The Blacklist Declassified

 

🔴 Trump/Ukraine/Russia Files 2023 (Jan-Jun)

 
Permalink: https://wp.me/pDKwi-eHY
 

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:

All The President’s Lawyers (J Barro, R Lowry)
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

💙 Key War Accounts: @bayraktar_1love @ChuckPfarrer @DefenseU @DefMon3 @NOELReports @TheStudyOfWar @WarintheFuture @warmonitor3 @wartranslated

💙 Tim White’s awesome log: Search @TWMCLtd ✛ “Day 999” or use dates: https://twitter.com/search-advanced
(The War started on 2/24/2022)
 

༺ ✿⊰ ♤ ⊱✿༻

 
⭕ 30 Jun 2023

Politico, Alyona Getmanchuk and Olena Halushka: Why Ukraine should get an invitation to NATO https://tinyurl.com/2b2h57w9
// Opening accession talks won’t drag the Alliance into the war with Russia — in fact, it will prevent it.

WaPo: CIA director, on secret trip to Ukraine, hears plan for war’s endgame https://tinyurl.com/2av7b7xm “In an ideal scenario favored by Kyiv, Ukraine’s military would … advance troops and powerful weapons to the edge of Ukraine’s boundary with Crimea”
// During meetings in Kyiv, William Burns was told of Ukraine’s ambitious goal to retake territory and push Moscow into talks by the end of the year

TheTimes [UK]: Putin knows his history: the end will be brutal and from within https://tinyurl.com/yu7s5ues //➔ Great history and great writing #highlyrec
// 6/30/2023; Despite having the trappings of a functional constitution Russia remains an autocracy in which, from Peter the Great to Stalin, leaders either anoint their successors or are removed by bloody force, writes Simon Sebag Montefiore
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Putin’s End 6-30-2023

In the history of a nation famed for its blood-spattered successions, it was the most savage liquidation of an autocrat — and is ever in the mind of a history-obsessed Russian ruler who this week may be feeling the insecurity of a system in which the despot seems omnipotent but in which there is no orderly succession nor safe retirement and in which the jeopardy is intensified by his own merciless war. At midnight on March 23, 1801, Tsar Paul, successor and son of Catherine the Great, heard footsteps on the stair of his impregnable new residence, Mikhailovsky Castle. He did not have time to wonder how the assassins had gained access, nor how none of his multiple security agencies had reported the conspiracy, nor why this paradomaniacal military enthusiast was about to be challenged by his own elite officers.

Paul leapt out of bed in his nightgown and hid behind a tapestry. The conspirators, almost a hundred, were led by his top generals and many of them were drunk after a pre-regicidal champagne drinks party. They were let in by the emperor’s closest servant. They passed the bedrooms of his mistress, who did nothing. His son Alexander, heir to the throne, waited listening downstairs as they burst into the chamber. Paul was destroyed by war: his capricious foreign policy, including sending an army to attack British India, and his crazy, inconsistent personal terror, humiliating officers and nobles, convinced his trusted chief minister, Count Peter von der Pahlen, and his generals to depose him.

The conspirators saw his feet and dragged him out. When he refused to abdicate, a giant officer hit him with a golden snuffbox, knocking out an eye, then several threw themselves on to him. Holding down his limbs, they smashed his head on the floor and strangled him with his sash. When it was done, several drunkenly stomped the head to pulp. Downstairs his sobbing son, Alexander I, learnt he was now emperor and a parricide. Russian government, joked the French femme-de-lettres Germaine de Staël, was “autocracy tempered by strangulation”. Its 21st-century governance is not much improved.

Vladimir Putin surely knows the story well: he is a history buff specialising in 18th-century tsars and empire-builders. (God save us from omnipotent history buffs!) His three favourite characters — Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin — all either faced attempted military coups or successfully launched them.

Russia is run in such a way that orderly successions are virtually impossible. It has the trappings of a functioning constitution — elections, presidency, legislature — but that is cosplay. It is actually an autocracy that tolerates no real opposition, so the politics takes place in secret cabals in palace corridors, lubricated by money and vodka, enforced by pistol and swagger. Coups, intrigues, covins and conspiracies are the only ways to get anything done. …

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman In just 2 days, this Court has set civil rights back decades and blocked life-changing opportunities for millions of Americans. Precedent means nothing to conservative justices legislating from the bench with no transparency or accountability. ¤ We need reform and we need it now.

🐣 RT @RollingStone Commentary: The Supreme Court has become just another arm of the religious right — and the rest of us are all paying for it.
⋙ RollingStone: The Supreme Court Sold Its Soul to the Christian Right https://tinyurl.com/yc6nsjny
// From affirmative action to LGBTQ rights to student loans, the court delivered for a vocal minority made up of religious extremists

🐣 RT @igorsushko Kremlin asset Nigel Farage says his bank in the UK closed his accounts without explanation and 7 other banks refused his money. Well, yea, they don’t want the liability of holding his dirty money. Free market at work. I’m sure he’s welcome at Sberbank in Russia. [CNB link]

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski This makes me think that he, or his lawyers, were told something. Maybe not, but this seems rather random for him to make this prediction today.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1674842153099329536?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @@realDonaldTrump I predict that the Racist District Attorney in Atlanta, with the per capita WORST crime record in the Country, Fani Willis, where murderers “get away with murder,” and are seldom charged and almost never prosecuted, will be dropping all charges against me for lack of a case. I made a PERFECTLY LEGAL PHONE CALL, AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ABOUT AN ELECTION THAT I STRONGLY FEEL WAS RIGGED AND STOLLEN. NONE of the MANY LAWYERS on the call minded my words, or even hinted at
wrongdoing. SCAM!

NYT, Mikhail Zygar: Putin Thinks He’s Still in Control. He’s Not. https://tinyurl.com/mr33faj7 The uprising showed Putin “in the worst possible light: weak, vacillating, incapable of exerting control. He alone is to blame for what happened, something that is obvious to everyone except him”

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss The problem with being a useful idiot for this regime is that the regime always ends up diminishing your usefulness and amplifying your idiocy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheGEC Putin on Wagner:
2020 “Wagner does not receive funding from the Russian state” https://bit.ly/434B8uD
2022 “Russian state has nothing to do with Wagner” https://bit.ly/3NpkG2a
2023 June 27 “all of the funding the Wagner Group received came from the state” https://bit.ly/46l2sHT

🐣 RT @maria_drutska I haven’t heard Medvedev’s nuclear threats for over a week; I almost started worrying about how he’s doing. ¤ Meanwhile, scientists have created a visualization of a nuclear war between the USA and russia. ¤ In such a scenario, more than 5 billion people could die from explosions, radiation, and starvation, including approximately 99% of the populations of the United States, Europe, russia, & China.
💽 https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1674675418698244097?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @maria_drutska “The FSB has been tasked to kill Prigozhin,” – Head of the GUR Budanov

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone #Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said Russia’s reducing number of personnel & military at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Few people would be surprised if Putin caused an #ecocide nuclear explosion to delay Ukraine’s advance on occupied #Crimea.
⋙ TheGuardian: Russia reducing number of personnel at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – reports https://tinyurl.com/wbaze6f8
// Russia is gradually reducing the number of personnel at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southern Ukraine, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Friday.

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone No one can be “unbothered” by the “horrific developments taking place now in #Ukraine & the crimes committed by Russia. #Ecocide & environmental destruction is a form of warfare…” Yesterday, @GretaThunberg visited Kyiv & talked to President Zelensky.
⋙ CNN: Greta Thunberg highlights environmental cost of war in Kyiv meeting with Zelensky https://tinyurl.com/h3szy6ra

⭕ 29 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Enormous insights into the fragility of the Putin regime. A bunch of corrupt gangsters. Hard to unseat Putin. He’s off gassing vulnerability. The bench waiting to take power are weak, divided, don’t trust anyone. Couple of thousand tac nukes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar Of course Prigozhin had help from Russian generals. (…)
¤ https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1673972979452051456?s=20

You don’t march 800 km through 4 Russian oblasts virtually unimpeded if there is no significant support in the Russian generality. Putin had to order mayors with dump cars and excavators to set up barricades, because the Russian army was AWOL.

Even though the circumstances of Wagner`s stopping at the gates of Moscow are murky, I stand by my word that Moscow would have been taken by Sunday. The resistance of Putin’s regime was nonexistent or not willing to defend Putin and the question is not if Russian generals helped in this insurrection, but how many were involved.

The dissolution of Russian statehood is continuing and Putin is facing the dilemma whether to send out his few remaining bloodhounds to track down the insurrectionists and by doing so expedite the downfall of the Russian war effort or remain being a lame duck and being removed altogether in a short period of time. Since he is revengeful narcissist who already said that he will never forgive betrayal he would eventually go after the traitors, if he can regain some relative power back, and his enemies are most certainly aware of that fact. ¤ It’s going to be interesting either way, since he will lose no matter what. ¤ Source: [Below] #Russia #Ukraine #PMCWagner

🐣 RT @Mike_Pence While I strongly support American involvement in Ukraine, I heard again today frustration about how slow the Biden Administration has been in providing that military support. We are the most powerful Nation on Earth, we have the most powerful military on Earth, and we ought to be providing them with what they need to win.
💽 [CNN:] https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/status/1674598630748037121?s=20/photo/1

BBC: Chinese spy balloon did not collect information, says Pentagon https://tinyurl.com/3pd3jaxv “The US ‘took steps to mitigate’ what intelligence the suspected spy balloon could collect, officials said on Thursday”

AtlanticCouncil, Taras Kuzio: Putin’s Wagner weakness is a signal to support Ukraine’s counteroffensive https://tinyurl.com/umc7ry2v “Putin’s failure to punish mutinous troops … has revealed him as a weak leader who is more inclined to capitulate than escalate”

🐣 RT @walter_report There were 17 schools in Bakhmut (11,600 children).
There were 29 kindergartens in Bakhmut (3,500 children).
In Bakhmut there were 3 colleges (2,000 students), 2 academies (6,000 students), several music schools, 5 cultural centers, 12 libraries…
There was a salt mine near Bakhmut with World’s largest underground concert hall.
A magnificent winery with a unique bottling method was also in Bakhmut.
There was a lot in Bakhmut. Was. Not anymore.
Such a city no longer exists.
Leveled down by russians.
Wherever russians come to – they ruin and destroy everything.
Scourge.
@apostrophe_ua
🖼 https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1674538905939394560?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Russian elite brace for sweeping Kremlin investigation into Wagner rebellion https://tinyurl.com/3ynky94r

WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: The battle in Syria that looms behind Wagner’s rebellion https://tinyurl.com/yu28wtwt

🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki The bitter feud between Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov appears to have originated in Syria, as an interesting personal account by Prigozhin of the February 2018 Battle of Khasham illustrates. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1674479633545175047?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1674479633545175047.html

🐣 RT @gtconway3d From the journalist who first reported that a federal indictment was about to drop.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg NEW: Federal prosecutors are prepared to seek indictments against multiple figures in former president Donald Trump’s orbit and may yet bring additional charges against the ex-president in the coming weeks, The @Independent has learned
⋙⋙ TheIndependent: Prosecutors are prepared to hit Trump and his allies with new charges, sources say https://tinyurl.com/2n6sbwjt
// Prosecutors could bring between 30 to 45 additional criminal charges against the former president in the coming weeks

🐣 RT @ArmedMaidan Ukrainian forces breached dense mine fields and formidable defenses in a well-planned operation near Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut, that advanced so rapidly it cut off an entire Russian airborne company, which surrendered after realizing too late it was surrounded, Euromaidan Press says in its latest frontline report […]
🌎 https://twitter.com/ArmedMaidan/status/1674540142441250816?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Mike_Pence I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win this war in Ukraine, and it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty. There is no room in our party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.

🐣 RT @McFaul The longer autocrats stay in power, the more mistakes they make. They become isolated, surrounded by yes-men, and cut off from society. They think they know everything & stop listening to advisors. They get tired. #Putin has been in power for 23 years. That’s a long time.

🐣 RT @ KyivPost 🇺🇸Former US Vice President and candidate for nomination from the Republican Party, Mike #Pence, made an unannounced visit to #Ukraine, NBC News reported. ¤ He met with President #Zelensky, visited Moschun, #Bucha and #Irpin. ¤ “Supporting Ukrainian military is in our national interest,” Pence said.

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa The support of the United States for our fight for freedom is vital. The support of all Americans, every American family, all civil society groups, the Congress – both parties, both houses, and of course the support of President Joe Biden. I am grateful for this support!
Today, the 48th Vice President of the United States @Mike_Pence is in Kyiv. We discussed our defense, interaction between our nations, security cooperation, and importance of partners’ determination and certainty regarding Ukraine’s future membership in NATO. 🇺🇦🇺🇸

🐣 According to this @WashingtonPost chart, in states where affirmative action has been banned, Whites benefit by 2%, Asian-Americans by 1% and Blacks(!) by .5%; Hispanics are disadvantaged by 2%. Of greater importance is the fact that these effects are at the margins.
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1674487442957815810?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 ⇈ The relative positions of the groups don’t change much relative to one another.
WaPo: State affirmative action bans helped White, Asian students, hurt others https://tinyurl.com/y7fxu59s

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Before people start criticizing a decision they haven’t read, they should take a look at the facts of these “affirmative action” cases, in particular the outrageous facts of the case from my alma mater, Harvard. ¤ Race wasn’t just a “factor” in the mix. Asian-Americans were systematically denied admission because of their race, and everyone should stop pretending otherwise.
⋙ 🐣 What Harvard needs to do away with, if it seriously wants to eliminate bias, are legacy admissions.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TafkaTrap Legacies are a red herring. The merit gap is small & it’s legacy whites bumping non legacy whites. Black/brown AA admits bump Asians/Jews & the merit gap is huge. Legacies are not comparable. At all. They’re also not illegal racial discrimination.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 whites are not all the same: other factors matter, like family income, regional, urban/rural, ethnicity, religion; I get really annoyed at all whites being viewed as one undifferentiated mass ¤ legacy admissions are the closest thing we have to a hereditary, landed gentry

🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: The Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. The major ruling curtails race-conscious college admissions in the U.S., all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Supreme Court Rejects Affirmative Action Programs at Harvard and UNC https://tinyurl.com/jerh5nkp
// In earlier decisions, the court had endorsed taking account of race as one factor among many to promote educational diversity.
📔≣ ⋙ NYT: Read the Supreme Court Decision https://tinyurl.com/ycxshf3t
// [CourtDoc (copyable)]

🐣 RT @Acyn Reporter: Is this a rogue court? ¤ Biden: This is not a normal court

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Before people start criticizing a decision they haven’t read, they should take a look at the facts of these “affirmative action” cases, in particular the outrageous facts of the case from my alma mater, Harvard. ¤ Race wasn’t just a “factor” in the mix. Asian-Americans were systematically denied admission because of their race, and everyone should stop pretending otherwise.
⋙ 🐣 What Harvard needs to do away with, if it seriously wants to eliminate bias, are legacy admissions.

WSJ: U.S. Considers ATACMS Long-Range Missiles to Bolster Ukraine’s Fight https://tinyurl.com/57y96sec “The precision-guided missiles can hit GPS-located targets … with pinpoint accuracy, impeding Russia’s ability to put its rear-echelon operations out of Ukrainian reach”
// Officials see new urgency after long reluctance to provide advanced missile system

🐣 RT @BettyBowers Man whose sister did his homework in high school, who paid someone smart to take the SAT for him, got into college cause his daddy gave them money, and was called “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had” by a professor is happy we’re going back to “merit-based” enrollment, y’all.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/1674476477935386624?s=20/photo/1
// [Text:] “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!” — Dr. William T. Kelley

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA “The war between the security forces – the FSB and the Ministry of Defense of Russia – is entering an active phase” – GUR ¤ Therefore, physical destruction as a result of this confrontation is not excluded.

💙 🐣 RT @djrothkopf Bidenomics is real. It is a revolutionary. And it is producing better lives for Americans. By focusing on it, Biden is doing something else radical. He is not pandering or lying as his opponents do. He is running on the truth of his record.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Economists may look back on this time as an inflection point when historic investments ushered in a new era of domestic manufacturing, gave a new lease on life to the Rust Belt and improved the balance sheet of middle-class Americans.
⋙⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: ‘Bidenomics’ is transformative. Biden needs to ensure voters know it https://tinyurl.com/226e9s8d

The economy has created 13 million jobs, inflation has been more than cut in half, huge investments are being made in infrastructure and green energy, wage growth has begun to outpace inflation, the first drug price controls are going into effect and the biggest corporations will finally be forced to pay something in federal taxes. Yet polls show voters incorrectly think we are in a recession and remain negative about the economy. ¤ The White House is well aware of the problem.

🔄 Beginning this week, the White House is making a focused push to narrow the gap between performance and perception. On Monday, senior Biden advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn released a four-page memo explaining the president’s vision, which they call “Bidenomics.”

🐣 📊 RT @KyivPost 78% – the vast majority of Ukrainians have close relatives or friends who were injured or killed during the Russian invasion of #Ukraine, according to the results of a sociological survey conducted by the #Kyiv International Institute of Sociology on May 26 to June 5, 2023 ¤ At the same time, 64% of Ukrainians have at least one close relative or friend who was wounded, and 63% have at least one close relative or friend who was killed.
¤ https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1674379118446559232?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Respect 🙏
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1674406871455637504?s=20/photo/1
// “Peaceful and Free Europe” / “Ukraine Refusing to Surrender”

🐣 RT @OleksiyDanilov [tr] The collapse of the “Budapest Memorandum” (1994), the failed Bucharest NATO summit (2008) were successive steps to encourage the Russian attack on Ukraine. The third mistake can be critical. History has proven that world stability is impossible without solving Ukraine’s security issues. We expect maximum specifics in the “anti-Budapest” style from the upcoming Vilnius summit…

🐣 📊 RT @ EuromaidanPress Ukrainiansv attitudes toward the largest allied countries remains very positive.
94% consider Poland a friendly country, 86% consider the United States friendly, 85% consider the United Kingdom friendly,
80% – Germany, a jump from 65% last year [link]
◕ https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1674378348372393986?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️The issues of Ukraine’s future membership in NATO will be discussed already after the summit in Vilnius, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. ¤ “After the NATO summit, we will discuss Ukraine’s aspirations for NATO membership. And I am absolutely sure that the allies will send a very strong signal of support to Ukraine,”- said the Secretary General.

🐣 RT @ hwag_ucmc ‼️ Russian Threat to Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant, Ukrainian intelligence issues stark warning ¤ Watch our explainer here: https://youtu.be/7tDWtvFhkxM
💽 https://twitter.com/hwag_ucmc/status/1674385565737795584?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ @FinancialTimes Breaking news: Top Russian army general Sergei Surovikin — known as ‘General Armageddon’ — has been detained as the Kremlin cracks down on Wagner sympathisers following the militia’s failed mutiny last week https://on.ft.com/44pBQU2

🐣 RT @WarFrontline Wagner” will no longer fight in Ukraine, – Budanov
PMC “Wagner” will no longer participate in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine.And this is the most effective unit of the Russian Federation,which knew how to achieve success at any cost, said the head of intelligence💪🏼‼️👀

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa We have to realize that the path to our victory is difficult. And now, no one can say when we will complete it. But when the goal is clear and fair, it does not matter how thorny the path to this goal is. Ukraine will walk this path to victory! And this is no longer a dream – it is a reality.

🐣 RT @NOELreports “Bakhmut is fully controlled by the Armed Forces from the air, the occupiers are retreating from the northern streets,” commander Denys Yaroslavskyi said.
// “Defenders of Ukraine actually are working to take control of Klishchiivka and Berkhivka and its strategic heights near the city. After their capture, Bakhmut can be taken into an operational encirclement,” he added.

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Girkin… Oh-oh again 👀
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1674317347434160128?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Strelkov Igor Ivanovich #KRP ¤ While the face, vaguely similar to President (and absolutely not requiring compliance with the two-week quarantine necessary to get an appointment with the president) walked around Derbent, Hero of Russia Yevgeny Prigozhin traveled around Moscow, and then around St. Petersburg (where, apparently, he is now). No one is going to detain an eminent citizen who has recently been accused of rebellion. Although the whole country mourns at least 10 combat pilots killed through his fault. Listen, citizens: Do we really need to follow at least some laws in our country? Or is everything already possible?

🐣 RT @TelegraphWorld 🔴 Yevgeny Prigozhin was forced to launch his mutiny early because Russia’s security agency learnt of the plan in advance, Western intelligence agencies have said. ¤ Full story: https://tinyurl.com/bdz6yuyz

⭕ 28 Jun 2023

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Why Donald Trump Was So Mad at Mark Milley That He Confessed to a Crime https://tinyurl.com/4p9t97k7 “Milley [was] concern[ed] throughout the volatile post-election period that Trump might escalate a confrontation with Iran”

… Milley [was] concern[ed] throughout the volatile post-election period that Trump might escalate a confrontation with Iran. I learned about this as part of my reporting for “The Divider,” a book on Trump’s Presidency I was working on with my husband, Peter Baker of the Times, and decided to publish the information then, given its relevance to the new disclosures about the Trump-Milley rift. The resulting July 15, 2021, piece described repeated meetings after the election, during which Milley objected to the prospect of strikes, which were being pressed on Trump by a circle of Iran hawks around the President as well as by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Milley even flew to Israel to have a meeting with him, at his home in Jerusalem, to urge him to back off. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley told Netanyahu. Iran was in fact the subject of the final meeting Milley had with Trump, on January 3, 2021, when the chairman and other national-security advisers were summoned to the Oval Office on a Sunday afternoon to debate the matter one last time. At the end of the meeting, Trump raised the upcoming January 6th rally of his supporters to Milley and his acting Defense Secretary, Christopher Miller. “It’s gonna be a big deal,” Milley heard Trump say. “You’re ready for that, right?” …

[…] When Meadows’s ghostwriters showed up at Bedminster that day, the former President saw a chance to plant his story about Milley. It worked, by the way: the book that Meadows ultimately published in November of 2021, “The Chief’s Chief,” included a detailed account of the meeting in Bedminster, with the “sound of children laughing” at the pool outside drifting into the room as Trump, “dressed in a sport coat and a crisp white shirt,” recalled “a four-page report typed up by Mark Milley himself” that purportedly “contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran.”

No one made much of this attack on Milley when Meadows’s book came out. If anything, it underscored Trump’s own ignorance about the role of the Pentagon in dealing with its Commander-in-Chief. It is the military’s job, and that of its chairman as the President’s senior military adviser, to draw up war plans for any number of scenarios. Presenting such a plan to Trump on Iran is hardly proof of advocacy to use it.

What Milley had been so worried about in the final days of Trump’s Presidency was the spectre of an erratic leader, one who was cavalier with the nation’s secrets, impetuous in his thinking about war and peace, and consumed with himself and his effort to stay in power. All this was only confirmed by Trump’s rant against him. “This totally wins my case,” Trump had said in the taped interview that will now be used against him in court. But it already seems clear that the case it proved was Milley’s.

🐣 RT @ChakhoyanAndrew “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, when pushed against the wall, Putin did not lash out or become more dangerous. Rather, he became amenable to compromise and negotiation, focused on salvaging his position.” #mustread @MacaesBruno
⋙ NewStateman, Bruno Maçães: What Ukraine knew about the Wagner mutiny https://tinyurl.com/yty6tu7f
// Kyiv had been expecting Yevgeny Prigozhin to act for weeks. Now the truth is out: there is no Russian state.

🐣 RT @christogrozev As I said on @OutFrontCNN last night, we discovered a surge of panicky midnight communication between FSB, GRU and FSO already the night of 22 to 23 June, a full day before Prigozhin launched the coup attempt. This report may explain why.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bopancScoop: Wagner’s Prigozhin planned to capture Russia’s military leadership as part of his mutiny but had to rush the operation after Russian intelligence FSB learned of the plot some 48 hours in advance, which could in part explain its failure. [link] via @WSJ
⋙⋙ WSJ: Wagner’s Prigozhin Planned to Capture Russian Military Leaders https://tinyurl.com/439nfn7c
// Western intelligence officials say Russian domestic intelligence agency learned of plot in advance

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡ EU members France and Germany, alongside the UK and US, have led efforts to agree on bilateral security arrangements to provide Ukraine with long-term financing, military supplies, training, and intelligence aimed at helping it repel russia’s full-scale invasion and protect it from future aggression, — Financial Times.

The proposed EU declaration is aimed at sending “a very clear political signal” to Ukraine and russia, according to one diplomat involved in the discussions. It is also seen as ensuring the bloc has a stake in the broader security framework being devised to protect Ukraine and is not sidelined by US-led Nato, according to a second official. 👉 Follow @Flash_news_ua

🐣 RT @OmarRiverosays BREAKING: Trump is hit with more bad news as legendary “Watergate” journalist Bob Woodward declares on live national television that he “has never seen anyone in government” who is such “an alarming, dangerous threat to national security” as Trump. ¤ But it gets even worse for Trump…

⋙ Woodward continued his brutal rant on CNN, revealing that the “contingency plans” that Trump stole “are most sensitive documents in the government because they outline during a crisis how we might attack Iran, what the casualties would be, how many ships would be sunk, how long it might take.” ¤ This should strike fear in the heart of EVERY American who cares about our national security and democracy.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Sorry, trump. This investigation started wayyyyy before you declared your candidacy. So technically, trumps candidacy is interfering with Jack Smith’s investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KFaulders In response to ABC’s reporting, Trump’s campaign accused special counsel Jack Smith of “openly engaging in outright election interference and meddling by targeting one of the leaders of President Trump’s re-election campaign.” […]

🐣 RT @AccountableGOP Chris Christie: “We had people trying to hunt down the Vice President of the U.S. chanting, ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ And Donald Trump…sat outside the Oval Office in that dining room of his eating a well-done cheeseburger and watching TV and doing nothing to stop what was going on.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1674239987439501312?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @ WarintheFuture The ripples from the Wagner mutiny in Russia over the weekend continue to propagate across the Russian systems. A quick assessment of the impact on Russia’s ‘fighting power’. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1674162791199174657?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1674162791199174657.html

🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel A joy to my heart. Ukrainian forces have reportedly crossed the Dnipro River and retaken territory on the left bank of Kherson province, in a move that paves the way for a future possible advance towards Crimea. ¤ According to pro-Russian Telegram channels, Ukrainian troops have seized the village of Dachi, opposite the city of Kherson, and near the destroyed Antonivskyi Bridge. They have dug in and are seeking to establish a bridgehead, the channels said. @guardian

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSLIKA /0015 UTC 29 JUN/ UKR units on the Velyka Novoslika axis have liberated Rivnopil & the area to its south. RU forces were dislodged from the hamlet and fled toward Starornnaiorske. UKR has consolidated gains on the east bank of the Mokri Yaly River.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1674207386028867585?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en “And it would be right for Russia to ask for Ukraine’s membership in NATO now. ¤ Because NATO members defend themselves, not attack. ¤ NATO states defend nations, not rush into their neighbors to destroy their future. ¤ Russia, as the aggressor, knows this better than anyone else, a Russia that is now entering an era of rebellion and systemic weakness, is more than anyone interested in security on its internationally recognized borders. ¤ Therefore, Russia is also interested in Ukraine being in NATO” – @ZelenskyyUa

🐣 📊 RT @KyivIndependent Poll: 65% of Americans support arming Ukraine. ¤ Around 81% of Democrats, 56% of Republicans, and 57% of independents expressed their support for supplying Ukraine with weapons, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on June 28 revealed.

🐣 RT @McFaul Obviously waiting for further confirmation, but very big news if true. Remember Putin named Surovikin to command Russian forces in Ukraine & then soon removed him, replacing him with Gerasimov. Was reporting at the time that soldiers were disappointed with that decision. Wonder what they are thinking now?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Faytuks Russian general Sergei Surovikin has been arrested, two sources close the Russia’s ministry of defence tells The Moscow Times

🐣 RT @igorsushko Exhibit for the Hague, if Putin lives to see his trial for war crimes. Russia “fully” funded Wagner Group atrocities around the globe. Russian state paid Wagner over ₽166.371 billion in the past year. $1.935 billion.

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Big news is this wasn’t just an interview: it was a proffer session. Rudy is trying to avoid an indictment. ¤ Giuliani Sat for Voluntary Interview in Jan. 6 Investigation
⋙ NYT: Giuliani Sat for Voluntary Interview in Jan. 6 Investigation https://tinyurl.com/yhsvety9
// The onetime personal lawyer for Donald Trump answered questions from federal prosecutors about the former president’s efforts to remain in power after his 2020 election loss.

🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Russian sources reportedly say that Sergei Shoigu’s plan to defang the Wagner Group failed because he didn’t anticipate Yevgeny Prigozhin’s personal popularity. Prigozhin had prior knowledge of the moves being made against him, leading to his strike against Rostov-on-Don.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1673963225845493764?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1673963225845493764.html

2/ Shoigu is nonetheless said to be unsackable due to knowing too many secrets and having too extensive a network of loyalists to be easily uprooted. Meanwhile, Putin is said to have been in complete confusion and reportedly put the FSB in charge during the mutiny. ⬇️

3/ The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that a source has told it about what happened on the Russian government side immediately before Wagner’s mutiny: ¤ “The harbinger of a coup in Russia is always a strengthening of the protection of state institutions.

4/ “A few days before the escalation of the situation with the Wagner PMC, the FSO [Federal Protective Service] suddenly asked Rosgvardia [Russian National Guard] chief Zolotov for assistance from fighters of Dzerzhinsky division.

5/ “The Rosgvardians reinforced FSO patrols near the Kremlin, the White House [the Russian government’s main office], the presidential administration and other government facilities in the capital.

6/ “On 27 June, the reinforcements were withdrawn as suddenly as they appeared and the main state institutions were guarded as normal.

7/ “In addition to the strengthening of the security of the buildings, operative groups of the Central Security Service and the Main Staff of the Ministry of Defence flew to the war zone in advance, supported personally by Defence Minister Shoigu and his high-ranking entourage.

8/ “A group of officers of the Main Personnel Directorate of the Defence Ministry also flew to Rostov. They all were told there that by 1 July, the Wagner PMC shall be disbanded and cease to exist.

9/ “Newly arrived task force units and operational staff on the ground were ordered to make this transition without any excesses. ¤ Thus, with Moscow’s approval, the operation to disband Prigozhin’s army was to take place.

10/ “The protracted conflict between the defence minister and the head of the PMC was to have been ended. But things did not go according to plan.

11/ “According to the sources of VChK-OGPU, Shoigu was initially motivated by someone to take very drastic measures against several leaders of Wagner. Under any circumstances, Prigozhin and his associates, which included [Dmitry] Utkin, were to be interned.

12/ “But they did not take into account the popularity of the country’s chief chef with front-line officers, soldiers and service operatives. All possible scenarios for the detention of Prigozhin and his men have been made available to the latter.

13/ “As the VChK-OGPU source believes, they did not envisage the main thing – the unwillingness [of the military] to take the side of the extremely unpopular Special Military Operation leaders, Shoigu and Gerasimov.

14/ “That is when a missile strike was launched against Wagner’s positions. After the failed missile strike on Wagner’s positions the action unfolded. ¤ In a matter of hours the headquarters of the southern grouping and the city of Rostov-on-Don were taken.

15/ “The Defence Minister fled to Moscow. ¤ Then within twenty-four hours the Wagnerites effectively approached the capital.”

16/ As many commentators noted, Shoigu disappeared from view during the mutiny. According to VChK-OGPU, it was because he was effectively put into protective custody by the FSO while negotiations took place between the government and Prigozhin over his future.

17/ “Several VChK-OGPU sources confirmed information that after fleeing Rostov and the rapid advance of the Wagner PMC towards Moscow, Sergei Shoigu was effectively isolated by the FSO, he was not allowed anywhere under the pretext of personal security.

18/ “In reality, Shoigu was at this point the object of negotiations between Prigozhin and Lukashenko. It was because of Shoigu that Prigozhin initially broke off the negotiations (Putin refused to give up his defence minister).

19/ “However, the situation became more difficult by the hour, the convoy was rapidly approaching Moscow. As a result, Putin effectively met all Prigozhin’s demands by pushing back on Shoigu.

20/ “But even then he was not taken out of the isolation, because FSB Deputy Director Korolev personally initiated an urgent revision of all materials regarding the Defense Ministry (the issue regarding Deputy Minister Tsalikov is still open, by the way).”

22/ “[Aleksey] Dyumin also persuaded Putin of the need to “remove” Shoigu. But Putin decided otherwise – to make Shoigu into an almost-hero who defeated Prigozhin.

23/ “The source believes that the point here is that Shoigu is extremely dangerous in the event of resignation because of his knowledge, the huge number of people loyal to him in senior positions and his leverage over processes in the Kremlin.

24/ “This is not the harmless [Dmitry] Medvedev or [Vladislav] Surkov, whose silence and inaction can be bought with money, this is more serious. Putin is not ready for such a conflict right now,” reckons our interlocutor.”

25/ The FSB is said to have played a central role in dealing with the mutiny. During Wagner’s march on Moscow, VChK-OGPU published a cryptic account from a source: “In fact, the country is currently under the control of the FSB. Everywhere there’s fear and confusion.”

26/ The channel reports that another source in the Russian government “speaks of Putin’s utter confusion [during the mutiny] – he was only seen this way in 2014, when a Malaysian civilian Boeing was shot down by mistake [✛ TG Sources]

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LONG RANGE PUNCH: US Senator James Risch says the possibility of sending long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine is high. Risch said in an interview with the Voice of America yesterday (27 June) that ‘ATACMS missiles are an effective weapon that Ukraine must receive ASAP’.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1674174234052919297?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @haltman As Prigozhin sets up shop in Belarus, heads appear to be rolling in Russia of military leaders and others who may have helped him.
⋙ TheDrive: Purges Underway In Russian Security Apparatus After Prigozhin’s Mutiny https://tinyurl.com/mryc85wj
// Reports say Gen. Sergei Surovikin, head of the Russian Air Force and erstwhile Prigozhin ally, was arrested for his part in the mutiny.

🐣 RT @McFaul Surovikin is not some mid-level colonel. He is/was second in command in Ukraine and was first in command before Putin removed him. Having him out of the fight would be good for Ukraine. Having Russian soldiers pissed off about him being out of the fight would be even better.

🐣 RT @clashreport After the failed attempt of an armed rebellion, Moscow is conducting an “audit” of the activities of Wagner PMC around the world. ¤ Similar messages were transmitted to the authorities of the Central African Republic, Mali and the forces of Khalifa Haftar in Libya.

🐣 RT @7Veritas4 For those in the back, the investigations of his criminal conduct had started long before he declared his intentions. ¤ He isn’t running for President. He is running from his crimes. ¤ He isn’t being indicted for you. He is being indicted for Justice and the rule of Law.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/7Veritas4/status/1674032911551479809?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump IF I WASN’T RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, OR IF I WAS LOSING BADLY IN THE POLLS (I AM WINNING BY RECORD NUMBERS, & AGAINST BIDEN ALSO!), I WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN FAKE INDICTED. LIKEWISE, IF THE VERY CORRUPT DEMOCRATS TRULY WANTED TO RUN AGAINST ME, I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN INDICTED. IT IS ALL A BADGE OF HONOR & COURAGE. I AM BEING INDICTED FOR YOU!!!

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA INFORMATION FROM RUSSIAN MILITARY CORRESPONDENTS!!! According to preliminary information, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Forces Surovikin and his deputy, Colonel-General Yudin, were detained and taken to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.

NYT: Something Is Messing With Earth’s Axis https://tinyurl.com/3pru9uy2 “In terms of the effect on Earth’s axis, pumping up water from underground was second in magnitude, between 1993 and 2010, only to the post-glacier adjustment of the planet’s crust, the study found”

🐣 RT @sentdefender U.S. Officials have told the NYT they believe that Command-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, General Sergey Surovikin alongside several other Members of Russian Military Leadership knew about and possibly Supported the “Coup” by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner PMC Group.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Luka[shenko] the Mediator with his own vision of what happened on Friday, claims Putin made a decision to challenge Wagner with force, but Luka the Wise managed to get hold of Prigozhin who wasn’t picking up Putin’s calls.

NYT: Russian General Knew About Mercenary Chief’s Rebellion Plans, U.S. Officials Say https://tinyurl.com/2r25ctbb “If General [Sergei] Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of the infighting that has characterized Russia’s military leadership”
// Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, may have believed he had support in Russia’s military.

⭕ 27 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @wartranslated Luka[shenko] the Mediator with his own vision of what happened on Friday, claims Putin made a decision to challenge Wagner with force, but Luka the Wise managed to get hold of Prigozhin who wasn’t picking up Putin’s calls.

📔 ChahamHouse: Report: How to end Russia’s war on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2hyyxape
// Safeguarding Europe’s future, and the dangers of a false peace

[…] Backing a full and unambiguous Ukrainian victory is therefore essential not only on moral but also practical grounds. Although recent increases in Western supplies of munitions and other hardware are welcome, the fundamental solution to many of the problems raised in this report remains: that Ukraine still needs a massive influx of weaponry. Without it, Ukraine will cease to exist as a sovereign state and an emboldened Russia will continue its imperialist campaign of expansionism against neighbours and aggression against perceived adversaries, democratic and otherwise, the world over. In the longer term, backing Ukraine will serve to deter other aggressors while potentially sowing the seeds for positive political change in Russia.

NYT: Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections https://tinyurl.com/22kujys5 “The Constitution, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, ‘does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law’”
// The 6-to-3 majority dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory, which would have given state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over federal elections.

The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the majority opinion. The Constitution, he said, “does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law.” ¤ Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

… Though some of the biggest cases are still to come, probably arriving by the end of the week, the court has so far repeatedly repudiated aggressive arguments from conservative litigants. …

The case concerned the “independent state legislature” theory. It is based on a reading of the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which says, “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

Proponents of the strongest form of the theory say this means that no other organs of state government — not courts, not governors, not election administrators, not independent commissions — can alter a legislature’s actions on federal elections.

Chief Justice Roberts [writing for the majority ] rejected that position. “The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” he wrote.

The ruling soundly dismissed the theory, one that an unusually diverse array of lawyers, judges and scholars across the ideological spectrum viewed as extreme and dangerous. Adopting the theory, they warned, could have profound consequences for nearly every aspect of federal elections, including by erasing safeguards against partisan gerrymandering and curtailing the ability to challenge voting restrictions in state courts.

But some election law specialists cautioned that Tuesday’s decision elevated the power of federal courts in the process, allowing them to second-guess at least some rulings of state courts based on state law.

“This gives the U.S. Supreme Court the ultimate say over the meaning of state law in the midst of an election dispute,” Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a blog post. “This is a bad, but not awful, result.”

Others said the decision was a nearly complete victory and a resounding reaffirmation of the status quo. “I see no evidence of interest by the Supreme Court to make mischief here,” said Vikram David Amar, the dean of the University of Illinois College of Law

WaPo: After Putin speech on deal with mercenaries, Russia confronts divisions https://tinyurl.com/yc8ex5e8 “‘There was so little support for the regime that it was really striking. The military didn’t move. The police didn’t move. People were just watching’”

The Kremlin on Tuesday went into overdrive to try to project unity and reassert Putin’s strength while also moving to taint Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the former Putin ally who led the rebellion. But the official explanations for why Prigozhin was allowed to escape without punishment looked unusually thin, highlighting new doubts about Putin’s strength and competence in a crisis.…

The admission that Russian authorities spent so much money on a “private” mercenary group could backfire on Putin, as a telling example of the cost of the Ukraine war, which the Kremlin generally has sought to obscure from the public. The disclosure could be especially damaging after Prigozhin’s repeated accusations that Russian military leaders are minimizing the death toll in Ukraine, which he claims has run as high as 1,000 soldiers a day either killed, seriously wounded or deserting. …

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was present at Putin’s meeting with military officers, in a clear sign that the president is unlikely to remove him, despite intense resentment over Shoigu’s handling of the war among hard-line nationalists and some Russian military officers. Prigozhin, a ferocious critic of Shoigu, tried to leverage those divisions in his unsuccessful mutiny.

In Moscow, the FSB announced that charges against Prigozhin’s Wagner Group had been dropped because “it was established that its participants stopped their actions aimed at committing a rebellion,” the Tass state-owned news agency reported. ¤ Putin and the Defense Ministry have acknowledged that several Russian military pilots were killed in the rebellion when Wagner fighters shot down their helicopters and at least one plane. …

Moscow-based Russia analyst Boris Kagarlitsky, a former Soviet dissident and critic of the Putin regime, said Kremlin claims that unity saved Russia were “just nonsense,” adding that many citizens observed the mutiny unfold without backing one side or another. ¤ “There was so little support for the regime that it was really striking. The military didn’t move. The police didn’t move. People were just watching. Nobody rushed to the government offices to show support,” he said. …

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSLIKA /1720 UTC 27 JUN/ UKR forces on the Velyka Novoslika axis have liberated Rivnopil. UKR has continued to push RU south along the T-05-18 HWY, consolidating gains on the E bank of the Mokri Yaly River & are now in contact at Starornnaiorske and Urozhaine.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673740371241713669?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1830 UTC 27 JUN/ During the reporting period 26-27 JUN, RU forces including elements of the 76th Air Mobile Division (VDV) reduced offensive operations in the Kreminna AO. They are assessed to have failed in their attempt to reach the Zherebets watershed.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673758354814935072?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON CITY /2115 UTC 27 JUN/ RU conducted two airstrikes against UKR positions on the S bank. Fires are presently visible in the vicinity. Darkness is hampering assessment of the situation, though it appears UKR forces remain in contact along the M-14 HWY axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673800484245700608?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WESTERN THEATER /27 JUN/ Ukrainian ‘crossing attempts’ along the Dnipro will necessarily force Russia to divert units from covering the major axes of advance to the Sea of Azov– namely the M-18 HWY to Melitopol and the H-30 HWY to Tokmak. Ukraine will dictate the pace of battle.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673698540416032768?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DemocracyDocket BREAKING: In a victory for voters, the U.S. Supreme Court rejects the radical independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper. State courts will continue to have the power to strike down unfair maps & voting laws for violating state constitutions. http://bit.ly/mooredecision

🧵 RT @ JuliaDavisNews Lukashenko is starting to reveal the alleged details of his negotiations with Prigozhin (thread):
*This is Google Translate, which is not familiar with some expressions. I made a few corrections so you can get the gist of what is being said.
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1673695100671602688?s=20/photo/1 -n

🐣 RT @7Veritas4 Could somebody please explain to Captain Capslock, his family, and his friends, that even a former President is not above the law? ¤ “Smith”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/7Veritas4/status/1673655397960278017?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO THE DERANGED, TRUMP HATING JACK SMITH, HIS FAMILY, AND HIS FRIENDS, THAT AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, I COME UNDER THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT, AS AFFIRMED BY THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, NOT BY THIS PSYCHOS’ FANTASY OF THE NEVER USED BEFORE ESPIONAGE ACT OF 1917. “SMITH” SHOULD BE LOOKING AT CROOKED JOE BIDDEN AND ALL OF THE CRIMES THAT HE HAS PERPETRATED ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, INCLUDING THE MILLIONS & MILLIONS OF DOLLARS HE EXTORTED FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES!

🐣 Sovereignty does not depend on self-sufficiency. It is established by domestic and international law:
≣ Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine (1990)
https://tinyurl.com/5d84vmrh
≣ Law on the Succession of Ukraine (1991)
https://tinyurl.com/2p8xrztc

🐣 RT @nexta_tv #Putin’s main henchman in Europe came out with a new scandalous statement. ¤ It was directed, of course, against #Ukraine.
“Ukraine is no longer a sovereign state. It has no money and no weapons. It can only fight thanks to aid. The U.S. decides when peace will come,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor #Orban.
In addition, Orban said he did not consider #Putin a war criminal and opposed sanctions.

💽 Ukraine’s Mineral Resources https://youtu.be/BftqoZOryDo

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Lukashenko gave his version of how events developed during the mutiny: ¤ “I said don’t make a hero out of me in any case, neither of me, nor of Putin, nor of Prigozhin, because we missed the situation, and then we thought that it would dissolve, but it did not dissolve. And two people who fought on the front collided. There are no heroes in this case.” ¤ “My position: if Russia collapses, we will all be left under the rubble, we will all die.”

🐣 RT @wartranslated Putin is set to award soldiers who “took part in suppressing the mutiny” in Kremlin. Shoygu is ready to receive another award. Man is not going anywhere, it seems.

🐣 RT @sentdefender The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has Confirmed that the Criminal Charges against Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Fighters within the Wagner PMC Group which Participated in the “Armed Rebellion” on June 23-24 have been Completely Dropped.

🐣 RT @ MingtheMercil15 Girkin is so depressed, he’s descended into black parody.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MingtheMercil15/status/1673591731097329665?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] His Majesty Reba the First looked sadly at the members of the Privy Council, dejectedly huddled in their chairs … There were reasons for sadness and despondency:

Not only did the war “not go very well” but also the recent rebellion of the beloved royal cook, on whom such great hopes were pinned, and instead of gratitude – who raised the Gray Companies and almost broke into Arkanar on the way from the Irukan front.

Everyone on whom His Majesty’s gaze fell lowered their gaze and began to fidget nervously.

Here is the Supreme Constable sitting… With a face like a baked apple. Once offended by fate at birth, but by it (as if in compensation for a congenital lack of intelligence and incurable moral deformity) ascended to the very heights under the last King (Pitz the Sixth Forever Drunk) and even more ascended after the right choice made upon coming to power Slaves of the First.

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA “The criminal case of an armed rebellion against Prigozhin was closed” – the FSB of the Russian Federation

🐣 RT @NOELreports Prigozhin has likely also arrived in Belarus. His business jet flew from Rostov-on-Don to Belarus and landed at the Machulishchy airbase near Minsk at 07:40.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports “Lukashenko : “I gave all orders to bring the army to full combat readiness. We must be stronger than the threats looming over our land. And the threats again come from the West,” he added.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Lukashenko: “Today we clearly see a new wave of NATO expansion and an unprecedented build-up of the potential of the alliance member countries in the region, including in the immediate vicinity of our borders. Demonstration after demonstration, a demonstration of strength.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Lukashenko: “Under no circumstances should you make a hero out of me, neither of Putin, nor of Prigozhin, because we messed up the situation, and then we thought it would get better, but it didn’t get better. And two people clashed, who fought at the front. There are no heroes in this matter.”

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua 🇬🇧 British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that the provision of Storm Shadow missiles to Kyiv “had a significant impact on the battlefield” in Ukraine, and their accuracy was “almost flawless”. ¤ “We encourage international partners to provide Ukraine with their long-range systems,” he added.

⭕ 26 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @Samizdat24 I’ll keep saying it. Either Putin lays down a massive show of force, cracks the whip on Wagner and their allies or he’s cooked. The toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t “oh well whatever nevermind” a fucking thunder run on Moscow, even an aborted one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DylanBurns1776 Telegram is not taking Putin’s speech well ¤ People are confused by the inaction in response to the mutiny. Pro/anti Wagner crowd are disappointed, and everyone else seems to be doomering. ¤ Feels like Putin’s mystique cracked. While his ministry of defense has never looked weaker.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @UkrainianAna Russian reactions to Putin’s “sensational” and “fate determing” speech for your enjoyment 😁
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/UkrainianAna/status/1673416487233548307?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] OK, fine.
That’s it.
What was that?
Vova are you a fucktard?
No, really, it’s over. Over.
And that’s it?
That’s it?
OK. I am a naive fool. I am done.
Determined the fate for real…
Umm. OK.
Translations for you all.

NYT: Biden and Putin Have Dueling Messages on the Mutiny in Russia https://tinyurl.com/2s8f5ez3 “Mr. Biden said his first move was to gather key allies on a video call because ‘we had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse’ to ‘blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO’”
// The White House concluded that it had to get ahead of any argument by Vladimir V. Putin that the uprising was serving the interests of Russia’s adversaries.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WAGNER’S AIR DEFENSE: During Wagner’s lunge at Moscow, Pregozhin’s mutineers shot down this rare and valuable Il-22M Command and Control aircraft. RU is said to have only 12 of these aircraft. Also downed were 6 Russian helicopters, taking the lives of as many as 30 RU airmen.
🖼 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673517322798071809?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Holy shit. Trump’s response to the incredibly incriminating tape is even MORE insane than I expected.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1673530252038144003?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The Deranged Special Prosecutor, Jack Smith, working in conjunction with the DOJ & FBI, illegally leaked and “spun” a tape and transcript of me which is actually an exoneration, rather than what they would have you believe. This continuing Witch Hunt is another ELECTION INTERFERENCE Scam. They are cheaters and thugs!

🐣 RT @ cepa “I think the most important thing we learn from this very strange sequence of events is that Putin is far weaker than we thought, and his regime is much more fragile than we thought,” @apolyakova explains to @GeoffRBennett what Prigozhin’s failed mutiny means for Russia.

💙 🐣 RT @MartinSauerbrey Putins Speech in short: You are all traitors, we defeated you without problem: Would you like to go home, fight on with us or go to a Spa in Belarus with your boss in order to resume plotting against me? I’m the one and only President of the RF. Am I?

NBCNews: Five or six Secret Service agents have testified before Jan. 6 grand jury, sources say https://tinyurl.com/29rjdrtx
// It is not known what the agents’ proximity to Trump was on Jan. 6 or what information they may have provided to the grand jury.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: talk about burying the lede. RAFFENSPERGER will be interviewed by Jack Smith’s office IN ATLANTA on Wednesday. Is Smith prosecuting trump in Georgia? Sweet baby Jesus, I can’t keep up!
💙❤️ ⋙ WaPo: Justice Dept. asking about 2020 fraud claims as well as fake electors https://tinyurl.com/7me4xcfs

The Justice Department’s investigation of efforts by Donald Trump and his advisers to overturn the 2020 election results is barreling forward on multiple tracks, according to people familiar with the matter, with prosecutors focused on ads and fundraising pitches claiming election fraud as well as plans for “fake electors” that would swing the election to the incumbent president.

Each track poses potential legal peril for those under scrutiny, but also raises tricky questions about where the line should be drawn between political activity, legal advocacy and criminal conspiracy.

A key area of interest is the conduct of a handful of lawyers who sought to turn Trump’s defeat into victory by trying to convince state, local, federal and judicial authorities that Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was illegitimate or tainted by fraud.

Investigators have sought to determine to what degree these lawyers — particularly Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Kurt Olsen and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as then-Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark — were following specific instructions from Trump or others, and what those instructions were, 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.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has extensively questioned multiple witnesses about the lawyers’ actions related to fake electors — pro-Trump substitutes offered up as potential replacements for electors in swing states that Biden won. …

In the weeks after the election, an advertising firm created three ominously named spots for Trump’s fundraising effort: “Overwhelming,” “Stop the Steal” and “On Tape.” But when lawyers for the campaign reviewed the advertisements, they raised concerns that the spots contained false information and might not meet network standards, according to people familiar with the matter.

The campaign was facing a repeated problem, Trump adviser Jason Miller wrote to Larry Weitzner, an executive at the firm producing campaign ads for Trump. ¤ “The campaign’s own legal team and data experts cannot verify the bullshit being beamed down from the mothership,” he wrote, according to four people familiar with the email. That was why Giuliani and his lawyers were “0 for 32,” Miller added, an apparent reference to the number of times Trump’s legal team had challenged the election results in court and lost.

The email is one of many pieces of evidence prosecutors have obtained indicating that Trump advisers privately didn’t believe or were at least skeptical of voter fraud claims. Some of those messages came as top campaign officials continued to approve advertisements raising money off the claims and as Trump falsely continued to say the election was “rigged.” …

🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ I remember as a young prosecutor, the John Gotti prosecutor telling me that his upcoming trial was not about the proof, as Gotti was on tape confessing to the murders, it was about the jury being willing to follow the law.
Now we have that issue for the jury and the electorate.
⋙ 🐣 That’s why I’m worried. So many people in this country seem to have forsaken a commitment to “the facts and the law.”

🐣 The point Trump was trying to make about Milley and Iran was covered extensively at the time. Trump claims the document “proves” it was DOD that wanted to attack Iran, not him. Trump apparently had asked for “options.” What he’s ‘waving around’ is likely one of the “options.”

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom LOOK AT THIS CLASSIFIED THING RIGHT HERE THAT IS TOTALLY CLASSIFIED THAT I AM SHOWING YOU RIGHT HERE
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Wow CNN got the tape of Trump’s conversation about classified documents
🔊 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1673496118724816896?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov commented on Prigozhin’s latest statements: ¤ “I will repeat my conclusions. It was an attempted armed rebellion to remove Putin from power. There was an aim specifically to commit a coup d’état
¤ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1673447203979894784?s=20

The whole military operation was perfectly executed and prepared. A real master class. Those who have served and know at least something about an army should understand that unprepared units will not achieve such results. If the march had not been prepared, it would have ended halfway from lack of diesel and other things.

I will try to give my version of this coup attempt

Every coup has power and a political component. After the beginning of the SMO, it became clear to all that a conspiracy and a palace coup was possible. The question remained who could do it. As it turns out, Wagner was the perfect armed tool. There is a conflict with the Ministry of Defense. There was the possibility of preparing a conspiracy without fear of anything, because Prigozhin’s protection is perfect. And there are many other factors as well

Timing was perfect. The Ukrainian offensive; everyone was busy managing and defending. No one could imagine someone launching an insurgency. Wagner was recovering from Bakhmut. Everyone believed that the PMC was almost incapacitated. There was a weekend ahead. Officials and enforcers were relaxed. Some were on holiday. Administration buildings were empty

Route of travel. Don route was full of people, which was beneficial to the rebels as a “human shield”. Plus the longest days. Prigozhin actually admitted that they almost arrested Gerasimov in time to leave Rostov. I am sure that the aim was to arrest Shoigu and Gerasimov in Rostov. The capture of Rostov was a militarily competent action. As I have written before, it was impossible to carry out an operation in Rostov to arrest Prigozhin

Wagner’s units were not just marching, they were breaking through to Moscow. What facilities were they supposed to take? That question remains open. They had every opportunity to blockade the Ministry of Defense, General Staff, Lubyanka, PA and possibly the airports. There are witnesses that strange groups appeared in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the morning and moved around in an organized manner, dressed in camouflage uniforms just about in the street

Striking at the Wagner base was a “legitimate” reason for Prigozhin to take action. What they said about the reluctance to shed blood was a lie. It started to be shed immediately. The “protest” was a lie. There was no need to fly to Moscow for that. It would have been enough to take Rostov. In such cases, almost immediately Dzerzhinsky’s division is brought into Moscow. Kantemirovka and Tamanskaya were on full alert, but there was no order to go to Moscow. Putin clearly outlined what was happening. So did Sobyanin

Masses of people with their own tasks were to turn up in St Petersburg too. A GAZelle with cash was not just stored on the street. It happens when you have to distribute money to people quickly. It was like that on Maidan, by the way. Apparently, for some reason the political plan failed. Prigozhin, apparently, really did not want to take power himself. He had to provide a power plan. It is said that Putin flew urgently to St Petersburg. If so, Prigozhin stopped because there was no point in continuing the military operation. And then there were behind-the-scenes negotiations and so on

Everyone felt there was no state for about twenty-four hours. I guess in the future we will find out who the conspiracy was made for. In any case, this was just the beginning. Stakes are as high as ever. Next time the conspirators may succeed

If something looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck.

P.S. The main thing now is to show the public that this was not a conspiracy. We need to shift the public’s attention from political categories to disputes between “economic entities” and personal grievances. That is being done.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /2240 UTC 16 JUN/ The UKR Gen’l Staff reports that Russia was forced to carry out an aviation strike mission against Soledar; This strongly indicates that UKR forces have crossed the T-05-13 HWY between Krasbohorivka and Blahodatne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673457271613816833?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /1810 UTC 26 JUN/ On 24-25 JUN sources reported that UKR units had established a pontoon bridge augmented by ferries in the vicinity of the M-14 HWY (Anatovsky) bridge at Kherson. Over the next 18 hours, UKR established a bridgehead centered on the M-17 HWY axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673389363357425669?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer UPDATE/ 2230 UTC 26 JUN/ Frontline sources report a strong Russian counter-attack is in progress on the M-14 HWY axis north of Oleshky. The status of the UKR bridgehead will be updated as information becomes available.

NYT: Zelensky shows himself with Ukrainian troops in the east as Putin faces the fallout from an armed mutiny. https://tinyurl.com/5yx9nev2
.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he visited front-line positions on Monday, projecting unity with his troops as Russia continued to grapple with the fallout of a short-lived military mutiny.

In a series of photos, videos and messages posted on social media, Mr. Zelensky was shown addressing soldiers and meeting with commanders. He said the photos and videos were taken in the country’s east, where Kyiv’s forces are waging a counteroffensive to recapture territory from Russian control.

NYT: A Visibly Angry Putin Stresses Failure of Wagner Revolt https://tinyurl.com/yh9mzy4p
// Header changed to: Putin Says Russia Is United Behind Him, After Quelling Rebellion
// The Russian president made brief public remarks on Monday, his first since the end of the short-lived rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

A visibly angry Vladimir V. Putin on Monday denounced as “blackmail” a weekend rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group even as he defended his response to the mutiny and hinted at leniency for those who took part, saying that “the entire Russian society united” around his government.

Speaking publicly for the first time in two days, Mr. Putin, in an address broadcast on Monday night, refused to utter the name of the Wagner boss behind the insurrection, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin. But his contempt was clear for those who had seemed, briefly, to threaten civil war and upend Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces are mounting a counteroffensive.

🧵 RT @FreudGreySkull Putin came across as a lame duck in his latest post mutiny speech
📌 https://twitter.com/FreudGreyskull/status/1673426564330188800?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1673426564330188800.html

Putin thanked the population of Russia for solidarity and patriotism. The highest consolidation of society is shown. Everyone took a single position – the entire Russian society.
Everyone was united by responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland.

● From the very beginning of the events, decisions were made to neutralize the threat and protect the constitutional order. In any case, an armed rebellion would have been suppressed –
the organizers could not help but understand this. The organizers went to criminal actions, splitting the country at the moment when at the front with the words “Not a step back!” our comrades are dying.

The organizers of the rebellion pushed their subordinates to shoot at their own. This is what the enemies of Russia wanted: for Russia to lose, and society to split, choke in bloody civil strife. They rubbed their hands, wanting to take revenge in the so-called counteroffensive.

● Putin thanked the power structures and law enforcement agencies. The courage of the fallen pilots saved Russia from tragic events.

They tried to use Wagner PMC fighters in the dark.

Steps were taken from the very beginning to resolve the crisis and conflict. Putin thanked the Wagner commanders who stopped at the last line. Now they have the opportunity to conclude a contract with the Russian MOD, other power structures or go to Belarus.

🐣 I’m seeing news reports that say Putin approved the Wagner organization moving to Belarus. Is that true? I’ve seen only that Prigozhin could go there. What “promise” is Putin keeping? @McFaul @JuliaDavisNews @Gerashchenko_en

WaPo: Putin claims Russia would have crushed rebellion but Wagner fighters will be allowed to go to Belarus https://tinyurl.com/2p9ycpbu

● In his Monday address, Putin said that Wagner fighters who want to may go to Belarus because “the promise I gave will be fulfilled.” He said that Russia is under unprecedented pressure with “traitors” betraying their own citizens and Russian fighters — “that’s what Ukrainian nazis and national traitors wanted,” he added.

● Prigozhin said in his video message that the rebellion, which he calls a “march of justice,” came after orders that would have resulted in the absorption of Wagner mercenary forces in Ukraine into the conventional military, beginning July 1. He claimed that most Wagner members had refused to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry, fearing that they would be used as cannon fodder by incompetent commanders, and he reiterated accusations that his fighters came under attack from Russian forces.

● The success of Wagner’s rapid advance toward Moscow suggests that the group should have been responsible for the drive to take Kyiv in the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Prigozhin said. If that attack “was carried out by a unit of a similar level of training and moral composure such as Wagner then perhaps the ‘special operation’ would have lasted a day,” he said.

● Prigozhin did not reveal his location. He did not discuss his reported acceptance of exile in Belarus. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday afternoon that he does not have any assessment of Prigozhin’s location.

🐣 RT @revishvilig Putin tried to show decisiveness but his speech was utterly weak.
The big news is that Prigozhin with the Wagner fighters can move to Belarus.
Lukashenko’s address is postponed and will be tomorrow, very interesting what he will say.

🐣 RT @ JuliaDavisNews Putin did his best to look confident and decisive, but so far failed to utter anything new.

🐣 RT @McFaul Putin’s main objective tonight was to try to divide the Wagner fighters from their leaders.

🐣 RT @ wartranslated As always, anticlimactic from Putin:

– Any attempts to start a mutiny will fail.
– An armed mutiny would have been suppressed anyway. Perpetrators must’ve known about this.
– By betraying their country, they also lied and forced others to kill their own soldiers.
– All the enemies abroad and national traitors wanted us to fight each other. They failed.
– The majority of Wagner commanders and fighters are patriots. They were used covertly against their brothers-in-arms.
– I made steps to avoid large bloodshed. This needed time including letting those who made a mistake change their mind and see the consequences this will lead to.
– Stability was possible thanks to the enormous support of civil society who united during the difficult time.
– Putin will keep his word regarding PMC employees (possibly regarding no prosecution. Some can go to Belarus, rest can sign contracts with MoD. The choice is theirs.

≣ Putin’s Speech: Today I once again appeal to all citizens of Russia. Thank you for your endurance, solidarity and patriotism. This civic solidarity has shown that any blackmail, any attempt to create internal turmoil is doomed to failure.

I repeat,the highest consolidation of society, executive and legislative power at all levels was shown. A firm, unambiguous position in support of the constitutional order was taken by public organizations, religious denominations, leading political parties, in fact, the entire Russian society. Everyone was united and rallied by the main thing – responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland.

I emphasize that from the very beginning of the events, all the necessary decisions were immediately taken to neutralize the threat that had arisen, to protect the constitutional order, the life and security of our citizens.

An armed rebellion would have been suppressed in any case. The organizers of the rebellion, despite the loss of adequacy, could not fail to understand this. They understood everything, including that they went to criminal acts, to split and weaken the country, which is now confronting a colossal external threat, unprecedented pressure from outside. When at the front with the words “not a step back!” our comrades are dying.

However, the organizers of the rebellion, betraying their country, their people, betrayed those who were drawn into the crime. They lied to them, pushed them to death, under fire, to shoot at their own.

It was precisely this outcome – fratricide – that Russia’s enemies wanted: both the neo-Nazis in Kyiv, and their Western patrons, and all sorts of national traitors. They wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, to kill military personnel and civilians, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would split, choke in bloody civil strife.

They rubbed their hands, dreaming of taking revenge for their failures at the front and during the so called counteroftensive, but they miscalculated.

I thank all our military personnel, law enforcement officers, special services who stood in the way of the rebels, remained faithful to their duty, oath and their people. The courage and self-sacrifice of the fallen heroes-pilots saved Russia from tragic devastating consequences.

At the same time, we knew and we know that the vast majority of the fighters and commanders of the Wagner group are also Russian patriots, devoted to their people and state. They proved it with their courage on the battlefield, liberating the Donbass and Novorossiya. They tried to use them in the dark against their brothers in arms, with whom they fought together for the sake of the country and its future.

Therefore, from the very beginning of the events, on my direct instructions, steps were taken to avoid a lot of bloodshed. This took time, including to give those who made a mistake a chance to think again, to understand that their actions are resolutely rejected by society, and to what tragic, destructive consequences for Russia, for our state, the adventure in which they were dragged leads.

I thank those soldiers and commanders of the Wagner group who made the only right decision – they did not go to fratricidal bloodshed, they stopped at the last line.

Today you have the opportunity to continue serving Russia by entering into a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other law enforcement agencies, or to return to your family and friends. Whoever wants to can go to Belarus. The promise I made will be fulfilled. I repeat, the choice is yours, but I am sure it will be the choice of Russian soldiers who have realized their tragic mistake.

I am grateful to the President of Belarus Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko for his effortsand contribution to the peaceful resolution of the situation.

But I repeat, it was the patriotic spirit of the citizens, the consolidation of the entire Russian society that played a decisive role these days. This support allowed us to overcome the most difficult trials for our Motherland together.
Thank you for that. Thank you.

🐣 RT @DenesTorteli Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar: “Russia’s task now is to stop our offensive at any cost. By blowing up dams, mining fields, continuous shelling, sabotage, information injection and even ‘nuclear’ rhetoric. The motivation ‘not to lose’ the occupied lands will be much stronger than the motivation to ‘seize’ our lands. Because this is their mental primordial trauma. It is psychologically easier for them to endure an unsuccessful offensive than the loss of conquered lands. This demoralizes and demotivates them irreparably. They won’t be able to assemble their army on their own, because, like in Kharkiv region, the fighters will start refusing to obey orders en masse. So we have to understand this. Our troops are really having a hard time now. It is very difficult. But they are moving forward. They are moving forward. Because we are fighting a just war. And this is our strength.” https://t.me/annamaliar/887

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Feel the distance difference between dictatorship & all for one democracy. #StandWithUkraine️
🖼 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1673400121365504024?s=20/photo/1 -3

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews In the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mini-mutiny, state TV propagandists had a mission: to praise Putin’s wisdom for quickly ending the ordeal. Nonetheless, they couldn’t hide their outrage that the Wagner boss didn’t get “a bullet to the forehead.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian State TV Anchors Are Aghast That Vladimir Putin Didn’t Kill Yevgeny Prigozhin Over Mutiny https://tinyurl.com/re7a94y2
// The Kremlin’s propagandists praised Putin but were dumbfounded that he allowed the Wagner boss and his mercenaries to escape punishment.

WaPo: Defiant Prigozhin says Wagner mercenaries to operate from Belarus https://tinyurl.com/4jvxbykz //➔ a lot going on here, much of it contradictory; @washingtonpost says it’s free to read until June 30, so go at it; tumultuous times

Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin resurfaced Monday for the first time since his Saturday mutiny, and declared that his motive was to save the private militia from being subsumed into the Russian military — not to topple President Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin, who did not disclose his whereabouts, said he ordered the rebellion after Russia’s military killed 30 Wagner fighters in a missile strike on one of the militia’s camps, and he said he accepted a deal to avoid prosecution and move to Belarus because it would allow Wagner to continue its operations there.

Whatever his intentions, however, Prigozhin’s brazen revolt confronted Putin with the fiercest challenge he has faced in more than 23 years as Russia’s supreme leader, and it laid bare bitter divisions over the handling of the war in Ukraine that could have serious repercussions on the battlefield. …

Speaking in an 11-minute audio address posted on Telegram on Monday, Prigozhin said Wagner fighters were strongly opposed to signing a contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry — as they had been ordered to do by July 1 — because it would have effectively dismantled the group. Wagner had decided to hand back its equipment to the Defense Ministry when the missile strike occurred, he claimed.

Prigozhin expressed regret about Russian aircrews killed by Wagner during Saturday’s rebellion, “but these assets were dropping bombs and delivering missile strikes,” he said.

He boasted that Wagner was perhaps the “most experienced and combat-ready unit in Russia, and possibly in the world” and had performed a huge number of tasks in the interests of the Russian state, in Africa, the Middle East “and around the world.”

“Recently, this unit has achieved good results in Ukraine,” he said, adding that Wagner had received an outpouring of support from Russians in Saturday’s revolt, which he called a “march for justice.”

While Prigozhin issued his defiant statement, Russia’s embattled leadership tried to demonstrate control on Monday after the bruising, chaotic mutiny by airing a video of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visiting a command post. The Kremlin released video of a recorded address by President Vladimir Putin to young engineers. ¤ It was not clear when the video address by Putin was recorded …

Shoigu’s exact whereabouts and the timing of the video released by the Defense Ministry also were not clear. Russian media reported that it was prerecorded, probably on Friday, before the Wagner rebellion.

By contrast, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited his troops near the front lines in eastern Ukraine on Monday and his office quickly released video of the him greeting soldiers.

As a state of emergency in the Russian capital was lifted, Russians were left trying to make sense of Putin’s reversal from his threat of tough action against what he called “treason,” and what it could mean in the near term, especially for the ongoing war in Ukraine, and in the longer term for stability in the country and for Putin’s political future.

State-owned media, meanwhile, reported Monday that the insurrection charges against Prigozhin had not yet been rescinded. …

Russian news outlet Verstka reported that a Wagner base for 8,000 soldiers was being constructed in Belarus, in the Mogilev region southeast of Minsk. The report could not be confirmed. …

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin called for moves to strengthen Russian unity in the wake of the crisis, but he insisted that the Russian government worked “smoothly and clearly” during the crisis. …

“It is important to ensure the sovereignty of the Russian Federation and the security of citizens, taking into account recent events,” Mishustin said at a meeting of deputy prime ministers Monday. “It is necessary to consolidate society against the backdrop of an attempted armed rebellion.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wagner would continue operating in Mali and the Central African Republic, calling Wagner operatives there “instructors.” …

Lavrov said the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, had spoken with Russian government representatives Sunday and conveyed Washington’s view that the events were Russia’s internal affair and its hope that Russian nuclear weapons remained secure. …

News coverage by Russian media displayed how deeply the events have rattled Putin’s authoritarian state, which is built on his power as supreme leader, with the rule of law readily dispensable and competing fiefs — including oligarchs and officials — jostling constantly for presidential favor, state benefits and influence.

An opinion column in the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said that the “most terrifying scenario” — of fighting in the streets of Moscow and elsewhere and a split in Russia’s military and security forces — had been averted.

“Russia displayed its vulnerability to the whole world and to itself. Russia dashed to the abyss at full speed and with the same speed stepped back from it,” the columnist, Mikhail Rostovsky, wrote under the headline: “Prigozhin Leaves, Problems Remain: Deep Political Consequences of a Failed Coup.”

But there were signs of a potential crackdown on Russian private military companies, with widespread calls to bring them to heel, even though they are already technically illegal in Russia. One key reason for Wagner’s mutiny was Prigozhin’s refusal to sign Defense Ministry contracts that would have sidelined the militia and submitted it to Shoigu’s authority.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, carried out raids Saturday at the addresses of current and former Wagner mercenaries, Russian media outlet Important Stories reported.

Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the defense committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, told the Vedomosti newspaper there was no need to ban Wagner, calling it the most combat-ready unit in Russia. Kartapolov said Wagner fighters could continue to serve in the war in Ukraine if they signed contracts with the military. Such a path may be unpalatable to many Wagner fighters, who are intensely loyal to Prigozhin.

The state-controlled Tass news agency reported Monday that Wagner’s recruiting offices in Novosibirsk and Tyumen had reopened, after they closed during the mutiny, and that the group’s office in St. Petersburg was open and working. Wagner is seen by many in Russia as a more prestigious, elite and effective force than regular Russian military units.

Another newspaper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, called for all armed formations not officially part of the security structures to be disarmed given “today’s political reality,” in an article published Sunday. …

“The events of June 24 will undoubtedly have long-term consequences for the country. It became clear that a man with a gun, if he is not a state official, is a real threat to the state and statehood,” the newspaper’s editor, Konstantin Remchukov, wrote in an opinion column. “In Russia there should not be armed people who are loyal first to their commanders and only secondarily to someone else.”

Social media pages connected to Prigozhin, Wagner and key figures associated with him were blocked on Saturday. By Sunday, many pro-Kremlin Telegram channels were rushing to discredit the Wagner leader. In St. Petersburg, local media published photographs of gold bars, fake passports, millions in cash and “white powder” reportedly seized from his properties by the authorities.

Alexander Khodakovsky, head of the pro-Moscow Vostok Battalion, which is fighting in eastern Ukraine, published a story that Prigozhin had one of his underlings beaten “half to death,” after the subordinate told the mercenary leader that it would not be possible to recruit 1,000 Russian prisoners, but only 300.

“This incident told me everything: I made an approximate psycho-portrait of Prigozhin, and I began to warn everyone of the growing threat,” Khodakovsky wrote. “It was clear to me that a person with such manners serves only his own interests,” he added. “I always cringed when I saw how the figure of Prigozhin was erected on a pedestal.”

NYT: One Big Winner of Kremlin-Wagner Clash? The Dictator Next Door https://tinyurl.com/2jfmhk5f “Belarusian media machine has been trumpeting [Lukashenko’s] role as a power broker, a rare role reversal at a time when the dictator has become overwhelmingly dependent on Russia”
// The strongman leader of Belarus, a dependable ally of Vladimir Putin’s, may see a chance to rebrand himself as a statesman.

Mr. Putin agreed to mediation, and when “the president of Belarus called, Yevgeny Prigozhin immediately picked up the phone,” said Mr. Gigin, on whom the European Union once imposed sanctions for “supporting and justifying repression against the democratic opposition and civil society.”

The conversation between Mr. Lukashenko and Mr. Prigozhin was “very difficult,” said Mr. Gigin, who this month became the director of the National Library of Belarus. “They immediately blurted out such vulgar things it would make any mother cry. The conversation was hard, and as I was told, masculine.”

Though other possible explanations have been advanced for why Mr. Prigozhin gave up on his “march for justice” to Moscow, some offering minimal credit to Mr. Lukashenko, the Belarusian media machine has been trumpeting his role as a power broker, a rare role reversal at a time when the dictator has become overwhelmingly dependent on Russia.

“Putin lost because he showed how weak his system is, that he can be challenged so easily,” said Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat and analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Prigozhin challenged, he attacked, he was so bold and then he retreated, looking like a loser. Only Lukashenko won points — first in the eyes of Putin, in the eyes of the international community as a mediator or negotiator, and as a possible guarantor of the deal.” …

Opposition leaders believe that Mr. Putin’s ambitions are not limited to Ukrainian territory. Eventually, they predict, he will try to strengthen his control over Belarus.

With his reported mediation in the Wagner crisis, Mr. Lukashenko may hope to reclaim some of his rapidly eroding sovereignty, and stem Belarusian fears of being swallowed by its larger neighbor, said Dmitri Avosha, the founder of the Belarusian website Tribuna.

Lukashenko simply did a favor to Putin in its purest form, and helped himself solve the problem of occupation,” he said. …

However much the balance of power between Mr. Lukashenko and Mr. Putin may have shifted now, both men still need each other to remain in power. ¤ “They are two Siamese twins,” said Pavel Latushka, a former Belarusian diplomat and minister now in exile. “They can’t live without each other. It’s one body, two heads. The fall of one means the political death of another.”

Reuters: Russia’s Shoigu appears in video for first time since Wagner mutiny https://tinyurl.com/4b3fbvaj “Markov, a former Kremlin advisor … , said the defence ministry video was ‘a signal to everyone that Shoigu is in office and will probably remain defence minister now’
// ‘Putin will not do anything under pressure from a mutineer,’ Markov said.”

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en ⚡️Prigozhin about his deal with Lukashenko: ¤”Lukashenko extended his hand and offered to find a solution to continue the work of Wagner PMC in legal jurisdiction.”
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1673363320542298114?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @sentdefender Preparations are reportedly underway for the Construction of a Major Operations Base for the Wagner PMC Group near the Town of Osipovichi in the Mogilev Region of Eastern Belarus, with the Base said to be able to House and Support up to 8,000 Fighters; Belarusian Media has stated this is part of a plan to Build a Network of Camps and Facilities for the Wagner Group across Southern and Eastern Belarus with the Majority being roughly 100 Miles from the Border with Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 How would the Wagnerites get to Belarus? Not through Ukraine, certainly. Would Putin let them go through Russia? Hard to imagine. Letting Wagner set up camp in Belarus would give Lukashenko a lot of fierce fighters who are Russian citizens, a threat to Putin.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Summary of Prigozhin’s 26 June address to clarify the situation: it was to demonstrate protest against the “destruction of PMC Wagner, not toppling the Russian authorities”:
¤ https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1673345844148314112?s=20

What were the prerequisites for the March for Justice?
– PMC Wagner carries out tasks around the world. It was meant to stop existing on 1 July 2023. “Employees” all refused to sign the contract with MoD, only 1-2% decided to join the Russian army.

– The original plan was to go to Rostov on 30 July and transfer all vehicles to MoD, which were ready for transport.

– Despite any aggression, Wagner suffered a missile attack, followed by helicopter attack. Around 30 PMC Wagner fighters died. This triggered an immediate decision to move out early and respond militarily.

– Throughout the 24-hour march, one column went to Moscow, another to Rostov. They made 780 km of progress in one day. They regret being forced to attack the army aircraft but the bombs were dropped which caused the response. During the march, all military objects on the way were blocked and disarmed. None of the military have died on the ground.

– The objective was to not allow destruction of Wagner and take to responsiblity those who with their unprofessional actions made a huge number of mistakes during the SMO. All the military met along the way supported this.

– Wagner stopped when the advanced storm unit deployed artillery, conducted reconnaissance and realised a lot of blood will be shed in an upcoming battle. They decided that demonstration of the protest was enough, and turned around.

– Factors that made Wagner turn around: first, they didn’t want to shed Russian blood. Secondly, they wanted to demonstrate their portest, not overtake the authority in Russia.

– Lukashenko offered to find solutions for further legal operation of Wagner legally. Columns turned aroound and went back to field camps.

– The march showed many things demonstrated before. Serious secruity concerns around the country. All military bases and airfields were blocked.

– If actions on 24 Feb 2022 were done by forces as trained as Wagner, the special operation could have ended in 1 day. This shows the level of organisation that the Russian army should be following.

🧵 RT @Faytuks Prigozhin has posted a new long audio message (11 minutes+) on telegram. I will translate below. [🔊link]
📌 https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1673341974882004994?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1673341974882004994.html

No one has agreed to sign a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

We started our “March” due to injustice and we showed no aggression, but despite this, we were hit by missiles and helicopters – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

The Wagner group was bound to cease existence on July 1 – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

We showed master-class on how February 24, 2022, had to look, however, we turned around to avoid spilling the blood of Russian soldiers – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

The aim of the March was to avoid the destruction of the Wagner group. We regret that we had to hit Russian aviation – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

We wanted to hold accountable those who made mistakes during the special military operation in Ukraine – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

We didn’t do a “march of justice” to overthrow Russia’s leadership, however, it showed serious security problems in the country – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

When the first assault detachment approached Moscow, it became obvious that a lot of blood would be shed, so we felt that a “demonstration of what we wanted to do was sufficient” – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

During the march, civilians were happy and greeted PMC Wagner with Russian flags. Many residents supported the PMC because they saw support for the “fight against bureaucracy” – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

The march lasted 24 hours, during the day the columns travelled 780km and were 200km (124 miles) from Moscow – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

If the actions on February 24 were carried out by a unit by the level of training, like the Wagner PMC, the special operation might have lasted a day – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

Lukashenko extended his hand and offered to find solutions for the further work of the Wagner PMC group within “legal jurisdiction” – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

Among the PMC fighters, there are several wounded and two dead. The dead were servicemen of Russia’s Ministry of Defense who joined Wagner. No one was forced to “march” – Head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin

🐣 RT @vtchakarova According to @meduzaproject’s sources close to the presidential administration, around midday on June 24, #Prigozhin started trying to get in touch with the Kremlin himself – and allegedly even “tried to call Putin, but the president did not want to talk to him.
¤ https://twitter.com/vtchakarova/status/1673299718426750981?s=20

According to Meduza’s sources close to the Kremlin and the Russian government, it is likely that Prigozhin realized that he had “exceeded the limit” and that “the prospects for his columns to move are foggy. When the Kremlin saw Prigozhin’s changed mood, it allegedly decided against a “bloody clash,” according to Meduza’s sources. They claim that a large group of officials, including Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, and Russian Ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov, were engaged in the final negotiations.

“Prigozhin needed a worthy confidant to get out of the game [saving face]. Lukashenko acted as such. He loves PR and understands the benefits – so he agreed,” says the interlocutor of “Meduza. According to him, the “benefit” for Lukashenko is obvious: publicly he became the man who “saved Russia from a civil war at most, but at least from a great blood. #geopolitics #Velsig

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙛𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙋𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙣’𝙨 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙫𝙞𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡. Wagner’s “March of Justice” showed that the Kremlin does not know its own country. The government in Russia is only strong on TV, but in reality, it is as rotten as the wooden barracks in the Russian provinces.
¤ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1673296158670614529?s=20

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒅:
One plausible explanation for Prigozhin’s rebellion is that it was conceived as a play to cover up a multi-stage operation. At the end of it they were counting on:
🔹 Putin having a “carte blanche” to change the military leadership;
🔹 Prigozhin continuing his looting of Africa;
🔹 Wagner PMC being transferred to the Ministry of Defense as of July 1;
🔹 the authorities demonstrating that they know how to cope with crisis situations, uniting elites and the general population around them.

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒈𝒐𝒕:
The staging got out of hand and almost led to the regime’s collapse.
🔹 Directors of the “performance” did not take into account that Prigozhin has huge support inside the Russian Federation, and support of Putin’s vertical was declarative;
🔹 Lack of initiative from officials, incapable of independent decisions, was revealed;
🔹 Unity of the nation, uniting around the figure of Putin, was a fiction. The population was completely passive and loyal to the rebels.

𝑨𝒔 𝒂 𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒖𝒍𝒕:
🔹 Russian system was proven to be rotten and dysfunctional;
🔹 The regime holds on to a virtual picture that it broadcasts to the population and to itself;
🔹 Any critical situation inside the country threatens to collapse the system, the regime and the country.

Russia turned out to be not a fortress, but a gateway. Russian Volunteer Corps is free to enter the Belgorod region; the capital and the Kremlin are attacked by drones, and the mercenary army is capable of taking not Kyiv but Moscow without a fight in two days.

Based on analytical materials by @future_ui

🐣 RT @nexta_tv PMCs will no longer be able to enter into contracts with prisoners. This was announced by the chairman of the State #Duma Committee on Legislation and State Construction Pavel Krasheninnikov. According to him, now the contracts are concluded only with the Ministry of Defense of the #Russian Federation.

🐣 So, only the members of Wagner who did not participate in failed coup are welcome in the regular army. Hard to see how they would fit in. & what about the participants? Hard to see them melting away. ¤ And what about Prigozhin’s troll operation & his people in Syria and Africa?

🐣 RT @Tendar
– Girkin demands Prigozhin to be hung.
– Prigozhin wants to kill Shoigu, but goes to king potato
– Lame duck Putin is nowhere to be seen
– Kadyrov makes selfies on empty bridges
– Margarita Simonyan asks why Russia needs anyway the Ukrainian oblast
Like I mentioned on Saturday. This is a collapse of the last remnants of Russian statehood, and I accept everyone who says that Russian Federation was never even a state in the first place but a mafia entity.

⭕ 25 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa From time to time my son comes to my office. From time to time, but nevertheless. And he is most interested here in these chevrons. Military personnel, volunteers, relatives of our soldiers handed them to me. At the front and in Kyiv, in hospitals, during the award ceremonies for heroes in the Mariinsky Palace…
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1672898482842001408?s=20/photo/1

The number of chevrons on the chevron board is growing, but very slowly, as every time Kyrylo takes them away. And I am happy that he is interested in this. Our heroes, our defense, Ukrainian chevrons.

A long time ago I wanted to make a special series of posts in my social networks about these chevrons. About where they came from. Who gave them to me. What these units are. And today, we will start issuing such posts.

Maybe someone else wants to talk about the chevrons you have. I think that is correct. It is correct that our people, our children, should know to whom we owe our lives and Ukraine’s freedom.

Thank you, warriors! Thank you to everyone who fights and works for Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!

TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Putin Is Caught in His Own Trap https://tinyurl.com/4zpy98h7 “The Wagner mercenaries showed up in the [Rostov-on-Don] early Saturday morning. They met no resistance. Nobody shot at them. … People shook their hands, brought them food, took selfies.”
// After spending years cultivating public apathy, the Russian president found his people indifferent to his fate.

The Wagner Group mercenaries marched 800 kilometers across Russia, shot down planes and helicopters, took over a regional military command, provoked a panic in Moscow—troops dug trenches; the mayor told everyone to stay home—and then stood down. Yet in a way, the strangest aspect of Saturday’s aborted coup was the reaction of the people of Rostov-on-Don, including the city’s military leaders, to the soldiers who arrived and declared themselves to be their new rulers.

The Wagner mercenaries showed up in the city early Saturday morning. They met no resistance. Nobody shot at them. One photograph, published by The New York Times, shows them walking at a leisurely pace across a street, one of their tanks in the background, holding yellow coffee cups.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s violent ex-con leader, posted videos of himself chatting with the local commanders in the courtyard of the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District. Nobody seemed to mind his being there. …

People shook their hands, brought them food, took selfies. “People are bringing pirozhki, apples, chips. Everything there in the store has been bought to give to the soldiers,” one woman said on camera. In the evening, after Prigozhin had decided to stand down and go home (wherever home turns out to be), he drove away in an SUV with crowds filming him on their cellphones and cheering him on, as if he were a celebrity leaving a movie premiere or a gallery opening. Some chanted “Wagner! Wagner!” as the troops emerged into the street. This was the most remarkable aspect of the whole day: Nobody seemed to mind, particularly, that a brutal new warlord had arrived to replace the existing regime—not the security services, not the army, and not the general public. On the contrary, many seemed sorry to see him go.

The response is hard to understand without reckoning with the power of apathy, a much undervalued political tool. Democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote. But a certain kind of autocrat, of whom Putin is the outstanding example, seeks to convince people of the opposite: not to participate, not to care, and not to follow politics at all. The propaganda used in Putin’s Russia has been designed in part for this purpose. The constant provision of absurd, conflicting explanations and ridiculous lies—the famous “firehose of falsehoods”— encourages many people to believe that there is no truth at all. The result is widespread cynicism. If you don’t know what’s true, after all, then there isn’t anything you can do about it. Protest is pointless. Engagement is useless.

But the side effect of apathy was on display yesterday as well. For if no one cares about anything, that means they don’t care about their supreme leader, his ideology, or his war. Russians haven’t flocked to sign up to fight in Ukraine. They haven’t rallied around the troops in Ukraine or held emotive ceremonies marking either their successes or their deaths. Of course they haven’t organized to oppose the war, but they haven’t organized to support it either.

Because they are afraid, or because they don’t know of any alternative, or because they think it’s what they are supposed to say, they tell pollsters that they support Putin. And yet, nobody tried to stop the Wagner Group in Rostov-on-Don, and hardly anybody blocked the Wagner convoy on its way to Moscow. The security services melted away, made no move and no comment. The military dug some trenches around Moscow and sent some helicopters; somebody appears to have sent bulldozers to dig up the highways, but that was all we could see. Who will respond if a more serious challenge to Putin ever emerges? Certainly the military will think twice: Perhaps a dozen Russian servicemen, mostly pilots, died at the hands of the Wagner mutineers, more than died during the failed coup of 1991. Nobody seems particularly bothered about them.

One day after this aborted coup, it is too early to speculate about Prigozhin’s true motives, about what he was really given in exchange for standing down, about where Putin really spent the day on Saturday—some say St. Petersburg, some say a dacha in Novgorod—or about anything else, really. But the flimsiness of this regime’s ideology and the softness of its support have been suddenly laid bare. Expect more repression as Putin tries to stay in charge, more chaos, or both.

Substack Home&Away, Richard Haass: All Politika is Local https://tinyurl.com/yc63syzh

FT, Gideon Rachman: The Putin system is crumbling https://tinyurl.com/2px4v3eb “Sticking with Putin once seemed the safe option for the country’s elite. But as the system crumbles, these calculations are changing”
// After the march on Moscow, things cannot go back to normal in Russia

The images that defined Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a leader were filmed on February 25 last year. As Russian troops closed in on Kyiv, the Ukrainian president walked the streets of the city with his close colleagues, reassuring citizens that: “All of us are here, protecting our independence and our country.”

Now contrast that with Vladimir Putin’s performance, as the Wagner militia briefly threatened to march on Moscow over the weekend. From the comfort of an office, the Russian president raged about “betrayal” and “treason”. Then he disappeared. …

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: even the obedient state TV propagandists were flabbergasted by Putin’s decision to let Yevgeny Prigozhin stay alive, much less to walk free after committing his mini-mutiny. More in my latest article, linked below
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews In the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mini-mutiny, state TV propagandists had a mission: to praise Putin’s wisdom for quickly ending the ordeal. Nonetheless, they couldn’t hide their outrage that the Wagner boss didn’t get “a bullet to the forehead.”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian State TV Anchors Aghast that Putin Didn’t Kill Prigozhin https://tinyurl.com/y7k9njj3
// The Kremlin’s propagandists praised Putin but were dumbfounded that he allowed the Wagner boss and his mercenaries to escape punishment.

💙 NYT, J Michael Luttig: It’s Not Too Late for the Republican Party https://tinyurl.com/3wfck47f “[R]ushing to model their campaign on Mr. Trump’s breathtakingly inane template is as absurd as it is ill fated. They will be defending the indefensible”

Donald Trump this month became the first former or incumbent American president to be charged with crimes against the nation that he once led and wishes to lead again. He cynically calculated that his indictment would ensure that a riled-up Republican Party base would nominate him as its standard-bearer in 2024, and the last few weeks have proved that his political calculation was probably right. …

In a word, the Republicans are as responsible as Mr. Trump for this month’s indictment — and will be as responsible for any indictment and prosecution of him for Jan. 6. One would think that, for a party that has prided itself for caring about the Constitution and the rule of law, this would stir some measure of self-reflection among party officials and even voters about their abiding support for the former president. …

… As only the Republicans can do, they are already turning this ignominious moment into an even more ignominious moment — and a self-immolating one at that — by rushing to crown Mr. Trump their nominee before the primary season even begins. Building the Republican campaign around the newly indicted front-runner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comedic as it is tragic for the country. No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning. …

From his distant second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal law enforcement” against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. Mike Pence dutifully pronounced the indictment political. And both Governor DeSantis and Mr. Pence pledged — in a new Republican litmus test — that on their first day in office they would fire the director of the F.B.I., the Trump appointee Christopher Wray, obviously for his turpitude in investigating Mr. Trump. It fell to Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, to articulate the treacherous overarching Republican strategy: “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.” ¤ There’s no stopping Republicans now, until they have succeeded in completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends. …

Republicans have waited in vain for political absolution. It’s finally time for them to put the country before their party and pull back from the brink — for the good of the party, as well as the nation. ¤ If not now, then they must forever hold their peace.

🐣 RT @Osinttechnical We officially have the first “Russians requesting airstrikes via telegram” of the counteroffensive
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated A more recent update is now convincingly requesting air support to assist in destroying the group. It appears as if a Telegram channel is the only way to do it as the situation is deteriorating rapidly.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1673072580104798213?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] The area under the Antonovsky Bridge (about 150 meters) is also used by the enemy to supply and rotate groups that have settled in the “Hotel”, as well as in the “Dachas” area – in this area the enemy is using Polish-made mortars against the positions of our troops.

According to the latest information, reinforcements continue to arrive to enemy units, the total number of manpower in the bridge area at the moment is up to 100 people.

Also, due to the difficulty of passing information from the fields through official channels, we are forced to report: in this area, for several days, at different times, groups of our fighters were blocked that were performing the tasks of cleaning up the area, one group was evacuated, it’s not possible to evacuate the second group at the moment since enemy firing points are not suppressed and evacuation groups get under heavy enemy fire.

The enemy knows about the blocked group. For several days, artillery, including heavy flamethrower systems, attacked the enemy in this area, but, as colleagues rightly noted, only tactical aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces can solve this problem; ground forces do not present an effective solution. If necessary, solution. If necessary, all available information, as well as the coordinates of enemy concentration sites, are ready to be transmitted via any convenient communication channel.

🐣 RT @officejjsmart “RESIGN PUTIN!”
⚡️⚡️⚡️Girkin (Strelkov) urged Putin to “act as commander in chief or resign.”
According to Ateo Breaking, the former 🇷🇺 intelligence officer, who organized the 2014 invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 & who has a wide following in 🇷🇺, is not holding-back about Putin. 💥💥💥
🖼 https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1673003142026330113?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mhmck Understand Russians.
They are nihilists. There is no limit to their behaviour. They will commit any atrocity.
They are liars. They don’t recognize the possibility of truth or a world of shared experience.
They are slaves. They only understand dominance and submission.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Who will pay Prigozhin now? ¤ Prigozhin’s private army existed thanks to Putin’s dirty money. ¤ For the money from selling oil, gas, timber, metals, gold and other resources of Russia to the West and to the East.

Yesterday, Russian media reported that during searches in the offices of the PMCs, colossal amounts of cash were found – 4 billion rubles, (about $50 million).

Prigozhin immediately admitted that this was money of the PMC and that it was intended for paying the so-called “coffin” money – payments to the relatives of killed mercenaries.

“Wagner PMC has existed for 10 years using cash only. When we were working in Africa, in Ukraine and in other countries, when America was a nightmare, everyone was satisfied with cash. And now they came with searches,” Prigozhing commented.

Let’s talk about the dirty economy of Wagner PMC. ¤ Using simple arithmetic calculations, multiplying the declared number of mercenaries in the PMC – 50,000 people, by their average payment for a bloody contract – RUB 240,000, we get the amount of $150 million a month. And this amount does not include any other costs for the maintenance of Prigogzhin’s private army. ¤ According to my rough estimates, maintaining a private Wagner army cost Putin between $250 million and $350 million in cash per month.

It is possible that one of the reasons that prompted Prigozhin to revolt against Putin was the conflict over the verification of how he spent more than $2 billion received from Putin and his oligarchs during the 15 months of war.

We still do not know the reasons why Prigozhin stopped his march on Moscow by his mercenaries. Neither he, nor Putin, nor Lukashenko made a single public statement after the talks.

But I have several questions:

1. Will Putin, after Prigozhin’s rebellion, finance his PMC in the same way as before? I highly doubt it! And if not, then where will Prigozhin get $250 million per month to maintain PMCs?

2. Will Prigozhin now be provided with shells, cartridges, missiles – after his mercenaries shot down helicopters and a Russian plane yesterday with the same missiles? I don’t think so!

3. Will the Russian military, who until this moment idolized Prigozhin as a real military leader, forgive him the Russian pilots and officers killed by him? I think that he lost their trust, both after the murders and after a cheap provocation about the alleged shelling of the rear camp of the PMC, staged by Prigozhin himself as a pretext for rebellion.

4. How will Prigozhin withstand the powerful blow of Kremlin propaganda? Already last night it was clearly visible how quickly and clearly the position of Kremlin propaganda in relation to the Wagner PMC has changed. From yesterday’s heroes, they quickly began to turn into traitors, rebels, and murderers of valiant pilots. A few more weeks and instead of Prigozhin and his accomplices, instead of the Wagnerites “heroes of Russia”, propaganda will show them as a bunch of scoundrels, rebels and murderers – which, in fact, they are.

Therefore, future events look obvious to me – yesterday Prigozhin lost his chance to seize power in Russia. ¤ There will most likely not be a second campaign against Moscow, since Wagner PMC will slowly collapse through a gradual reduction in funding for salaries to mercenaries, through contradictions between those who are 100% loyal to Prigozhin and who feel deceived and thrown into the furnace of the ambitions of the bloody Bakhmut butcher.

And Ukraine only benefited from this failed rebellion, as fascist Russia became even weaker – and that’s good news!

🐣 RT @sentdefender Russian Sources are stating that Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu is currently under a form of “House Arrest” by the FSB pending an Investigation into his Leadership within the MoD and the Theft of Military Funding, Sources believe that Major Announcements regarding charges in the Chain-of-Command and General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces are expected sometime today, June the 26th or this week.
[TextLink:] [tr] https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1673171204209795072?s=20/photo/1 -2

WaPo: What just happened in Russia? The Wagner crisis, explained. https://tinyurl.com/2p92vhju Basic backgrounder

🐣 RT @maryilyushina An overview of why Prigozhin marched on Moscow, the irony of his predictions of a revolution in Russia and the surprising warmth Wagner received from Rostov residents — something that should rattle Kremlin quite a bit
⋙ WaPo, Mary Ilyushina: Mercenary boss warned of revolution in Russia, but his own was short-lived https://tinyurl.com/wc8mhw6w

🚫 🐣 RT @MattPPea Shoigu arrested according Wagner channels. Thanks to @Wales4Ukraine [link]
// need confirmation

🐣 RT @randymot4 Both the Wagner group and the Free Russian forces have demonstrated that Russia is very poorly defended. Virtually the entire army is in Ukraine and even that is not enough to cover the long defensive lines. The Ukrainian attack force not committed includes abput 9-10 heavy brigades, fully mobile incl support vehicles. They will cut through the opening in the Russia lines – probably in two or three places – and go a long way toward ending the war. A mobile operation gives Ukraine a huge advantage due to the slowness of Russian command & control. #RussiaLosing

🐣 RT @randymot4 Both the Wagner group and the Free Russian forces have demonstrated that Russia is very poorly defended. Virtually the entire army is in Ukraine and even that is not enough to cover the long defensive lines. The Ukrainian attack force not committed includes abput 9-10 heavy brigades, fully mobile incl support vehicles. They will cut through the opening in the Russia lines – probably in two or three places – and go a long way toward ending the war. A mobile operation gives Ukraine a huge advantage due to the slowness of Russian command & control. #RussiaLosing

🐣 RT @Stanovaya [Carnegie Eurasia] Below is a brief description of Prigozhin’s mutiny and the factors that contributed to its outcome. We, as observers, initially missed important details due to the scarcity of information and lack of time for in-depth analysis. Here’s the perspective that currently seems most plausible:

1️⃣ Prigozhin’s rebellion wasn’t a bid for power or an attempt to overtake the Kremlin. It arose from a sense of desperation; Prigozhin was forced out of Ukraine and found himself unable to sustain Wagner the way he did before, while the state machinery was turning against him. To top it off, Putin was ignoring him and publicly supporting his most dangerous adversaries.

2️⃣ Prigozhin’s objective was to draw Putin’s attention and to impose a discussion about conditions to preserve his activities – a defined role, security, and funding. These weren’t demands for a governmental overthrow; they were a desperate bid to save the enterprise, hoping that Prigozhin’s merits in taking Bakhmut (that’s why he needed it!) would be taken into account and the concerns would catch Putin’s serious attention. Now it appears that these merits helped Prigozhin to get out of this crisis alive, but without a political future in Russia (at least while Putin is in power).

3️⃣ Prigozhin was caught off-guard by Putin’s reaction and found himself unprepared to assume the role of a revolutionary. He also wasn’t prepared for the fact that Wagner was about to reach Moscow where his only option remained – to “take the Kremlin” – an action that would inevitably result in him and his fighters being eradicated.

4️⃣ Those in the elites who were able reached out to Prigozhin with offers to surrender. This likely added to his sense of impending doom. However, I don’t believe any high-level negotiations took place. Lukashenko presented Prigozhin with a Putin-endorsed offer to retreat on the condition that Prigozhin would leave Russia and Wagner would be dissolved.

5️⃣ I don’t think Prigozhin was in a position to make demands (such as the resignation of Shoigu or Gerasimov – something many observers expect today. If that happens, it will be due to another reason.) After Putin’s address in the morning of June 24th, Prigozhin’s primary concern was to find an off-ramp. The situation would have led to inevitable death in merely a few hours. It is possible that Putin has promised him safety on the condition that Prigozhin remains quietly in Belarus.

I stand by my previous assertion that Putin and the state have been dealt a severe blow (which will have significant repercussions for the regime). However, I want to emphasize that image has always been a secondary concern for Putin. Setting optics aside, Putin objectively resolved the Wagner and Prigozhin problem by dissolving the former and expelling the latter. The situation would have been far worse if it had culminated in a bloody mess in the outskirts of Moscow.

And no, Putin doesn’t need Wagner or Prigozhin. He can manage with his own forces. He’s now certainly convinced of that. I will disclose many more details in my bulletin to be issued tomorrow evening.

NYT, Anton Trianovski: Revolt Raises Searing Question: Could Putin Lose Power? https://tinyurl.com/yfp6u4ju “The fact that Mr. Prigozhin and his forces were not being punished punctured Mr. Putin’s reputation as a decisive leader who would not tolerate disloyalty.”
// Russians with ties to the Kremlin expressed relief that the mercenary leader’s mutiny did not spark a civil war. But they agreed that Vladimir Putin had come off looking weak in a way that could be lasting.

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN! In the theme of the recent “coup”, today I will discuss a true revolution. One that is integral to understanding the current war. A heroic fight to break the chains of corruption – Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity of 2013/14. 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1672832074150027264?s=20

🐣 RT @ @ZelenskyyUa With just 15 days to go until the @NATO Summit in Vilnius, we are doing everything to ensure that the summit has real content. Strong content.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1673071448427053057?s=20/photo/1

Positive decisions for 🇺🇦 in Vilnius are the only possible positive decisions for our common security in Europe and in the Alliance as a whole.

Thank you to everyone who supports Ukraine! Thank you to 🇺🇸 Mr. President @POTUS, the Congress, both parties and all Americans for the historic strengthening of freedom in the world! Thank you to 🇨🇦 Mr. Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau and all Canadians for your unwavering support! Thank you to 🇵🇱 Mr. President @AndrzejDuda and everyone in Poland who stands with 🇺🇦 in the defense of Europe!

🐣 RT @home_fella Russia is planning to blow up Zaporizhzhya NPP -Budanov ¤ “Russian troops have deployed equipment with explosives near 4 of the 6 power units of ZNPP. The plan for a terrorist attack on ZNPP is fully developed and approved. They can use technical means to accelerate the disaster”
🖼 https://twitter.com/home_fella/status/1672994165003616256?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ORIKHIV AXIS /2050 UTC 25 JUN/ UKR forces are reported to have advanced south on the T-04-08 HWY axis and have consolidated a 1 KM gain in the vicinity of Robotyne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1673071069228326916?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en “The coup was being prepared for eight months and all of Prigozhin’s publicity was aimed at preparing it” – GULAGU NET
¤ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672936813646757895?s=20

GULAGU NET published a list of the National Guard, Federal Security Service and Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation units that have partially or fully moved over to Prigozhin’s side.

A description of what is happening was also provided: ¤ This special operation was being prepared and developed over a period of more than eight months. Surovikin and Alexeyev not only knew but were also involved and verbally instructed some commanders not to offer armed resistance. That is why they were urgently taken under control and forced to make a video-recorded appeal addressed to Prigozhin. Later, when taking over the headquarters of the Southern Military District of the MoD, Alexeyev uttered an important phrase to Prigozhin’s demand of giving them Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov: “Yes, take him away”. They were ready to hand over their commander (superior officers) to the rebels. This is a fact of betrayal, a decision on which is about to be made.

This special operation involved former commanders and fighters of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 2nd and 15th GRU brigades of Wagner PMC (under the command of Utkin), who had previously participated in special operations on the territory of foreign countries, primarily to capture customs posts, communication points, local army units and strategic weapons.

Formally, Yevgeny Prigozhin himself was at the headquarters of the Southern Military District of the MoD, and did not physically move from there, holding talks with the Deputy Minister of Defense and giving orders to detain or capture anything, unlike Utkin, Kuznetsov and other PMC commanders, and neither Putin, nor Peskov promised them immunity and non-prosecution. By the end of the year, they will be detained or liquidated. ¤ Source: GULAGU NET

Meduza: ‘Putin was nowhere to be found’ An inside look into the Kremlin’s attempted negotiations with Prigozhin and why it took Lukashenko to put an end to the rebellion https://tinyurl.com/bddc472y

🐣 RT @ ZelenskyyUa I spoke with 🇺🇸 President @POTUS. A positive and inspiring conversation.

We discussed the course of hostilities and the processes taking place in Russia. The world must put pressure on Russia until international order is restored.

I thanked the @POTUS for the unflagging support of 🇺🇦, especially for Patriots. ¤ It is important to further increase 🇺🇦 capabilities to protect our skies. In this context, I also thanked him for the support of the fighter jet coalition. ¤ We discussed further expansion of defense cooperation, with an emphasis on long-range weapons.

I am grateful for the readiness of the 🇺🇸 and the American people to stand side by side with Ukraine until the full liberation of all our territories within internationally recognized borders.

We coordinated our positions on the eve of the @NATO Summit in Vilnius, discussed further work on the implementation of 🇺🇦 Peace Formula and preparations for the Global Peace Summit.

🧵 RT @khodorkovsky_en Wagner PMC chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted military coup was one of the most serious political events to take place in Russia in the last 20 years. Why did it happen, what does it mean and what lessons can be learned from it?
📌 https://twitter.com/khodorkovsky_en/status/1672952267287433216?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1672952267287433216.html

⭕ 24 Jun 2023

NewYorker, David Remnick: Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Rebellion: Putin’s Weakness Unmasked https://tinyurl.com/nhjwuvf2 “‘Putin is still alive. He is still there in his bunker. But there is the growing feeling that he is a lame duck, and they have to prepare for Russia after Putin’”
// 6/24/2023
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Prig Coup Nykr Jun 2023

NYT: Rebel Wagner Forces, Threatening March to Moscow, Abruptly Stand Down https://tinyurl.com/4nnpehtt “The head-spinning sequence of events that played out in less than 24 hours plunged a nation already struggling to wage the war in Ukraine into a full-blown domestic crisis”
// The mercenary group had seized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the center of Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine, posing a grave threat to President Vladimir Putin’s government.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE: The Russian FSB raided the HQ of the Wagner Group, where they discovered various passports belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Many were made out to his alter ego, Vladimir Vasilovich Bobov, & oddly, one made out to in his real name, with someone else’s picture.
🖼 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1672790835694370816?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, David Ignatius: Putin and Prigozhin played a game of chicken — and both swerved in the end https://tinyurl.com/5r88y3kk “Putin might have saved his regime … , but this day will be remembered as part of the unraveling of Russia as a great power — which will be Putin’s true legacy”

President Vladimir Putin looked into the abyss Saturday and blinked. After vowing revenge for what he called an “armed mutiny,” he settled for a compromise. ¤ The speed with which Putin backed down suggests that his sense of vulnerability might be higher even than analysts believed. Putin might have saved his regime Saturday, but this day will be remembered as part of the unraveling of Russia as a great power — which will be Putin’s true legacy.

Putin’s deal with renegade militia leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin is likely to be a momentary truce, at best. The bombastic rebel will head for Belarus, in a deal brokered by his pal President Alexander Lukashenko, in exchange for Putin dropping charges against him and his mutinous soldiers, according to Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov.

This was a real coup, until it wasn’t. For much of Saturday, Prigozhin was marching units of his 25,000-man Wagner militia toward the gates of Moscow, rolling through Russia’s Ukrainian command headquarters at Rostov-on-Don and north to Voronezh. Sources tell me the Russian FSB put up roadblocks along the way, to little effect. Putin called up the National Guard to defend Moscow. …

The Biden administration’s response to this mad day in Russia seemed to be a version of the advice attributed to Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” That, as well as the usual Biden prescription: focus on allies and partners.

President Biden and his team stayed in contact with foreign leaders. White House and State Department officials spoke to the other major democracies, known as the Group of Seven; they added India and Australia as members of the “Quad.” They consulted with NATO and the European Union.

The message in all these calls, I’m told, was “cool it.” Don’t make the crisis in Russia more dangerous by seeking to intervene or profit from the disarray. This message was focused especially on Ukraine; U.S. officials stressed their desire that Kyiv not seem to take advantage of the strife in Russia in ways that might spiral into an even more dangerous moment. The Ukrainians, from what we can see, followed that advice.

What comes next, surely, is more trouble for Putin in Ukraine. Prigozhin told the truth flat out in the days before his march on Moscow. Ukraine didn’t threaten Russia, and Russia’s invasion was unnecessary — a mistake of epic proportions. Even Putin, the ice man, can’t freeze the burning truth of his Ukraine disaster.

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTomThe Prigozhin episode is not a win for Putin, writes @RadioFreeTo: “The Russian dictator has been visibly wounded, and he will now bear the permanent scar of political vulnerability.”
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The Coup Is Over, but Putin Is in Trouble https://tinyurl.com/4x9w26bb
// The Wagner Group’s chief may have lost spectacularly, but Russia’s dictator suffered a huge political blow.

A short recap of the past 24 hours in Russia reads like the backstory for a fanciful episode of Madam Secretary or The West Wing. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the brutal convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, declared war on the Russian Ministry of Defense and marched into the city of Rostov-on-Don. He then headed north for Moscow, carrying his demand for the ousting of Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The city went on alert.

Prigozhin and his men came within 125 miles of the capital—that is, closer to Moscow than Philadelphia is to Washington, D.C. He then said that a deal had been struck and that Wagner’s forces were turning around to avoid bloodshed. Apparently, however, the blood Prigozhin saved from being shed was his own. If the “deal” announced by the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accurately reflects the outcome of this whole bizarre episode, Prigozhin has in the space of a day gone from being a powerful warlord to a man living on borrowed time in a foreign country, waiting for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inevitable retribution. …

Nonetheless, this bizarre episode is not a win for Putin. The Russian dictator has been visibly wounded, and he will now bear the permanent scar of political vulnerability. Instead of looking like a decisive autocrat (or even just a mob boss in command of his crew), Putin left Moscow after issuing a short video in which he was visibly angry and off his usual self-assured game. Putin reportedly worries a great deal about being assassinated, and so perhaps he wanted to hunker down until he had more clarity about who might be in league with Prigozhin. But whatever the reason, he vowed to deal with Prigozhin decisively and then blew town, probably to his retreat at Valdai, in a move that looked weak and disorganized. …

Prigozhin gets to stay alive, at least for the moment, but his life as he knew it (and maybe in any sense) is over. Putin, however, is now politically weaker than ever. The once unchallengeable czar is no longer invincible. The master of the Kremlin had to make a deal with a convict—again, in Putin’s culture, among the lowest of the low—just to avert the shock and embarrassment of an armed march into the Russian capital while other Russians are fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.

… [T]wo things appear certain. First, Putin has suffered a huge political blow, and he has survived by making deals both with Prigozhin and with his own colleagues in the Kremlin that are, by any definition, a humiliation. And second, Yevgeny Prigozhin has changed the Russian political environment surrounding Putin’s war in Ukraine. ¤ Prigozhin’s rebellion and its effects will last beyond today, but how long he will live in Belarus—or stay alive in Belarus—to see how the rest of it plays out is unclear.

NYT: Timeline: What Led to the Standoff Between Russia and Prigozhin https://tinyurl.com/msah4sxu Prigozhin had debunked Russian justifications for the war and accused the military of corruption and incompetence; Wagner got to within 200km of Moscow when a deal was cut
// The leader of the Wagner mercenary group had kept a low profile for years, only acknowledging his force’s existence in September of last year.

WaPo: Wagner uprising is reckoning for Putin’s rule https://tinyurl.com/27x65zpv “[O]bservers said the uprising was ‘a symptom of a deep sickness’ within the Russian state brought on by Putin’s messianic mission to capture what he believes are Russia’s historical lands in Ukraine”

Vladimir Putin faced the gravest challenge to his presidency after the system he has presided over for the last twenty-three years buckled this weekend under the pressure of the war he launched in Ukraine and, for a moment, devolved into armed conflict inside Russia.

The march on Moscow by an irate onetime ally, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, accompanied by a convoy of armed members of his private Wagner mercenary group, was a reckoning for a presidency that till now has thrived on Putin’s ability to divide and rule by pitting rival groups against each other and serving as the ultimate arbiter among feuding elites.

Although eventually aborted, Prigozhin’s insurrection exposed the deep weaknesses inside Putin’s rule, raising the specter of civil war and, for several hours on Saturday, appearing to pose a threat to Putin’s position itself. After more than two decades of autocratic rule, Putin’s hubris has repeatedly clouded his judgment — both in invading Ukraine and in misjudging whether Prigozhin could pose a threat — and allowed a months-long standoff between the Wagner chief and the Russian military leadership to spiral this weekend into armed rebellion.

“Recently, Putin has been making mistake after mistake, and Prigozhin could become for him a critical mistake,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s onetime richest man who became a leading exiled opposition figure after Putin jailed him for ten years. “When you are in power for twenty years and everyone tells you what a genius you are, who knows what happens to your consciousness.” ¤ The current crisis, however it ends, will ultimately further weaken Putin’s regime, Khodorkovsky said. …

WaPo: Wagner uprising is reckoning for Putin’s rule https://tinyurl.com/27x65zpv “[O]bservers said the uprising was ‘a symptom of a deep sickness’ within the Russian state brought on by Putin’s messianic mission to capture what he believes are Russia’s historical lands in Ukraine”

🧵 RT @MarkHertling It hit me we’re thinking of Prigozhin in the wrong way. ¤ His actions have confused us these last 48 hours (and beyond) because we see him as the leader of a large mercenary body, fighting for pay (or freedom from jail) instead of what soldiers fight to defend (the state). 1/4
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1672738004102705152?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @LamarEsq @MarkHertling: Thank you, General, for the brief primer, on CNN, re: Prigozhin as modern warlord. You nailed the characteristics and the reason for 21st-century bafflement. Excellent insight.

After some research, I’m now concluding he fits the definition of a modern day warlord, with these attributes: ¤ Here are the characteristics of a warlord: · an individual with limited military skills, who is accountable to no one, who has no true ideology… 2/4

…who rules through patronage, who flourishes only when the central government is weak, and who further fragments the politics, the unified military action, and the economics of a central government. ¤ There is no contribution to a nation’s power, only the individual’s. 3/4

If this definition fits Prigozhin, it also suggests that Russia is therefore a failed – although semi-functioning – quasi modern state. ¤ We know Putin is a kleptocratic authoritarian, so this seems to fit. ¤ Would be interested in what others think of this conclusion. 4/4

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️Summarizing all the events and the words spoken, we can say that Yevgeny Prigozhin bet everything and lost. Most likely, PMC Wagner will cease to exist and will be disbanded

🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. 23 June 23. Putin’s control and stature gravely weakened by the criminal war in Ukraine. He’s brutal but scared. Still has an iron clamp on the security institutions. His continued leadership of Russia is more tenuous each month.
// 11thHour

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov: “I have to admit with great bitterness that the Russian Federation is one step closer to its final and irrevocable demise.

As of today, the Russian Federation has two presidents – the real president, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the acting president to serve his term. The main purpose of the acting president is to periodically address the real president, kneeling down, with the question: “What do you want, Yevgeny Viktorovich?”

Never, even in my worst nightmare, I couldn’t imagine that I would see this shame and destruction of my country.”

🐣 RT @ ZelenskyyUa We all remember how the head of Russia threatened the world in 2021. He had some ultimatums, he was trying to show a kind of strength…
¤ https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1672658185641926660?s=20

The year 2022 showed that he confused – confused his illusions and the lies he was fed with strength. They in the Kremlin are capable of resorting to any terror, capable of resorting to any stupidity, but they cannot provide even one percent of the necessary control. And they are the problem.

In one day, they lost several of their million-plus cities and showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs and anyone else how easy it is to capture Russian cities and, probably, arsenals with weapons.

Now, it is very important that no one in the world remains silent because of being afraid of this Russian chaos. All the actions of the leaders now can be historic. Every word of journalists is worth its weight in gold. It is necessary to clearly name the source of the problem. And if someone in the world tries to ignore the situation, if someone in the world is under the illusion that the Kremlin is capable of regaining control… this only postpones the problem until the next breakthrough of chaos – even more dangerous. ¤ We all know the solutions.

🐣 RT @McFaul What has weakened Putin’s grip on power? His disastrous war in Ukraine. The longer the war continues, the weaker Putin’s regime becomes. Those that want to avoid Russian state collapse (i.e. Xi) should be pushing Putin to end his war.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Civilians chanting “Shame!” and “Traitors!” at the police units which arrived back in Rostov after Wagner units withdrew.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672737054973739010?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en By my estimates, Putin’s rating in Russia fell below 30% in the 24 hours of Prigozhin’s “coup d’etat”. The bloody murderer turned into a limping duck, his “macho” image shattered both in Russia and abroad

It’s really like Russia had two presidents today – the real one, a determined, capable murderer, and the old one – cowering with fear deep down in his bunker, sending his bloody accomplice Lukashenko to negotiate.

Why did Lukashenko become the mediator in negotiations with criminal Prigozhin? I think the answer is simple. Wagner convoys were only a few hours away from Moscow. If they had captured the capital, they would take control over government buildings, including the Kremlin. That would lead to the collapse of Putin’s regime, and that, in turn, would have caused the collapse of Lukashenko’s regime. That’s why one rushed to save the other.

What will happen next?
1. No one really knows the exact agreements that were reached in negotiations with Prigozhin. The fact is – a convoy of Wagner PMC stopped and walked away 200 km from Moscow, and that Prigozhin’s forces left the headquarters of Southern Military Region in Rostov.
2. A lot will depend on whether Putin will honor his side of the deal, including the resignation of Shoigu and Gerasimov (assuming that was included in the agreement).

One thing is clear:
There will be a sequel of some sort.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer A LONG STRANGE TRIP: The Wagner Group mercenary Group, led personally by Yevgeny Prigozhin, has seized the Southern District Military Command Center in Rostov-on-Don. Wagner units are now embarking on a Quixotic 1000 km (600 mi) journey to Moscow.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1672622608565583872?s=20/photo/1
⋙ BBC: Wagner boss to leave Russia and charges dropped, state media says https://tinyurl.com/3aft9t2f

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that criminal charges against #Prigozhin will be dropped. Other #Wagner members will likewise not be prosecuted for their participation. Prigozhin agreed to move to #Belarus.

🐣 RT @nicholadrummond After what’s happened today – with Putin openly accusing Prigozhin of treason and Prigozhin responding that Putin colluded with Shoigu and Gerasimov to start the SMO under false pretences – there really is no going back for either man. This ends badly for one or the other.

🐣 RT @mhmck The most prudent and stabilizing way to end the war and build peace is to inflict public, chaotic and humiliating defeats on the leader-of-the-moment of the Russian terrorist state.

🐣 RT @301military BREAKING: Peskov announced that the criminal case against Prigozhin will be dropped, and he will leave for Belarus.

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @ ZelenskyyUa Today, the world saw that the bosses of Russia do not control anything. Nothing at all. Complete chaos. Complete absence of any predictability.
// 12:47pCT
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1672662657881571332?s=20

First, the world should not be afraid. We know what protects us. Our unity. ¤ Ukraine will definitely be able to protect Europe from any Russian forces, and it doesn’t matter who commands them. We will protect. The security of Europe’s eastern flank depends only on our defense.

Ukrainian soldiers, Ukrainian guns, Ukrainian tanks, Ukrainian missiles are all that protect Europe from such marches as we see today on Russian territory. And when we ask to give us the F-16 fighters or the ATACMS, we’re enhancing our common defense. Real defense.

Second, everything must be real. It’s time for everyone in the world to frankly say that all of Russia’s criminal actions against Ukraine were and are unprovoked. And we all have to focus exclusively on our common security priorities. NATO is not just a word or a set of formal promises. These are reliable guarantees for everyone that peace won’t be destroyed. Without Ukraine, such guarantees are worthless. Already in July at the summit in Vilnius, it is a historic chance for real decisions without looking back at Russia. Any nation that borders Russia supports this.

What will we, Ukrainians, do? ¤ We will defend our country. We will defend our freedom. We will not be silent and we will not be inactive. We know how to win – and it will happen. Our victory in this war.

And what will you, Russians, do? ¤ The longer your troops stay on Ukrainian land, the more devastation they will bring to Russia. The longer this person is in the Kremlin, the more disasters there will be.

🐣 RT @McFaul Can anyone remember a mutiny or coup attempt that lasted 24 hours and no one really fought or was killed? We all watched how easy it was for Wagner to seize Rostov. Something strange going on here.

🐣 RT @McFaul Putin could not control a mercenary force that he created & run by his buddy. He had to rely on Lukashenko of all people to cut a deal with a guy he called just hours ago a traitor. These are signs of real weakness, not strength.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ORIKHIV AXIS /1715 UTC 23 JUN/ UKR forces in contact south of the H-08 HWY axis; RU units are reported to be on the defensive. UKR has advanced south along the T-04-08 HWY & is in contact north of Robotyne. UKR units are in contact NW of Verbove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1672291679699648519?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ igorsushko 🚨 Prigozhin released a recording that he will turn his columns around and stop his March of Justice on Moscow after coming within 200km. There’s going to be so much more to this. Either a fake out or some insane deal has been struck, and not necessarily with Putin. 🍿

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Prigozhin says it’s over: ¤ “They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan.” ¤ Audio: https://t.me/concordgroup_official/1303

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Wagner chief says mercenaries are turning back after advance toward Moscow https://tinyurl.com/w9mcbp9u “With security guarantees for Wagner Group on the table, Prigozhin agreed to stop his forces’ progress toward Moscow”; the deal was brokered by Lukashenko
// 2:45pCT

The agreement for Prigozhin’s forces to turn around was brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who spoke with Putin before negotiating with Prigozhin, according to Belarusian state-owned news agency Belta. With security guarantees for Wagner Group on the table, Prigozhin agreed to stop his forces’ progress toward Moscow.

Mercenaries are halting their travel toward Moscow and turning back from the city, Wagner Group leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin said in an audio message Saturday. After a day of mounting tension in Russia as Prigozhin’s forces advanced in the direction of the capital, his statement appeared to signal a possible end to the immediate crisis.

Prigozhin said his forces had gotten within 200 kilometers of Moscow, and now “we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps according to the plan.” The Washington Post could not immediately clarify his whereabouts. Prigozhin called his forces’ movement on Saturday — which began after Prigozhin called for Russians to join his campaign against President Vladimir Putin’s military leadership — a “march of justice.”

Wagner forces on Saturday had moved north from the Voronezh region to the Lipetsk region, which is roughly 250 miles from the Russian capital.

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian⚡️⚡️⚡️Columns of “Wagner” entered the Moscow region, passing through the city of Barabanov, – Russian media ¤ Now they are only 2 hours away from Moscow.
🌎 https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1672604539797512193?s=20/photo/1

CNN: Putin is at risk of losing his iron grip on power. The next 24 hours are critical https://tinyurl.com/y349teru

🐣 RT @@wartranslated ❗️Prigozhin audio message 10:19AM BST – “no one will surrender to the demands of the President”:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672536701997072384?s=20

“Regarding the betrayal of the Motherland, the President is deeply mistaken. We’re patriots of our Motherland. We fought and we are fighting, all fighters of PMC Wagner. And no one is going to surrender to the demands of the President, FSB, or anyone else. Because we don’t want the country to live further in corruption lies, and bureaucracy.

When we fought in Africa, we were told that we needed Africa, and then they dumped it, because they stole all the money that was meant to come for help.

When we were told we are fighting with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that the ammo, weapons, all money put towards this were also being stolen, while officials are sitting and saving them for themselves for an incident that happened today, when someone is going towards Moscow.”

Now they are not saving anything, they are striking us with planes and helicopters at the columns with civilians. And they hit civilians because they’re missing. And they hit anywhere they can.

Thus, we are the patriots, but those resisting us today are those who gathered around scumbags. Audio: https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/3812

🐣 RT @WarFrontline The Belarusian regiment of Kalinouski is preparing an appeal to the Belarusian people at 17:00.👀👀

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Medvedev and his family have fled Moscow according to Russian channels.

🐣 RT @TheDeadDistrict Interception of the Russian radio: The Russian 205th Brigade in the Kherson direction is thinking about “turning its guns to Russia”. Audio in my TG channel

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en It’s really high time for Russian liberals to talk to Russians in Russia and abroad, to raise their voice and to give vision of future of people of Russia. Future without Putin or Prigozhin. ¤ Peoples of Russian Federation, if you have been waiting for a chance – this is it! ¤ Please share/tag with everyone to whom this may concern.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672542872665505792?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ ZelenskyyUa Everyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself. Who sends columns of troops to destroy the lives of another country and cannot stop them from fleeing and betraying when life resists. …
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1672543858863767552?s=20

… Who terrorizes with missiles, and when they are shot down, humiliates himself to receive Shahed drones. Who despises people and throws hundreds of thousands into the war, in order to eventually barricade himself in the Moscow region from those whom he himself armed. For a long time, Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government. And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it. And all this is one person, who again and again scares by the year 1917, although he is able to result in nothing else but this.

Russia’s weakness is obvious. Full-scale weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain, and problems it will have for itself later. It is also obvious. Ukraine is able to protect Europe from the spread of Russian evil and chaos.

We keep our resilience, unity and strength.
All our commanders, all our soldiers know what to do.
Glory to Ukraine!

🐣 RT @Den_2042 Prigozhin: “As with regard to the high treason, the President has made a big mistake. We are the patriots[…] We don’t want the country to continue to live in corruption, in lies and in bureaucracy.”

🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 24 June 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence’s use of language: https://ow.ly/s3ez50OWlAF 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1672505632325238784?s=20/photo/1

● In the early hours of 24 June 2023, the feud between Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group and the Russian MoD escalated into outright military confrontation.

● In an operation characterised by Prigozhin as a ‘march for freedom”, Wagner Group forces crossed from occupied Ukraine into Russia in at least two locations. In Rostov-on-Don, Wagner has almost certainly occupied key security sites, including the HQ which runs Russia’s military operations in Ukraine

● Further Wagner units are moving north through Vorenezh Oblast, almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow. With very limited evidence of fighting between Wagner and Russian security forces, some have likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner.

● Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out. This represents the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.

🧵 RT @ MarkGaleotti All still pretty unclear as to Prigozhin’s rebellion, but am struck by the uncompromising language in Putin’s emergency address in which he denounces this as treason and a betrayal of the Fatherland 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1672517490495180800?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1672517490495180800.html

All still pretty unclear as to Prigozhin’s rebellion, but am struck by the uncompromising language in Putin’s emergency address in which he denounces this as treason and a betrayal of the Fatherland 1/

If Prigozhin thought there was a deal to be struck, this implies not. But I suspect VVP has (belatedly) come down hard because he must realise just how far his own legitimacy and credibility is on the line. 2/

Putin created Prigozhin, as a useful and biddable instrument (never one of his friends), and Putin allowed the Prigozhin/Shoigu rivalry to continue way past the point at which is was becoming dangerous and dysfunctional. 3/

His whole system is based on them, divide and rule on steroids, but it means that arbitrating these rows is one of his key and unique roles. No one else can do it – and so the buck stops with him when they spin out of control. 4/

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ❗️”Either we take advantage of this historic chance, or we will lose everything,” Belarusian volunteer Sakhashchyk, founder of the 1st separate amphibious assault company in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, addressed the Belarusian military in connection with the events in the RF

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian “We will destroy everything around us, we are all ready to die – all 25 thousand, and then another 25 thousand, because the Russian people must be freed,” – Prigozhin.

🐣 RT @wartranslated “The war will end inside Russia, the process has begun” – Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

🐣 RT @yasminalombaert Russia’s chief state propagandist Vladimir Solovyov comments on the Wagner Putsch.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1672516463830204418?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated❗️Kadyrov emerges, supports Putin, calls this a military coup, requests Wagners to lay down weapons.

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: MUTINY IN RUSSIA MAY LEAD TO A COUP. What started as a small, localized mutiny by Yevgeny Pregozhin & PMC Wagner mercenaries against Russian Federation army commanders has escalated into a pre planned full blown coup. Whether Putin is the target or just Shoigu, Wagner is now marching on Moscow.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian Telegram channels report that Wagner PMCs have entered Voronezh and are on the outskirts of Krasnodar and Volgograd. No one is resisting the militants.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Today, Ukraine has become a few steps closer to complete Victory over Russia and complete return of its territories, including Crimea.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672520308790525953?s=20/photo/1

A vile, but useful in this case monster – Prigozhin, raised an armed rebellion against Shoigu and Gerasimov, captured the headquarters of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation, and now his advanced groups are heading towards Voronezh, and then towards Moscow.

In fact, this is a rebellion, not against war criminals Shoigu and Gerasimov, but against Putin himself, whose place Prigozhin has long wanted to take and create his own regime in Russia.

What are the true motives of Prigozhin that prompted him to launch an armed rebellion? I think that he, as a person who has known Putin personally for more than 30 years, treats him with contempt and sees that Putin, having unleashed a bloody massacre against Ukraine, for the sake of his illusory greatness, no longer controls the situation.

In addition, Prigozhin, who has already participated in military coups in Africa for 10 years, decided that if it was possible to seize power in Sudan or the Central African Republic, then it is possible to do it in Russia as well, which Putin has lowered during his 23 years of rule to the level of puppet tropical dictatorships .

An interesting question – what exactly was the reason for the mutiny? Yesterday at 7:30 p.m., Prigozhin published a video showing footage of a rocket attack on the rear camp of the “Wagner” military unit, as a result of which his fighters were allegedly killed.

I am convinced that this provocation was organized by Prigozhin himself, because there was no sense for Shoigu and Gerasimov to attack one of the dozens of military camps of the “Wagner” military group.

If they really wanted to solve their problem with the bloody clown, they would have to eliminate him himself, not attack some tent in the forest and give Prigozhin an excuse to start a riot.

Prigozhin had been preparing for this mutiny for a long time. It is for this reason that he has been raising his profile for the past six months by accusing Shoigu and Gerasimov of sabotage, and gaining the trust of the Russian military, who are not satisfied with the way the criminal war against Ukraine is being waged. It was for this reason that he opened Wagner centers in all subjects of the Russian Federation and recently toured half of Russia.

Prigozhin has crossed his Rubicon, and will not turn from his path until he is physically destroyed or he achieves his goals.

In my opinion, what are the further possible options for the development of the situation?

The first: Putin’s power today and tomorrow will crumble like a house of cards. Prigozhin’s troops will enter Moscow, seize the Kremlin, the Ministry of Defense and all power, and Prigozhin will appoint himself the military dictator of Russia, on the basis that Putin cannot perform his duties due to a sharp deterioration in his health.

The second: Putin will give an order to physically destroy Prigozhin, which has already been effectively declared an outlaw, with a blow from “Kinzhal” or “Iskander”, as well as to destroy from the air the PMC convoys that are now heading from Russian South towards Moscow. I say from the air, since it is unlikely that any ground unit of the Russian army would dare to engage in open combat with the experienced and strictly disciplined mercenaries of the Wagner Army.

The third option: Putin will abandon the plan to physically destroy Prigozhin and try to come to an agreement with him, fulfilling his demands to remove Shoigu, Gerasimov and other ineffective war criminals, replacing them with Prigozhin’s proteges, in order to increase military pressure on Ukraine and our allies.

This will still mean the actual transfer of power to the hands of Prigozhin and the departure of Putin from power, and in the future the possibility of being shot together with Kabayeva for treason, as the Ceausescu couple was shot in 1989, on the second day after the beginning of the uprising.

You can choose which of the three options is the most beneficial for Ukraine, or write your vision in the comments.

In my opinion, all three options that I mentioned above only strengthen Ukraine’s position and bring our Victory closer.

If Prigozhin seizes power in the Kremlin, it will with a 99% probability lead to the collapse of Russia, which I have predicted since 24 February, 2022.

Kadyrov and the leaders of other national subjects of the federation in the Caucasus, Povolzhie (Volga region), and Siberia, know that Prigozhin considers all of them second-class people and will easily give an order to shoot and destroy any of them. Therefore, they will negotiate with the local commanders of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, the Russian Guards, the FSB, and declare their independence from Prigozhin.

An armed war of clans will begin for power, for resources, there will be such chaos and disorder, compared to which the year 1917 will seem like a fairy tale.

If, after all, Putin gives the order and Prigozhin is eliminated, then the Russian army, which was still somehow holding on due to the belief in some improvements, will completely lose the remnants of faith in the possibility of winning in the confrontation with us and our NATO allies.

Next will be our successful offensive, the total overthrow of the remnants of the Russian front, and the Russians and together with their henchmen will run and stop only after crossing our borders. ¤ Onwards to Victory!

🐣 RT @wartranslated ❗️AP Wagner: “The trigger of the Civil War was pulled by Pypa [Putin]. Instead of sending one or two degenerates into retirement, he gave the order to neutralize the most combat-ready unit in Russia. The life of one or two traitors was placed above 25,000 heroes. Who is evil in this conflict is already obvious. The victory will be for PMC “Wagner”. ¤ AP Wagner is one of numerous channels associated with senior figures in Wagner.

🐣 RT @wartranslated ❗️Full morning of 24 June address by Putin to the nation in regards to the military coup:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672508593969549312?s=20

“I appeal to the citizens of Russia, to the personnel of the Armed Forces, law enforcement and security services, fighters and commanders currently fighting on their positions, repelling the enemy attacks, doing it heroically.

I spoke to the commanders in all directions last night. I appeal also to those who were deceptively pulled into the criminal adventure, pushed towards a serious crime of an armed mutiny.

Russia today is leading the most difficult war for its future, repelling the aggression of neo-nazis and their handlers. Against us, the whole military, economical and information machines of the West are turned.

We fight for the lives and security of our people. For our sovereignty and independence. The right to remain Russia, a state with 1000 years of history.

It’s a battle where the fate of our people is decided requires uniting of all our forces, unity, consolidation and responsibility. Everything else [t]hat weakens us must be shoved to the side.

Our external enemies are using any arguments to undermine us from within. Thus, actions splitting our unity is a betrayal of our people, our combat brothers who fight now at the frontline. It’s a strike in the back of our country and our people.

Exactly this strike was dealt in 1917 when the country was in WW1, but its victory was stolen. Intrigues, and arguments behind the army’s back turned out to be the greatest catastrophe, destruction of the army and the state, loss of huge territories, resulting in a tragedy and a civil war.

Russians were killing Russians, brothers killing brothers. But the beneficiaries were various political chevaliers of fortune and foreign powers who divided the country, and tore it into parts. We will not let this happen.

We will protect our people and state from any threats, including internal betrayal. What we’re facing is exactly internal betrayal. Extraordinary ambitions and personal interests led to treason. Treason of their own country and people and of the case that fighters of Wagner were dying for alongside our soldiers.

Heroes who liberated Soledar and Artemivsk, towns and cities of the Donbas. They fought and were giving lives to Novorossiya and the unity of the Russian world. Their name and glory were also betrayed by those who are trying to organise the mutiny, pushing the country into anarchy and brother-killing, to a defeat, in the end, and capitulation.

Repeat: any internal mutiny is a deadly threat to our state, to us as a nation. It’s a strike against our nation, our people. And our actions to defend the fatherland from such a threat will be brutal.

Anyone who consciously went on the path of betrayal, who prepared the armed mutiny, went on the path of blackmail and terrorist actions, will take an inevitable punishment.

They will answer to the law and our people. The Armed Forces and other departments were properly instructed. Extra anti-terrorist measures are now being implemented in Moscow, Moscow region, and a number of other regions.

Decisive actions will be taken to stabilise the situation in Rostov-on-Don. It remains difficult. The operation of civilian and military control departments is practically blocked.

As a President of Russia and the Supreme Commander, as a citizen of Russia, I will do everything to defend the country, protect the Constitution, lives and safety, liberty of the citizens.

Those who prepared the military mutiny, who raise weapons against combat brothers, have betrayed Russia, and will pay for this. And those who are being pulled into the crime, I’m asking to not make this crucial, tragic, unrepeatable mistake. Do the one right choice – stop participating in criminal actions.

I believe that we will defend and preserve what’s sacred for us. And together with the motherland, we will overcome all challenges, and become even stronger.

🐣 RT @McFaul OK, so both sides are now all in.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Wagner PMC Telegram channel:
“Putin made the wrong choice. All the worse for him. Soon we will have a new president”

🐣 RT @Tendar Russian insurgent forces are spreading in all directions. Volgograd, Krasnodar, Moscow, you name it. No serious resistance is reported. #Russia #Coup

🐣 RT @Tendar Putin just made his last big mistake. It is monumental self-own.
For the Russian troops in Ukraine this must be the most-confusing moment in their lives.
Expect major developments in Ukraine but also outside!
This is a once-in-lifetime moment!

🐣 RT @KyivPost ⚡️#Putin promised to fight back: “They’re pushing us to a defeat and capitulation, a strike against Russia, our people. Our actions will be brutal… As a citizen of #Russia, I will do everything to defend the country.”

🐣 RT @Tendar Putin has given formal orders to “neutralize” the rebellion and de facto kill Prigozhin. ¤ That’s it. All hell is lose.

🐣 RT @McFaul That analogy casts Putin as Nicholas II and Prigozhin as Lenin –an odd image to be invoking.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ McFaul Strange to me that Putin invoked 1917 in his speech today. Not a good analogy for him to be resurrecting.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Putin called the situation a criminal adventure, betrayal, treason, rebellion, apostasy and a stab in the back – from his address regarding Prigozhin.

🐣 RT @s_hnizdovskyi Putin recorded an address, calling Prigozhin a traitor. Putin said he had given instructions to MoD and other agencies to deal harshly with the coup organizers. Prigozhin will “answer not only in front of the law but in front of the people”, Putin said. More of his quotes:
“❗️Any turmoil is a deadly threat, our actions will be tough.” ⚡️Russian armed forces received the necessary order to neutralize those who organized an armed insurgency, Putin said.

🐣 📊 RT @s_hnizdovskyi Russians place more trust in protecting Russia’s border regions from the attacks on Wagner PMC (43%) than in the Security Forces (FSB) (37%). This may indicate that the state’s monopoly on military power has been undermined (especially regarding the current events)
◕ https://twitter.com/s_hnizdovskyi/status/1672505425915269121?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ PhillipsPOBrien So let me get this straight. Wagner controls Rostov and the Ukrainians have damaged/destroyed the transport links from Crimea to Russian forces in Ukraine. Basically, the Russian army supply situation is, in a word, screwed.

🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien So, looks like Prigozhin is doing this on his own, wow. Question. How many Russian army troops are actually in Russia and can be used to stop him?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ NOELreports President Putin is now adressing the Russian nation.
“We are fighting for the right to remain Russia, a state with a thousand-year history. Actions that are being carried out now are apostasy from the nations. This is a stab in the back of our country and our people.”

🐣 RT @ IAPonomarenko So, no deal with the Wagner, as far as I understand.
It’s a 100% war now. ¤ It remains to be seen how strong is the loyalty of Russia’s regular military (a large part of which are mobilized cannon fodder slaves) toward the ridiculed dictator who is growing childish day by day.

🐣 RT @ nexta_tv ⚡️#Putin: “The Russian Armed Forces received the necessary order to neutralize those who organized the rebellion. ¤ All those who consciously embarked on the path of betrayal will suffer inevitable punishment.”

🐣 RT @McFaul The idea that Putin will let Prigozhin overthrow his buddy Shoigu & then do a deal with him strikes me as rather far-fetched. If I were Putin, Id be very scared of Prigozhin. But these are strange, volatile times.

🐣 RT @ @AndriyYermak Разом із Залужним, Шапталою, Неїжпапою, Олещуком та Хоренком. ¤ Команда Президента Зеленського. У росіян буде палати🔥
[Translated from Ukrainian by Google]
Together with Zaluzhny, Shaptala, Neizhpapa, Oleschuk and Khorenk.
President Zelenskyi’s team. The Russians will have chambers 🔥
🖼 https://twitter.com/AndriyYermak/status/1672488121999454209?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports Solovyov seems sad in his first response to what is happening in Russia.
“Every kingdom, if it is torn apart by strife, will be desolate, and every city or house where there is strife will not stand.”
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1672495008568541184?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en Putin’s address expected soon – Peskov ¤ It was supposed to have started almost 45 minutes ago.

🐣 RT @gorsushko 🚨Wagner PMC reports they have taken control of military objects around Voronezh and the Russian army there has chosen to side with ‘the people.’ They mean Wagner PMC.
🌎 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1672493722217467904?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AlexBondODUA “pootin postponed his morning speech, previously announced by Peskov”- rus media. ¤ People say that there are some serious troubles with the logistic of 💼🧻 for Mr. president.

🐣 RT @OstapYarysh Wagner group claims to control military objects in Rostov and Voronezh.
Counter-terrorist regime introduced in Moscow and Moscow Region.
Putin is expected to deliver a special address.
And it’s only 9:30 am in Moscow.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR All mass events in Moscow have been cancelled, Moscow Mayor Sobyanin said.#Prigozhin #RussiaIsCollapsing

🐣 RT @ McFaul Wow. Russia now has two armies in control of two different parts of the country. That’s the definition of a civil war or (according to Tilly/Trotsky) a “revolutionary situation.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko 🚨 Prigozhin issued his first public address from the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, a city with a population of 1.1 million, which Wagner PMC now fully control.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1672482027701166081?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 23 Jun 2023

WaPo: New video undercuts claim Twitter censored pro-Trump views before Jan. 6 https://tinyurl.com/4hccbtdk
// In the internal video call from Jan. 5, 2021, workers were told not to take tougher action against a growing wave of tweets they feared were veiled incitements to violence.

🐣 RT @ wartranslated Prigozhin says the army supports him, and accuses Shoygu of hiding 2000 dead Russian corpses in Rostov morgue to hide losses:

“The majority of the military are warmly supporting us. We get messages: “Finally, the jusice in the army will come! Finally, you will ensure we will get the ammo and won’t be thrown as meat!”

Just now, the information came through: in Rostov morgue, the Minister of Defence ordered to hide 2000 bodies, which are held there to avoid showcasing the losses.” ¤ Audio: https://t.me/concordgroup_official/1290

🐣 RT @YVindman It’s hard for me to imagine Russian forces in Ukraine staying and fighting while there is an insurrection at home. If this persists / gathers momentum, I can see a rapid collapse of Russian forces in Ukraine.

WaPo: Wagner mercenary boss faces arrest over ‘incitement to armed rebellion’ https://tinyurl.com/msvj5ar4 “The bizarre and chaotic events Friday were the latest sign of the damage that Putin’s war in Ukraine has inflicted in Russia over the past 16 months”

Russia’s Federal Security Service late Friday announced a criminal case against Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, accusing him of “incitement to armed rebellion” after he declared an open conflict with Russia’s military leadership and called on Russians to join 25,000 Wagner fighters against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top commanders.

🐣 RT @RealCynicalFox #RussianCoup Several initial thoughts:

1. If this is in fact a coup attempt, which remains to be seen, Putin needs to show himself publicly as soon as possible to rally loyalist Russian forces as soon as possible to prevent further defections. There are repeated reports of Russian troops joining Wagner forces.
2. Again, assuming this is a coup, Putin now finds himself in the same position Tsar Nicholas did in 1917 in at least one sense. His most reliable units – the VDV and Spetsnaz – have been seriously weakened by recent casualties. These are the units who would normally be used to put down such an action against the government. Their capability & reliability is now far more questionable in their current (somewhat) rebuilt state than it was pre-war.
3. The lack of public statements from Putin, Shoigu, and Gerasimov is genuinely concerning and raises questions as to their current status.
4. The choice of Wagner center of gravity at Rostov is curious if this is an outright coup attempt. It certainly impacts the Russian war effort in Ukraine.
5. If this spirals into something prolonged and/or a genuine threat to the current Russian government, the situation for the UAF may change dramatically. This may develop into a genuine opportunity for Kyiv.

🐣 RT @McFaul What is happening in Russia so far is not a conventional coup in that Prigozhin is not trying to overthrow Putin, but just the Russian generals in charge of the armed forces.

🐣 RT @igorsushko 🚨 Special Operations Forces (SSO) commanded by Major General Valery Flustikov have taken over control of the Ministry of Defence headquarters on Frunzenskaya in Moscow. Right now, there’s no way of knowing whose side he is really on: Shoigu or Prigozhin. Probably “wait & see.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1672352313091178496?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AVindman Rostov houses the command of the Southern Military District and the Operational Headquarters for the war in Ukraine. It’s also one of Russia most important logistical hubs for the war. Wagner could get it hands on enormous stockpiles.

🐣 RT @Stanovaya Here are a few insights into the situation surrounding Prigozhin:

1️⃣ For a long time, Prigozhin has been out of direct contact with Putin, yet he’s believed he was acting in Putin’s interests “by default”. His significant contributions in the war enhanced his sense of exclusivity and privilege.

2️⃣ The President’s administration maintained the stance that unless explicitly directed, it wasn’t feasible to openly confront Prigozhin, despite a strong inclination to do so. In fact, they had even convinced themselves of his usefulness.

3️⃣ As I’ve previously stated, the atrocities of war can drive people to the brink of sanity. Even the most loyal players, who are dependent on the Kremlin (which doesn’t imply complete manageability), can lose their sense of proportion. This is especially true when there appears to be no response to the continual attempts to escalate the situation.

4️⃣ Now that the state has actively engaged, there’s no turning back. The termination of Prigozhin and Wagner is imminent. The only possibility now is absolute obliteration, with the degree of resistance from the Wagner group being the only variable. Surovikin was dispatched to convince them to surrender. Confrontation seems totally futile.

5️⃣ The impending end of Wagner has satisfied many in power. He had become excessively anti-state, which is intolerable during a war. However, a significant number of those outside of power now lament the loss of a character like Prigozhin, who had begun to appeal due to his daring and audacity. Consequently, political repercussions are expected.

A crucial point to note is that many within the elite will now personally fault Putin for letting the situation escalate to such extremes and for his lack of a timely, adequate response when to many it was evident that Prigozhin was pushing the limits of Kremlin’s tolerance. Therefore, this entire saga is also an undercut to Putin’s standing.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Prigozhin: two aircraft are above Wagner’s convoy. He’s asking them not to obey criminal orders, threatens revenge if they do. Calls Russian military to turn against Shoigu and Gerasimov who are responsible for more than 100,000 Russian deaths.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en The addresses of Surovikin and deputy head of Russian intelligence department were filmed in front of a suspiciously similar backgrounds. They look like they’ve been arrested.

🐣 RT @@HerrDr8 #1WayTrainRideRUS #1PageAssessUKRWar This from APR 2022. Discontinued the analytical thread then when it became clear Putin survived the initial debacle. TOTALLY unclear who has THE influence chit on Prig.
◕ https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1672421111034785794?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ maria_drutska Update of russia vs. russia

● Prigozhin claims Wagner has entered Rostov (please note, Rostov is a logistics hub for the russian military), but no proof of this, yet; though more and more videos do seem to be appearing to show this
● President Biden has been briefed on the situation
● Missile strikes in Kyiv, and other cities
● Prigozhin claims to have shot down a russian helicopter; he didn’t provide evidence, but there are videos circulating which have not been authenticated, yet
● Google News blocked in russia
● Governor of Rostov region tells civilians to stay indoors
● Prigozhin’s name seems to be blocked from russian media
● Girkin claims that the military coup is pre-planned, and done prematurely – he’s pissed (remember he hates Prigozhin)
● Supposedly FSB & police have been put on full alert in Rostov
● FSB has setup checkpoints along highways, and also in Moscow where people are being searched
● Kremlin appears to be locked down, with military vehicles patrolling; putin was informed a few hours ago
● military vehicles are seen patrolling in various cities including Rostov & Moscow
● russian tv channels (I believe channel 1) were interrupted with an emergency message about Prigozhin & Wagner
● Earlier, Surovikin released a video (general who oversaw russia’s Kherson goodwill gesture) pleading with Wagner / Prigozhin to return to their barracks
● This all started earlier today when Prigozhin released a video blaming Gerasimov and Shoigu for the shortcomings of the russian invasion, leading to the deaths of 100K russian soldiers. He also dismissed russian narrative about Ukraine bombing civilians in Donbas for 8 years, and several other Kremlin talking points.
● Then, Prigozhin accused Shoigu of bombing Wagner, which the russian MOD denied (the video looks staged, but I’m not an expert in this)
● There were messages on Telegram of russian units firing on other russian units who were fighting near the front; again, I can’t confirm this
● Prigozhin has stated that he wishes to hang Shoigu in the red square, publicly
● Prigozhin to be investigated for mutiny by the FSB; the Wagner building in Moscow was searched earlier today

There are more and more videos coming out, but they haven’t been authenticated, yet. Western media outlets are starting to pick up on this, and russian Telegram is talking non-stop about this. ¤ But, remember, whatever is happening now, for russia, it will get worse. ¤ Good night, and Slava Ukraini!

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en VCHK-OGPU – from their source: “The attempts to act against Prigozhin come solely from FSB and Russian Guards. The Ministry of Defense has withdrawn itself, lower-rank officers either simply refuse to follow orders, or openly support Wagner.
As for Shoigu and co. – they simply hid and entirely lost their touch with reality. Apparently, the scare is serious.”

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 As I said, there is no Russian state, no political chain of command, and total failure in Ukraine has exposed that. Who will obey whose orders now? If Prigozhin is still alive and free in 24 hours, we will have entered a new reality.

🐣 RT @Tendar At this point it is absolutely irrelevant if Prigozhin’s coup will succeed or not. Literally everybody in Russia and outside will know after this night that the war in Ukraine is lost. The morale of the Russian army, which was already low, will hit rock bottom and the mood in Russia altogether will be Armageddon-like.

What started as an attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government and annex all of Ukraine has eventually backfired on a monumental scale. The last chapter of this Russian-made tragedy has opened and I doubt that it will be a long chapter.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian media:
“The source says there is panic in the Kremlin, no one can reach Putin”
“Source: Right now the Kremlin is negotiating about something with general governor Dyumin”
Source: Some people in the Kremlin, from the presidential administration, are finding out about a possible emergency relocation. One of the few available destinations is Uruguay”.
* Alexei Gennadyevich Dyumin is a Russian politician, serving as Governor of Tula Oblast since 2016. Previously he served as President Vladimir Putin’s chief security guard and assistant before being promoted to lead the Russian military’s Special Operations Forces, where he oversaw the annexation of Crimea in 2014

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer RED ON RED ENGAGEMENT: @PStyle0ne1 reports that an armed convoy of Wagner PMC troops has left Shakhty and is apparently en route to a RU military command center at Rostov-on-Don. It appears the long-simmering feud between Wagner PMC and the Russian MOD may be about to go hot.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1672393600812961793?s=20

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Whether #Prigozhin coup succeeds, let’s remember Putin only turned on him today, AFTER the Wagner head blew open all the Kremlin’s lies about the war. He admitted #Ukraine did nothing to provoke #Russia. Greedy Russia just wanted to install a puppet so oligarchs could plunder it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🔥 Key #Prigozhin admissions that Russia’s rationales for war are lies:
-denazification
-demilitarization
-genocide in Donbas
-protecting Russian speakers, ethnic Russians
AND P admits plan was to install a puppet & plunder Ukraine for oligarchs.
#RussiaIsTerroristKleptocracy
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @SamRamani2 Yevgeny Prigozhin has crossed another red line
The Wagner Group chief is now attacking the rationale for Russia’s war with Ukraine
Here are some key points /1
📌 https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1672250346805116928?s=20

🐣 RT @FreudGreyskull The head of the General Staff of the Russian Federation gave the order to launch airstrikes on the columns of Wagner PMC – Prigozhin. ¤ Yevgeny Prigozhin thanked the pilots, who, in his words, “refused to obey the order.”

🐣 RT @Fireblade577 A civil war is brewing in Russia between the established Elite and Prigozhin and these videos are clearly designed to recruit those dissatisfied with the established elite to his side. This could blow up any moment (or not at all) or we could see attempts at eliminating 1/2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated In continuation of his interview, Prigozhin lists two reasons for the start of the SMO: a) personal ambitions of Shoygu and b) the desire of Russia’s ruling clan, who were not satisfied with the Donbas, to appoint Medvedchuk as the president of Ukraine and divide its assets between each other for plundering. According to Prigozhin, denazification and demilitarisation make no sense since Azov wouldn’t be exchanged for Medvedchuk otherwise.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672186669762596865?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Fireblade577 Prigozhin who is clearly staying close to the front where he can be protected by his Wagner Loyalists 2/2

⭕ 22 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder All of these Ukrainian actions are taking place on Ukrainian sovereign territory. Russia has no more business making threats about this than it does about actions in Iceland, Liberia, or New Zealand.
⋙ TheGuardian: Russia accuses Ukraine of using UK-supplied missiles to strike bridge to Crimea https://tinyurl.com/5as5xxux
// Chonhar Bridge is one of a handful of infrastructures linking Crimea with the mainland

Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, said on Tuesday that the potential use of US-made Himars and the Storm Shadow missiles against targets in Crimea would mark the west’s “full involvement in the conflict and would entail immediate strikes upon decision-making centres in Ukrainian territory”.

Shadow missiles have a range “in excess of 250km” (155 miles), according to their manufacturer, the European arms group MBDA, significantly further than the high-precision Himars rocket launchers, which have been used heavily by Ukraine.

The shorter-range missiles have become less effective as Russia moves its troop and supply reserves further from the frontlines. The Storm Shadow missiles should allow Ukraine to strike at targets previously out of reach.

WaPo: IRS whistleblower says Justice Dept. slowed, stifled Hunter Biden case https://tinyurl.com/ddpy8xpe
// Tax investigator says prosecutor decisions whittled down the case against the president’s son

🐣 RT @nother_fella I find myself agreeing with Senator Graham, Strelkov and even Prigozhin today; never thought that would happen! ruzzia is desperate but must be deterred from blowing the ZNPP. 🇬🇧 has given 🇺🇦 Storm Shadows; 🇺🇦 should be permitted to use them to sink part of the Black Sea Fleet as a warning.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov: Russia has no chance to win, Putin and the higher ranks of Russian leadership are delusional. Russia lost all initiative on the frontlines.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1671200203083329541?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @LindseyGrahamSC The Graham-Blumenthal resolution: ¤ 1⃣ Agrees that the deployment of the Russian Federation’s tactical nuclear weapons within the Republic of Belarus is a threat to Ukraine and NATO member states.
📌 https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1671916293832802304?s=20

⋙ 2⃣ Views the use of any tactical nuclear weapon by the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, or their proxies, or the destruction of a nuclear facility, dispersing radioactive contaminates into NATO territory causing significant harm to human life….. ……as an attack on NATO requiring an immediate response, including the implementation of Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty.

⋙ 3⃣ Urges the current administration to consult with NATO leaders and other European partners to develop a comprehensive response to minimize the threat to civilians and coordinate a diplomatic and military response commensurate with the situation.

🐣 RT @7Veritas4 His daily plea to his congressional shills to save him.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/7Veritas4/status/1671853418380419072?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Congress will hopefully now look at the ever continuing Witch Hunts and ELECTION INTERFERENCE against me on perfectly legal Boxes, where I have no doubt that information is being secretly “planted” by the scoundrels in charge, the Perfect Phone Calls (Atlanta), the illegal DOJ/Pomerantz/Manhattan D.A. Hoax, where virtually EVERYONE agrees THERE IS NO CASE, and the NYSAG SCAM, where I have proven beyond a doubt that there is no case, but have a hostile Judge who should not be on this case!

🐣 RT @7Veritas4 “Congress, if you’re listening…” ¤ – Captain Capslock
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/7Veritas4/status/1671854828945920000?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS AGAINST ME CURRENTLY BEING BROUGHT BY THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI, WHO ARE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL. THIS CONTINUING SAGA IS RETRIBUTION AGAINST ME FOR WINNING AND, EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY TO THEM, ELECTION INTERFERENCE REGARDING THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. IT WILL BE THERE UPDATED FORM OF RIGGING OUR MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION. LOOK AT THE POLLS – THEY CAN’T BEAT ME (MAGA!) AT THE BALLOT BOX, THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IS TO CHEAT. STOP THEM NOW!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KAMIANSKE AXIS /1750 UTC 22 JUN/ On 21 JUN, UKR repelled a RU counterattack Piatykhatky. Also on 21 JUN, a UKR missile strike targeted a troop & equipment & concentration in Shyroke, destroying a KSHM command vehicle, several trucks and artillery pieces and killing 50 RU troops.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1671936471232544768?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CUTTING THE CORD: UKR carried out a long range precision strike that severed the M-18 HWY bridge linking Crimea to Melitopol. The destruction of this bridge will negatively affect RU logistics in the southern area of operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1671947294684446732?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @kvistp Russia will no longer be able to normally supply its troops in the occupied Zaporizhia region after blowing up the Chongar bridge. ¤ The last escape route for supplies for the occupiers is marked. This route can be fired with HIMARS MLRS without any problems, so any trip along it will be really hot for all Russians.😁💙💛
🌎 https://twitter.com/kvistp/status/1671923051301158940?s=20/photo/1

WaPo Editorial: Dictators’ dark secret: They’re learning from each other https://tinyurl.com/3vufwj5j “All who believe in democracy must find new ways to advance it. … Democracy’s greatest strength is openness. It should be harnessed to tell the truth loudly and widely”

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa We have just had a report from our intelligence and the Security Service of 🇺🇦. ¤ Intelligence has received information that Russia is considering a scenario of a terrorist attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. A terrorist attack with radiation leakage. They have prepared everything for this.

Unfortunately, I have repeatedly had to remind that radiation has no state borders, and who it will hit is determined only by the wind direction.

We share all available information with our partners – everyone in the world. All the evidence. Europe, America, China, Brazil, India, the Arab world, Africa – all countries, absolutely everyone should know this. International organizations. Everyone.

There should never be any terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants anywhere. This time it should not be like with Kakhovka – the world has been warned, so the world can and must act.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian military blogger explains the importance of the Chongar bridge: it was best suited for the Russian military and civilian supply in Kherson region, it carried 70% of the traffic. While it can be repaired, Russia does not have reliable means to prevent cruise missile strikes in the area. https://t.me/zhivoff/9740
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1671790854812450817?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] Strike on the bridge over Chongar: consequences

The first thing to understand is that this is not just a strike on a bridge, it is a strike on a land corridor. The strike was serious, and it is possible that it will happen again. 70% of all military and civilian traffic went through Chongar.

The second thing that has now become obvious is that we are very poorly protected from attacks by Storm Shadow missiles, and previous arrivals in Genichesk were an element of breaking through our air defenses in the north of Crimea.

The logistics of supplying new regions after the attack of the bridge will seriously become more complicated, and the risk of repeated arrivals will scare many away from attempting to cross. Both the military and commercial operators, and all of us who work in the liberated territories, will get into trouble.

2/2 Thirdly, the border crossing of Armyansk goes to Kherson, it is worse equipped, and you will have to make a detour of 100 km along completely unusable roads that have not been put in order. And the Chaplynka border crossing is generally not really suitable for civil traffic, and there are no roads there either.

Over the past week, the enemy has inflicted serious damage on the civilian infrastructure of the Kherson region. It is still not very clear how the political administration of the region can work without a bridge and under the threat ofthe arrival of new missiles.

Fourth: visually, the bridge is quite suitable for movement, it can be repaired fairly quickly, but something must be done about the constant threat of repeated strikes. In general, the situation is difficult. In such cases, the enemy must be dealt a disproportionately strong blow in order to wean him from attacks on his own infrastructure, but premonition tells us that we will refrain.

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Three roads connect Crimea with the Kherson region: two in the Armyansk region (through Kalanchak and Chaplynka) and one in the Dzhankoy region – through Chongar ¤ It is the road through Chongar that is most convenient for transporting military equipment to the Zaporizhzhia region
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Maks_NAFO_FELLA In Chongar, an automobile bridge connecting the peninsula with the mainland was attacked. ¤ Previously, Storm Shadow missiles were used for the attack. The road surface on the bridge was damaged. Traffic is blocked.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1671749471351324673?s=20/photo/1 -3

🐣 @AdamSchiff
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
– Maya Angelou
🙏💙

⭕ 21 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @wartranslated ❗️Prigozhin accuses the Russian MoD of hiding facts about the Ukrainian offensive and Russian losses. ¤ In a 4-minute audio message, Prigozhin declares there are areas where no military reporters are allowed to hide the truth about casualties Russia is taking during the counter-offensive. According to Prigozhin, Ukrainians are aiming to reach Molochny Lyman (likely to cut the Russian Zaporizhzhia group into two). If things progress the same way, Russians will one day wake up with Crimea being Ukrainian, says Prigozhin. ¤ He once again attacks Shoygu for inactivity and brings up the dead sailors of the Moskva cruiser lost by Russia last spring.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1671528539655491585?s=20/photo/1

WaPo Editorial: House Republicans censuring Adam Schiff says more about them than him https://tinyurl.com/3cnj7cpd The measure passed only after Trump threatened to support primary opponents against any GOP Representatives who did not vote for the censure

[…] Contrary to what many Trump supporters claim, the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III never exonerated Mr. Trump. Indeed, the special counsel’s report laid out significant evidence of obstruction of justice. It’s indisputable that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

After 20 Republicans voted last week with Democrats to table the censure resolution, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that he’d support primary challengers against them. (Mr. Schiff had spearheaded Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and played a leading role on the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.) When the resolution came up again Wednesday, this time without a threat to fine Mr. Schiff $16 million, most of those Republicans capitulated. …

In so doing, they weakened the power of congressional censure as an official rebuke reserved for egregious conduct — and, in the process, made themselves appear to be the wrongdoers.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff To my Republican colleagues who introduced this sham resolution: You honor me with your enmity.
You flatter me with this falsehood.
Your words tell me that I have been effective in the defense of our democracy, and I am grateful.
💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1671595167827079171?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln .@tedlieu refuses to mince words and play the GOP’s games – it’s clear that the Durham report is a sham drummed up by Republicans desperate for anything that might discredit the Biden administration.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1671699526883876864?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @BryanDawsonUSA If you want to know why pathetic, traitorous Kevin McCarthy and his traitorous Republican horde voted to censure Adam Schiff, watch him own John Durham and get him to admit, and agree with the Mueller report, that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians:
💽 https://twitter.com/BryanDawsonUSA/status/1671741420682506240?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Special Counsel John Durham: “Our report should not be read to suggest in any way that Russian election interference was not a significant threat. It was.”
💽 [8:22m] https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1671701257600245761?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @OccupyDemocrats BREAKING: Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff humiliates John Durham, the author of Trump’s phony “Durham report,” during a hearing today by the House Judiciary Committee.
¤ https://twitter.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/1671605195447447554?s=20

It all started when Durham tried to claim that the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump and Russia was a hoax. ¤ That’s when Congressman Schiff expertly cut Durham off, declaring, “Mr. Durham, just so people remember what this is all about, let me ask you. The Mueller investigation revealed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a sweeping and systemic fashion, correct?

This is when the fun began, because Durham had no choice it to respond, “Yes, that is correct.” ¤ But Schiff didn’t stop there, continuing to hammer Durham:

SCHIFF: And Russia did so through a social media campaign that favored Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton, correct?
DURHAM: The report says yes.

SCHIFF: Mueller found that a Russian intel service hacked computers associated with the Clinton campaign and then released the stolen documents publicly. Is that right?
DURHAM: That report speaks for itself as well.

SCHIFF: Mueller also reported that though he could not establish the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, he also said, quote, “a statement that the investigation did not establish certain facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts,” and also appears in the report, doesn’t it?
DURHAM: Yes.

SCHIFF: In fact, you cited that very statement in your own report, did you not, as a way of distinguishing between proof beyond a reasonable doubt and evidence that falls short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt?
DURHAM: Correct.

SCHIFF: Both Mueller and congressional investigations found that Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort was secretly meeting with an operative linked to Russian intelligence named Konstantin Kilimnik, correct?
DURHAM: Yes.

SCHIFF: And that Manafort gave that Russian intel operative the campaign’s internal polling data. Correct?
DURHAM: Yes.

SCHIFF: Is it true, Mr. Durham, that Mueller and congressional investigations also revealed that Don Jr. was informed that a Russian official was offering the Trump campaign, quote, “very high level and sensitive information,” unquote, “that would be incriminating of Hillary Clinton was part of,” quote, “Russia and its government support of Trump.” Are you aware of that?
DURHAM: Sure, people get phone calls all the time from individuals who claim to have information like that.

SCHIFF: Really? The son of a presidential candidate gets calls all the time from a foreign government offering dirt on their important opponent. Is that what you’re saying?
DURHAM: I don’t think that’s so unique.

SCHIFF: Are you really trying to diminish the significance of what happened here and the secret meeting that the president’s son set up in Trump Tower to receive that incriminating information?
DURHAM: I don’t think that that was a well-advised thing to do.

SCHIFF: Oh, not well advised. All right. Well, that’s the understatement of the year. So you think it’s perfectly appropriate or maybe just ill-advised for a presidential campaign to secretly meet with a Russian delegation to get dirt on their opponent? You would merely say that’s inadvisable?
DURHAM: I wouldn’t do it, but it wasn’t illegal, was it? It was stupid, foolish, ill advised.

SCHIFF: Well, it’s illegal to conspire to get incriminating opposition research from a hostile government. Wouldn’t that violate campaign laws?
At this point, all that Durham could respond with a was a shameless “I don’t know.”

Please retweet and ❤️ to thank Schiff for setting Durham straight — and consider investing in Tribel, a “woke” new Twitter competitor that’s currently doing a round of equity crowdfunding and just blew past $1.8 million raised from 4,400 of its users. If you want to own a piece of the “next big thing” in social media, here is the link to do so, http://wefunder.com/Tribel. You can invest as little as $100 — or as much as you’d like.

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ This is a stain on this institution, led by Trump but carried out by enablers who are complicit. The death of statesmen and women.
⋙ 🧵 RT @lukebroadwater House Democrats have gathered in the well of the House chanting “shame! shame! shame!” after the chamber votes along party lines, 213-209, to censure Rep. Adam Schiff
📌 https://twitter.com/lukebroadwater/status/1671651279762751489?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @lukebroadwater The Democrats are surrounding Schiff and cheering for him as he approaches the well for the censure
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @lukebroadwater Some are now chanting “Santos! Santos!” ¤ Swalwell shouts out “pathetic!”
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: House Censures Adam Schiff Over His Role Investigating Trump https://tinyurl.com/3uexs7h6
// The move by the G.O.P.-led House was the first in what could be a series of votes seeking to punish those whom Republicans have deemed enemies of the party.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople I guess he’s not happy with what an embarrassing shitshow Durham’s testimony was, on top of his ever increasing unhinged lunacy continuing at a rapid pace.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1671640920595525632?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Just think of it??? All these failed criminal acts against me, and then I get indicted on phony “Trumped Up” charges where they refuse to use the Presidential Records Act, and the Clinton Socks Case, under which I am totally innocent and a charge could not even be brought. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!! These thugs and criminals must be punished!

💙🧵 RT @rgoodlaw This is the exchange I’ve been waiting for. @RepAdamSchiff demonstrates Durham’s disregard of clear evidence of Trump Campaign-Russian collusion. ¤ Durham admits he lacks knowledge of undeniable parts of record, indicates why his report ignores episodes.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1671562659525689347?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en The war in Ukraine is the largest drone war in the history of humankind. We are actually in a transitional stage – our war combines elements of all the wars of the 20th century.

From WWI when soldiers stayed in trenches, aiming rifles at each other and seizing positions with bayonet attacks ¤ To ¤ “Swarms of drones”, AI and neuronetworks actually being used to gain advantage on the battlefield. ¤ Ukraine has combined all the elements of past wars. The one who remains on old positions and will fight with old methods will lose.

But our enemy must not be underestimated. Russians also understand the importance of drones very well and produce good ones, like Lancet and Orlan. They increase production by circumventing sanctions. So it is very important to disrupt Russian supply chains, simplify and develop the drone market, support drone producers in Ukraine as well as those who produce anti-drone means.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russia will not launch a nuclear strike on Ukraine, Ukraine’s Intel chief, Kyrylo Budanov, says
For all my dislike of Russia, this country is not run by idiots only, Budanov said.
🖼 http://president.gov.ua

⭕ 20 Jun 2023

(✅)NYT: Hunter Biden’s Tangled Tale Comes Front and Center https://tinyurl.com/3texzeey
// 1/11/2023, Updated 6/20/2023; Federal prosecutors could decide soon whether to indict the president’s son on tax and gun charges, and he faces a fresh round of hostile congressional hearings. But a close look at his story shows that it differs in important ways from the narrative promoted by Republicans.
[Oversight Committee Doc:] A President Compromised: The Biden Family Investigation https://tinyurl.com/bdz2zjt4 Interim Report
// 11/17/2022
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Hunter Tangled 6-20-2023

🐣 RT @NatalkaKyiv Seems like Budanov is addressing the whole world in this video. Note how he repeats the words ‘the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’ over and over.#Budanov #Zaporizhzhia #Russia #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1671382408594173953?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump is offering talking points, not defenses https://tinyurl.com/y5fx9dnx In the infamous photo of items laid out on the floor were Secret items he had already sorted out and kept together in a leather-bound box in his office, where he often entertained guests

The “2A” identifier corresponds to the government’s documentation of the evidence it collected at Mar-a-Lago during the search. In the manifest of what was seized, Item 2A is listed as “[v]arious classified/TS/SCI documents.” It is apparently a subset of Item 2, identified as a “[l]eather-bound box of documents.” That box and its contents were removed not from the storage room near the Mar-a-Lago pool but from Trump’s office, where he was in the habit of entertaining visitors.

It isn’t identified as “a box with some shirts and a few documents.” It’s just a box — a leather-bound one — sitting in Trump’s office, with documents. In that, it seems, were the documents that appear in that famous photo. Of the 15 documents originally identified by the FBI as bearing “top secret” classification, six were found in the Item 2A batch. Four were “TS/SCI,” which means they were classified as “top secret” and included “sensitive compartmented information,” a more restricted level of control.

WaPo, Philip Bump: The tedious demand that everything be subjected to made-for-TV ‘debate’ https://tinyurl.com/ayp9jz2u “We have turned ‘debate’ into a cudgel meant not to inform but to entertain, to validate our skepticism and to feed our dislike of our opponents”

Science does not arise from debate. “The scientific process for vetting and evaluating claims about science and medicine … involves other experts reviewing and considering the subject. It involves testing methodologies and writing lengthy papers articulating competing claims and arguments.” ~ Philip Bump, WaPo

Take, for instance, the research that proved the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. First comparative studies were done that showed statistically that it didn’t have any effect. Then a group of German scientists discovered why: Most cell studies had been done using a default cell culture of renal (Vero) cells, and hydroxychloroquine was effective on them. But lung cells have a “back door” that allowed thhe virus in. COVID-19 can infect lung cells.

To reach scientific conclusions, you have to “commit science,” you have to do the work. Others have to be able to replicate it. If human subjects are involved, there are ethical rules and processes. Medicine is a profession and a discipline. You can “debate” until the cows come home, but until you do the work of science, nothing can be resolved. ¤ https://tinyurl.com/4xmzjxmr

NYT: Judge in Trump Documents Case Sets Tentative Trial Date as Soon as August 14 https://tinyurl.com/4ru7e236 //➔ Mark the date: Use pencil
// The judge, Aileen M. Cannon, set an aggressive schedule for moving the case forward, though the proceedings are likely to be delayed by pretrial clashes.

WaPo, Editorial: Why Hunter Biden’s plea deal is justified https://tinyurl.com/5f4hm6u5 “The outcome appears similar to what other defendants might have gotten for similar violations of the law”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2120 UTC 20 JUN/ UKR broke up RU attacks on Dubovo-Vasylivka & Hyrhorivka. Russian losses for the period include 1,010 KIA, 8 Main Battle Tanks, 15 Armored Fighting Vehicles and more than 27 artillery and Multiple Rocket launch systems.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1671263713469538304?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Michael McFaul: The U.S. needs to launch a diplomatic surge on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mv6ysrbj //➔ China, Turkey, a group of African nations, selected EU countries and the Pope have all offered to help broker peace talks and rebuilding: Where is the US?

WaPo: Hunter Biden reaches deal to plead guilty in tax, gun case https://tinyurl.com/4pz487ju “[T]he lead prosecutor in the case, said the investigation ‘is ongoing,’ suggesting that matters beyond the tax and gun issues are still under scrutiny”
// The president’s son would get about two years probation and enter a diversion program, people familiar with the negotiations said

🐣 RT @ JohnWDean Hunter Biden accepted responsibility for his malfeasance. Something Republicans never do! Hunter did not get a deal, notwithstanding GOP efforts to make it into a capital crime. Trump NEVER takes responsibility and the GOP NEVER holds him responsible. GOP is embarrassing itself.

🐣 RT @renato_mariotti It insults the intelligence of the American people to compare misdemeanor tax charges to a scheme to steal Top Secret documents and obstruct justice when the government asked for them back. ¤ If anything, Hunter Biden was treated harshly — those crimes are rarely charged.

🐣 RT @ lindyli If you don’t care about Jared Kushner grifting $2 billion from MBS & another $500 million from the UAE
Or about Ivanka grifting $100 million from MBS
Or about Trump profiting off LIV
Or about Mnuchin grifting $2 billion from MBS
No one cares what you say about Hunter Biden

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman My statement on the resolution of Hunter Biden’s criminal case.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RepDanGoldman/status/1671200170485198856?s=20 /photo/1

[Text:] “This was a thorough, professional, and exhaustive investigation into Hunter Biden’s finances which started under the Trump Administration and was investigated by a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney, David Weiss, for five years.

I have every confidence that the charges levied against Hunter Biden reflect Mr. Weiss’s fidelity to the rule of law – and his oath to proceed without fear or favor – and hold Hunter Biden accountable for every charge Mr. Weiss could prove. ¤ “Ultimately, Hunter Biden is accepting responsibility for crimes and conduct that is virtually never charged by the DOJ.

‘It is also clear that the U.S. Attorney’s exhaustive examination of Hunter Biden’s finances found no wrongdoing connected to President Biden, further debunking the rumors, hearsay, and innuendo coming from House Republicans.

“As with Donald Trump’s indictments, this case should be litigated in the court of law, not the court of public opinion, and most definitely not the halls of Congress.

🐣 RT @SykesCharlie He’s taking this rather well, I think.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1671230641831129088?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump The Hunter/Joe Biden settlement is a massive COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION INTERFERENCE “SCAM” THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE. A “TRAFFIC TICKET,” & JOE IS ALL CLEANED UP & READY TO GO INTO THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – AND THIS AS CROOKED DOJ, STATE, & CITY PROSECUTORS, MARXISTS & COMMUNISTS ALL, HIT ME FROM ALL SIDES & ANGELS WITH BULL…! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

🧵 RT @PeterHotez 1/n Awful to read Mr. Ackman’s account of my activities. I have no pharma conflicts, I co-developed low-cost patent-free Covid vaccines for global health reaching 100 million doses. I never took a cent for any cable news/podcast/radio appearances., spoke tirelessly to low-income
📌 https://twitter.com/PeterHotez/status/1671183258384474112?s=20

⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterHotez 2/n ..communities to help them survive during the pandemic. I spoke endlessly to teacher groups, school boards and parents so we could keep schools open at difficult times. And you have the audacity to present phony conspiracy websites that monetize the internet as your evidence?
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterHotez 3/n: 200,000 Americans needlessly perished because they fell victim to antivaccine activism during the pandemic, mostly during the delta and BA.1 waves when Covid vaccines were 90% protective, because they listened to the conspiracists and politically motivated talking heads.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterHotez 4/n I saved lives during the pandemic. And now you’ve shown us your contribution.

PravdaUA: Russian Defence Minister began to threaten strikes on “decision-making centres” in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4cyfm7a8

At a military collegium, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu began to threaten strikes on “decision-making centres” in Ukraine, in the event that the Armed Forces strike occupied Crimea.

Source: The press release of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
Shoigu’s direct quote: “According to our data, the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine plans to strike the territory of the Russian Federation, including Crimea, with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles.”

Details: Shoigu is convinced that the occupied Ukrainian peninsula is outside the war zone, so the Russian military leadership will consider possible strikes on Crimea as drawing the US and the UK into the war and will strike back at the “decision-making centres” in Ukraine.
Shoigu also complained that since 4 June, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had carried out 263 attacks on the positions of the Russian occupiers. …

🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ Hunter Biden note: 3 factors why this is on the up and up:
1. to go forward with the tax deal, the DOJ Tax Division had to sign off on this deal;
2. the USAttorney is a Trump appointee, held over by Garland;
3. 1st time tax offense like this rarely get prosecuted/jail time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ kyledcheney JUST IN: Hunter BIDEN has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses and entered a diversion agreement on a felony count of being a drug user in possession of a firearm. https://tinyurl.com/bdekahkf
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1671180294345433091?s=20/photo/1

EuromaidanPress: Prigozhin escalates conflict with Russia’s Ministry of Defense – UK intelligence https://tinyurl.com/3ez86b3s “Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is defying the Russian Ministry of Defense’s orders for his mercenaries to sign official state contracts”
// Amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is defying the Russian Ministry of Defense’s orders for his mercenaries to sign official state contracts and says he awaits the ministry’s reply to a “contract” of his own making, the UK intelligence says in its daily update:

🐣 I don’t think it’s possible to debate facts with Trump
He’s a black hole of delusion that sucks in everything it encounters and turns it into spaghetti (to borrow Stephen Hawking’s metaphor)
He remains extremely and singularly dangerous

🔄 💙 🐣 RT @ BryanDawsonUSA [15 Jun] Watch the Congressional testimony where Comey admits FBI investigators found no emails marked classified on Hillary’s server:
💽 https://twitter.com/BryanDawsonUSA/status/1669359690692845573?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /0130 UTC 20 JUN/ Russian social media and Telegram channels report that RU forces are advancing west of Kreminna. These sources claim the VDV’s the 76th Air Mobile Division has launched an attack along the O-130501 Road axis toward Yampolivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670966307750027266?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 19 Jun 2023

🧵 RT @TrentTelenko [6/19] The size and duration (6 hours plus) of the secondaries at the Rykove (Partyzany) ammo depot (below) argue the PSU storm Shadow Strike hit a RuAF theater level ammo storage depot. ¤ This means things.Artillery Logistical 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1670971803987058688?s=20

GovExec (2020): Who Really Defeated the Islamic State – Obama or Trump? https://tinyurl.com/wd56kd2e The plan was Obama’s and about 50% of the success was achieved under him: Trump adopted Obama’s plan but gave more leeway to the military, however at the cost of more civilian deaths
// 10/19/2020; President Trump has claimed the Islamic State was completely defeated on his watch – but an analysis of government maps and other reports shows his administration did only half the work

NYT: GOP Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election https://tinyurl.com/387nc4vx “Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices”
// A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.

On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.

The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved.

They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press. …

A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.

Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.

In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.

The committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.
Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.

A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.

No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.

“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said. …

🐣 RT @ChrisDJackson Fact check: this photo was taken in 2013 by @PeteSouza.
𝘝𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘑𝘰𝘦 𝘉𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘓𝘪𝘴𝘢 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘤𝘰, 𝘈𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘏𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮, 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘱𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘰𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘺 1, 2013. 𝘖𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘺 𝘗𝘦𝘵𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘻𝘢
🖼 https://twitter.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1670977573684142082?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Robert F Kennedy, Jf. is an expert on vaccines in the same way the insane guy out behind the bus station screaming that aliens have a tracking device shoved up his ass is an aerospace engineer.

🐣 📋 RT @NewVoiceUkraine Ukraine has only deployed 25% of its forces accumulated for the counter-offensive, while the Russians have thrown 90% of their reserves into defense. [link]
¤ https://twitter.com/NewVoiceUkraine/status/1670921398376878080?s=20

💽 Fox: Entire Trump Interview https://www.foxnews.com/video/6329757073112
// full hour

🐣 RT @Acyn Trump: First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot
Baier: You lost the 2020 election
Trump: They were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballot. The ballots were fake ballots. [etc etc]
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1670922502510452738?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @OccupyDemocrats BREAKING: Donald Trump’s night goes from bad to worse as FOX News host Brit Hume humiliates him live on the air over his disastrous interview with his fellow FOX News host Bret Baier, declaring that Trump’s rambling defense of his charges for violating the Espionage Act was “on the verge of incoherent.” ¤ But it gets worse for Trump…

First, the FOX host began by congratulating his colleague Bret Baier in front of millions of FOX viewers for pushing back against Trump and not letting him get away with lying about the indictment and his culpability.

Then, Hume set his sights on Trump, declaring, “I will say a couple of things. His answer on the matters of the law seem to me to verge on incoherent. He seemed to be saying that the documents were really his, and that he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so by a subpoena because he wasn’t ready to because he hadn’t sorted them and separated the classified information or whatever from his golf shirts, whatever he was saying.”

Hume concluded his brutal rant by putting Trump on notice that he has MAJOR problems waiting for him when the trial begins, declaring that Trump “seems to believe that the documents were his and that he had declassified them, when there was evidence to the contrary. And therefore, he could do whatever he wanted with them. Which I don’t think is gonna hold up in court.” ¤ That’s right. Even FOX News knows that Trump is TOAST.

Please retweet and ❤️ if you think that Trump MUST be found guilty — and consider investing in Tribel, a “woke” new Twitter competitor that is currently doing a round of equity crowdfunding and just blew past $1.6 million raised from 4,000 of its users. If you want to own a small piece of what is quickly becoming the “next big thing” in social media, here is the link to do so, http://wefunder.com/Tribel. You can invest as little as $100 — or as much as you’d like. Here’s the link to download the new Tribel app that Elon Musk is so afraid of: http://tribel.app.link/okwPIHYCIqb

🐣 RT @MeidasTouchTrump just does not know when to keep his mouth shut.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1670913684305215488?s=20/photo/1

In a new interview with Bret Baier on Fox, Trump says the National Archives should have begged him for the documents back: “The only way NARA could ever get this stuff, this back, would be ‘please, please, please could we get them back.'”

NARA *did* ask Trump for the documents and then subpoenaed him when he refused. Even then, Trump lied about fully complying with the subpoena and instructed his aide, Walt Nauta, to move the boxes to a different location.

Trump gives a incredibly weak excuse that he was “very busy” and “wanted to go through the boxes and get all of [his] personal things out” before turning them over.

🐣 RT @MeidasTouch This is absolutely brutal for Trump. Ouch. This is absolutely brutal for Trump. Ouch.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1670925881781669889?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Holy shit this guy is the biggest idiot I have ever seen! This is the best story he can come up with? This guy is cooked. Keep talking moron.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn There’s a lot going on here and this is going to reviewed: Trump on the recording of him
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1670921724911558665?s=20/photo/1

NYT: China’s Rebound Hits a Wall, and There Is ‘No Quick Fix’ to Revive It https://tinyurl.com/54cwr6zs “China’s exports to the United States were down 18.2 percent last month compared with May last year”
// Policymakers and investors expected China’s economy to rev up again after Beijing abruptly dropped Covid precautions, but recent data shows alarming signs of a slowdown.

🐣 RT @anneapplebaum If you were wondering why the Ukrainians won’t stop fighting
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChakhoyanAndrew “Since Russia’s soldiers first stormed 🇺🇦, women have been gang-raped, men castrated, children sexually abused, & civilians forced to parade naked in the streets, according to the UN.” #ThisIsRussia #RussianCulture
⋙⋙ TheTelegraph [UK]: Castration, gang-rape, forced nudity: How Russia’s soldiers terrorise Ukraine with sexual violence https://tinyurl.com/3y32rup3
// 11/28/2022; The Kremlin has been accused of terrorising Ukrainians with sexual violence systematically – and known reports are the ‘tip of the iceberg’

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian⚡️🇨🇳China does not provide 🇷🇺Russia with lethal weapons, – 🇺🇸Blinken ¤ “We and other countries received assurances from China that it does not and will not provide lethal aid to Russia for use in 🇺🇦Ukraine. We appreciate that and have seen no evidence to the contrary.”

WaPo: FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 for more than a year https://tinyurl.com/mu4ta6fc ‘Inside DOJ, some have complained that the AG’s determination to steer clear of any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate the former president’
// In the DOJ’s investigation of Jan. 6, key Justice officials also quashed an early plan for a task force focused on people in Trump’s orbit

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ORIKHIV AXIS /2330 UTC 19 JUN/ RU carried out an airstrike against Novodarivka, and shelled Orikhiv, Novoandriyivka and Mala Tomachka. UKR forces are in contact along the T-04-08 HWY axis. West of Luhivske, UKR units are reported to be in contact along the T-08-15.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670934566016614400?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer,KAMIANSKE-ORIKHIV AXIS /1430 UTC 19 JUN/ The 0600 briefing of the UKR Gen’l Staff reports that its forces have expanded control of a Piatykhatky. UKR troops are in contact in the vicinity if Luhove and N of Hrozove. RU conducted air strikes on Novodanvilivka and Orikhiv.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670798606285111298?s=20/photo/1

🔄 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WE COVER THE WAR: Indications & Warnings @ChuckPfarrer and @MriyaReport post daily maps of the Ukraine War. We cover Svatove, Kreminna, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kamianske and Kherson, as well as partisan actions near Melitipol and long range strikes and sabotage in Crimea.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670895985977901058?s=20/photo/1
// Index chart of fronts

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1510 UTC 19 JUN/ Over the past 72 hours, UKR forces have consolidated significant gains north and south of the Bakhmut urban area. Gains of as much as 3 Km have been registered along the M-03 HWY axis. UKR has consolidated gains S of the H-32 and Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670810073189285889?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @OleksiyDanilov War is hard work. At this time, our job is to eliminate the russian occupiers, their forces and means. Calmly, carefully, step by step. Today, Ukraine’s Defense Forces are doing their job perfectly! ¤ Everything will be Ukraine, and it will be within the borders of 1991.

🐣 RT @maxseddon The clandestine operation to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. ¤ “The red lines are long gone for Putin. He wants all these guys dead.”
NYT: Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida https://tinyurl.com/2h35dkmr
// A failed plot to assassinate a C.I.A. spy in 2020 in part led to expulsions of the agency’s chief in Moscow and his Russian counterpart in Washington.

As President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil.

The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also signaled a dangerous low point even between intelligence services that have long had a strained history.

“The red lines are long gone for Putin,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former C.I.A. officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia. “He wants all these guys dead.” …

“We cannot allow a foreign power to interfere in our democratic process with impunity,” President Biden said at the White House in announcing the penalties. He made no mention of the plot involving Mr. Fuentes.

⭕ 18 Jun 2023

TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: Morality Is for Trump What Colors Are to the Color-Blind https://tinyurl.com/3kph2vmm “Other shady and unethical individuals have served in the White House … but Trump’s full-spectrum corruption puts him in a category all his own”
// The majority of his enablers, though, still know right from wrong.

… Trump doesn’t just cross moral lines; he doesn’t appear capable of understanding moral categories. Morality is for Trump what colors are to a person who is color-blind.

But what’s true of Trump isn’t true of the majority of his enablers. They see the colors that Trump cannot. They still know right from wrong. But for a combination of reasons, they have consistently overridden their conscience, in some cases unwittingly and in some cases cynically. They have talked themselves into believing, or half-believing, that Trump is America’s martyr and America’s savior.

Trump’s behavior obviously speaks to his own character. But Trump’s behavior has also proved to be a test of the character of others—Republican politicians and voters, the GOP establishment and the evangelical movement. It’s proved to be a test of character for those who claim to be “constitutional conservatives” and “family values” advocates, for ethicists and public intellectuals, for right-wing commentators and party strategists.

With very few exceptions, and to varying degrees, they have failed it. They have turned against—or at the very least, at a crucial hour, they have failed to defend—ideals and institutions they once claimed to cherish. Donald Trump could not have so deeply wounded our republic without his enablers. It took a team effort.

And now here we are, eight summers after Trump announced his first bid for the presidency, and we find him facing 71 felony counts while still 30 points above his nearest GOP rival, having transformed the Republican Party in his own image in ways that exceed even what Ronald Reagan did. His imprint is on the party in a thousand different ways. Tens of millions of Americans see Trump as their angel of vengeance, and they can’t wait for the second act to get started.

The moral wreckage of Donald Trump’s presidency and post-presidency was predictable and even inevitable. The reason? Trump’s moral depravity, which touches every area of his life, private and public, has long been in public view, undisguised and impossible to miss.

In July 2016, I described Trump as temperamentally unfit to be president—erratic, unprincipled, unstable, obsessive, a serial liar, and a misogynist who made racist appeals and who suffered from what, at the time, I called a “personality disorder.” On the day after Trump’s inauguration, I wrote, “A man with illiberal tendencies, a volatile personality and no internal checks is now president. This isn’t going to end well.” It hasn’t.

The scope and seriousness of Trump’s misconduct over the past eight years are staggering. He has relentlessly promoted lies and conspiracy theories, brutalized and dehumanized his opponents, threatened prosecutors and judges, and used his pardon power to subvert the legal system. He was found liable in a civil case of sexual abuse and defamation. He made hush-money payments to a porn star. He instigated a violent attack on the Capitol and attempted to overturn an election. He was impeached twice. And he is the first former president to be indicted, not once but twice. More indictments are likely to come.

Other shady and unethical individuals have served in the White House—Richard Nixon and Warren Harding among them—but Trump’s full-spectrum corruption puts him in a category all his own. His degeneracy is unmatched in American presidential history and unsurpassed in American political history.

If Trump’s malice is obvious, what’s behind it is more difficult to assess. In 2016, the psychologist Dan McAdams wrote a psychological portrait of Trump for The Atlantic, which he later expanded into a book, The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning. McAdams describes Trump as “psychologically singular,” a man who “lacks an inner story to provide his life with temporal continuity, purpose, and meaning. He is the episodic man, living (and fighting) in the moment.” And that moment is free of ethical considerations and ethical constraints. …

Whatever the precise nature of Trump’s psychological pathologies—McAdams says Trump is “way more strange than any mental illness category that one can apply or create”—we can see for ourselves how they manifest: extreme narcissism, lack of empathy, feelings of persecution, grandiosity, and deceitfulness; impulsivity, shamelessness, remorselessness, and rage; a compulsive desire for attention, an obsessive need to dominate others, an eagerness to shatter social norms, and the belief that rules that apply to others don’t apply to him.

In his 1983 book, Statecraft as Soulcraft, George Will, one of the most consequential conservatives of the past half century, wrote that “the purpose of politics is to facilitate, as much as is prudent, the existence of worthy passions and the achievement of worthy aims.” Will was channeling Aristotle, who said in the Nicomachean Ethics, “The main concern of politics is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions.” …

Donald Trump, rather than using the presidency to elevate human sensibilities, did the opposite, and he did it relentlessly. Among the most damaging legacies of the Trump years is his barbarization of America’s civic and political life. He called the spirits from the vasty deep, and they came when summoned.

Many millions of Americans responded, determined that their country become more decent, more humane, more just. We are now in mid-story; none of us knows quite how it will end. An extraordinary drama is playing out, and each of us has a role to play in shaping the outcome. …

WaPo: Barr slams Trump’s defense in documents case as ‘absurd’ and ‘wacky’ https://tinyurl.com/99r38y59 “‘I think the government acted responsibly,’ Barr said on Fox News. ‘They gave him every opportunity to return those documents. They acted with restraint’”
// Speaking to CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Barr, a Republican, pushed back on a number of his party’s talking points in excusing the former president’s alleged actions.

🐣 RT @KateGoesTech How many F-16s are gathering dust in each country:
🇺🇸 USA: 2,256
🇮🇱 Israel: 362
🇹🇷 Turkey: 270
🇪🇬 Egypt: 220
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 213
🇰🇷 South Korea: 180
🇬🇷 Greece: 170
🇹🇼 Taiwan: 150
🇵🇰 Pakistan: 111
🇦🇪 UAE: 80
🇩🇰 Denmark: 77
🇯🇴 Jordan: 64
🇸🇬 Singapore: 62
🇧🇪 Belgium: 54 …
// 5/30/2023

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ZAPORIZHZHIA FRONT /0245 UTC 18 JUN/ Early contact reports suggest that UKR troops have broken through S of Novodanvilivka. Preliminary info suggests that UKR is expanding a widening pocket from Novopokrovka in the E, Verbove and Novoprokopivka in the S and Kopani in the West.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670261602648567808?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 17 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar #WagnerGroup financier Yevgeny #Prigozhin continued to signal his disinterest in formally subordinating the #Wagner private military company (PMC) to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). http://isw.pub/UkrWar061723
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1670260251570913281?s=20/photo/1

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin continued to signal his disinterest in formally subordinating the Wagner private military company (MC) to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Prigozhin sarcastically criticized the MoD’s formalization efforts on June 17 after previously portraying himself as compliant with the Russian MoD’s order for volunteer formations to sign formal contracts by July 1 and claimed he attempted to submit a contract to formalize Wagner under the Russian MoD.[19] Prigozhin implied that the Russian MoD will confiscate weapons that volunteer units obtained outside of the Russian MoD’s weapon deliveries and noted that inexperienced Russian commanders with higher military education will replace what he claimed are more combat-effective volunteer commanders. 20] Prigozhin added that formalization will destroy hierarchies within volunteer formations and force volunteers to serve in the military without the Russian MoD respecting military contract deadlines. Prigozhin noted that the Russian MoD will not provide sufficient supplies or weapons for volunteers and will mistreat irregular forces. Prigozhin did not discuss the contents of his claimed formalization contract with the Russian MoD on June 17, but a Wagner-affiliated milblogger suggested that Prigozhin demanded a series of powers and concessions from the Russian military command discussed in the force generation section of this update. [21] Prigozhin’s behavior indicates that he is unlikely to subordinate Wagner forces to the Russian MoD unless such a move would grant him more political power within Russia.

🧵 RT @ @Mylovanov The African delegation brokering peace between Ukraine and Russia achieves nothing. ¤ Putin interrupted the arguments of the delegation after they stated that the peace should be based on internationally recognized borders. ¤ Putin made several claims. Let’s address them. 1/
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1670174144946749441.html
📌 https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1670174144946749441?s=20
// by economist mostly about grain exports

🐣 RT @igorsushko Russian war criminal & former FSB spetsnaz, Igor ‘Strelkov’ Girkin predicts Russia’s collapse if Ukraine is able to break through the current frontline, which he calls the thinnest thread on which everything hangs for Russia.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1670256908341772289?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko Strelkov is of the belief the depth of the defences are quite shallow.

🐣 RT @ EmbassyofRussia 🇷🇺 President of #Russia Vladimir #Putin: ¤ I do not rule out that if there had been a different administration in #US, then perhaps it would have been possible to take a different path in the situation with Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @dylanc78 I do not rule out that if there had been a different administration in #Russia, then perhaps it would have been possible to take a different path. Russia would be a prosperous and respected member of the international community. But instead, Russia is a kleptocracy.

🐣 RT @ RusEmbUSA 💬President #Putin: As for 🇷🇺-🇺🇸 contacts, there are practically none. ¤ ❌ It is not us who refuse to carry on a dialogue with them, they just shifted the focus of this dialogue to arms supplies. ¤ 🔥 We will burn everything they have supplied and see what they will do next.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ROLL THE BONES: As Putin & Lukashenko try desperately to scare someone with Belarus’ nuclear weapon starter kit, a pair of USAF B-1B bombers did a fly over of Lativa. The B-1B, known as ‘The Bone’, is the key weapons platform of the United States’ Global Strike Command (GSC).
⋙ 🐣 RT @NATO_AIRCOM 2️⃣ strategic 🇺🇸 B-1B flew over 🇱🇻Riga on 17 June. Bombers are currently deployed in Europe & conducted Air-Land-Integration with @Latvijas_armija forces.
🇱🇻MinDef: “B-1B training flight shows that our Allies are capable of defending Latvia swiftly & with impressive fire power.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KAMIANSKE AXIS /2000 UTC 17 JUN/ RU mil bloggers and social media reports that Russian forces are retreating from Luhove. UKR units are in contact south of [Zherebianky] and Piatykhatky. It is assessed that UKR is consolidating lodgments west and south of the T-08-12 HWY axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670157308704223233?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVSLIKA / 17 JUN/ UKR forces broke up Russian counter attacks at Blahodante, Storozhove and Makarivka. RU forces have been steadily pressed south down the T-05-18 HWY. UKR units are now in contact in the vicinity of Urozhaine. Heavy fighting is continuing.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670180697674338306?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /1350 UTC 17 JUN/ Sources report that Ukrainian SOF units have crossed in force in the vicinity of Nova Kakhovka. The operation may have been staged with the possible goal of establishing a bridgehead. RU forces will be forced to redeploy to contain the attempt.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670080695799103488?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AVDIIVKA AXIS /1350 UTC 17 JUN/ UKR downed a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter on 16 JUN. UKR forces broke up RU attacks at Stepove, Avdiivka & Peske. A RU airstrike was carried out against Avdiivka and RU fire missions were conducted against the settlement of Vesele.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1670063859401465857?s=20/photo/1.

💙 WaPo: Trump’s indictment plus candidacy could endanger democracy and the rule of law https://tinyurl.com/3cnkkdbs “Not since the Vietnam War in the 1960s or perhaps the mid-19th century before the Civil War has the country’s governing structure faced such disunity and peril”
// The collision of former president Donald Trump’s criminal indictment with the presidential campaign could further undermine confidence in democratic principles and institutions of government, experts say

🐣 RT @sentdefender Russian Sources are claiming that Ukrainian Forces have begun to Deploy a Significant number of Electronic-Warfare Systems along the Frontline in the Donetsk Region result in “Huge Drone Losses by Russian Units” and leading many to believe that a Ukrainian Operation in the Region is Imminent.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1669861229022642177?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡Kremlin spokesman claims Ukraine largely ‘demilitarized’. ¤ Kremlin press secretary Dmitriy Peskov claimed that Russia’s goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine was largely completed, saying that it was using “fewer and fewer of its own weapons” and increasingly relying on weapons provided by the West.

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski John Eastman, who wrote the legal brief Trump cited to pressure Pence to overturn the election, is complaining that he lost his job as a tenured law professor, and the judge ordered that his CA disbarment hearing be live-streamed this Tues so the American public can watch.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1670165526214066177?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @berlin_bridge Yes, like how the Nazis kindly let the Allies land at Normandy. A gentlemen’s agreement don’t you know.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BowesChay Vladimir Putin has revealed that #Russian troops withdrew from #Kiev and other regions in #Ukraine on the basis of a peace deal agreed in #Turkiye, this casts serious doubts over Ukrainain narratives about defeat of Russia in the “battle of Kiev”
¤ https://twitter.com/BowesChay/status/1670153379509686272?s=20

He showed African leaders and press the document at their meeting in St Petersburg. Russian journalists published the title page of the document both sides provisionally agreed to titled “Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees of Ukraine”

According to the President of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Russia agreed in principle to the draft agreement spring 2022 in Istanbul, but then Kiev refused to sign it after Russian troops voluntaraly pulled back when ordered by Moscow as part of the deal.

The text says that the UK, China, Russia, the USA, France, and Turkey would act as guarantors. Sources suggest Boris Johnston travelled to Kiev soon after to insist / threaten Zelensky not to continue with the deal.

⋙⋙ 🐣 why would Ukraine sign such a draft statement with Russia still occupying >20% of their land? ¤ if they “withdrew” from northern Ukr as part of a deal, why didn’t they state it at the time? ¤ fact is, they were trounced and so, once again, rewrite history
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1670174521750429702?s=20/photo/1
// apple or banana meme

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Yesterday’s African delegation to Kyiv was a mere PR event organized by Kremlin. ¤ Now they’re in Moscow reading a list of prepared Kremlin disinfo narratives. ¤ And NOW, they’ll get PAID.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1670129228203847681?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] [Russian Talking Points:] [ Only Putin speaks ]
● The leadership of Unkraine refused to negotiate, not us. Russia is ready for a constructive dialogue with all who are for peace.
● Kyiv began hostilities against the Donbass in 2014, it was he who unleashed a war in Ukraine.
● The food crisis in the world is caused not by a special operation, but by the actions of the West.
● For a long time we tried to restore the situation by peaceful means, but the West led us by the nose.
● The logic of recognizing the LPR and DPR, and protecting Donbass is impeccable from the point of view of international law and the UN Charter.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Amazing to read this NYT op-ed from 50 years ago today, 6/17/73, the 1st anniversary of Watergate. Read it & compare to what we are living through now. ¤ This was 8 days before John Dean’s riveting, explosive testimony that revealed Nixon’s deep complicity in a massive cover up.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1670103841042481153?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Sky_Lee_1 21 post in less than an hour. He’s imploding!
💽 https://twitter.com/Sky_Lee_1/status/1670086757852016643?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mfa_russia 💬 FM #Lavrov: Democracy is not only for domestic consumption. The West believes it has the right to impose its domestic democratic rules on others. ¤ ☝️The principle of the UN Charter – the sovereign equality of states – applies in the international arena https://t.me/MFARussia/16273
🐣 “The West believes it has the right to impose its domestic democratic rules on others” ¤ Ukraine chose a democratic future: it was not imposed. Rather, after promising Ukraine he would seek EU membership, Putin compelled Yanukovych to renege. Putin imposed. Then, Maidan.

⭕ 16 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA 🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russian Ambassador to the USA Anatoly Antonov met with U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy in Washington, DC on June 16. ¤ Topical issues of the bilateral agenda were discussed.

AP: NATO moves to protect undersea pipelines, cables as concern mounts over Russian sabotage threat https://tinyurl.com/42a4jv5w

🐣 RT @NatalkaKyiv After the Russian terrorist attacks on the Kyiv region on the same day African leaders were visiting Kyiv President Zelensky doesn’t hold back at a press conference with his African colleagues. ¤ #Zelensky #Putin #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar #RussiaIsATerroristState #RussianWarCrimes #Russia #Africa
💽 https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1669925867470897153?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Ukrinform_News The root of the evil is Russia. And this root must be extracted. It’s absurd that the UN deploys its humanitarian missions under the threat of shelling by Russia, which sits in the chair of a UNSC permanent member.@SergiyKyslytsya spoke with Ukrinform.

NYT, Stephen Wertheim: The Tale the West Tells Itself About Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2p9a7v52 //➔ Wertheim takes the view that, because Iraq was a mistake, Ukraine must be, too.
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1669978804310224898?s=20

But Ukraine is a EUROPEAN conflict in that it embodies the West’s commitment to democracy over autocracy.

If the West cannot defend a country that so desires Enlightenment values, the entire Western project is lost, there is nothing to offer the World, and we have no recourse but to let “the Darkness drop again” (Yeats) @stephenwertheim

✛ “Stephen Wertheim (@stephenwertheim) is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and Catholic University. He is the author of ‘Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.’”

↥ ↧
TheGuardian, Stephen Wertheim: Two decades later, it feels as if the US is trying to forget the Iraq war ever happens https://tinyurl.com/3uua7vh5
// 3/17/2023

BookReviews (Amazon):
Stephen Wertheim: Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy
October 27, 2020

● David Shulman 4.0 out of 5 stars The Fall of France Shock
January 27, 2021

Columbia University historian and co-founder of the noninterventionist Quincy Institute offers up a conspiracy theory of how a small group of intellectuals centered around the Council on Foreign Relations in the early 1940’s became the vanguard of American hegemony in the years to come. The elite view was highlighted by Henry Luce’s famous “American Century” article in Life Magazine in February 1941. To me there is some truth in what Wertheim writes, but history is far more complicated than the theory he lays out.

He argues that it was not Pearl Harbor that turned the tide against isolationism, but rather the fall of France in May 1940. Although France’s fall did not move public opinion all that much, it certainly moved elite opinion. But why did it move elite opinion? My answer is that it was an enormous geopolitical shock that would have worked its way through policy in any event, elite opinion or not. Why?

Simply put, the correlation forces drove policy far more than a few intellectuals. The fall of France meant that the balance of power in Europe was broken and Germany ruled supreme. England was up against the wall and the wily Stalin understood the geopolitical underpinnings of his pact with Hitler were rendered moot. Stalin’s hope of Western Europe bleeding white in a manner similar to World War I was shattered and instead of the Soviets being able to pick up the pieces of a shattered Europe, his country would soon become Hitler’s prey.

In America the isolationists/noninterventionists believed that the European balance of power would be preserved obviating the need to intervene. The collapse of France shattered that illusion. Thus, the noninterventionist idea of hemispheric defense looked kind of lame in the face of a Nazi dominated Europe. Simply put by not acting the United States would be on the strategic defensive, a hardly desirable outcome.

After the war, the United States stood astride the world like no other power ever before. But contrary to what Wertheim argues, instead of pressing its military advantage, the U.S. demobilizes and remains that way until the Korean War. It was Soviet expansionism in Europe and China that forces the United States into becoming a global hegemon, albeit an enlightened one.

I wish Wertheim would have cited Walter Russell Meade’s “American Providence” which discusses the four strands of American foreign policy. In that book Meade outlined the conflict between the Wilsonian internationalists and the Jeffersonian isolationists on the eve of World War II. That argument was settled initially by the Jacksonians revenge against the Pearl Harbor attack and later the Hamiltonian internationalists seized the economic prizes that were available in the postwar world. ¤ In a word, Wertheim overstates his case, and the book could have used a better editor. It is a slog at too many points.

● Amazon Customer 3.0 out of 5 stars Containment is neglected
February 8, 2021

As some reviewers have stated, the argument does not develop any of the issues related to containment introduced by George Kennan as the US demobilized after WW2. While the discussion of the projection of American power in 1940 and 1941 is an interesting intellectual exercise, the fact that the US was slowly getting drawn into the war had to be justified to the public (and members of Congress) which had firmly turned against any involvement. A rationale for engagement was thus necessary, ergo, the necessity of arguments in support of what were essentially moral imperatives for an American presence globally. In reality, it was the USSR that tripped the scales in favor of an American presence in so far as Germany was defeated anyway and Soviet power was rapidly taking hold in Europe–then of course there was China, Korea, Vietnam, etc. In addition, lets not forget that D-Day, June 1944 was as much about defeating Germany as it was an attempt to prevent the Russians from occupying all of Europe right up to the English Channel, the 1942 Second Front issue not withstanding. The democratic debacle in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was itself a sufficient reason to have the Americans on edge, especially after the allied discussions at Yalta and Potsdam.

● not me 3.0 out of 5 stars Buyer Beware: Recycled Dissertation
June 19, 2021

“Tomorrow, the World” has big ambitions. Looking for the roots of American imperial overreach, it focuses on the early 1940s, when “elites” (the author’s phrase) in New York and Washington redefined “internationalism” to mean U.S. global dominance, in contrast to an older “internationalism” that rejected power politics and emphasized international law and free trade. These “elites” wanted the U.S. to police the world, with the UN and the British Empire serving as auxiliary vehicles for American power. The author sees a direct connection between their plans and the global war on terror of the 2000s (somehow the Cold War gets left out of the story). These issues are important but, unfortunately, “Tomorrow, the World” is based mainly on the author’s PhD research in the archives of the Council on Foreign Relations and in the correspondence of a handful of academics and journalists (such as Quincy Wright and Walter Lippman). As a result, the book ends up as little more than a recycled dissertation, with all the limitations of that genre, even though it is packaged as something grander. (If anyone doubts how limited the book is, consider the fact that Henry Stimson and Harry Hopkins aren’t even mentioned in the index.) The author now needs to write a real book based on the archives of the State Department, the War and Navy Departments, the White House, the Congress, the British government, and major newspapers. If nothing else, a better-researched and comprehensive book would avoid the cramped trivia and faint John Birch Society odor that mar this one.

NYT: African Leaders Talk Peace in Ukraine, as Missiles Explode Overhead https://tinyurl.com/2p8u5zvs Zelensky insisted that peace talks can only begin after Russia leaves the land it invaded and occupies. The African Leaders are eager for grain imports to resume and urge talks now.
// After meeting with the Africans, including some who have close ties to Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that their peace plans were unrealistic.

NYT: Evidence in Trump Documents Case Hints at ‘Ongoing Investigations,’ Filing Says https://tinyurl.com/5df2wxtu “Judge Cannon asked the federal magistrate judge assigned to help her with the case…. Judge Bruce E Reinhart issued [the] warrant used by the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago”
// Court papers from federal prosecutors in the case against Donald Trump suggested that other criminal cases could potentially emerge from the inquiry.

[…] The government’s motion for a protective order, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers did not oppose, said that prosecutors were ready to start turning over a trove of nonclassified evidence that they had collected during the documents investigation. That included information about investigative techniques, material related to potential witnesses and things like grand jury transcripts, exhibits and recordings of witness interviews, the motion said.

It also sought to restrict disclosure of the evidence to Mr. Trump’s legal team; to people who might be interviewed as witnesses and their lawyers; and to any others who were specifically authorized by the court. …

Shortly after the government requested the protective order, Judge Cannon asked the federal magistrate judge assigned to help her with the case, Bruce E. Reinhart, to handle the question of whether to impose it. It is common in the Southern District of Florida for magistrate judges, not district judges like Judge Cannon, to handle pretrial motions.

Judge Reinhart is no stranger to the case. Last summer, he issued a warrant used by the F.B.I. to search Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, suggesting that he believed there was probable cause that investigators would find evidence of a crime at the compound.

It could be a significant development moving forward if Judge Reinhart handles the more substantial legal motions that will be filed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers in the months to come, given that Judge Cannon was widely criticized for making rulings favorable to Mr. Trump in an early stage of the investigation.

TheDailyMail: EXCLUSIVE: Saudi crown prince bragged that Jared Kushner gave him CIA intelligence about other Saudis saying ‘here are your enemies’ days before ‘corruption crackdown’ which led to torture and death https://tinyurl.com/22ud5brc
// 4/5/2018
● Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Jared Kushner in October
● Salman has since bragged about using classified intelligence from Kushner as part of a crackdown on ‘corrupt’ princes and businessmen in Saudi Arabia
● He said the intelligence from Kushner included information on those who were disloyal to Salman and who were his ‘enemies’, insiders tell DailyMail
● Kushner’s attorney’s spokesman said it was ‘false’ that the president’s son-in-law passed on secrets and that he was ‘well aware of the rules’
● The crown prince launched his crackdown on corruption in November, days after he met Kushner for talks in Riyadh
● Hundreds were rounded up, including princes from rival parts of the Saudi royal family and some of the country’s wealthiest businessmen
● But the crackdown saw accusations of torture and at least one reported death

🐣 RT @BlackKnight10k The CIA was spooked in 2021 because all of their assets were being captured and murdered and I think about it all the time ever since the FBI found those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago
⋙ TheHill: CIA admits to losing dozens of informants around the world: NYT https://tinyurl.com/y4d78ncy
// 10/5/2021; CIA assets killed

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Here he is. Fox producer and former Tucker show Editor Alexander McCaskill, leaving Fox today with his stuff after getting fired for posting the ‘Wannabe Dictator’ chryon about Biden. Have a nice weekend!
¤ https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1669834209526005761?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Igorsushko Incredibly bizarre video published by Yevgeny Prigozhin. He went to Russia’s Ministry of Defence to hand over the signed agreement which would allegedly subordinate Wagner PMC to the Ministry of Defence. Prigozhin and Shoigu are playing a game of intrigue. English translation:
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1669789313918459904?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Igorsushko UPDATE: To absolutely no one’s surprise, the “agreement” Prigozhin signed was drafted by Wagner and not the MoD. It stipulates the MoD must send unlimited funding, armament, and soldiers to Wagner PMC. This is not the contract Shoigu and Putin ordered Prigozhin to sign. Theatre.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1669836174041534470?s=20/photo/1 -3

🐣 RT @mkraju Senate GOP John Thune, amid calls from some on the right to defund parts of DOJ: “I think defunding is a really bad idea.” ¤ GOP Rep. Don Bacon says Trump lied about holding top secrets at his house and showed them to people. “I’m not in the mood for defending that.”
💽 https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1669817197462421504?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @petestrzok As details about Trump’s handling of classified material emerge, the level of likely damage to national security only increases. ¤ Trump was and remains a counterintelligence nightmare, unrivaled in Presidential history.
Thanks to @NicolleDWallace for the conversation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Donald Trump is a counterintelligence nightmare, still to this day… He took this stuff with him everywhere it appears, so the chances in my opinion are high that there was classified info at Bedminster… at Trump Tower” – @petestrzok w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1669832491773878278?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Dana Milbank: As Trump is arrested, Republicans honor the insurrectionists https://tinyurl.com/59hf8v93 Fake hearing for fake “patriots” ~ more cosplaying for the violent fringe of the MAGA base

… In the Capitol complex, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), with sidekick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and four other far-right lawmakers, held a “hearing” that honored participants in the riot, family members of Jan. 6 rioters and organizers of the attempted overthrow of the 2020 vote.

Technically, Gaetz couldn’t call such a hearing, because he isn’t a committee chairman. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is trying to win back the support of extremists such as Gaetz, let it happen anyway.

Gaetz did his all to make the proceedings look official. There were congressional seals on his nameplate and on the big screen behind him. A meeting room in the Capitol visitor center was arranged to appear like a committee room, with lawmakers facing the witnesses. Gaetz advertised the “field hearing” as part of how “the 118th Congress is investigating the weaponization of the federal government.”

He impersonated a chairman — “you are recognized,” “thank you for your testimony,” “I’ll recognize myself [for] questions,” “her time has expired” — and the others played along (“Thank you for the opportunity to testify,” “I yield back”). Gaetz said testimony could be used “for the official record [of the] House” or for “work in the Judiciary Committee, upon which I serve, or the Oversight Committee.” C-SPAN carried the proceedings live. …

🔄 ≣ Wikipedia: The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209 https://tinyurl.com/bdhkft8m

APNews: NATO moves to protect undersea pipelines, cables as concern mounts over Russian sabotage threat https://tinyurl.com/42a4jv5w

🐣 RT @ukraine_map The US 🇺🇸 Congress draft National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2024 from the House Armed Services Committee says that no less than $80 million of USAI funds should be used for the procurement of ATACMS for Ukraine 🇺🇦

⭕ 15 Jun 2023

🔄 💙 🐣 RT @ BryanDawsonUSA [15 Jun] Watch the Congressional testimony where Comey admits FBI investigators found no emails marked classified on Hillary’s server:
💽 https://twitter.com/BryanDawsonUSA/status/1669359690692845573?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ukraine_map The US 🇺🇸 Congress draft National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2024 from the House Armed Services Committee says that no less than $80 million of USAI funds should be used for the procurement of ATACMS for Ukraine 🇺🇦

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s chances of a Jan. 6 indictment soar https://tinyurl.com/4ntm266c Five factors: “the convictions of Jan. 6 participants, the Georgia investigation, Smith’s success in getting witness testimony, [Judge] Carter’s decision and general public sentiment”

[…] Five factors now point to a federal indictment on Jan. 6-related charges. ¤ First, the Justice Department has already obtained multiple convictions on the most serious charge — seditious conspiracy — and long prison terms for multiple militia group members. Smith might not be able to directly tie Trump to the violence, but it would be a gross injustice for the people Trump told to go to the Capitol to do his bidding to get heavy jail sentences but to let the man they believed sent “orders” to go free.

Moreover, by winning convictions on seditious conspiracy, the department has proved that the events of Jan. 6 were sedition, namely an effort “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States … or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

If Trump cannot be tied directly to the violence (either in calling for his supporters or allowing them to run amok for 187 minutes), his effort nevertheless plainly sought to prevent the execution of the law and the constitutional transfer of power.

Second, a state filing in Georgia based on the phony elector scheme and the effort to cajole Georgia officials to “find” just enough votes to flip the state to Trump more or less force Garland’s hand. The federal counterparts to expected state charges (e.g., interference with an election official, voting fraud) cannot be wished away. If the facts are available for Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, they are there for the Justice Department.

Third, Smith has the goods. The inner circle has been pierced; credible witnesses with percipient knowledge of the relevant facts are arrayed against Trump. He’s got the evidence the House select committee on Jan. 6 committee obtained. He has the testimonies of former vice president Mike Pence, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former White House lawyers. …

Fourth, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, in a case involving John Eastman’s assertion of attorney-client privilege, already found that (albeit at a lower standard of proof) “President Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding by launching a pressure campaign to convince Vice President Pence to disrupt the Joint Session on January 6.” Looking at the accumulated evidence, he found, “These actions more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding.” …

Fifth, the conversation about the propriety of indicting a former president has percolated throughout the political system. As evidence of Trump’s liability (on multiple grounds, in different venues) has mounted, we saw the shift from “How can we indict without becoming a banana republic?” to “How can we fail to indict without becoming a banana republic?” Certainly, MAGA Republicans remain devoted to their cult figure, with no regard for the rule of law. But polling during and after the Jan. 6 hearings showed that majorities think he did something illegal and/or should be indicted.

This does not mean Smith should be guided by public polls. It does mean there is no flashing red light to suggest the public would rise up in opposition to an indictment, no threat to the institutional integrity of the Justice Department beyond those already screaming “witch hunt!” or making wild, baseless accusations about misconduct.

Given the convictions of Jan. 6 participants, the Georgia investigation, Smith’s success in getting witness testimony, Carter’s decision and general public sentiment, it would be foolhardy to bet against an indictment on Trump’s most serious breach of his oath: his attempt to overthrow the results of a presidential election. All Americans should look forward to the day when he is held accountable for his attack on democracy.

WaPo, Ben Hodges: How to know whether Ukraine’s counteroffensive is working https://tinyurl.com/bddht592 ‘Watchful waiting’ by the US means Ukraine will always be under supplied with military equipment and ammo. Ukraine needs ATACMS now.

🧵 RT @igorsushko Having spent dozens of hours analyzing every word spoken by Prigozhin during his hour-long interview to develop a precise translation (9,117 words!), here are my key takeaways. ¤ Thanks to everyone who donated to http://woc.one to make this project possible!
📌 💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1669549294515531777?s=20/photo/1
// 57min video interview w Prigozhin

1. Putin no longer controls Prigozhin. Prigozhin’s brazen sense of security as he incites a revolution against Putin’s regime can only mean one thing – someone else with immense power in the regime has guaranteed Prigozhin’s personal safety.

2. Prigozhin is a very conniving & extremely intelligent monster. In some instances he is clearly lying, but none of his statements ever break the logical chain. The interview was not scripted.

3. He far surpasses Putin with his level of intellect.

4. Although the audience for his populist message is the Russian public, he sprinkles in unambiguous signals that he’d never use nuclear weapons if he were in charge, calling the idea mentally-ill. Target audience for this part is clearly the West’s intelligence community.

5. Interest in Prigozhin in Russian society is through the roof. He has succeeded in legitimizing himself through this kind of medium by speaking directly to the people. His support is rapidly rising, including in local government offices.
⋙ DailyMail: Putin’s chef is now more popular than Vladimir in Russia: Internet searches show Russians are more interested in the Wagner mercenary chief than their president https://tinyurl.com/4r3rysh6
// Russians appear to be more curious about Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin. Google Trends from May showed Prigozhin had greater popularity than Putin

6. Idea of Prigozhin as the savior of Russkiy Mir (Russian World) is permeating various levels of society among the hardcore warmongers, exactly those who have thus far supported Putin.

7. Direct calls to execute the Russian military leadership is an unambiguous attack on Putin. In response, Defence Minister Shoigu ordered to disband & absorb all Russian PMCs, including Wagner, just 5 days later. Prigozhin said “Shoigu will die” if he tries to take over Wagner. Note that Putin has now publicly come out in support of Shoigu’s order to disband Wagner PMC.

🐣 RT @TreasChest 16 ballistic missiles were aimed at the Patriot, after they were shot down they learned that among them were 6 “Kinzhal” missiles, — the commander of the 96th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade Iaremenko (Granit)
¤ https://twitter.com/TreasChest/status/1669543191983411200?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg I don’t think anyone read him the Miranda warning…
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1669481318336348170?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump SO NOW THAT EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS THAT THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT, PLUS THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, TOTALLY EXONERATED ME FROM THE CONTINUING WITCH HUNT BROUGHT ON BY CORRUPT JOE BIDEN, THE DOJ, DERANGED JACK SMITH, AND THEIR RADICAL LEFT, MARXIST THUGS, WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST ME, APOLOGIZE, AND RETURN EVERYTHING THAT WAS ILLEGALLY TAKEN (FOURTH AMENDMENT) FROM MY HOME? THIS WAS NOTHING OTHER THAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!

🐣 RT @Faytuks President Biden is ‘open’ to a proposal from NATO’s Secretary general to remove the Membership Action Plan requirement for Ukraine to join NATO ¤ “MAP requires a candidate nation to make military and democratic reforms with NATO’s advice and assistance”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1669482487133642752?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Politico: Biden ‘open’ to plan that eases Ukraine’s path to NATO membership https://tinyurl.com/2p8s3fpy
// The proposed removal of the Membership Action Plan would provide neither a formal invitation nor a timeline for joining the alliance.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ZAPORIZHZHIA AXIS / 2230 UTC 15 JUN/ UKR forces have expanded a series of lodgments south of Orikhiv and the H-08 HWY. Coordinated UKR offensive operations have pushed south of Novodanylivka in the east, in a pocket extending to Robotyne and Novoprokopivka in the west.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1669470248934731776?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ArmedMaidan Ukraine “appears to be taking Russian prisoners at a faster pace than at any time in the war so far… this is a sign of the Russian army cracking”: Korshak
🌎 https://twitter.com/ArmedMaidan/status/1669428732136660992?s=20/photo/1

Ukraine’s 47th Brigade, which famously lost a small number of Bradleys and Leopards while advancing near Orikhiv last week, suffered few casualties in that action (thanks to the Western armour), remains “fully combat-capable,” went on to liberate two villages and appears to have recovered at least some of the damaged armour, Korshak says

Korshak also comments on Putin’s admission Tuesday that Russia lost 54 tanks in the previous week ¤ “If he’s admitting 54, then what’s the real number his underlings didn’t tell him? If his subordinates are giving the loss numbers even a 50 percent haircut, and say the real number for the week was 100 tanks, then we are left with, for Russia, the disconcerting sum that this offensive is knocking out 15 or so Russian tanks A DAY, and the thing about that is — that estimate is almost exactly the same as the UAF [Ukrainian Armed Forces] official estimates for the same period. Point being, if we assume Putin is being lied to by a factor of 50 percent, then that is yet more evidence that when the UAF reports they took out a Russian tank, honestly, they probably did” ¤ https://tinyurl.com/4txjr7tz #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineCounteroffensive #VelykaNovosilka

🐣 RT @shashj Stupendous. Sixteen months into his botched war, Putin declares that military bloggers are the first people to have told him about the problems facing Russian units.
⋙ (🧵) RT @RALee85 Sladkov says the last 30 minutes was a closed meeting where the voenkors told Putin about problems facing Russian units. According to Sladkov, Putin said “I didn’t know about this…I’m hearing about this for the first time” after hearing about problems. https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7958
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1669120068687372288?s=20
⇈ ⇊
🐣 [Lead tweet] RT @RALee85 [Jun 13] A good indication of the influence of prominent Russian Telegram channels and voenkors in this meeting with Putin, including Sladkov, Kots, Poddubny, Pegov, Filatov, Kulko, Rudenko, Steshin, Gazdiev, Zimenkin, Agranovich, Kuksenkova, Ushenin, etc […] [link]
¤ https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1668657779156955139?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Putin’s repeated meetings with them also indicates that he wants a different source of information on the war than his intelligence and military commanders.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Some of these voenkors have been very critical of Russian generals, as a whole and focusing on individuals.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 [above tweet]

🐣 RT @ddale8 Here are *7* cases from 2017 to 2023 in which an obscure citizen was convicted and sentenced to prison time for having classified material at home — under the exact same Espionage Act “willful retention” provision Trump is charged under:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1669446554648715264?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: Multiple non-spies have received prison sentences under Espionage Act provision Trump is charged with violating https://tinyurl.com/yh6ywzvw

💙 WaPo: Trump rejected lawyers’ efforts to avoid classified documents indictment https://tinyurl.com/mvrrc799 “Trump time & again rejected the advice from lawyers & advisers who urged him to cooperate & instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the [non-lawyer] head of … Judicial Watch”
// 6/14, upd 6/15; The former president was not interested in attempting to negotiate a settlement in the classified documents investigation

💙 NYT: The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden https://tinyurl.com/3dabf95t About-to-be-disbarred (and likely to be indicted for Jan 6 offenses) Geoffrey Clark one-ups Barr on the powers of the President to micro-manage the Department of Justice
//. Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president.

[…] The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power. [ He has lost his tenured position and is being disbarred in California ]

Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.

Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

In statements to The New York Times, both Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought leaned into their battle against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight over the survival of America itself. …

Mr. Trump’s top rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also rejects the norm that the Justice Department should be independent. …

… As the former president addressed his supporters on Tuesday night at his Bedminster club, Fox News displayed a split screen — Mr. Trump on the right and Mr. Biden on the left. The chyron on the bottom of the screen read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.” … [ The chryon writer, a Tuckercarlson producer, was fired for this ]

As president, Mr. Trump saw his attorney general as simply another one of his personal lawyers. He was infuriated when his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then refused to reverse that decision to shut down the case.

After firing Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump believed he had found someone who would do his bidding in William P. Barr, who had been in the role during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Barr had an expansive view of a president’s constitutionally prescribed powers, and shared Mr. Trump’s critical views of the origins of the Russia investigation.

Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department overruled career prosecutors’ recommendations on the length of a sentence for Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., and sought to shut down a case against Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty. Both cases stemmed from the Russia investigation.

But when Mr. Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to stay in power after he lost the election, he grew enraged when Mr. Barr refused to comply. Mr. Barr ultimately resigned in late 2020.

🐣 RT @poroshenko [tr] You know, no less important than the power of our Armed Forces and the help of our allies is our internal UNITY. ¤ We have one enemy – Putin. And this should be remembered.

I understand everything. I understand that you are tired, I understand that you are nervous. I understand that sometimes you want to… ¤ But now we have to stop talking. ¤ We must keep unity until our complete VICTORY. And we will deal with everything later.

This is my message, this is the message of our soldiers from the front. Unity and support of the Armed Forces and victory is our priority. ¤ Today, we are working again in the East, we are again transferring equipment, baths and something new — high-explosive fragmentation grenade launchers of 40 mm caliber for dropping from drones on the heads of you know who 😉

🐣 RT @RFERL “I have the feeling we haven’t seen the real offensive yet,” one military expert said. “Yes, they are fighting in many places, but to my mind, not with full capacity. Ukraine hasn’t committed their heavier brigades yet.”
⋙ RFE/RL: You’re Hearing A Lot About Ukraine’s New Counteroffensive. One Week In, It’s Only Getting Started. https://tinyurl.com/3pcsun7d

🐣 RT @AndriyYermak [tr] We highly appreciate the bipartisan and bicameral legislative initiative proposed by US lawmakers to make Russia pay for the war by transferring the assets of the aggressor state to Ukraine. It is necessary to rebuild Ukraine with Russian funds.

🐣 RT @McFaul Excellent! An idea that our international working group on sanctions has been advocating for many months. @AndriyYermak @DmytroKuleba: US senators to launch bill to seize and transfer Russian assets to Ukraine
⋙ FT: US senators launch bill to seize and transfer Russian assets to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/93atwwh5
// Bipartisan push comes amid debate over how to help Kyiv pay for reconstruction from the war

🐣 RT @NOELreports “Right now, our fighters are facing stiff resistance. But Russia will lose the war if the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is successful,” Zelenskyi in an interview with NBC News. [

🐣 RT @TreasChest It is important that the water in the pond at the Zaporizhzhya NPP remains at the current level, – Director General of the IAEA, Raphael Grossi.

Today, Grossi visited the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant to assess the impact of the collapse of the Kakhovskaya HPP dam on its safety. ¤ “There is evaporation, there may be a leak, but the water level has to be kept at that level. With the available water reserves, the station can be safe for a period of time. ¤ The station will work to replenish water reserves to ensure the normal functioning of the safety system. And we will carefully monitor this process,” he said. http://ZN.UA

🐣 RT @djrothkopf It’s true. Much of the horrific abuse of our Constitution will be funded by the rich if they feel it can ensure they do not become ever so slightly less rich as a result of paying their fair share of taxes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HC_Richardson Thread. Personally, I am wondering how much of politics now is only about super rich folks determined to sink Biden because he wants to raise taxes on the extraordinary fortunes they’ve amassed under the low-tax regime of the past 40 years.
💙 ⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ Good morning. ¤ If any of you are still bamboozled by Nancy Jacobsen and Mark Penn’s @nolabelsorg’s actual intentions let me hook you up. ¤ They claim to be moderate, centrist problem solvers who are running a 3rd part effort to “give Americans more choices.”
📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1669327042398261249?s=20

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA AXIS /1430 UTC 15 JUN/ UKR forces advance south of Vuhledar and T-05-09 HWY axis. RU attack on Maryinka repelled. Fire missions target RU HQs and troop concentrations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1669349279436259328?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 14 Jun 2023

WSJ, Karl Rove: Trump Invited This Indictment https://tinyurl.com/3ppks38w ‘This indictment is devastating in its rigor of evidence and the seriousness of the alleged crimes. The case will further tear our country apart and—wrongly—undermine confidence in our justice system’
// His childish defiance of the law comes at a high cost to him—and to the country.

… [T]his indictment is devastating in its rigor of evidence and the seriousness of the alleged crimes. Even so, the case will further tear our country apart, as it has a heavy impact on the presidential campaign and—wrongly—undermines confidence in our justice system.

The blame for this calamity rests solely on Mr. Trump and his childish impulse to keep mementos from his time in the Oval Office, no matter what the law says.

One of the relevant statutes is the Presidential Records Act, which states that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.” The PRA defines these in the most expansive way imaginable. Essentially every scrap of paper, text or email the president or his staff creates or receives is a presidential record, except his personal diary, private political receives is a presidential record, except his personal diary, private political materials unrelated to the presidency, and campaign papers.

None of that apparently mattered to Mr. Trump. Before he left Washington in January 2021, he ordered a fleet of trucks to carry away hundreds of boxes of letters, reports, memos and other documents he’d received as president. The indictment says these included information about “defense and weapons capabilities” of both the U.S. and foreign countries, American nuclear programs, our and allies’ “potential vulnerabilities . . . to military attack,” and “plans for possible retaliation” to an attack.

Those documents didn’t belong to Mr. Trump, and he surely knew that. The president’s lawyers and staff must have warned him he couldn’t take the files. His top aides with security clearances had been made well aware of classified documents’ sensitivity, having all signed acknowledgments “that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling” of classified information “could cause irreparable injury” to the country, for which the government “may seek any remedy available.”

It also had to have been explained to Mr. Trump that the White House Office of Records Management kept a list of the documents he received and the National Security Council maintained a log of the classified documents he saw. He must have known these inventories would be shared with the National Archives and Records Administration, so that NARA would know if he improperly took documents.

That’s why in May 2021 the archives began requesting their return. When Mr. Trump sent some records back in January 2022, NARA knew he had more. When his lawyers said in June 2022 that after a “diligent search,” all remaining “responsive documents” had been returned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew that wasn’t true. It took a search warrant two months later to collect the rest of them.

Mr. Trump says there’s no criminal penalty for violating the Presidential Records Act. That’s true, but it only highlights how damning his behavior was. Congress thought a law so simple and clear would be honored by anyone entrusted with the presidency. Instead of living up to his office, Mr. Trump treated it and America’s national security flippantly, taking thousands of presidential records, among them hundreds of highly classified documents. It should have been evident to anyone who once occupied the Oval Office that documents containing some of the nation’s most important secrets shouldn’t be treated as trophies, shared with private guests, discussed with political associates or stored in bathrooms or ballrooms. Any staffer found guilty of doing that would go to prison for breaking the laws protecting the nation’s secrets, as Mr. Trump is now charged.

However Mr. Trump’s trial ends, America is bound for a period of anger, division and recrimination. Some Republicans, searching for ways to undermine Mr. Trump’s indictment, are even turning to one of the far left’s lunacies—calling for law enforcement to be defunded. Eliminating the FBI is no different from scrapping the San Francisco Police Department.

Extreme as this situation is, it could easily have been avoided if Mr. Trump simply followed the law and left behind his precious keepsakes. It’s a shame one of his top aides didn’t have the gumption to make him do so. If then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows ordered the trucks heading south to Mar-a-Lago to detour to drop off records at the archives’ warehouse in Suitland, Md., it might have enraged Mr. Trump when he found out, but it would have spared the country from the ugly months ahead.

No matter the outcome, America will pay a high price for the former president’s reckless petulance. So will he.

YahooNews/RollingStone: Trump’s Advisers Want Tom Fitton to Butt Out: Report https://tinyurl.com/mr3mk6he

Donald Trump can’t stop taking advice from Judicial Watch President (and definitely not a lawyer) Tom Fitton — and it’s driving his attorneys crazy. According to a report from The Washington Post, who spoke to seven Trump advisers familiar with the behind-the-scenes events of Trump’s indictment by the Justice Department, the former president repeatedly ignored the counsel of his lawyers in favor of Fitton’s advice.

According to the report, lawyers for the former president pleaded with him to cooperate with investigators looking to recover the hundreds of classified documents Trump took with him after leaving the White House. Sources told the Post that Fitton’s name was often invoked by Trump in his explanations as to why he was choosing to ignore the legal advice he pays millions of dollars for.

Multiple advisers to the former president told the Post that they believe Trump’s insistence that he could keep the documents without repercussion, and his invocation of the “Clinton Socks” case as justification, are a direct result of Fitton’s advice.

On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 federal criminal counts brought by the DOJ as a result of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s hoarding of classified documents. The charges include violations of the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a record or document, and concealing a document in a federal investigation.

Trump has remained defiant in the face of his second arrest this year and vowed revenge against President Joe Biden and the prosecutors overseeing his case during a speech following his arraignment.

That revenge plot has been aided by Fitton. As reported by Rolling Stone in May, Fitton claims that the DOJ is “stonewalling” him and his organization’s efforts to publicly unmask the names of employees working under Smith. The department has denied Fitton’s request on grounds that it is an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” that would also “interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

While Fitton’s involvement with the former president is causing headaches for the people trying to keep him out of jail, he is but one block in the teetering Jenga tower that is Trump’s legal team. Sources with knowledge of the matter previously told Rolling Stone that Trump’s legal roster was riddled with internal squabbling and underhanded attempts for dominance over various legal cases. With two of Trump’s attorneys having resigned hours before the former president was indictment was unsealed, Fitton’s free — if unfounded — legal advice might be the best he can get. […]

WaPo: Trump centers campaign on his prosecution, vilifying legal system https://tinyurl.com/35cze6hb “As Trump and fellow Republicans rally around the ‘weaponization’ theme, there are signs that his supporters are already internalizing the message”
// The former president has redefined the stakes of his campaign and has misrepresented facts and law

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom A party that lost its mind in 2016 and continues to deteriorate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ MorningConsult Nearly 3 in 5 potential Republican primary (59%) voters back Trump for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, up from 55% last week before news of his indictment on charges related to his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. https://morningconsult.biz/3OYzNlB
◕ https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1669175403888406528?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NatalkaKyiv Ukraine is reporting that Russians mined a number of dams in the Zaporizhzhia region. ¤ The dams are located on the Tokmachka River in the area of ​​Trudovoye, Snegurevka and Ostrikovka. ¤ The Russian army intends to blow them up when the Ukrainian Forces advance toward Tokmak. ¤ #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar #RussiaIsATerroristState #RussianWarCrimes #Russia
🌎 https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1668960492478423046?s=20/photo/1

📋 OccupyDemocrats: CUT OFF: CNN won’t allow Trump on live TV anymore https://tinyurl.com/yc7mmmpu

The news network that just hosted a Town Hall with disgraced former president Donald Trump last month has now refused to air his post-arraignment speech live. ¤ Trump is now complaining that CNN host Jake Tapper — who Trump labels “Fake Tapper” — said the network wouldn’t air his speech live and argues that this could be why the network has been dropping in ratings (although in fact, the ratings dropped after his Town Hall).

Tapper, on the other hand, said that the speech would be covered, with fact-checking, but not aired live, because of Trump’s tendency to lie, and the potential that his words could actually be dangerous. ¤ The latter is evidenced by the frequency of death threats to public officials after he attacks them verbally, as well as by the January 6th attack.

In his Town Hall last month, among other things, Trump again attacked E. Jean Carroll, who had just faced off against him in a court battle that ended in a jury finding Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation, awarding Carroll millions of Trump’s ill-gotten dollars.

Since then, there’s been a shakeup at the network, with the CEO Chris Licht out after viewers largely blamed him for setting up a pro-Trump atmosphere, among other reasons. ¤ The decision not to air Trump’s post-indictment speech live seems to suggest that Licht’s exit is part of a culture change at the network. Tapper said: ¤ “We’re not carrying his remarks live because he says a lot of things that are not true and sometimes potentially dangerous, but we do have some…so you can get a sense of his state of mind and how he’s framing his defense.”

[Trump] posted on TruthSocial, arguing that Tapper didn’t want to cover him because he didn’t want CNN viewers to see “the level of enthusiasm” in Trump’s supporters. ¤ “Fake Tapper just demanded that his broadcast be closed down from Miami because there was far too much enthusiasm on the streets for “Trump.” The good news is, he was the only one to do so, perhaps a good explanation as to why CNN’s ratings are so low!” Trump said.

It’s Trump’s norm to attack networks as having low ratings when they aren’t favorable to him. ¤ In this case, the ratings drop can be directly tied to him, though. OutKick reports: “The primetime hours of CNN, 8-11 pm, have declined 32 percent since the town hall — from 581,000 to 395,000. CNN recorded its lowest primetime average since May 2014 the week following the event.” ¤ Basically, the event didn’t draw conservative viewers to CNN and alienated liberal viewers — equating to a net loss.

Meanwhile, at Fox News, the opposite decision was made — a choice to enhance partisanship and appease the most tantrum-prone former president in U.S. history. ¤ Covering President Joe Biden, they ran a chyron —  that’s the little headline that scrolls under the news — declaring Biden a “wannabe dictator.”  Specifically, it declared: ¤ “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”

(Biden did not have his political rival arrested; Trump was arrested because the DOJ has evidence indicating that he committed dozens of felonies, though it will remain to be determined in court if he’s guilty.) ¤ The chyron aired near the end of the slot that used to belong to Tucker Carlson, according to the New York Times.

[ Note: Fox stated the chryon was taken down almost immediately and steps have been taken. @avindman is demanding Fox no longer be shown on military bases. (Sources: seen by me on Twitter ]

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Cities with ruins instead of life. Cities with flooded streets. Cities that exist only in fond memories. Cities where explosions now sound instead of children’s laughter. We will never forgive the pain that Russia has brought to our land. And we will expel the Russian evil from all our land, liberate every city and village of ours from the occupier and return justice to our people.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1668906224639721474?s=20/photo/1
// moving video

🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Mike Pence: “I had a chance to review the indictment over the weekend. And this indictment contains serious charges and I cannot defend what is alleged. The very prospect that what is alleged here took place…it puts at risk the men and women of our Armed Forces.”
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1669077206772097024?s=20/photo/1

NYT: Judge in Trump Documents Case Has Scant Criminal Trial Experience https://tinyurl.com/ycyzhmvt
// Judge Aileen M. Cannon, under scrutiny for past rulings favoring the former president, has presided over only a few criminal cases that went to trial.

WaPo, Karen DeYoung: As Ukraine’s counteroffensive heats up, Washington holds its breath https://tinyurl.com/5f3mpw22
// After 16 months of war, and with tens of billions’ worth of advanced weapons sent, Western backers need Ukraine’s forces to show dramatic gains against Russian occupiers
↥ ↧
⋙ Comment: I recommend the article below as an antidote to the one above:
Comment Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/14/ukraine-counteroffensive-biden-support/?commentID=a18f64e3-19c3-4e99-860b-bfe3dd71d77e
↥ ↧
⋙ 🐣 RT @Jack_Watling Having kept fairly quiet throughout its preparation I’ve written a piece for @RUSI_org trying to outline the challenges over the next few weeks for the AFU’s offensive. They are beating expectations, but this is going to be a hard fight.
⋙⋙ RUSI, Jack Watling: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Begins: Shall the Leopards Break Free? https://tinyurl.com/64m3sbus
// Ukrainian forces are making gains, but the offensive is some way from its decisive phase; we must refrain from premature pronouncements of success or failure.

[…] For Ukraine’s international partners, the summer is likely to be deeply uncomfortable. Losses will mount and success will take time. It is vital, however, that there is no diminution in the strengthening of the training programmes allowing Ukraine to continue to generate combat units, or the mobilisation of defence industry to put supply to the Ukrainian military on a sustainable basis. However much territory is liberated in this offensive, the critical variable is convincing the Kremlin that even if its defeat comes in stages, it is coming.

⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Seathanaich Here’s hoping that this campaign unfolds like Normandy in 1944. A tough break in, fixing enemy reserves, creating a weak point, and then a breakout and enemy collapse. ¤ Until then, impatient voices will be the loudest.

🐣 RT @georgewbarros Good piece from @Jack_Watling. ¤ The Ukrainian campaign design seeks to have the Russians decisively commit their reserves to one sector of the theater so the Ukrainians can then decisively commit to attacking a weak point.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Jack_Watling Having kept fairly quiet throughout its preparation I’ve written a piece for @RUSI_org trying to outline the challenges over the next few weeks for the AFU’s offensive. They are beating expectations, but this is going to be a hard fight.
⋙⋙ RUSI, Jack Watling: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Begins: Shall the Leopards Break Free? https://tinyurl.com/64m3sbus
// Ukrainian forces are making gains, but the offensive is some way from its decisive phase; we must refrain from premature pronouncements of success or failure.

🐣 RT @ DevanaUkraine Russian soldiers who surrendered today are massively criticizing and saying bad things about their commanders who betrayed them. Look at their emotions. These are not memorized texts, as in the videos of the russians.
💽 https://twitter.com/DevanaUkraine/status/1669046699480735749?s=20/photo/1
// really sad

🔄🔄 🐣 I invite you to follow my curated Twitter Lists on “Ukraine” (~1.2K accts)
and (more technical) “War in Ukraine” (~700 accts) https://twitter.com/i/lists/157259218
✛ War in Ukraine: Battles, Battle Maps, Weapons, Ret. Mil., Milbloggers, Think Tanks https://twitter.com/i/lists/1545071393397784576

🔄 🐣 I read that changing the sensitivity rating helps. I did so and it seems to have improved the situation. ¤ Mostly, though, I use two Twitter Lists: ”Ukraine” & “War in Ukraine.” Feel welcome to follow them. The first follows ~1.2K accounts. The !atter follows ~700 accounts. No ads

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln .@NoLabelsOrg is funded by the same billionaires that are funding Ron DeSantis. ¤ Don’t be fooled, they don’t want a moderate in office. They’re nothing more than pro-MAGA operatives that want to siphon votes from Biden to get Trump back in office or help DeSantis win in 2024.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1669034466696650758?s=20/photo/1

😂 RT @AWeissmann_ Trump saying “DOJ is not coming just after me, they are coming after you,” only makes sense if you have intentionally taken nuclear and military secrets and obstructed justice. Unless that applies to you, you can relax!

🐣 RT @sgurmanm “Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor,” Garland said in his first public comments since Trump’s indictment. “He as assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his commitment to integrity and the rule of law.”

🐣 RT @NikaMelkozerova with all our criticism of some western journalists, when we see great work we always celebrate it. So many Ukrainians in my feed( including me) shared this story as very accurate, not rosy, objective reporting. Masterful
💙 ⋙ NewYorker, Luke Mogelson: Two Weeks at the Front in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yw8yn6ep
// 5/22/2023; In the trenches in the Donbas, infantrymen face unrelenting horrors, from missiles to grenades to helicopter fire.

🐣 RT @ United24media ⚡️ International Criminal Court is investigating potential new charges against Russian President Putin over Kakhovka hydroelectric plant disaster, says lawyer Scott Martin. ICC reps arrive in the Kherson region.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA AXIS/ 1650 UTC 14 JUN/ UKR forces make gains S of T-05-09 HWY at Novodonetske. UKR forces are engaging in mine-clearance operations and offensive operations against Rivnopil. UKR counter-battery fire destroyed 5 Russian Masta type self-propelled howitzers.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1669021980044009483?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️⚡️At the upcoming summit, NATO will send a clear signal that it is ready to accept 🇺🇦Ukraine into the Alliance — Stoltenberg

🐣 RT @FreudGreyskull Romanov continues his explosive reaction to the commanders incompetence. ¤ Does anyone know his name?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/FreudGreyskull/status/1668908022377385984?s=20/photo/1 -4

[Text:] The co-authors of a number of our tragic offensives continue to “advance”. A selection of emergency situations near Kremennaya: –

It was near Kremennaya, a tragic incident occurred in one of the divisions that were going to go on the offensive. For two hours people stood in a crowd in one place and waited for the division commander to say his motivating word. But instead of him, the HIMARS MLRS and enemy artillery had their say. In the Yuzhnodonetsk direction, in a few days there were fewer victims in the battles than from the criminal stupidity of the division commander (c @rybar –

If by the middle of the second year of the war there are commanders that carry columns to the front and build personnel in one big pile, and then wait for the enemy artillery to strike, then such commanders must be shot before the formation, even if they are colonels or even generals (c) @vysokygovorit

– Bitch, you can’t stand in a column for two hours in one place! Well, what are you doing, father commanders, you are commanding people! Will bloggers be looked for again instead of degenerates with high shoulder straps? The Armed Forces of Ukraine have no merit in this war. We are at war with our own stupidity and sloppiness, smeared from above with beautiful reports (c) @dva_majors

Judging by the photo of the PnV https://t.me/voenacher/46645, we are talking about a person on whose topic in November 2022 there was a sensational appeal from the fighters of the 155th Marine Corps Brigade of the Pacific Fleet addressed to the Governor of Primorsky Krai https://t.me/grey_zone/15698

Colleagues here confirm my naive guesses with hints:
https://t.me/romanov_92/39345
https://t.me/milinfolive/102130
As for me, the military prosecutor’s office should rustle with an electric broom. But we are still having a hard time with this, so most likely there will be furious revelations of worthless military correspondents, who again blur the blissful picture of reports with photos.
So it goes.
Eternal remory to the dead.

🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Strelkov forwards a furious message from Alksnis attacking Putin directly: “I don’t want to give you advice because it’s obviously useless, but try to get a detailed map…Maybe then you will not be disgraced to the whole world by ignorance of the situation at the front?”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1668878263882776577?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] What do you mean by “a significant part of Donetsk”? Isn’t the former Donetsk region part of the DPR? But SIXTY PERCENT of its territory is still under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine today. And for fifteen months we have not been able to drive the Ukrainian army out of Maryinka and Avdiivka, in fact, the suburbs of Donetsk, from where the capital of Donbass is being shelled every day. But have Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, like hundreds of other settlements of Donbass, already been liberated?

What kind of sanitary belt are you talking about if we were unable to drive the enemy away even from Donetsk, subjecting NINE YEARS to torment, suffering and the threat of death of its inhabitants?

After your words, which I quoted, I once again became convinced that our affairs are bad if the Supreme Commander-in-Chief is absolutely not in control of the situation at the front. And I remembered another Supreme Commander-in-Chief – Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, to whom the Chief of the General Staff, General Antonov, daily personally reported the situation on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War with the obligatory display on the maps. And Stalin knew this situation by heart.

I don’t want to give you advice because it’s obviously useless, but try to get a detailed map of the fighting in Ukraine on your office wall, where all the changes in the course of the fighting will be noted daily. Which it i advisable to submit to you personally after the daily report of the current Chief of the General Staff. General Gerasimov, or even Minister of Defense Shoigu. Maybe then you will not be disgraced to the whole world byignorance of the situation at the front?

⭕ 13 Jun 2023

CBSNews: What does the Presidential Records Act say, and how does it apply to Trump?https://tinyurl.com/yuxdenu3 “The PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to [NARA] at the end of their administrations,” the Archives said”

✅ NYT: Trump’s Misleading Defenses in the Classified Documents Case https://tinyurl.com/2p93aa46 “Trump repeatedly defied requests to return materials for months and, according to the indictment, played an active role in concealing classified documents from investigators”
// The former president drew misleading comparisons to others, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.

🐣 RT @OmarRiverosays BREAKING: Trump is hit with more devastating news as Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer who defended him at his impeachment hearings, betrays him, declaring that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment is like “a gun with Trump’s fingerprints on it.” ¤ But Dershowitz didn’t stop there…

He continued, declaring that this is “by far” the most serious of all of the cases against Trump” — and they when Trump “foolishly waved” top secret documents “about a battle attack plan for Iraq” in front of his staff” and bragged that he “could have declassified this, but didn’t,” it became “an admission that he had material that he knew he had not declassified” — which is “evidentiary gold” for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case.

Please RT and ❤️ if you think that Trump MUST be found guilty — and consider joining the growing exodus to Tribel, a new Twitter competitor I created that is exploding in popularity because Elon Musk banned Tribel’s Twitter account — but he forgot to ban this link to download the new Tribel app: http://tribel.app.link/okwPIHYCIqb

🐣 RT @Reuters A federal judge said E. Jean Carroll, the New York writer who last month won a $5 million jury verdict against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, can pursue a related $10 million defamation case against the former US president [link]

🐣 RT @VABVOX #NEW While Trump was being arraigned for 37 counts related to violations of the Espionage Act, a federal judge agreed that E. Jean Carroll could amend her defamation suit to expand damages due to what he said at the CNN Town Hall.
[TextLink:] https://pic.twitter.com/w8h9GJgKsl

Technology[.]org: Five More Patriot Batteries will Arrive in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/27n7hz8f “The Ukrainian military reportedly managed to improve the systems, allowing them to track and destroy hypersonic missiles twice as fast as they were designed for”
// Raytheon has announced that Ukraine will be receiving additional five batteries of the Patriot air defense system, and the approximate timing has been disclosed.

[…] According to the head of Raytheon, the deadline for delivering these complexes to bolster the Armed Forces of Ukraine is planned for the end of 2024 at the latest. The article also highlights that even Raytheon itself was surprised by the impressive effectiveness of their missile platform in Ukraine, which was demonstrated in actual combat situations.

Furthermore, the article revealed a bit of a “teaser” information by saying that Ukraine has made modifications to the Patriot’s software, enabling it to track and destroy hypersonic missiles that fly at double the speed it was originally designed for.

“The Ukrainian military reportedly managed to improve the systems, allowing them to track and destroy hypersonic missiles twice as fast as they were designed for,” says the original article.

However, as the experts from Defense Express noted, implementing changes to the American military software from the Ukrainian side to enable interception of Russian “hypersonic” missiles, such as the X-47 “Kinzhal,” seems quite a challenging task which could possibly be accomplished only with the help of the colleagues from the U.S. Army.

Meanwhile, Raytheon Technologies is actively working to increase the production of air defense systems and accelerate the technological production cycles, which currently stand at two years. Specifically, the production capacity is being increased to 12 batteries manufactured per single year.

This increase is not only driven by Ukraine’s requirements but also by the growing global demand for the Patriot system (its PAC-3 version), especially following its successful use in real conflicts, facing Russian weaponry.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This ad starts airing today in several markets. Will Trump see it in Mar A Lago and Bedminster? ¤ Yes. Yes, he will.
💽 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1668276361562316800?s=20/photo/1
// traitor ad @ProjectLincoln The Lincoln Project Espionage Act

🐣 RT @AndriyYermak As President @ZelenskyyUa said, meetings were held with the diplomats of the respective countries, and we are waiting for their reactions. ¤ The sanctions coalition must give a tough response. We need to ensure circumvention of sanctions is impossible.
🔄 ⋙ 🐣 In the House, on the Republican side, make sure to include:
@RepMikeRogersAL, Armed Services: @HASCRepublicans
@RepMcCaul, Foreign Affairs: @HouseForeignGOP
@RepMikeTurner, Intelligence: @HouseIntel
@RepMarkGreen, Homeland Security: @HomelandGOP
// pro-Ukraine GOP pro-Ukraine Republicans in the House

CBSNews: What does the Presidential Records Act say, and how does it apply to Trump?https://tinyurl.com/yuxdenu3 Trump is not charged under the PRA, but under Provision 793 of the Espionage Act which prohibits the retention of national defense information in an unsecured location

🐣 RT @tribelaw Judge Aileen Cannon “and the 11th Circuit owe both Trump and the American people an expertly run trial free from the appearance of bias.” Judge Cannon cannot fulfill that obligation.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Aileen Cannon should not preside over the Trump trial https://tinyurl.com/yc5mz8xr

[…] Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe told Newsweek: “Judge Cannon’s rulings in favor of Donald Trump’s motion to suspend the criminal investigation … including her appointment of a special master to undertake a review that had no basis in law, certainly fits that test by establishing a strong basis for questioning her impartiality, entirely apart from the aggravating factor that she was appointed to her lifetime position on the federal bench by defendant Donald Trump.”

Other legal scholars agree. (As Stephen Gillers put it, “Now, the fact that a judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned doesn’t mean that the judge is partial. The public may simply not trust the impartiality of the judge. Because public trust in the work of the court is a value as important as the work itself, the rule says that the judge should not sit when we can’t fairly ask the public to trust what the judge does.”)

It borders on absurd that an inexperienced judge appointed to the bench by the defendant to whom she threw lifeline would try the case after getting slammed by the circuit court for even touching his civil gambit. This might be the most important criminal trial in U.S. history, with enormous implications for democracy, the rule of law and national security.

WaPo: President Biden huddles with NATO Chief Stoltenberg amid questions on Ukraine, Sweden and NATO’s next secretary general https://tinyurl.com/d3bpt7vh “We’ve strengthened NATO’s eastern flank & made it clear we’ll defend every inch of NATO territory” ~ Biden

🧵 RT @judgeluttig There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president.
📌 https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1668766562210447360?s=20

⋙ 🐣 RT @judgeluttig He has dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ to prosecute him from the moment it was learned that he had taken these national security documents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @judgeluttig On any given day for the past 18 months — doubtless up to and including the day before the indictment was returned — the former president could have avoided and prevented this prosecution. He would never have been indicted for taking these documents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @judgeluttig But for whatever reason, he decided that he would rather be indicted and prosecuted.
⋙ 🐣 RT @judgeluttig After a year and a half, he finally succeeded in forcing Jack Smith’s appropriately reluctant hand, having left the Department no choice but to bring these charges lest the former president make a mockery of the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA/ 2050 UTC 13 UTC/ Front line sources report a major RU counter-attack is in progress against the T-05-18 axis S of Velyka Novosilka. RU forces are reported to have seized high ground to the EWst of the Mokri Yaly River, dominating the T-05-18 approaches.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1668704311805726721?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ZAPORIZHZHIA AXIS/ 1530 UTC 13 JUN/ Front line sources report that UKR has destroyed more than a dozen RU tanks and numerous BMPs and IFVs in the last 24 hours of combat. UKR SOF directed a strike on Polohy, killing RU Major General Sergei Goryache.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1668642293723680768?s=20/photo/1

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump arraigned, pleads not guilty to 37 classified documents charges https://tinyurl.com/48nsryts “A few hundred people, most of them Trump supporters, had gathered and were waving flags and chanting” outside the Miami federal courthouse
// After scowling through a court hearing, the former president tries to fundraise and hype his candidacy

🐣 RT @ ProjectLincoln .@TheRickWilson points out Trump’s love for media attention has no conditions. There is no such thing as bad press to him. The blitz around the latest indictment is another flood that will drown out lesser known candidates opportunity to present themselves & their campaigns.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1668758526338953216?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @DonbasDIY As Russia preaches denazification, Since 2004 it has covertly partnered & financed Neo Nazi & far-right movements around the world. Following a Neo-Eurasianist strategy popularized by Dugin, these fringe groups are causing division, spreading lies & subverting societies. 1/
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/DonbasDIY/status/1664000637560934402?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TreasChest ⚡️Zelensky’s evening address:

🔹The Bakhmut direction, and this, in particular, the soldiers of the 80th separate brigade of the DSHV – there is forward movement in various areas. Thank you for your extraordinary courage!
🔹Tavria OSUV units – in the conditions of extremely brutal battles, in the conditions of aviation and artillery superiority of the occupier, there is forward movement. Thank you, warriors!
🔹Marines of the 35th and 36th separate brigades, 110th separate mechanized brigade, 128th separate mountain assault brigade, paratroopers of our cool “Simdesyatdevyatka”, artillerymen of the 55th separate brigade “Zaporizka Sich”… Thank you for strength!
🔹And I thank everyone in our society who understands that the liberation of our land from such occupiers requires difficult, heroic and intense actions, which day by day, step by step, give the necessary power to our offensive actions. ¤ Channel 24

⭕ 12 Jun 2023

NYT: Hillary Clinton’s Emails: A Nation Struggles to Unsubscribe https://tinyurl.com/4xmdktm8 “The two episodes are vastly different legal matters, and Mrs. Clinton was never found to have systematically or deliberately mishandled classified information”
// As Donald Trump made history by becoming the first former president to face federal charges, many Republicans tried to change the subject by renewing an eight-year-old controversy.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1668948331018477572?s=20/photo/1
🔄 Butter Emails

🧵 RT @KremlinTrolls Video appears to show Russian terrorists using anti-retreat detachments (often called ‘barrier’ or ‘blocking’ troops) to fire on their own fleeing soldiers. ¤ Stalin used this method in 1941 to control unruly troop units.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1668208719618768899?s=20/photo/1 -2

The first use of the barrier trooos by the Red Army occurred in the ate summer and fallof
1918 in the Eastern front during the Russian CivilWar, when People’s Commissar of
Military and Naval Affairs (War Commissar Leon Trotskv of the Communist Bolshevik government authorized Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the commander of the lstArmy, to station blocking detachments behind unreliable Red Army infantry regiments in the 1st Red Army,
with orders to shoot if front-line troops either deserted or retreated without permission.
formation in the Red Army.

On 18 December he cabled: ¤ “How do things stand with the blocking units? As far as I am aware they have not been included in our establishment and it appears they have no personnel. It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them.”

The barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supolies in areas
controlled by the Red Army, a role which soon earned them the hatred of the Russian
civilian population. …

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa More terrorist missiles, Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people. Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded. The rescue operation in Kryvyi Rih continues. My condolences to all those who have lost their loved ones! 🇷🇺 terrorists will never be forgiven, and they will be held accountable for every missile they launch.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1668480633864171521?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Such a powerful @BBCSteveR report from Moscow. As its war on Ukraine drags on, Russia sinks deeper into glorifying its militarism, a messianic militarism. Very reminiscent of Nazi Germany, right down to the propaganda language, “We are Russians. God is with us!” h/t @IlvesToomas
⋙ 🐣 RT @BBCSteveR Extraordinary art exhibition across from the Kremlin: “We are Russians. God is with us!” Seems to reflect the official view that somehow God is on Russia’s side. On Russia Day, I ask Muscovites about this, & about Russia’s war in Ukraine & Russia’s future. @BBCNews
💽 https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1668319910349656066?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @mkraju John Thune says of Trump indictment: “They’re very serious allegations.”
Others in GOP downplay it. ¤ Sen. Tommy Tuberville on allegation Trump obstructed probe and tried to hide classified documents.”They obviously got what they wanted,” he said of DOJ.
📌 https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1668388556799201287?s=20

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Ukrhydroenergo head: Kakhovka dam destruction cut off water supply to Crimea for ‘at least a year’ ¤ “There is no water supply to Crimea because the Kakhovka reservoir’s water level is already much lower than what is needed to go along the Crimean Canal, Ihor Syrota said.

🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Russian Defence Minister Shoigu’s recent bid to control the Wagner Group is reportedly motivated by Russian elites aiming to stop Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin becoming a player in future turmoil. Meanwhile, an apparent leak accuses Wagner of massive theft of military fuel.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1668397517292072965?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ […] 14/ It remains to be seen where this will go, but the apparent leak looks like an attempt to prepare the ground for Wagner – and presumably Prigozhin himself – to be prosecuted for corruption and theft. /end

🐣 RT @ RpsAgainstTrump WOW. Mitt Romney isn’t mincing words about Trump’s mishandling of classified documents: ¤ “I’m angry. The country is going to go through tumult as a result of one thing: President Trump didn’t turn over military documents when he was asked to do so.”

🚫 🐣 RT @Carl_Rehnberg2 Defence Minister Shoigu has issued a kill order for all soldiers of the PMC Wagner, it is kill on sight, no captives. ¤ He has also recinded all pardons for any member of PMC Wagner. ¤ Civil War has started in Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Carl_Rehnberg2 Gay Satan did publish it below, but here it is again.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Carl_Rehnberg2/status/1668363527428399105?s=20/photo/1
// letter in Russian: some commenters say letter is FAKE
[TextLink:] [tr] https://twitter.com/JaryloUEch13479/status/1668373933601574915?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @yasminalombaert Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday it has signed a contract with the Akhmat group of Chechen special forces, a day after Russia’s powerful mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin refused to do so.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1668368081876287492?s=20/photo/1

The signing followed an order that all “volunteer units” (mercenaries), should sign contracts by July 1 bringing them under the control of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, as Moscow tries to assert its control over private armies fighting on its behalf in Ukraine.

In return, volunteer fighters would get the same benefits and protections as regular troops, including support for them and their families if they are wounded or killed.

Prigozhin, who has waged a running feud with the defence ministry and accused it of failing to provide adequate ammunition supplies to his Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, said on Sunday he would refuse to sign any such contract. ¤ He said that Shoigu “cannot properly manage military formations”.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA/1740 UTC 12 JUN/ UKR forces are reported to have liberated Rivnopil. UKR units have united at Starornaiorske with forces now advancing south down the T-05-18 axis. UKR is consolidating gains and is presently reported to be in contact north of Staromlynivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1668311079745728519?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MissionYak https://twitter.com/MissionYak/status/1668312894746787840?s=20/photo/1
◕ [Text:] Confidence in Putin reached record lows in many countries surveyed in 2022
% who have in Russian President Vladimir Putin to do the right thing regarding world affairs

🐣 RT @tribelaw I’ve been arguing this for days. And if our system is too weak to achieve her recusal, at the very least the Chief Justice should direct that the entire trial be televised to ensure vitally needed transparency.
⋙ 🧵 RT @NormEisen Judge Cannon must recuse from Trump’s case under 28 USC 455–or be reassigned by the 11th Circuit ¤ Her lawless pro-Trump rulings that were smacked down on appeal mean her “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” ¤ I explain @Slate & in this thread (1/x)
📌 https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1668238931400306691?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NormEisen Under 28 USC 455(a) a judge shall disqualify themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” ¤ Judge Cannon’s situation clearly fits that test ¤ She is obligated to recuse herself & if she doesn’t the 11th circuit will likely reassign sooner or later (3/x) [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1668252110079639555?s=20/photo/1
// [Text:] 28 U.S. Code § 455 – Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge
Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

🐣 📋 RT @ SIPRIorg At the start of 2023, the 9 nuclear-armed states possessed an estimated 12 512 nuclear weapons:
USA 🇺🇸 5 244
Russia 🇷🇺 5 889
UK 🇬🇧 225
France 🇫🇷 290
China 🇨🇳 410
India 🇮🇳 164
Pakistan 🇵🇰 170
North Korea 🇰🇵 30
Israel 🇮🇱 90
Read more in #SIPRIYearbook 2023 ➡️ http://bit.ly/3MYIDxd
[TextLink:] ◕ https://twitter.com/SIPRIorg/status/1668133114730749952?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski The rantings of a deranged madman with autocratic dreams who continues to become more unstable and unraveled with every passing day.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1668291671820312577?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump NOW THAT THE “SEAL” IS BROKEN, IN ADDITION TO CLOSING THE BORDER & REMOVING ALL OF THE “CRIMINAL” ELEMENTS THAT HAVE ILLEGALLY INVADED OUR COUNTRY, MAKING AMERICA ENERGY INDEPENDENT, & EVEN DOMINANT AGAIN, & IMMEDIATELY ENDING THE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA & UKRAINE, I WILL APPOINT A REAL SPECIAL “PROSECUTOR” TO GO AFTER THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, JOE BIDEN, THE ENTIRE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY, & ALL OTHERS INVOLVED WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR ELECTIONS, BORDERS, & COUNTRY ITSELF!

CEPA, Ben Hodges: Think Ukraine’s Offensive Has Started? Wait for the Heavy Brigades https://tinyurl.com/nz8twyu8 “When we see two or three of those brigades … focused on a narrow frontt, it will then be possible to say that the main attack has probably started”
// There’s fighting underway across frontline Ukraine, says Lt-Gen (rtd.) Ben Hodges, but the decisive moment will come when we see hundreds of armored vehicles hitting Russian lines.

… There is a big difference between starting an offensive, and the main attack or main effort of the operation. The offensive has clearly started, but not I think the main attack.

When we see large, armored formations join the assault, then I think we’ll know the main attack has really begun. To date, I don’t think we’ve witnessed this concentration of several hundred tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) in the attack.

A Ukrainian tank battalion normally has 31 tanks. An armored infantry battalion would have about the same number. Add in armored vehicles carrying engineers, air defense, logistics, and so on. An armored brigade would likely have three tank battalions and one or two mechanized infantry battalions. In total, then, an armored brigade is going to have 250-plus armored vehicles of different types.

I estimate that the Ukrainians have put together anywhere from seven to 12 armored brigades. Some may have only Ukrainian or captured Russian equipment, and others will have a mix of Western-provided kit.

When we see two or three of those brigades (around 500-750 armored vehicles) focused on a narrow front, it will then be possible to say that the main attack has probably started and where it’s happening. 

If the West provides everything the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) need, especially long-range precision weapons, then I still anticipate that Ukraine can liberate Crimea, the decisive terrain of this war, by the end of this summer, that is to say, by the end of August. This is one of the aims of the offensive, I believe.  At that point, the UAF’s long-range precision weapons could reach Sevastopol, Saky, Dzankoy, and other key Crimean targets, and that would allow them to make the peninsula untenable for Russian forces.  That’s why the UK’s delivery of Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles with a range of 155-plus miles, was such an important contribution.

I hope the Biden Administration will finally relent and give short-range (up to 300km or 186 miles) ground-to-ground ATACMS ballistic missiles to Ukraine. That would mark a decisive contribution to what Ukrainian forces can achieve on the ground by giving the offensive an enormous boost. …

Lined up in defensive positions before the UAF assault units are the Russians, sitting behind hundreds of miles of trenches with bunkers, minefields, anti-tank ditches, and “Dragons Teeth” obstacle belts.  But these defenses are only as good as the soldiers occupying them and covering those obstacles. I’m not impressed with the fighting capabilities of the Russians in most places, and the vicious in-fighting we see between the various Russian leaders, (e.g., warlords like Prigozhin and Kadyrov) highlights the lack of cohesion on the Russian side.  I imagine the UAF will exploit this. …

🐣 RT @ GlasnostGone Work has already started in an investigation by the International Criminal Court over the breach of the Kakhovka dam in #Ukraine & the vast flood it triggered, president Zelensky said – adding representatives of the court have visited the Kherson region.
⋙ PresidentUA: It is very important that representatives of international justice have seen with their own eyes the consequences of the Russian act of terrorism at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant https://tinyurl.com/2t2nvftz Address by the President of Ukraine

AP: Trump allies cite Clinton email probe to attack classified records case. There are big differences https://tinyurl.com/42nfv63n The “two important differences are in willfulness and obstruction”

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Ukrainian intelligence warns that Russians, have just mined the Crimean Titan chemical plant in Armyansk to release 200 tons of ammonia, ¤ This will environmentally devastate a huge area. ¤ Ukraine warned about the Kakhovka Dam and no one listened. ¤ Let’s hope this time is different.
🌎 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1668174163599654913?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 11 Jun 2023

NewVoiceUkraine: Hacker drains Russian special services wallets, transfers funds to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/8kde3jkt
// A hacker gained access to hundreds of cryptocurrency wallets belonging to the Russian special services, and may have transferred stolen bitcoins to Ukrainian aid organizations, cryptocurrency experts now believe.

🐣 RT @davidgura “What he was stockpiling were the materials of treason. He may not have known how and when he would cash in this currency, but there can be little doubt that he was determined to retain the ability to do just that.”
💙 ⋙ NYRB (@nybooks), Fintan O’Toole: The Ultimate Deal https://tinyurl.com/4bpfvpcu
// Trump’s hoarding of official secrets is both breathtakingly careless and utterly calculated.

Secrets are a kind of currency. They can be hoarded, but if kept for too long they lose their value. Like all currencies, they must, sooner or later, be used in a transaction—sold to the highest bidder or bartered as a favor for which another favor will be returned. To see the full scale of Donald Trump’s betrayal of his country, it is necessary to start with this reality. He kept intelligence documents because, at some point, those secrets could be used in a transaction. What he was stockpiling were the materials of treason. He may not have known how and when he would cash in this currency, but there can be little doubt that he was determined to retain the ability to do just that.

Before the publication of the grand jury’s indictment, it was possible to believe that Trump’s retention of classified documents was reckless and stupid. The indictment reveals that recklessness and stupidity are the least of his sins. With Trump, it’s always a mistake to equate anarchy with purposelessness or to think that the farce is not deadly serious. Trump’s hoarding of official secrets is both breathtakingly careless and utterly calculated. At the heart of that calculation is a cold resolve to not give up the power that access to highly restricted information had given him. …

🚫 WaPo: Trump’s Miami court date brings fears of violence, rally plans https://tinyurl.com/3wtuytuj “Escalating violent rhetoric in online forums, coupled with defiant statements from the former president and his political allies, have put law enforcement officials on alert”
// Law enforcement officials are monitoring online threats and potential gatherings of far-right extremists and marshaling more officers

🐣 RT @abigaildisney My grandfather is spinning in his grave.
⋙ 🧵. RT @AnnaForFlorida Nazis outside of Walt Disney World right now — absolutely disgusting.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/AnnaForFlorida/status/1667583474276990976?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 🐣 Yanukovich ran promising to bring Ukraine closer to the EU. Then, under compulsion from Putin, he reversed course, resulting in the Maidan and the exposure of flagrant corruption. It was Russia’s intervention that is to blame for 2014, NOT the West.
🌎 😅 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1668117926920978432?s=20/photo/1
// Not Russia map

CNN: Wagner chief rejects Russian Defense Ministry efforts to rein in his force https://tinyurl.com/ysb8s5ks “Yevgeny Prigozhin’s comments follow an announcement by the Russian Ministry of Defense Saturday that ‘volunteer units’ and private military groups would be required to sign a contract with the ministry.”

🐣 RT @ yasminalombaert President Zelensky’s evening address. “Even beasts are more moral than you, Russian state.”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1667995037043392513?s=20/photo/1

“Russian terrorists continue to shell evacuation routes, evacuation points, boats that take people away… Today, as a result of one of these attacks, three people were killed. Ten more people were injured, including two police officers. It was an evacuation from Kardashynka, an occupied village on the left bank of Kherson region… The occupiers created this disaster by blowing up the dam, leaving people to their fate in flooded towns and villages, and then shelling the boats that are trying to take people away… Even beasts are more moral than you, Russian state.”

🐣 RT @atrupar Former Trump AG Bill Barr on Trump’s federal indictment: “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here — a victim of a witch hunt — is ridiculous.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1667896395804622848?s=20/photo/1
// FoxNews Sunday
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Bill Barr: “We can’t forget here that this entire thing came about because of reckless conduct of the president. If he had just turned over the documents, which I think every other person in the country would have done … ”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1667897349132173313?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @tomiahonen Republican Opinions on Trump

Kilmeade: Trump’s insane
Priebus: an idiot
McMaster: dope
Mnuchin: idiot
Kelly: unhinged & an idiot
Mattis: 5th grader
Christie: a child
Coulter: moron
Barr: detached from reality
DeSantis: moron
Bolton: a Putin-loving moron
Tillerson: fucking moron

🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #UkrOffensive2023ZAP #1PageAssessUKRWar Context for ZAP traction (ex: JUNO sector). War lost by Putin 3 weeks in. Since then, brilliant Ukrainian strategy (they channel BH Liddell Hart), true grit,arsenals of democracy pumping kit in. Now, liberation of #TheOrcTriangle time.
🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1667979469502439431?s=20/photo/1 -3

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer [6/10] KAMIANSKE CITY AXIS /1625 UTC 10 JUN/ RU media indicates that UKR forces are advancing in the vicinity of Zherebianky & Piatykhatky. It is assessed that UKR forces have made progress on the O-081349 HWY axis in the vicinity of Nesterianka and may be advancing toward Hrozove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1667565677526351875?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA /2110 UTC 11 JUN/ During the day of 11 JUN, sources report that UKR forces have staged advances in the Velyka Novosilka area of operations. The villages of Storozhove, Blahdonte, Makarivka, Starornnaiorske are reported to have been liberated
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1667998833769345024?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1745 UTC 11 JUN/ Sources report that UKR forces have advanced S toward Soledar, penetrating RU lines by as much as 2000 meters. The same sources report UKR advances on a widening front between Vasiukivka & Orikhovo-Vasylivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1667946649153335299?s=20/photo/1

💙 🐣 RT @peterpomeranzev ‘Russia is a culture where you have crime without punishment and punishment without crime’. The Ukrainian scholars Tetiana Ogarkova and @yermolenko_v helps me understand what lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence
⋙ TheGuardian, Peter Pomerantsev: What lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence? Freudian analysis offers an answer https://tinyurl.com/p7f8jza2
// The blowing up of a Ukrainian dam echoes a traditional cycle of destruction and self-destruction marking the country’s history
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DTAH22 I truly think that Russians are the remanence of pre-historic mankind, where they were isolated from the general human race development process, and kept the basic primitive man instincts and behavior. They never developed beyond that
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @The_Fit_Gourmet That’s an astute analysis. I would also add that violence permeates the russian society at all levels. From family violence and drunkenness that children witness at a very young age to “dedovschina” in the army… there’s a sense of normalcy and indifference when violence happens.

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone We all know that if #Ukraine liberates #Crimea, then Putin’s in BIG trouble. Its lose would make huge world headlines & he’d be unable to hide the humiliating defeat from the Russian people. So it’s unsurprising Putin blew the Nova Kakhovka dam to delay any advance on Crimea.
¤ https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1667866607404580865?s=20

⋙ 🐣 RT @DenesTorteli Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar: “According to available information, it has become known that the enemy is moving its most combat-ready units from the Kherson direction, primarily marines, airborne troops and the 49th Army. Therefore, the purpose of the Russians’ explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant becomes obvious. Thus, taking into account its own losses and limited reserves, thus realizing the inability to deter the Ukrainian offensive in different directions, the command of the Russian occupation forces decided to ‘narrow’ the possible geography of the Armed Forces’ active actions. The explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was obviously carried out in order to prevent the Ukrainian Defense Forces from launching an offensive in the Kherson sector and to free up the necessary reserves for their deployment to the Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut sectors. Also, by destroying the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, the Russian leadership is trying to divert some of the forces and resources of the Ukrainian Defense Forces to eliminate the man-made disaster, thereby making it impossible to liberate the occupied territories on the left bank of the Kherson region.” https://t.me/annamaliar/837

🐣 RT @@NOELreports Plans love silence. [Budanov]

🐣 RT @NatalkaKyiv Prigozhin’s press services published his response to the following question: “The debate continues on the web about the presidential administration giving you a very loud signal that you have personal ambitions, and you need to remove them in order to unite around a common victory. ¤ What can you say about this and how do you intend to realize these ambitions?” #Prigozhin #Wagner #RussianArmy #Russia #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1667780718917738496?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @realblackmonk Let’s see where this his ambition leads him. I think prighozin knows he has crossed the rubicon. A faction must give way for the other. Either Shoigu/Gerasimov led MOD or Prighozin and his backers will have to leave the scene. Sooner than later.

🐣 RT @NOELreports It looks like Putin and Shoigu want to centralize the PMC’s under their command. All voluntary fighters who are fighting for Russia have to sign a contract with the Russian Federation as of 1 July 2023. This also applies to Wagner, led by Prigozhin. ¤ Shoigu pulls the strings.
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1667810365869113344?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 10 Jun 2023

WaPo: Political risks rise for Putin as Ukraine’s counteroffensive begins https://tinyurl.com/4xxyk7y4 ‘Nervousness among the Russian elite over the firepower of Ukraine’s Western weaponry is driving fears that the land bridge to Crimea could be severed’

🧵 RT @atrupar ICYMI, my thread on Trump post-indictment speech earlier today to the Georgia GOP convention begins here
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1667650559074074627?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @OhRick4 It makes me sad that HALF our country is siding with a TRAITOR over OUR National Security and Democracy
The UNITED States of America
I’m heartbroken
Is there no true patriotism left
Its like people don’t care
None of this, NONE OF IT should have happened in the first place
⋙ 📋🐣 40% of Americans live in counties that voted for Trump
30% of US GDP comes from those counties (Brookings)
MAGAdonia is a 2nd tier country
SCOTUS just gifted Dems 4 or 5 House seats
Worry less, GOTV more

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SECOND ORDER EFFECT: RU war planners may have forgotten that the dam they destroyed was critical to the supply of fresh water to the Crimean Peninsula.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1667708106032259073?s=20/photo/1

🚫NYT: Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric in His Defense Disturbs Experts https://tinyurl.com/3tknxyh7 //➔ poorly sourced (2 experts; typical rw kooks)
// The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.
// 📋 “The last thing Dems want is for Trump not to run because he is is a flawed candidate who lost to Biden once already: MAGAs are just coddling and cosplaying”
// 📋 Biden-voting counties produce 70% of the US GDP (Brookings) and are home to 198M (60%) vs 130M (40%) people; MAGAmerica is a third world country
// me, fretting with statistics

🐣 RT @ @tomiahonen And from our international desk.. Danni has calculated how many people GLOBALLY were damaged by our Traitor-In-Chief and his tremendous collection of espionage… RT @Daniellahahah18
◕ https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1667692692686491648?s=20/photo/1
// 475.9M in Five Eyes countries

🧵 RT @noclador I looked at the footage of the Ukrainian attack South of Mala Tokmachka… errors were made: one by higher ups & one by the attacking troops.
1) No air defense: at least three russian drones and one helicopter flew above the Ukrainians and walked russian artillery in. 1/15
📌 https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1667266063501873153?s=20

🐣 🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #Kto200Arctic ISW reports: “Russian sources claimed that elements of the 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) are defending against Ukrainian counterattacks in the Bakhmut area”. The 200th? If RUS using them again, RUS be short. Real short.
◕ 🌎 https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1667692826866352128?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Tendar Since both sides are already reporting it, I will release the information I collected, too. There is anyway a delay of this information and therefore does not compromise OPSEC. ¤ Almost the entire forward defense line of the Russian army near Velyka Novosilka – around 20 km long – has been wiped out. Ukrainian forces liberated Neskuchne and Novodonets’ke. ¤ Based on Russian drone footage we know that Ukrainian forces are already operating further south, hammering Russian forces in Storozheve and the little village of Blahodatne, nearby. #Ukraine #Counteroffensive #VelykaNovosilka #Donetsk
🌎 https://twitter.com/Fireblade577/status/1667652666569138176?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @jonflan What every citizen must decide. We’ve about done the groundlings in DC who did the dirty work for Trump and his corrupt overseers; time to get after the really serious wrongdoers – consider the pyramid of guilt –
◕ https://twitter.com/JonFlan/status/1667655201434550274?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FIGHT’S ON: UKR’s Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky says that the long-awaited counter-offensive against Russia has started. “Counteroffensive & defensive actions are taking place.” But he would not talk in detail about which stage the counter-offensive was in.
⋙ BBC: Ukraine counter-offensive actions have begun, Zelensky says https://tinyurl.com/drtvr9sp
// Ukraine’s president refused to say which stage the counter-offensive against Russian forces was in.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CastleShore In my opinion the counteroffensive will start as a grind, probing for weaknesses getting thrown back in some areas. But when they break through things will start to happen very quickly and the Russians will soon be in full retreat just like last time

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/ 2005 UTC 10 JUN/ UKR has consolidated advances made on numerous axes in the Bakhmut (AO). RU attacks at Bohdanivka and Bila Hora were broken up. were registered S of Ivanivske, across the canal west of the rail right-of-way and in the vicinity of Klischiivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1667621747359612929?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TreasChest At the initial stage of the counteroffensive, it will be extremely difficult, but in the end, the Armed Forces will do much more than analysts’ forecasts, — former director of the CIA, General David Petraeus, in an interview with The Washington Post.
¤ https://twitter.com/TreasChest/status/1667616548817719296?s=20/photo/1

“The Ukrainians have begun to carry out an extremely difficult military task. They are attacking prepared defensive positions that are well supported by artillery. And in war, defense always has an advantage over offense,” the general emphasizes.

In addition, the Armed Forces will not have air superiority — the first F-16 aircraft are expected only in the fall. However, according to Petraeus, Russia will not have it either.

According to the general, the battles at the initial stage of the Ukrainian offensive “will be extremely difficult, and then the situation will become easier.”

the Russians will lack the reserves to cover a front of a thousand kilometers, and on the side of the Armed Forces will be Western equipment and foreign-trained, motivated military personnel.

“I believe that the Ukrainian command will organize impressive joint military operations,” the American general is convinced. ¤ #counteroffensive_ukraine http://ZN.UA

🐣 RT @yamane_patricia And he’s added to it #ArrestThemAll
[TextLink:] ◕ https://twitter.com/yamane_patricia/status/1667537901930926080?s=20/

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump See you in Miami on Tuesday

[Flyer:] ALL HANDS ON DECK!
Trump Document Hoax Rally
400 N Miami Ave.
Miami, FL 33128
Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse
Tuesday, June 13 10am to 5pm
🖼 https://twitter.com/yamane_patricia/status/1667537901930926080?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople We are numb to how completely & utterly insane this lunatic is.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1667543870589243392?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @reaDonald Trump AMERICA WENT TO SLEEP LAST NIGHT WITH TEARS IN ITS EYES. SOMEDAY SOON, HOWEVER, IT WILL BE ABLE TO WIPE AWAY THOSE TEARS AND SMILE, BIGGER THAN EVER BEFORE, FOR WE WILL HAVE DEFEATED THE RADICAL LEFT MARXISTS, FASCISTS, COMMUNISTS, LUNATICS, & DERANGED MANIACS, & CLEARED THE PATH TO PUT AMERICA FIRST & THEN,QUICKLY, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

⭕ 9 Jun 2023

NYT Editorial: Donald Trump Should Never Again Be Trusted With the Nation’s Secrets https://tinyurl.com/yy6mdr7k “Trump’s recklessness in retaining and showing off military secrets is both arrogant and breathtaking. … It put the lives of American soldiers at risk”

CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: Seven of Trump’s false or unsupported claims on the documents investigation https://tinyurl.com/2p8u28jk
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1668208354521481217?s=20/photo/1

🔻False claim: Trump was following the Presidential Records Act by refusing to immediately return documents
🔻False claim: Obama, the Bushes and others took millions of documents home with them after leaving office
🔻False claim: The federal government could have simply asked for the documents back
🔻Unsupported claim: Trump declassified everything
🔻Unsupported claim: The FBI might be wrongly describing empty folders as actual documents
🔻Unsupported claim: The feds might have planted evidence
🔻False claim: Biden has been ‘totally uncooperative’

📊 YahooNews/NVofUA: Over 80% of Ukrainians oppose territorial concessions, even at risk of protracted war — poll https://tinyurl.com/23x733ya

CBSNews: Justice Department unseals Donald Trump indictment—and reveals the charges against him https://tinyurl.com/mrxas2c7

The historic federal indictment filed against former President Donald Trump was made public Friday, detailing the charges the former president is facing related to his handling of sensitive government records after leaving the White House.

The 44-page indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida alleges that Trump “endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal retention of classified documents.” The indictment names Walt Nauta, an aide to Trump who served as a White House valet, as a co-conspirator.

The indictment lists 37 felony counts in all against Trump:

31 counts of willful retention of classified documents
1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice
1 count of withholding a document or record
1 count of corruptly concealing a document or record
1 count of concealing a document in a federal investigation
1 count of scheme to conceal
and one count of making false statements and representations.
At least four of the charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Trump was summoned to appear in federal district court in Miami on Tuesday for an arraignment. He spent Friday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, golfing with GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, who tweeted a photo with the former president.

Read the full text of the indictment against Trump here https://tinyurl.com/2p94kywd

What information was in the boxes stored by Trump?

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” the indictment states. “The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Among 31 records “relating to the national defense” discovered at Mar-a-Lago were White House intelligence briefings from 2018 through 2020 related to foreign countries, documents concerning military capabilities of foreign countries and the U.S., a June 2020 document involving a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities, an undated record about U.S. nuclear weaponry and a document from October 2018 concerning the communications with another country’s leader.

Twenty-one of these documents had a “TOP SECRET” classification marking, while nine were marked “SECRET.” The final document bore no marking, according to a chart included in the indictment.

The 31 documents relate to Trump’s alleged violation of federal law regarding the willful retention of national defense information.

The 38 counts in the indictment — the final count, also of making false statements, is specific to Nauta — stem from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into documents recovered from Trump’s South Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, after he left the White House in January 2021. Roughly 300 documents marked classified in all were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in the months after the end of Trump’s presidency.

The indictment states that Mar-a-Lago “was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents” after Trump left office.

“Nevertheless, Trump stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club — including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room,” according to the filing, which includes photos showing boxes stacked on the ballroom stage and in a bathroom next to a shower and toilet.

Another photograph contained in the indictment shows one box located in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago tipped over on the ground, with materials spilling out from it. The indictment states that on Dec. 7, 2021, Nauta discovered the fallen box and texted an unidentified Trump employee, “I opened the door and found this…” with two photos of the scene. Contained among the items in the box was a document marked “SECRET/REL TO USA, FVEY,” meaning it was releasable only to the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S., prosecutors said.

Trump allegedly showed classified documents to others

It also alleges Trump showed classified documents to others and notes that on multiple occasions, the former president spoke of the importance of protecting classified information, both as a candidate in 2016 and then as president. The former president did not inform U.S. Secret Service he was storing records with classification markings at Mar-a-Lago.

According to the indictment, there were two occasions in 2021 when Trump showed classified documents to others. The first occurred in July 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster during a recorded meeting with a writer, publisher and two staff members, none of whom had security clearances. Trump “showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that he said was prepared for him by the Defense Department” and called the plan “highly confidential” and “secret.” He then said, “As president I could have declassified it … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,” the filing states.

The second occasion took place weeks later, in either August or September 2021, also at the Bedminster property. The indictment states that Trump showed an official with his political action committee who also lacked a security clearance a classified map related to a military operation and “told the representative that he should not be showing it and that the representative should not get too close.”

Trump “caused some of his boxes” to be moved to Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in May 2021, which the indictment notes “was not an authorized location.”

Unlawful retention and obstruction

The indictment lays out the efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration, then the Justice Department, to recover presidential records. Those demands began with the Archives in May 2021 and escalated over the next 15 months, with a federal grand jury issuing a subpoena on May 11, 2022, for all documents with classification markings.

Trump met with two of his lawyers to discuss the response to the subpoena days after it was issued, during which the attorneys said they needed to search for documents that would be responsive to it. Citing comments by Trump memorialized by one of his lawyers, the indictment states the former president said, “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes,” and asked, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

In between the meeting with his lawyers on May 23, 2022, about the subpoena, and June 2, 2022, when one of Trump’s lawyers returned to Mar-a-Lago to sift through boxes kept in the storage room, Nauta moved “at Trump’s direction,” 64 boxes to the former president’s residence, prosecutors claim. Thirty were brought to the storage room, according to the indictment.

In response to the subpoena, a total of 38 documents marked classified were given to Justice Department officials who traveled to Mar-a-Lago to collect them. A third Trump attorney — who did not search the boxes on the property — was present on June 3, 2022, when the records were turned over and signed a certification stating that “[b]ased upon the information that [had] been provided to” her, “a diligent search was conducted of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida.”

“These statements were false because, among other reasons, Trump had directed Nauta to move boxes before Trump Attorney 1’s June 2 review, so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found — and in fact were not found — by Trump Attorney 1,” the indictment states.

The attempts to recover the records culminated in an extraordinary court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI on Aug. 8, 2022. The indictment notes that “more than 100 documents with classification markings remained at The Mar-a-Lago club” until the FBI’s August search.

The FBI opened its investigation into the alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago at the end of March 2022, and a federal grand jury investigation started the next month.

Prosecutors detailed what they said were the former president’s efforts to obstruct the probe, including suggesting his attorney falsely represent to investigators that Trump didn’t have documents relevant to a grand jury subpoena and directing Nauta to move boxes of records to conceal them from Trump’s lawyer, the FBI and grand jury.

He also suggested his attorney hide or destroy documents covered by the subpoena. Prosecutors allege that Trump directed his attorney to sign a “sworn certification” that all the classified documents had been turned over to the FBI — when Trump knew there were more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

The government says Trump knew this because he “had directed that boxes be removed from the Storage Room [at Mar-a-Lago] before Trump Attorney 1 conducted the June 2, 2022 search” for documents with classified markings. As a result, Trump Attorney 1’s search “would not and did not locate” documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena” — and were not provided to the FBI.

After the June 3, 2022 search, the government says “more than 100 documents with classification markings remained at The Mar-a-Lago club until the FBI search on August 2022.”

The indictment asserts that Trump kept classified documents “originated by, or implicating the equities of” number agencies within the intelligence community, including the CIA, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and Departments of Energy, Defense and State.

The criminal case brought by federal prosecutors in Florida is unrelated to the state charges leveled against him in April in New York. That indictment entails allegations of falsification of business records.

Smith is also examining efforts to stop the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election and events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, and that investigation remains ongoing.

What happens next with Trump?

Trump is expected to travel to Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday to speak first at the state’s GOP convention and then at the North Carolina Republican convention in Greensboro.

On Monday, two sources with knowledge of the planning told CBS News that Trump will travel from Bedminister to Miami via his private plane, “Trump Force One.” He is expected to spend the night at Trump National Doral Miami before motorcading to the federal courthouse for his scheduled arraignment on Tuesday.

🐣 RT @davidmweissman This is the lord and savior of the Republican Party. Trump is now sending his cult to intimidate Jack Smith and his wife. This does not sound like an innocent man.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/davidmweissman/status/1667270993155325955?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonaldTrump This is the man who caused the Lois Lerner catastrophe with the IRS. He went after Evangelicals and Great Americans of Faith. The United States had to apologize, and pay major damages for what this deranged lunatic did. He had a unanimous loss in the Supreme Court. His wife is a Trump Hater, just as he is a Trump Hater–a deranged “psycho” that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with “Justice,” other than to look at Biden as a criminal, which he is!

⋙ 🐣 SCOTUS overturned the Gov McDonnell bribery conviction, ruling the bribes he took weren’t substantial enough. Given the bribes Justice Thomas (and others, like Scalia) accepted, Donnelly’s price-tag must have seemed pretty cheap
⋙ 🐣 Lois Lerner was exonerated. Trump’s own DOJ dropped the case. Her IRS went after as many left-leaning groups as right-leaning groups. Sort of like Benghazi, there was no “there there”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ZAPORIZHZHIA AXIS / 2115 UTC 9 JUN/ The UKR government has requested media/social media reportage to remain mindful of Operational Security. The UKR Gen’l Staff reported on 9 JUN that on the Zaporizhzhia axis RU forces carried out airstrikes at Olhivskyi, Hulyaipole and Stepove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1667277673062715397?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TreasChest Members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives, from the Democratic and Republican parties, introduced a resolution calling on the administration of President Joe Biden to transfer long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, – the co-author of the resolution, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, Republican Michael McCaul.

“If the USA does not provide Ukraine with all the necessary weapons, it will contribute to the prolongation of the war. ¤ The success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is directly related to the military assistance provided by the United States and our allies.

Therefore, it is extremely unfortunate that the administration is delaying billions of dollars in military funding that could be immediately transferred to Ukraine and, in turn, help its Armed Forces significantly change the situation on the battlefield.

The United States and its allies jointly possess thousands of ATACMS missiles that could be transferred to Ukraine. ¤ Russia’s advantage in long-range weapons now forces Ukrainian forces to fight in a much more disadvantageous position.

The rapid provision of this extremely important weaponry will provide the Ukrainian military with the necessary ability to strike deep in the enemy’s rear, which they currently do not have, undermining Russia’s ability to wage war,” the resolution reads.

⋙ 🐣 It’s extremely heartening to see this. Although there are certain (loud, uninformed, unserious) voices among the GOP in the House, I’m always relieved to recall that the heads of the key committees (Intelligence, Foreign Affairs etc) stand strongly behind Ukraine

WaPo: Here are the 37 charges against Trump and what they mean https://tinyurl.com/mrsvdnjd Trump is accused of violating seven federal laws but faces 37 separate charges.
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1667251918052245505?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @EricLiptonNYT Here is the full Trump indictment document FYI. Click on link. https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/gov-uscourts-flsd-648653-3/ecd27a8d6d1f36ef/full.pdf
📔 Trump Indictment (Documents) https://tinyurl.com/2p8xwkpr 49p
📔 Copyable Version https://tinyurl.com/mry82c9v
📔 ⋙ See under Entire Articles: Indict Docs 6-12-2023

🐣 RT @kaitlancollins Trump indictment says on two occasions in 2021, he showed classified documents to others — one was the July recording CNN reporting referenced and the other was August or September 2021 when he showed people without clearances “a classified map related to a military operation.”

🧵 RT @EliotHiggins One thing I haven’t been able to figure out with the dam destruction is we have local people saying they heard an explosion at about 2:20am, then video footage of the dam supposedly from 2:46am showing a small explosion, and then reports of a large explosion detected after that.
📌 💽 ◕ https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1667100337453277185?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Quote: “Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other” ~ Thomas Paine, Common Sense

PravdaUA: Occupiers admit hydroelectric power plant blown up by Russian sabotage group https://tinyurl.com/3c938kmf Source: press service of the Security Service of Ukraine, citing Russian sources
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1667117884051447810?s=20/photo/1

Quote from the Security Service: “The invaders wanted to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam and caused a man-made disaster in our country’s south.”

Details: “It’s not them [Ukraine – ed.] who have struck. Our sabotage group is there. They wanted to scare them with this dam. It didn’t go according to plan, it was more than they planned,” says the Russian military.

The occupier goes on to describe the consequences of this disaster, which Russia is trying to hide: rising water levels, flooding and destruction.

🐣 RT @Justlove3332 Spelling is fun. In all seriousness, every sweaty altar boy (Rubio) every base head (Lee) every white boot wearing, Disney hating dingle(Meatball) who still defends this man or talks about “banana republic” can suck it. You unleashed this orange ape on us. Keep feeding the beast.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Justlove3332/status/1667041724366041091?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [6/8] CRAZY JACK SMITH AND HIS BAND OF THUGS AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ARE COMING FOR YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT TRYING TO TAKE ME DOWN IN THE GREATEST WHICH HUNT OF ALL TIME. SO UNFAIR! NIXON SAID WHEN A PRESIDENT DOES IT’S NOT ILLEGAL, AND TRUMP IS A MUCH BETTER PRESIDENT THAN NIXON EVER WAS. TOTAL LOSER, HE COULDN’T TAKE DOWN ROE, HE LET THAT HAPPEN AND VIETNAM TOO. VERY SAD. I HAD A PERFECT CALLAND FORGOT TO GIVE BACK SOME PAPERWORK TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIEVES AND SUDDNELY FOR TRUMP IT’S SUCHABIG DEAL. I ALREADY KNOW IN MY MIND I WILL BE PRESIDENT AGAIN IN 2024 SO IT WON’T MATTER. AND JUST WAIT. THEY WILLALL PAY!

⭕ 8 Jun 2023

DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Trump Case Isn’t About ‘Documents,’ It’s About National Security https://tinyurl.com/yt5tmn6f
// The media needs to stop focusing on the paperwork and make it clear that the former president’s actions posed a serious threat to the country.

[…] … Based on evidence that has already been made public we know that Trump did not mistakenly shift a classified document or two from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. He was briefed repeatedly on the proper handling of classified materials. He has even acknowledged, on tape, that he understood how such sensitive, easily weaponizable documents should be treated.

But he ignored the law. He ignored the advice he was repeatedly given. And, based on reporting to date, he stole scores of items that were not his, to which he had no right, which could put the lives of Americans and our national interests and those of our allies at risk.

When news of his theft was discovered and the U.S. Department of Justice sought the return of those documents, Trump did not cooperate. He lied about them. He concealed documents from the government. He obstructed justice. In fact, if recent reporting is true, he did not just obstruct justice, he went to great lengths to do so. Indeed, the lengths he went to force us to ask another question that is relevant in this case: “Why?”

Why did he go to such great lengths to violate the law and put his future freedom at risk not to mention exposing U.S. intelligence assets to great jeopardy? Was it just to satisfy his admittedly gargantuan ego? To be able to say, “Lookee here, I was president once and I can prove it?” Even for Trump, that would be reckless.

No, it is unlikely he would have committed these alleged crimes unless he had a purpose in mind, an audience for what he had taken in mind, an anticipated return envisioned for the investment of time he had made, and for the risk he had undertaken.

We do not know to whom the documents may have been shown. Perhaps we will learn that in due course. We do not know (and perhaps may never know) to whom he may have contemplated showing them. But it seems safe to assume he did not hang onto them because he possessed some Harlan Crow-like impulse to create a personal museum that paid tribute to historical misdeeds.

We know this, in part, because he had shown a complete contempt for our national security, for the products produced by our intelligence community, for the entire concept of protecting vital national secrets throughout his presidency.

He appointed a national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who lied to the FBI about inappropriate exchanges he had with foreign enemies. He sought to defend that national security adviser after his crimes were clear (and has said he would reappoint him should he be elected again.) In one of his first meetings in the Oval Office with Russia’s foreign minister, he revealed to him and to the Russian ambassador sensitive classified information that put allied intelligence assets at risk.

He ignored the advice of national security professionals and granted his son-in-law and daughter classified clearances they should not have had. He repeatedly attacked and denigrated the intelligence community including one time, while standing alongside Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018.

He put stooges in high places in the intelligence community to ensure that he would be able to control any revelations they might produce that he saw as threatening, and perhaps to enable him to come up with dirt on his enemies. He has said he would fire the professionals in the U.S. government in a clear effort to be able to replace them with those who placed loyalty to him above loyalty to the country or our Constitution.

This is all known. All on the public record. He was a threat to national security long before he stole these classified materials and went to great lengths to illegally retain them.

Indeed, there are not only these facts to provide context but the other major cases against Trump that are looming. What could better illustrate that Trump was something more than a souvenir hunter? He was, after all, impeached for seeking to blackmail Ukraine’s President Zelensky into performing a political hit job on Joe Biden prior to the 2020 campaign. He was again impeached for leading an insurrection against the U.S. government, actions which themselves may lead to a set of indictments from special prosecutor Jack Smith. Part of what Smith may be investigating are the efforts at defrauding the U.S. electorate, and perhaps Trump’s own donors in an effort to illegally maintain the presidency. Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis may also prosecute him for those crimes. ¤ If Willis does it, let’s be careful not to refer to it as the “Georgia case” or simply as the “fake electors” case.

If Smith goes after Trump for leading an attempted coup against his own government, let’s not call it just the “Jan. 6 case” or be tempted to frame it in a way that makes it look, as some Republicans would have it, as though it were about just another partisan spat on Capitol Hill, albeit one that got a little out of hand.

The stakes in all these cases are much greater.

Take, for example, the reported case of a recording of Trump suggesting he was in possession of a classified war plans memo concerning possible moves we might make against Iran.

It’s not just egregious behavior, whatever the reason for his mentioning it, it also requires we consider what might happen if he shared that with his friends and business partners in Saudi Arabia or how, should the document become more widely available to our enemies, it could in a future conflict put U.S. soldiers lives at risk.

The case against Trump for leading a coup attempt is not about something that happened almost three years ago. He is running for president again. He has repeatedly shown his disregard for the Constitution and his willingness to place his own personal interests above those of the country. …

That is why we must frame the nature of the crimes with which the former president is being charged so carefully. We dare not numb ourselves to why they are important, numb ourselves to the anger and outrage we should be feeling or to the sense of danger that the likely defendant carries with him should the cases prove unsuccessful or, God forbid, their verdicts are subsequently nullified by an American electorate that failed to understand the scale and gravity of the crimes Trump committed repeatedly, often before our very eyes.

Donald Trump is not simply a clown, a fraud, an incompetent, a former game show host, or a sloppy, vulgar, golf-and-fast-food-loving doofus. Yes, he is all those things. But they are not the aspects of his character—or his behavior—that are important here.

He is, above all, a threat. He is a danger. He is tied to our worst international enemies and a threat the FBI director calls the greatest we face (domestic terror).

His trials should not be seen as political spectacles or some new twisted Trumpian reality show. They should be seen as an effort by our system to protect us, to take a dangerous man off the streets, to reduce the threat to our nation, our children, our allies, our values, and our institutions that this one malevolent, profoundly corrupt man poses.

🐣 RT @drdave1999 Political types are all over the air tonight, reminding people that “this is a dark day in American history.” I disagree, and I’ll tell you why. ¤ Trump’s given us more than 6 years of dark days. Now that the legal system is working, today is actually a day to be proud of America.

.🐣 RT @atrupar his face screams FAFO
🖼 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1666956936514793472?s=20/photo/1
// bearded Jack Smith

🐣 RT @SkinnerPm Goodnight to most, from all at Skinnerville, where we are thinking about our sweet SweetDog, who loved and was loved, and who was never indicted.

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump charged in Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation https://tinyurl.com/348nncvk “The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter.”
// Former president, first ever to face federal criminal charges, posts on social media that he must appear in court in Miami on Tuesday

‼️🐣 RT @oneunderscore__ Donald Trump: “I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1666952332884561920?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Page 1: The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is “secured” by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time.
🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Page 2: | have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election. I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!

🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Russian state TV hosts have openly endorsed Donald Trump for president: “Our beloved Trump, in whom we place all of our hope… As always, our candidate doesn’t let us down. We need to support him.” #TBT #DonaldTrumpIsARussianAsset #TraitorTrump [via JuliaDavis]
💽 https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1666824113460060160?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen says Israel assesses Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam and Israel is looking into how to provide humanitarian aid

NBCNews: Ukraine launches counteroffensive against Russia https://tinyurl.com/3jch6b8x “This new phase of the war, which many see as crucial to persuading Western allies to renew their support, comes as Ukraine grapples with the fallout from the destruction of a critical dam in the region.”

🐣 RT @marceelias 🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Supreme Court AFFRIMS lower court victory in Alabama redistricting case. Follow @DemocracyDocket for details….
⋙ 🐣 RT @marceelias In addition to adding an additional minority opportunity district in Alabama, this will also add one in Louisiana (a case from there was held pending this decision). It will also result in least one more in GA and likely several in Texas.

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: military expert Evgeny Buzhinsky proposes destroying Kyiv dam and razing the city to the ground.
💽 [YT] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1666792560004677634?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent UN agrees to conduct evacuations from flooded occupied areas. ¤ Ukraine and the UN agreed that the UN would deploy personnel to the flood-affected left bank of the Dnipro River, occupied by Russia, to provide aid and conduct evacuations, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry announced.

⭕ 7 Jun 2023

TheIndependent [UK]: Prosecutors ready to ask for Trump indictment on obstruction and Espionage Act charges https://tinyurl.com/ycnbacvn “[P]rosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week”
// The Independent has learned that prosecutors are prepared to ask grand jurors to vote on charges as early as Thursday

🐣 RT @Faytuks A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states do not provide tangible security guarantees to Ukraine at NATO’s summit in Vilnius, former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen says – The Guardian
⋙ TheGuardian: Nato members may send troops to Ukraine, warns former alliance chief https://tinyurl.com/3pkebe3f
// Security guarantees and membership path needed at Nato summit to avoid escalation, says Anders Rasmussen

🐣 RT @Sytheruk Ukrainians are dying every single day, including children. Russia have well and truly shown their hand. The dam confirms it. ¤ Everything in wests power toHelp Ukraine needs to be done now! ¤ Send Ukraine everything! F-16, f-18. Typhoons etc and send loads more tanks! Do more!
💽 https://twitter.com/Sytheruk/status/1666600335463395330?s=20/photo/1
.// caution: scenes of death and devastation

TheHill: House cancels votes for rest of week amid floor ‘chaos’ https://tinyurl.com/jkzutt3a “A group of 11 conservatives sunk a procedural rule vote Tuesday in a stunning rebuke to GOP leadership, fueled by anger over the debt limit bill negotiated by McCarthy and President Biden”

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Prosecutors Tell Trump’s Legal Team He Is a Target of Investigation https://tinyurl.com/ycdebkt6 ‘Notifying a potential defendant that he or she is a target indicates that the person is a direct focus of a criminal investigation and often precedes the filing of charges’
// The notice from the office of the special counsel Jack Smith suggested that an indictment was on the horizon in the investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents.

WaPo: Trump special counsel shifts focus of possible indictment in documents case to S. Florida https://tinyurl.com/2z72hptv
// People familiar with the matter said prosecutors want to base much of the case where most of alleged misconduct happened

🐣 RT @SykesCharlie Ranty McRant has some thoughts. DOJ, FBI,NEW YORK A.G., NEW YORK D.A., ATLANTA D.A., FASCISTS ALL!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1666516273465794589?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Wow, this is turning out to be the greatest & most vicious instance of ELECTION INTERFERENCE in the history of our Country. Remember, I’m leading DeSanctimonious BIG in the Polls but, more importantly, I’m leading Biden by a lot. Also, & perhaps most importantly, they are launching all of the many Fake Investigations against me RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CAMPAIGN, something which is unheard of & not supposed to happen. DOJ, FBI, NEW YORK A.G., NEW YORK D.A., ATLANTA D.A. FASCISTS ALL!

🐣 RT @yamane_patricia Ha! https://tinyurl.com/2zk6wddh Man just can’t stop lying 😡
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/yamane_patricia/status/1666584890723237888?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI, starting with the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, the “No Collusion” Mueller Report, Impeachment HOAX #1, Impeachment HOAX #2, the PERFECT Ukraine phone call, and various other SCAMS & WITCH HUNTS. A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE & ELECTION INTERFERENCE AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST
MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!

🐣 RT @syadoz1 Washington post says the first stage of the counter offensive is doing well
⋙ WaPo, David Ignatius (June 6): D-Day dawns for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mt3y7mj9 “Military campaigns are rarely all or nothing, but this one comes close. If Ukraine can drive back an already shaky Russian army, it stands a chance of forcing Moscow to bargain for an end of its failed invasion.”

🐣 RT @wartranslated [2am Ukr] Several Russian sources are noticing a dramatic increase in fire and assault on their positions tonight in Zaporizhzhia direction. They say tanks are attacking their positions and shelling is non-stop:

Zapiski Veterana:
“I think now we can already talk about the beginning of the offensive announced by Ukraine for so long. There hasn’t been such movement at the front for a long time. And on the part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it never happened at all. ¤ It’s happening. Good luck to all.”

Sladkov:
“The offensive has begun. We have numbers. Wishing steadfastness to men in trenches. We’re not sleeping.”

Romanov believes this is still probing of defence:

“Not yet. ¤ There are active probes of our defense. In different areas, at different times of the day. ¤ Naturally, if the enemy manages to achieve success somewhere, he will try to consolidate and develop it.”

🐣 RT @reedgalen Is this real? I mean, even for him this is 🍌
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/reedgalen/status/1666578254332035073?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump WHEN MARK MEADOWS CAME CRAWLING TO ME WITH TEARS IN HIS EYES, SAYING SIR I NEED A JOB PLEASE HELP ME, I FELT VERY SORRY FOR HIM. I KNEW HE WAS STRONGLY HATED BY MOST OF HIS FELLOW CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS, BUT I HAD JUST FIRED MY PREVIOUS CHIEF OF STAFF, LIKE A DOG, SO I DECIDED TO HAVE MARK AUDITION FOR THE JOB, APPRENTICE STYLE. HOW DID HE THANK ME? BY HIRING VISCOUS RINOS & RATS WHO TURNED AND THROUGH ME UNDER THE BUS WITH THE RADICAL COMMUNISTS OF THE J6 COMMITTEE AND THEN A MAD DOG LEFTIST PROSECUTOR. I WAS GOING TO FIRE MARK IN 2021 BUT THE ELECTION WAS STOLLEN FROM ME!

🐣 The @UN or @NATO needs to go in immediately and estsblish a Safe Zone and rescue these people‼️ ¤ This is an 🚨EMERGENCY🚨
@StateDept @DeptofDefense @SecBlinken @POTUS
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa The situation in the occupied part of Kherson region is absolutely catastrophic.
¤ https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1666551447243182081?s=20

The occupiers simply abandoned people in these terrible conditions. Without rescue, without water, just on the rooftops in flooded communities. And this is another deliberate crime of Russia: after the terrorist state has caused a disaster, it also maximizes the damage from it.

Now we need a clear and quick response from the world to what is happening. It is even impossible to establish for sure how many people in the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson region may die without rescue, without drinking water, without food, without medical care. Our military and special services are rescuing people as much as it is possible, despite the shelling.

But large-scale efforts are needed. ¤ We need international organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help people in the occupied part of Kherson region. Each person who dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organizations that have forgotten how to save lives. If there is no international organization in the area of this disaster now, it means that it does not exist at all, that it is incapable of functioning. All the relevant appeals from Ukraine and our government are in place.

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Will tell you why my tweets may be a little more vitriolic than normal the past few days (aside from the obvious).

Met a woman from Lisychansk traveling alone. Her 14 year old daughter was gangraped by Russians a year ago while they took over her home, left her pregnant, later got abortion. Daughter committed suicide in Poland 2 months ago.

This is what Russians bring to Ukraine, and to hear these western fucks like Musk and the rest promote Russian PR without having ever lived under the Russian system and its barbarism, is infuriating.

Getting on Twitter now is like entering an alternate universe run by naive western kids that’ve never experienced life outside mom’s house. ¤ Is this what living in the safety of the West does to one’s brain now? So soft and easily manipulated?

🧵 RT @KofmanMichael A few thoughts on the dam’s destruction and its implications for Ukraine’s offensive. In brief, I doubt it will have a significant impact on UA mil operations. The Khakovka dam is at least 100 miles from where much of the activity might take place at its closest point. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1666477698607087616?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @KofmanMichael This is an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe, with long term economic implications for the region, for which Russia is responsible, but I’m skeptical that Ukraine’s military prospects in the short term will be negatively affected in a meaningful way.

🐣 RT @walter_report Evacuation of civilians and animals on the right (west) bank of Dnipro river continues after russians blew up Kakhovka dam on Dnipro river. ¤ Those who are on the east bank (under russian occupation) are left on their own. ¤ Serhii Korovayny
🖼 https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1666432939347918851?s=20/photo/1
// rescued dog clings to rescuers leg

🐣 RT @Tendar Ukrainian drones delivering water to the citizens of Russian-occupied Oleshky. The Russian occupation neither helps nor would it allow any SAR helicopters to be deployed. The Ukrainian army tries its best to help. #Ukraine #Kherson #Oleshky

⭕ 6 Jun 2023

CNN: Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that the ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship https://tinyurl.com/2spn689z

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer RUSSIAN WAR CRIME: The circumstances of the failure of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam indicate that it was an overt act of the RU occupation forces. On or about 1 JUN, RU forces emplaced explosives adjacent to the south bank of the hydroelectric complex– which they control.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1666216915058958337?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @drosha69 205th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade of ru warned that the Nova Kakhovka dam is rigged to blow by ruzzians in Fall of 2022
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/drosha69/status/1666038445284950016?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/1915 UTC 6 JUN/ On 5 JUN UKR air defense intercepted 10 recon UAVs 6 other RU UAVs of various types. UKR Missile and artillery units hit 2 command posts, 12 concentrations of RU troops, weapons and military equipment, 1 anti-aircraft missile system.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1666159135388205074?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald Water level in reservoir behind Kakhovka dam was at historic max before it was destroyed. There’s speculation in Ukraine that Russia, which controlled the sluices on the east bank at the hydropower plant, raised the water deliberately to maximise destruction – a long-planned act.
◕ https://twitter.com/Euan_MacDonald/status/1666025231113244673?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ind_prop is there a plausible explanation why the water level dropped so significantly to begin with?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald The Russians may have been experimenting to see what effect lowering the reservoir level would have on the cooling ponds at Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant – but that’s just speculation on my part.

🐣 RT @RusMission_EU The Commission has proven that #Washington set up a vast network of extra-territorial biological laboratories around the world and in #Ukraine. ¤ We hope that this document will not go unnoticed by the EU. ¤ https://tinyurl.com/ydf7pzv4
⋙ 🐣 This is not a scientific or legal paper. Many claims but no footnotes ~ seriously⁉️ When I got to “military biological projects in Ukraine, which were partially supervised by Hunter Biden,” I laughed out loud. I’ve written papers for IBM. UChicago and Mayo Clinic. This report is a joke.

p19 In 2009, Hunter Biden, the son of the current U.S. President Joe Biden, Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former US Secretary of State John Kerry, and Devon Archer, founded the investment company Rosemont Seneca Partners. Close connection of this fund with principal contractors of the Pentagon, including Metabiota, can be traced.

p40 Not so long ago, the U.S. non-governmental organization Judicial Watch decided to conduct its own investigation in the context of incessant news about U.S. involvement in military biological projects in Ukraine, which were partially supervised by Hunter Biden. To do this, journalists initiated a request to the DTRA.

🐣 RT @gtconway3d everyone should retweet this as many times as humanly and technologically possible
⋙ 🐣 RT @AccountableGOPm Bill Barr on the classified documents investigation: “This is not a case of the DOJ conducting a witch hunt…This would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents, but he jerked them around for a year and a half…There is no excuse for what he did here.”

🐣 RT @Faytuks The US government has intelligence that is leaning towards Russia being behind the Nova Kakhovka attack, two US officials & one Western official says – NBC ¤ The US is working to declassify some of the intelligence & share it as early as Tuesday afternoon
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1666125145679753216?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NBCNews: Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of blowing up Nova Kakhovka dam https://tinyurl.com/3a3ub9xe
//: The critical Kakhovka dam was destroyed, according to video verified by NBC News and local officials on both sides.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA /1600 UTC 6 JUN/ UKR Gen’l Staff reports on 6 JUN indicate a RU assault on Velyka Novosilka was broken up; in this engagement a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter was shot down.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1666112098756116481?s=20 /photo/1

🐣 [pdf:] 🐣 RT @lijukic Great map showing soil quality across Europe. You can see whyUkraine is the breadbasket of Europe.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1666131859498053646?s=20/photo/1

🐣 “The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine could imperil the supply of fresh water to the Russian-occupied Crimea” Newsweek: https://tinyurl.com/yaj7mpsa
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1666134326411505672?s=20/photo/1
// Map: “THE NORTH CRIMEAN CANAL: CRIMEA’S WATER LIFELINE” from .EuromaidanPress

🐣 RT @PointlessWar The peak of the Dnieper water leakage is probably observed right now. [11:45amCT] This comes from an interview with the head of Ukrhydroenergo Ihor Syrota for Forbes ¤ A few points, according to the head of “Ukrhydroenergo”
🔺 Restoration of the Kakhovskaya HPP will cost $1 billion and may last 5 years.
🔺 The reservoir will be activated to the “dead point”, when the leak will stop, in about 4 days. 🔺 Regarding the Zaporizhzhya NPP, the situation is under control, catastrophic consequences are not expected.
🔺 Most of the three regions, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhya, will remain without water.
🔺 According to approximate estimates, 35-37 villages will be flooded. [of 80]
🔺 According to calculations, in 7-10 days all the water that arrived will go further into the sea.
🖼 https://twitter.com/PointlessWar/status/1666124340134281220?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 I said in 2014 that Putin would try to destroy Ukraine if he could not control it. He is losing and lashing out, but allowing him to win would be far worse. The only response is to help Ukraine achieve victory and territorial integrity asap.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russia blowing up Kakhovka NPP is an act of terrorism that will have long-lasting negative effects not just on Ukraine but the whole world.

The South of Ukraine is one of the main global agricultural areas. The destruction of the HPP will flood the lands, destroy the irrigation system – less food will be grown, and exported, deepening the global food crisis. Russia will be able to continue blackmailing the world with food terrorism as one of the leading food exporters.

This could have devastating effects on Ukrainian economy – food is one of our main exports. The costs of restoration will be enormous. Tens of thousands more people will become IDPs.

The North-Crimean canal will dry out, leaving Crimea without drinking water. This means that when Crimea returns to Ukraine, it will be a disaster zone, just like Donbas. ¤ Terrorist state is committing genocide right before our eyes. The consequences will be felt for decades.

The world must acknowledge Russia as a terrorist state. Ukrainian Armed Forces must receive everything and anything to ensure a sustainable Ukrainian victory and stopping Russia as a global threat to humanity.

🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel @ZelenskyyUa told about the Kakhovska HPP blow up by Russians at the B-9 Summit in Slovakia. The Bucharest Nine is a Polish-Romanian initiative launched in 2015 that aims to help exchange views and coordinate positions on the security of NATO’s eastern-flank countries. ¤ It brings together Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia. @jensstoltenberg @ZuzanaCaputova @AndrzejDuda @prezidentpavel @GitanasNauseda @KlausWe47855967
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1666055171179266050?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA October 20, 2022. ¤ Zelensky warns that the invaders are mining the units and the dam of the Kakhovska hydroelectric power station and asks to send an international observation mission there..Thank you UN and all the other wonderful organizations…

🐣 RT @mfa_russia Russian MFA Spox Maria #Zakharova: On October 21, 2022, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN sent a letter to the UN Secretary General regarding Kiev regime’s plans to destroy the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam. ¤ Here is a question for @antonioguterres: what has been done?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1666038487546560514?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Faytuks Russian sources don’t seem that sad that the Nova Kakhovka dam is destroyed. ¤ Fighterbomber: “The more problems crests have, the easier it is for us. In general, the collapse of the dam from a military point of view suggests that for some time downstream there will be no offensive operations and we can spend this time eliminating the counterattack” https://t.me/fighter_bomber/12620
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1665965984560164865?s=20/photo/1

It is clear that the main news today will be Kakhovskaya HPP. It is clear that crests [“khokols”] will blame us for its destruction without bothering with any proofs. But. Personally, Iam in favor of demolishing everything that is needed there.

Hydroelectric power station, nuclear power plant, thermal power plant, Chernihiv, Bankovaya, pipelines and other dry cargo ships and in general everything that we can hit today with conventional weapons. For tomorrow it will all have to be beaten with a nuclear.

The more problems crests have, the easier it is for us. In general, the collapse of the dam from a military point of view suggests that there will be no offensive actions downstream for some time and we can spend this time eliminating the counterattack, which has finally begun and calmly burn the Leopards, than, in fact, aviation is now busy. And aviation is there to hu me.

The crests spent the night as planned, in air alerts, while the work of the Kyiv “Patriota” was not noted by subscribers.

The so far unfinished “Patriot” in Zhuliany worked on long-range targets with an incomprehensible result, but it is clear that at least one rocket went off right at the exit from the launcher, I hope with a good result.

In general, while enjoying morning coffee, we are enjoying the hysteria of crests at the hydroelectric power station and are waiting for a video of the work of a couple of dozen UMPCs in only one fortified area

🐣 RT @KateGoesTech As a result of today’s terrorist act Crimea will have water access problems for decades ¤ Why is that interesting? ¤ Because Nazis know they won’t be able to hold Crimea another year
🌎 https://twitter.com/KateGoesTech/status/1666008488701485065?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @tvtoront Zelenskyy after the NSDC meeting: ¤ This night at 02:50 🇷🇺 terrorists carried out an internal detonation of the Kakhovska HPP structures. About 80 settlements are in the flooding zone. ¤ 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @tvtoront It was authorized to carry out evacuation from risk areas and to provide drinking 💧 to all cities and villages that were supplied from the Kakhovka reservoir. ¤ 💬We do everything to save people. All services, military, Government, Office are involved – President Zelenskyy. 2/2

🐣 RT @AlexBondODUA What ruzzia did with Nova Kakhovka is comparable in scale to the use of nuclear weapons. ¤ I don’t understand what moscow has to do to make the world community realize that this cancer needs to be strangled. ¤ Need a complete embargo on all Russian goods!
💽 🌎 https://twitter.com/AlexBondODUA/status/1666000391383703552?s=20/photo/1
// model of flooding from Nova Kakhovka dam

🐣 RT @kromark Not only important what happens to the areas down the stream, but up the stream too – and not because of the ZNPP, which reactors are shut down for months now and cold, but for agriculture and economy first and foremost with water levels going low. To be short, it’s a disaster.

🐣 RT @BasedWarszawa A reminder that the russians have a history of destroying dams. In August 1941 the NKVD blew up a dam in Zaporizhzhya, killing tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians. For decades the tragedy was hidden and unacknowledged.
⋙ 🐣 RFERL (2013): Ukrainian Activists Draw Attention To Little-Known WWII Tragedy https://tinyurl.com/5n7n94nn
// 8/23/2023

🐣 RT @AleksandrX13 People from the russian-occupied areas hit by the flood say that in many places the orcs are sitting on trees and screaming as the waters rise. ¤ It seems they underestimated the scale of the disaster they caused. Their fortifications are underwater. And I wonder just how much, in terms of supplies, arms, and heavy guns, they have lost.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AleksandrX13 The russians in the flooded areas are in a complete panic, being much more hit by the disaster than even Ukrainians in these areas – it seems they had no idea, when they destroyed the dam, of the forces they were unleashing!

NYT: Poland Isn’t the Friend the West Thinks It Is https://tinyurl.com/ha43f5s5 “[T]he countries most muscular in their defense of Ukraine are those affected by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact …. Theirs is a solidarity based on the trauma of Russian imperialism”

[…] That fear is what undergirds the country’s response to the war. Poland’s modern history — annexed, subordinated and occupied — is one of a recurrent loss of independence. This tragic inheritance, never far away, explains the government’s energetic response to the war in Ukraine: The future must not repeat the past. And it’s not just Poland. A glance at the map is enough to see that the countries most muscular in their defense of Ukraine are those affected by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, which exposed Finland, the Baltic States and Romania, along with Poland, to the depredations of conquering armies. Theirs is a solidarity based on the trauma of Russian imperialism.

The United States should take note. In February, on the anniversary of the invasion, President Biden spoke in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. After praising Poland as one of the United States’ “great allies,” Mr. Biden stressed the importance of defending freedom and democracy. It was a powerful speech. But freedom and democracy do not, in this part of the world, necessarily go hand in hand. Just look at the fact that the Law and Justice party, despite government scandals and sky-high inflation, sits comfortably at around 35 percent in the polls.

The party’s newly burnished international image as steadfast friend to Ukraine only helps to entrench such support. The government can plausibly present itself as the guarantor of security, both at home and abroad, underwritten by Western backing. Along with countries like India, Turkey and Rwanda, Poland may become part of the jigsaw of not-so-liberal friends of the West, helping to consolidate opposition to Russia and China. This process is happening for the convenience of the West — but not in adherence to its values.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The United States, for one, exerts considerable influence in Poland. If Mr. Biden, whose two visits to the country in the past year were major events, spoke out against the government’s domestic behavior, it would send a powerful message to party leaders. What’s more, Washington could make financial assistance — last year, the United States invested $288.6 million in Poland’s military — conditional on compliance with democratic standards and the rule of law. It might not work immediately: The European Union’s withholding of post-pandemic recovery funds to protest the government’s violation of judicial independence hasn’t reversed that slide. But it would show Poland’s illiberals that they can’t just do as they please.

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Major Ukrainian dam damaged, threatening southern areas with flooding https://tinyurl.com/ypprt2d7 “Both Russia and Ukraine have previously accused each other of plotting to destroy the dam, without providing evidence”
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1665985565345325059?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 5 Jun 2023

Remember this? ➔ Reuters (Oct 21, 2022): Factbox: Is the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine about to be blown? https://tinyurl.com/32bpxzts
// 10/21/2022

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder “Russia issues an unending stream of nuclear threats. In the West today… these are discussed in psychological rather than strategic terms… When Russians talk about nuclear war, the safest response is to ensure their very conventional defeat.”
⋙ NYT, Timothy Snyder: Putin Is Fighting, and Losing, His Last War https://tinyurl.com/5n6ew795

🐣 RT @ AntiToxicPeople LOL
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1665878518692220929?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonaldTrump Ty Cobb is a disgruntled former Lawyer, who represented me long ago, and knows absolutely nothing about the Boxes Hoax being perpetrated upon me by the DOJ for purposes of interfering with the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election, where I am substantially leading all “comers, including Republicans and Democrats. His words are angry, nasty, and libelous, only because I did not continue using him (and paying him), and for good reason. He will be held legally responsible for his false statements!

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Prigozhin attack Konashenkov 👀👀👀🐸🤜🏻🐍
[TextLink:] /https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1665863388507914245?s=20photo/1
Viktorovich Prigozhin commented on the MoD report: <<| think Baron Munchausen is resting. And judging by what is written here, we will soon get to the aliens with such losses. To destroy one and a half thousand people, it must be such a massacre, per day, over 150 kilometers, that motherdo not grieve. Therefore, I think that this is just fromthe realm of wild, sloppy fantasy. In general, you need to add up all the numbers that Konashenkov gives. ¤ I think that we have just destroyed the entire planet Earth 5 timess.>>
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @NOELreports Russian state media RIA Novosti about the events in Donetsk region. ¤ “The total losses of Ukrainian troops amounted to more than 1,500 personnel, 28 tanks, including 8 Leopards made in Germany, 3 wheeled tanks AMX-10 made in France and 109 armored fighting vehicles”.

NYT, Paul Krugman: The Eyes of the World Are Upon Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2tseysrn ‘If Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeds, the forces of democracy will be strengthened around the world, not least in America. If it fails, it will be a disaster for Ukraine and for the world’
// entire: “If Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeds, the forces of democracy will be strengthened around the world, not least in America. If it fails, it will be a disaster not just for Ukraine but for the world”

🧵 RT @TimInHonolulu 1. When #45 met with Russian spies in the Oval Office it was reported he burned an Israeli asset in Raqqa, a city that at the time was a focus of my reporting. I then took the time to examine the facts and the issue of whether POTUS had the power to declassify the Israeli asset.
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/TimInHonolulu/status/1665840725014216705?s=20
// photo of Trump with Russians in office

WaPo: Trump-funded studies disputing election fraud are focus in two probes https://tinyurl.com/7h2vs6ps “The research is likely to be used as the prosecutors try to build a broader case, alleging racketeering, according to the three people”
// The then-president’s campaign hired two firms to prove voter fraud, but none was ever found

WaPo: Ukrainian forces claim advances along front line; Russia says it repelled attack in Donetsk https://tinyurl.com/2xby9zbs

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar Russian and Ukrainian officials are signaling the start of the Ukrainian #counteroffensive. ISW has observed increased combat activity in different sectors of the frontline and assesses that Ukrainian forces are making territorial gains despite Russian claims to the contrary.⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1665763741407772672?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1665763741407772672.html

2/ The signals include Russian MoD claims that Ukrainian forces launched an unsuccessful “large-scale offensive” on June 4 & Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar’s June 5 statement that Ukrainian forces are “transferring to offensive actions” in some unspecified areas.

3/ Russian officials have historically immediately claimed that Ukrainian counter-offensives failed even when the counter-offensives ultimately succeed.

4/ @TheStudyofWar has indeed observed an increase in combat activity in different sectors of the frontline but will not speculate about or forecast the intent, weighting, or focus of Ukrainian counter-offensive operations.

5/ ISW will assess the outcome of Ukrainian counter-offensive operations when it can do so without compromising Ukrainian operational security, in accordance with ISW policy.

6/ A successful counteroffensive operation may take days, weeks, or even months before its outcome becomes fully clear, during which time Russian sources may falsely claim to have defeated it
.

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Although the global trend is clear – Russia will lose this war, Russia’s rulers continue to deny reality. […]
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1665813669865742336?s=20/photo/1

They continue to try to deceive the world, to circumvent sanctions, to produce more weapons, to ensure more resources and people are spent on this aggression… We are preparing our steps, new steps to further limit Russia’s military potential. Everyone in the world who helps the terrorist state circumvent sanctions in one way or another, everyone in the world whom Russia uses for the supply of weapons, components, equipment… Each such entity must feel the full force of the free world. And we will ensure this. It is a common task of the world to stop terror. And the main prerequisite for fulfilling this task is to stop any ways in which terrorists are still trying to get something for themselves. More news to come soon.

FactCheck[.]org (2022): The Facts on ‘De-Nazifying’ Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/342ec3b7 “A statement signed by more than 300 historians who study genocide, Nazism & World War II said Putin’s rhetoric about de-Nazifying fascists among Ukraine’s elected leadership is ‘propaganda’”

WaPo: Trump lawyers ask Justice Dept. not to charge Trump in classified docs case https://tinyurl.com/5utzc6x8
// High-stakes meeting included special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading probe of Trump’s conduct, possible obstruction

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1920 UTC 5 JUN/UKR forces have initiated multi-pronged offensive actions in the Bakhmut AO. UKR states it troops have advanced 200-1600 meters at Orikhovo-Vasylivka and Paraskoviivka, approximately 100-meters at Ivanivske, and 700 meters at Klischiivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1665798504545918982?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @LucasADWebber The White House said on Monday that actions by China in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea reflect a “growing aggressiveness” by Beijing’s military that raises the risk of an error where someone gets hurt https://tinyurl.com/2s3kabv4

🐣 RT @nytimes The decision by some Ukrainian soldiers to wear patches with Nazi icons threatens to reinforce Russian propaganda used to justify the invasion. It also could give the symbols mainstream life after the West’s decades-long efforts to eliminate them.
⋙ NYT: Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History https://tinyurl.com/3xu7m6pn
// Troops’ use of patches bearing Nazi emblems risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate.
⋙⋙ 🐣 This article is ignorant of Ukrainian history and culture and much more concerned about the ADL than Jews living in Ukraine. Ukraine is multi-cultural and diverse with a painful history it has only been free to explore for 25 years. They are also fighting for their existence.
⋙⋙ 🐣 If you want to learn how bafflingly complex and horrible the 19th & 20th were in Eastern Europe, read ”Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder and realize most memories of these horrors were suppressed by the USSR, only coming to light with Glastnost

🐣 RT @EeldenDen Ukrainians fight to be part of Europe instead of Russia.. They fight for the European way of life. It sorts the wheat from the chaff, the true from the traitor. It unites liberals, nationalists, progressives and conservatives. All fighting for Europe

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VELYKA NOVOSILKA/ 1820 UTC 5 JUN/ UKR has likely initiated its long-awaited offensive. Despite early RU claims of rebuffing a Ukrainian attack, it is assessed that UKR units have now consolidated a lodgment in the village of Novodonetske. Developing. https://archive.ph/hCZ5k
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1665787457734836234?s=20/photo/1

CREW (Msy 26): Donald Trump is likely to be indicted soon related to classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Here’s what he may be charged with. https://tinyurl.com/2p833jww

🐣 RT @ AntiToxicPeople Oh my god. Full meltdown mode 🫢🤪🍿
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1665759493832216576?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP – THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!

🐣 RT @SecBlinken The Kremlin continues covert efforts to destabilize democratic countries via malign influence operations. Today, we are designating seven members of a Russian intelligence-linked group, and one entity, for their role in destabilization operations in Moldova.

🐣 RT @trajaykay 🇬🇧🇺🇦🔱 President Zelensky meets with foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, in Kyiv today. ¤ Very touching words from James Cleverly 🔱 Zelensky official I had a meeting with Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs of the United Kingdom James Cleverly
⋙ 🐣 RT @trajaykay During the meeting, we discussed important topical issues: Ukraine’s expectations from the NATO Summit in Vilnius, promotion of the Ukrainian Peace Formula and preparation of the Global Summit on its implementation, as well as the London International Conference on the
⋙ 🐣 RT @trajaykay Reconstruction of Ukraine. ¤ We are very grateful for the support that the UK has provided and continues to provide to Ukraine. In recent weeks, we have held talks with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. There was a direct dialogue and very important agreements were reached

🐣 RT @costareports BREAKING: Trump’s lawyers just spotted by @CBSNews entering the Justice Department, per @RobLegare who is on site… comes as sources tell me the special counsel is moving toward a charging decision in the classified documents case
⋙ 🐣 RT @costareports Sources tell @CBSNews that Trump’s lawyers are expected to raise concerns about how prosecutors have handled atty-client questions during the grand jury but there is no sign the special counsel is going to waver from how he and his team have handled the crime-fraud exception…

🐣 RT @RALee85 Khodakovsky and other Russian channels said that Russian communications went down before Ukraine’s assault yesterday. Kots also posted about Ukrainian EW jamming Russian comms. …

🐣 RT @ ivanastradner Several Russian radio stations were hacked and played a fake President Vladimir Putin speech announcing an invasion from Kyiv’s troops and emergency measures in three regions bordering Ukraine. [link]

🐣 RT @WarFrontline 🚨#Breaking, Chystopillia, Zaporizhzhya. Ukrainian soldiers behind enemy lines.👀‼️💪🏼 ¤ North of Tokmak ¤ Follow for more🍿

🐣 RT @FP #BREAKING US won’t let Iran get nuclear weapons, Sec. of State Blinken reiterates at pro-Israel lobby

🐣 RT @DenesTorteli Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar: [Bakhmut] “What is happening now? We are continuing the defense that we started on February 24, 2022. The defense operation includes everything, including counteroffensive actions. Therefore, in some areas we are moving to offensive actions. In particular, the Bakhmut direction remains the epicenter of hostilities. We are moving on a fairly broad front there. We are making progress. We occupy the dominant heights. The enemy is on the defensive, trying to hold their positions. In the south, the enemy is on the defensive. Local battles continue. Why are the Russians actively launching information about a counteroffensive? Because they need to divert attention from their defeat in the Bakhmut sector.” https://t.me/annamaliar/813

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Already the whirr of the back pedal, after months of anonymous quotes to major news outlets stating the exact opposite: “American and European military officials advising Ukraine say that Russia’s defensive lines could be more fragile than thought”:
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Also significant: “But although the 23rd and 31st brigades have benefited from Western equipment, they are not among the nine Western-supplied and trained brigades that Ukraine has built up over the last six months for the purposes of spearheading an offensive.”
// so Russians are falling to regular troops, not the special brigades

@McFaul @ Arestovich clearly has vision for Ukraine. He has a revolutionary spirit that reminds me of our Founders in those heady days. He recently worked for Zelensky. He seems like a person who might need a mentor (to avoid pitfalls) & friends. You know best 🙂

🐣 RT @arestovych In the end we have five tasks (2+3):
¤ https://twitter.com/arestovych/status/1665690214197493763?s=20/
[Translated from Ukrainian by Google]

1. During the thirty years of independence, the most immoral types managed to form a System that is used for non-market exploitation of the country and people.

Scum won in Ukraine. ¤ They set the rules and seized most of the assets.

This System must be destroyed. ¤ Honest people must win. ¤ Morality must return to politics.

We have to destroy not only the deep state of circular bail, where judges can beat people with impunity, sons “decided” to rape female classmates, and law enforcement officers – make business a nightmare, but also the very possibility of its reproduction anew.

To build a new System that will support, strengthen and raise human creativity, entrepreneurship, and potential. ¤ This is the key to our survival. ¤ The old system, in the face of a foreign policy threat, will kill Ukraine, because it not only raped our past, not only drains the present, but also takes away resources for the future, destroys it.

2. Defend Freedom and approve it as a national idea and practice.

Any decision at any level should be selected according to the criterion – does it expand the rights and opportunities of citizens or not?

Restrictions are allowed only temporarily and exclusively in the interests of national security.

Freedom is a basic condition. ¤ Only freedom can unleash true Ukrainian potential, and when we provide the conditions for its growth, the world will gasp. ¤ I am sure that even we still do not know the full strength of our potential. ¤ But the deep state kills him every day.

3. Return the state to the state.

You do not own the state today. ¤ The state does not perform state functions properly. ¤ The state does not guarantee a citizen development and future, protection and opportunities. Moreover, she often takes them away or destroys them.

The state is stretched across political beds, corrupt, corrupt, ineffective. ¤ Instead of protecting and promoting national interests and creating conditions for the prosperity of the citizen, the state is mainly geared to pumping out money, black money.

The state must be cleansed and saved. ¤ It must gain independence from any influence other than the collective will of its citizens. ¤ This is a huge task and it must be done.

4. Return the state to the people.

The state rarely helps a person today. ¤ The main feeling of a citizen from communicating with the state is, for the most part, humiliation. ¤ The state mainly subverts, exploits and uses a person. ¤ Or remains indifferent.

To overthrow the state of the people means to make the state a friend of man. ¤ The main assistant of a citizen in his affairs.

The state should work for the protection, support and development of people, people, society, culture, economy. ¤ Special services and law enforcement officers should not mock business, but work to promote its economic interests – in the country and abroad. ¤ A person should go to the state as a reliable assistant and deputy. ¤ This is what it means to “return the state to the people.”

5. Return the people of history.

God has partially completed this task for us. ¤ He pulled us into the Great History by the hair, despite (perhaps) our desire. ¤ Our task is to be worthy of it.

The alpha sign of a Ukrainian in the world should be freedom and dignity. ¤ Dignity and freedom should flow from us, we should distribute this Wi-Fi to others. ¤ We have to go beyond local consciousness and start playing games on a global scale, making moves across the entire chessboard.

The Ukrainian victory shocked the world. ¤ Ukrainian culture, our civilization heritage should impress him. ¤ The world has lost its way today, new light, a new future and a new way of the world are the work of Ukrainians. ¤ Our business.

But the world will not believe us until we can accomplish this task for ourselves.

⋙ 🐣 magnificent vision for Ukraine — and the free world ¤ I envy your opportunity to start afresh, despite the high price you must pay ¤ do the work, don’t let your vision be dimmed, but treat weakness with gentleness and failures as opportunities ¤ and bring the world along with you: teach us!

🐣 RT @wartranslated Khodakovsky claims Ukraine is stepping up efforts in the Vuhledar area, says first Leopards were sighted:

“The situation on Novodonets’ke and to the left towards Velika Novosilka is difficult – the enemy, having felt our weak points, is stepping up his efforts. For the first time we saw leopards in our tactical area. As I expected yesterday – having a sense of success, the enemy will throw additional forces into the battle. Only in the area of ​​Novodonets’ke recorded up to thirty units of armored vehicles.”

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en A Russian media claims: ¤ “Putin stopped receiving bad news reports, especially about the war, because of his “extremely irritated” reaction to those reports.
¤ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1665676212516057089?s=20

According to an insider familiar with the situation, Putin reacted to reports containing the actual situation in the following manner: he irritatedly told the reporter that he [reporter] was currently under the influence of “Western propaganda” and was “thickening the clouds” in its wake, while Putin himself had more reliable information from other sources which did not coincide with the information provided by the rapporteurs. The journalist then would be dropped out of the list of people who have access to the Russian president for a long time. But those who reported only successes had permanent access, and defeats and failures were reduced to petty nuisances of no significance.

The source says that at this point Putin simply stopped receiving “bad news” because the president does not want to hear it.”

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “Troops are withdrawing slowly, it’s a shame! Shoigu, Gerasimov, I urge you, come to the front, raise the army with pistols, so that they can march forward. Come on, you can do it! And if you can’t, you’ll die as heroes!” – terrorist Prigozhin blames Russian military leadership for new defeats near Bakhmut.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1665663582887968768?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukraine managed to retake back territory in southern Bakhmut and secure two settlements on the southern front. As well, Russia loses 200 square kilometers of territory in the Belgorod Oblast to pro-Ukrainian insurgents.
⋙ EuromaidanPress: Frontline report: Ukrainians secure foothold in Bakhmut and on the southern front https://tinyurl.com/yc56wt9w “So far, this was merely a reconnaissance-in-force operation, as the assault units were very light”

CNN: Exclusive: Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks, sources say https://tinyurl.com/yckpmusc

🐣 RT @KadirHama #russia planned massive disinformation campaigns and prepared old combat videos for this purpose. ¤ A reminder for everyone to be on their guard not to amplify any nonsense about a counteroffensive until there’s official confirmation, or you risk spreading russian fakes. #fellas
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KadirHama/status/1665620587866193920?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] STRATCOM of the Armed Forces of Ukraine / AFU StratCom

! WARNING! The Armed Forces of Ukraine warns of a loss. The Russian occupying forces are intensifying their informational and psychological operations.

Russian telegram channels and social networks are planning to intensify the spread of unreliable information about the combat operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And of their own formations. In order to demoralize Ukrainians and introduce delusion of the community (including one’s own population) Russian propagandists will spread unreliable information about the counteroffensive, its directions and losses of the Ukrainian army. Even if there is no counterattack. For this, old videos and photos have been prepared, which show damaged vehicles, dead and captured. And also other fake materials.

! We remind you that reliable information can be obtained only from the operational reports of the General Staff, strategic communications structures and from designated official speakers of the Defense Forces and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Russian Defense Ministry says Ukrainian counter offensive has begun. ¤ Judging from the panic I’m seeing on Russian military channels, they are right. ¤ This will be an absolute massacre.

⭕ 4 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @WarFrontline 🚨Several 🇷🇺 Z military channels, such as 🇷🇺 channel RVvoenkor here, are now also reporting several AFU 🇺🇦 breakthroughs at the front lines, and that the attacks and advance continue. The signs of the current success of the AFU 🇺🇦 offensive are becoming clearer and clearer.‼️🔥👀

🐣 RT @SuperCola_3 I made a small video showing Ukraine from more peaceful times, you know, before the rushistZ came. ¤ I don’t really know how to edit, but Ukraine is so f*cking beautiful I think it turned out kinda okay. ¤ Hope you enjoy it.
💽 🖼 https://twitter.com/SuperCola_3/status/1665414203371397120?s=20/photo/1

🐣📋 RT @KyivIndependent Danilov: Ukraine lost 7.5 times fewer troops than Russia in Bakhmut. ¤ Ukraine’s losses in the Battle of Bakhmut were lower than Russia’s by a factor of 7.5, National Security and Defense Council chief Oleksiy Danilov told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

🐣 RT @Faytuks Pro-Russian Wargonzo is reporting a new Ukrainian attack near Velyka Novosilka, Donetsk oblast ¤ “This time the news is much more disturbing. The Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to form a much more serious armored fist” ¤ https://t.me/wargonzo/12962
🌎 https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1665584036654243841?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] ⚡️ Urgently ⚡️ The Armed Forces of Ukraine went on the attack again near Velika
Novoselovka ⚡️

This time the news is much more disturbing. ¤ Unlike yesterday’s attack on our positions, which was deployed almost closer to lunch (the enemy began the main offensive operations at about 11:00, this time the neo-Nazis lined up in battle formations around 4:00 in the morning.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to form a much more serious armored fist. Much more equipment is involved than the day before. Only from the Golden Niva about 30 pieces of equipment (mostly NATO-style) advanced to our positions.

The main direction of the strike is the settlement of Novodonetskoye (it stands on the line just somewhere in the middle between Velika Novoselovka and Vugledara). There is evidence that the enemy is trying to enter the village.

There is a tough fight going on. As we wrote earlier, yesterday there was only the first wave. Today’s roll is clearly more powerful. @wargonzo * our project is funded by subscribers, help card 4279 3806 9842 9521

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The grand jury is meeting again this week. His lawyers may meet with DoJ officials this week. LFG!!!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1665522574741102597?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump
Reports are the Marxist Special Prosecutor, DOJ, & FBI, want to Indict me on the BOXES HOAX, despite all of the wrongdoing that they have done for SEVEN YEARS, including SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN. Biden Crimes go unpunished, including that he had Boxes in Chinatown, in his garage by the “Corvette,” & 1,850 Boxes in Delaware that he won’t allow anyone to see. That is real OBSTRUCTION! They seek retribution for Republicans looking into Biden’s CRIMES!I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!

🐣 📋 RT @FellaNafo “Ukraine has now more than twice (!) the number of brigades the US Army had at the end of the Cold War.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @noclador As there seems to be some confusion: ¤ Ukraine’s offensive force is 35 combat brigades, 2 special forces regiments, 1 air assault regiment, 52 rifle battalions, 2 pontoon regiments, 6 artillery brigades, whole bunch of air defense, engineer, reconnaissance, drone, and logistic 1/2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @noclador units… while another 86 (!) brigades hold the rest of the front. These 86 brigades are backed by 9 artillery brigades and lots and lots of combat support units. ¤ Ukraine has now more than twice (!) the number of brigades the US Army had at the end of the Cold War. 2/2
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DisruptivePoltx What’s the actual difference between a brigade, a battalion, a regiment & a unit?
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rltone22 Regiment is a specialized unit about half of a brigade. Brigade is 3-4 battalions. Battalion is 6-8 companies iirc. Company is 100 men
⋙⋙⋙⋙🐣 RT @gr1mrea9er By NATO standards a battalion is about (700-1000 troops), one third to a fifth of a Brigade (3-5000). Two battalions usually counts as a regiment.
A unit is a group having a prescribed size and a specific combat or support role within a larger military organization.
⋙⋙⋙⋙🐣 RT @liberalurbanite A unit can be any size, it’s just a way to call a group or formation of soldiers.
A battalion can consists anywhere between 400-1000 soldiers (3-7 Companies).
A brigade consists of 3-6 battalions and is roughly 3000-5000 in size.
A regiment is an outdated way of organizing 1/2.
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @liberalurbanite Companies make up battalion, battalions make up regiments, regiments make up brigades (usually). Nowadays a brigade can be made up of multiple battalions (it was the case for US in mid-late Cold War), whilst regiment is just a smaller brigade made up of fewer battalions.
⋙⋙⋙⋙🐣 RT @DannyPunton A unit is any independent group. Generally squad/section->platoon->company->battalion->(regiment or brigade)->division->army.
Sov regiment is smaller than brigade. US only has regiments historically where UK they are one or more permanent battalions and brigade is a task group.
⋙⋙⋙⋙🐣 RT @DmytroVan
Numbers, equipment, capabilities
Battalions have 300 to 900 people, they form regiments, reinforced and better equipped regiment is brigade and has 5000+ personnel
Some brigades in Ukraine now have the amount of personnel of division 9000 or so people
⋙⋙⋙⋙🐣 RT @CrimsonShadowMK
I see a lot of answers about numbers, but the key difference as it pertains to these armies is functional. Brigades have the necessary support elements to operate as an independent unit in a given area. Soviet regiments mostly lack that support internally, and need their ..
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NAFOWhiteMouse
Understand all the numbers you are seeing are paper strength. Many 🇷🇺 units started the war under strength esp on infantry. Plus losses erode units unless replacements are sent and if the fighting is hard, there won’t be enough replacements
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @zappaterrologo
A battalion usually consist of 500-800 soldiers (range: 300-1000). Two or more battallions make a brigad/regiment). The choice between “regiment” and brigade is merely dependent on naming conventions. “Unit” is a very generic term who does not detail the size of the formation.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/zappaterrologo/status/1665421809913561091?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Victor_Tovikrov Honest answer is it massively differs from army to army and in different time periods.
Brigades / regiments difference is not so much in size, but purpose, for example. Both comprise battalions, but a brigade has a fuller package making it more capable of acting independently.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RedDave14 There is an old rule of thumb:
3 Sections = 1 Platoon
3 Platoons = 1 Company
3 Companies = 1 Battalion
3 Battalions = 1 Regiment
3 Regiments = 1 Brigade
3 Brigades = 1 Division
3 Divisions = 1 Corps
3 Corps = 1 Army
(Armies, eras, locations, all differ)

🐣 RT @TrentTelenko So, Wagner PMC is ambushed by the Russian Army 72nd Brigade. ¤ The Russian Army unit loses the minefield- ambush & it’s 72nd Brigade has a battalion commander captured, beatened, and give a POW confession video. 🤯 ¤ I can’t imagine a story that absurd, let alone write it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated PMC Wagner detained and interrogated no other but the commander of the 72nd Brigade, Roman Venevitin. Wagner and the 72nd Brigade shared positions in Bakhmut.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1665472757696528386?s=20/photo/1

They detained the man, beat him, broke his nose, and forced to record a video admitting to firing at a car of PMC Wagner due to “personal animosity” towards them.

They accuse him of being drunk while doing so, speaking to him as if he is a subordinate. This is a complete demoralisation of the Russian Armed Forces who should not be any close to tolerating such behaviour of a PMC.

TheHill (2020): The Hill’s review of John Solomon’s columns on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yc975m2x
// 2/19/2020; article is a muddle; tags: Russia, election interference, impeachment; Burisma, Giuliani, Shokin, Lutsenko, Yanukovich, Parnas, Firtash, Hunter Biden

The columns focused on a controversy surrounding the Bidens and Ukraine that initially surfaced during the Obama administration. Specifically, the columns raised questions about Hunter Biden working on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma. When Hunter Biden joined Burisma, Joe Biden was the vice president and point person for U.S. policies on Ukraine. Joe Biden is currently a candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

President Trump seized on this issue, commenting on it on many occasions. The president asked the government of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens as his administration delayed $391 million of U.S. military aid to the country. Trump has said he was interested in rooting out corruption and that he did not expect nor request any quid pro quo. …

Contradicting assertions in Solomon’s columns, in Politico and in some other media reports, State Department officials, U.S. national security agencies and the Senate Intelligence Committee have concluded that Ukraine did not meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Russian government officials, who have denied meddling in the 2016 election, have pushed the narrative that Ukraine interfered in that U.S. election. …

The column suggests that Joe Biden was protecting Hunter Biden because Burisma was the subject of a “wide-ranging corruption probe.” That account has been disputed by officials in both Kyiv and Washington and others who maintain the investigation had grown dormant, and that Joe Biden was pushing for Shokin’s removal, not because he was investigating corruption allegations, but because he was neglecting to do so. British officials investigating fraud at Burisma backed this account, dropping a case against the company in early 2015 — months before Joe Biden’s push to remove Shokin — citing a lack of cooperation from the prosecutor general’s office in Kyiv. Furthermore, seeking Shokin’s ouster was the official position of the U.S. and the European Union. The Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove Shokin in 2016. Like Lutsenko, Shokin’s reliability as a source is in question. Shokin was among the figures Solomon interviewed during his research.

Hunter Biden, who had little to no energy expertise at the time he was hired by Burisma, has said it was “poor judgment” to accept the position on Burisma’s board, acknowledging that he likely received the job offer because of his last name. State Department officials also said in impeachment inquiry testimony that they were concerned with Hunter Biden sitting on the company board while Joe Biden was overseeing the U.S. government’s Ukraine policies. …

There has never been any proof of legal wrongdoing by the Bidens. Pressed on the matter in a recent interview, Joe Biden said the Bidens’ dual roles in Ukraine led some to say it set “a bad image.” …

Lutsenko himself in May 2019 said there was no evidence of legal wrongdoing. At the time of Lutsenko’s initial interviews with Solomon in March 2019, there was tension between Lutsenko and Yovanovitch amid official U.S. concerns about Lutsenko’s commitment to anti-corruption efforts.

Aside from Solomon, diGenova and Toensing had other clients with interest in Ukraine. According to Bloomberg, diGenova and Toensing were paid $1 million by a Ukrainian oligarch, Dmitry Firtash, to find negative information on the Bidens. Firtash is fighting extradition to the U.S. on conspiracy charges, and the effort was designed to help win Giuliani’s help in the case, Bloomberg reported. They have also met with Lutsenko, according to The New York Times.

Salon, Sophia McClennon (2022): Why Zelenskyy’s background in comedy really matters https://tinyurl.com/mvkh8drt “The goal of satire is to get the audience to think, to recognize the flaws in the status quo and to see that the sorts of narratives offered by those in power can be changed”
// 3/12/2022; Forget about Paddington for a minute. The comedy that made Zelenskyy famous was also political

[…] Satire is a unique form of comedy, one that relies on creative irony.  Here the comedian isn’t getting laughs because they fall down or make someone look silly; they get laughs because they hold up a creative mirror to the absurdities, injustices and abuses of power that govern the world. The goal of satire is to get the audience to think, to recognize the flaws in the status quo and to see that the sorts of narratives offered by those in power can be changed. Using satire to coax the public to think differently is even more essential when the public is being ruled by fear and repression. As Stephen Colbert explains, satire “alleviates fog off of the mind, because when you’re laughing you can’t be afraid. And, when you’re not afraid, you think better. Laughter leads to thinking.

But today’s satire is often not just a comment on the flaws and follies of the world and a call to rethink them. Today’s satirists aren’t simply court jesters. As I’ve explained in relation to the rise of satirists as political actors in the Trump era, there has been a steady increase in satire playing a direct role in political action. Today’s satirists inform and educate the public, run for office, propose legislation and engage in all sorts of political activities.

Earlier, I made the comparison between Kvartal 95’s comedy troupe and The Smothers Brothers. Interestingly, one of the regulars on The Smothers Brothers, Pat Paulsen, also ran for president. But, unlike Zelenskyy, Paulsen’s campaigns were entirely satirical. For example, he ironically would answer any criticism with the catchphrase: “Picky, picky, picky.”

In contrast, Zelenskyy’s campaign might have included plenty of stunts, but it was always sincere. Again, as a point of comparison, we might think of Jon Stewart’s actions to support war veterans, John Oliver’s attack on the coal industry, Samantha Bee’s activism for women’s reproductive rights or Michael Moore’s advocacy for clean water in Flint, Michigan. These are satirical comedians who are very serious about social issues. For them, satire isn’t a distraction from politics; it is politics.

Zelenskyy’s satire is in this same family of using ironic wit to foster political change and using the charisma of comedy to help defend and advance democracy. When asked about the overlaps between his character on “Servant of the People” and his campaign, Zelenskyy explained, “I didn’t invent all this [the show]—I felt all this, I am really feeling all this…It would have been impossible to create it all simply because I am a good actor and because someone wrote it well. We wrote it together, we all lived it together.”

Zelenskyy’s experience traveling across Ukraine as part of the Kvartal 95 troupe meant that he would also have gained a wide understanding of the issues that mattered to the people. Ladygina notes, “Zelenskyy is not performing sincerity because sincerity has been part of his connection with Ukrainians since the late ’90s.” Well before launching the Servant of the People political party, Kvartal 95, for example, had launched a number of social programs, including a campaign to encourage women to get mammograms, and also contributed funds for the Ukrainian military.

The main character of the “Servant of the People” is named Vasily Petrovich Goloborodko. His last name, Goloborodko, offers insight into the satirical wit of the show. Ladygina, a native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian, explains that Goloborodko means “beardless” and symbolizes a man without experience. Choosing that name, then, was an early and obvious sign that the show wanted to position the protagonist — someone from outside the political elite, who could be honest, sincere and committed to a better Ukraine — as what the country needed. But they also knew that having honest outsiders try to fight the Goliaths of corruption, oligarchy, Russian imperialism and international pressures would never be easy.

When we see that Zelenskyy’s comedy repertoire wasn’t just entertaining — it also posed creative ways to think about how to improve the future of Ukraine, and offered a funny look at how hard those changes might be to make — then Zelenskyy’s unwavering commitment to his people makes perfect sense. Just because he is witty, media savvy and pretty good at dancing, doesn’t mean he isn’t serious.

🐣 RT @Apex_WW The United States believes the highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive will result in Kyiv taking back “strategically significant territory,” Jake Sullivan, US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said Sunday.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Apex_WW “Exactly how much, in what places, that will be up to developments on the ground as the Ukrainians get this counteroffensive underway,” Sullivan said. “But we believe that the Ukrainians will meet with success in this counteroffensive.”

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Update : “#Sweden 🇸🇪 complied with Turkey’s demands and has the right to join NATO” – Stoltenberg
Stoltenberg following a meeting with Erdogan, said that he had reached an agreement on a meeting with the participation of Sweden, Turkey and NATO. It is scheduled for June 12th.

💙 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR The Plans need the Silence, – General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1665290411399688193?s=20/photo/1
// video of individual troops all giving the “shhhh” sign 🤫

⭕ 3 Jun 2023

🐣 RT @tassagency_en Russian President Vladimir Putin remains open to any contact that would allow meeting the goals of the special military operation through peaceful means, but the West does not provide such a chance, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: https://bit.ly/43DENAi
⋙ 🐣please define ”the goals of the special military operation” as they stand today ¤ thanks
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @colinsmith50 Regime change & keeping hold of territory already taken. It’s the equivalent of a burglar offering to stop burgling as long as the householders agree to give away the deeds, permits the thief to keep everything he’s stolen & pays burglar for his time & loss of equipment.

🐣 RT @albafella1 Head of PMC “Wagner” terrorist Prigozhin promised to avenge the dead residents of the Belgorod People’s Republic:

“Why did we take Bakhmut and rename it Artemovsk? Why are tens of thousands of people, our Russian guys, dying, moving towards the West? In order for us to start giving away, step by step, pieces of the Belgorod region, our primordially Russian land? Why is everyone silent about the death of these civilians? Where is General Lapin? Where is Shoigu? Where is Gerasimov? Where are their explanations to the Russian people? Tell us their names and surnames, tell us the place and date where the burial will be, so that we can take off our hats and honor their memory, and then decide how and when we will take revenge,” — he says

🐣 RT @TreasChest The counteroffensive of the Armed Forces will be impressive and will reach its climax in the first three to four days, — former director of the CIA, General David Petraeus, on BBC Radio 4.

“I have a feeling that they will achieve the effect of a combination of different types of weapons, that is, they will successfully conduct a combined operation, when there are sappers who overcome obstacles and neutralize minefields, moving forward; armored vehicles that follow them are protected by infantry from anti-tank missiles; anti-aircraft defenses that keep Russian aircraft as far away as possible; electronic warfare equipment that jams their radio networks; logistics that follow directly behind them; artillery and mortars that precede them. This will inevitably lead to a culmination of forward unit attacks in the first 72-96 hours.” Petraeus said.

He also noted that Ukraine will eventually block Russia’s land access to Crimea and begin the “process of isolation” of the peninsula. Despite this, Petraeus expressed doubt that the liberation of Crimea will take place in this counteroffensive.

“But if the Ukrainians can start isolating Crimea, I think it will very, very significantly change the dynamics of the war,” the American general added. #counteroffensive_ukraine http://ZN.UA

🐣 RT @ SamRamani2 The Wagner Group says it is ready to defend Belgorod if the Russian Defence Ministry doesn’t do its duty ¤ Yevgeny Prigozhin claims Wagner will enter Belgorod even without an official Kremlin invitation

😅 RT @PaulaChertok DeSantis is the Joke of “Woke” warrior now – actually channeling Churchill who (checks note) fought an actual war, and *against* fascists not for them. #DeJokeOfWoke #DeFascist #NoThanks
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn DeSantis: As president, I recognize that the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress.
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1665086349483835392?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @igorsushko Some weeks ago Putin’s Kremlin propaganda ‘killed’ Ukraine’s top general, Zaluzhny, now they ‘killed’ general Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency, GUR. ¤ The situation is certainly unraveling for Russia both in the information space and on the ground.

🐣 RT @Mollyploofkins Magadonians?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1664740480431579137?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump WE ARE MAGADONIANS, WE ARE VERY SMART, WE STICK TOGETHER AS ONE, WE FOLLOW TRUTH SOCIAL, WE PUT “AMERICA FIRST,” AND WE WILL “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump FOX SHOULD EMBRACE MAGA. THEIR PRIMETIME VIEWERSHIP IS DOWN 37% FROM JUST A YEAR AGO, ALL BECAUSE THE VERY SMART, EVEN BRILLIANT, MAGADONIANS KNOW THAT, DESPITE ALL THE FAKE LIP SERVICE, FOXNEWS IS PUSHING RON DESANCTUS, OR ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER, BECAUSE THEY HATE THE GREATEST “AMERICA FIRST” PRESIDENT TO EVER PUT ON A SUIT AND TIE, ME. THEY ARE ALL GLOBALISTS, AND GLOBALISTS WILL NEVER, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

🐣 RT @nexta_tv Russia has failed to achieve any of the goals that Putin set at the beginning of the “Special Military Operation. This was stated by First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots Konstantin Zatulin.

“What were our goals officially declared at the beginning of the Special Military Operation? Denazification, demilitarization, neutrality of Ukraine and protection of the citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, who suffered all this time. On which of these points have we achieved results? None of them.

Moreover, some of them are no longer meaningful. For example, the neutrality of Ukraine. What is the sense of making this demand? None at the moment,” said the deputy of Putin’s “United Russia” party.

🐣 RT @S1epanS Some interesting key points from Igor “Strelkov” Girkin’s stream yesterday. Includes his usual pessimism and begging for mobilizations as well as commentary on Transnistria’s fate and the events in Belgorod.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/S1epanS/status/1664941308635500544?s=20/photo/1 -2
[ Errors of sofware in reading text, but here’s what it picked up: see linked pdfs if necc ]

[Text:] 1. The raids on Belgorod Oblast are meant to draw away Russian reserves which would otherwise be used to defend against a Ukrainian offensive, most likely to happen in the Zaporozhye direction in the south. Ukraine has not committed large forces to these raids, at most a battalion sized unit. It few brigades, they would easily reach the outskirts of Belgorod. These raids will continue.

2. The only way to prevent these raids, and the incessant artillery bombardment of our border areas, is to go on the offensive and create a Sokm buffer zone on the Ukrainian part of the border, A 30km zone w not be enough due to the range of Ukrainian artillery. However, with our current military capabilities, such an offensive is impossible. That is why Russia should never have retreated fron the Susy and Chernihiv oblasts. the retreat from Kyiv itselt was correct. our forces there would have been encircled and destroyed after the ground froze in spring, similar to our experiences during the 1939 Winter war.

3. the Russian army nas fully ceded the initiative to Ukraine, and are only passively responding to wha[t] Ukraine does. Girkin: “no one has ever won a war o passively responding to the enesy’s actions. The only way co regain chas anaclacive, and therefore win the war, as a cocas nacional mobilizacion, both of soldiers and of industry. However, this is impossible due to
Feudalise” within the armed forces. what as Victory>

4. Girkin belloves that “this war w continue unt koy as biberated from lazise and Zelenskyy flees to Jerusalem and his administration to Canada”. He reiterates that this sort of victory w only de possable wach a full nacional mobalazacion, and does now believe chac chas as possiole. hars are not won by cruise missiles. They are won by the boot of the infantryman occupying the enemy’s airfields, artillery posicions and cities

5. The feudalism mentioned earlier is the fact that the RU AF are split into 3 competing factions, each with their own political and military power base: The Ministry of Defense, wagner, and kadyrov. tach represent theanterescs of cafferenc offgarcns, and chear “aging tzar” cripples the time when Russia is losing.

6. Girkin says that Prigozhyn is lying when he says that roads out of Bakhmut were mined in front of him. he admits to disking him. out admits that he and hagner had the “only successes of the winter and soring campaign” when they cook baknmut. aloesc wich large casuaacies. Me says chac baknmuc, aachougn a viccory, was a waste of the resource that is Wagner, and that the PHC should have been committed elsewhere on the front. The rest of the Kussian spring campaign was a costly failure, especially in Avdaivka and Martinka, where no gains were made but heavy losses taken in “meat-wave /cannon fodder assaults with Mobiks and LONR troops.

7. The Ukrainians now enfoy an overall numerical supremacy in terms of troops. They have built up a large for the upcoming counteroffensive due to continuous mobilizations, while on the other hand Russianforces are dangerously depleted. Girkin says “I know I am repeating myself. but we need another [mobilization]

8. Transnistria. Girkin says that Transnistria is doomed, the “Ukrainian Nazis and Moldovan- excuse me. Romanian, nationalists can and will take it. Transnistria could have been taken as far back as last Summer, but [Gi]rkin be heves that the Ukrainians refrained -rom attacking at as blackma[il] to ensure the grain deal. however, an the long cerm, Transastrad and the russian garrason chere are doomed.

🐣 RT @NOELreports “We are ready for the counter offensive. We would like to have more equipment, but we can’t wait any longer. I strongly believe we will win,” Zelenskyi said in an interview with WSJ.
⋙ WSJ: Ukraine’s Zelensky: We Are Ready for Counteroffensive https://tinyurl.com/yn65m5fs
// Ukrainian president also discusses U.S. elections, NATO and China in wide-ranging interview

“I don’t know how long it will take,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it, and we are ready.”

In a wide-ranging, hourlong discussion, Zelensky, 45 years old, said he feared U.S. elections next year could bring a less-supportive administration to power and called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to offer a clear path to membership for Kyiv.

He also urged China to try to restrain Russia and said Ukraine urgently needed more U.S.-made Patriot missile-defense systems to protect citizens from aerial bombardments and to shield front-line troops.

Zelensky acknowledged Russian air superiority on the front lines and said a lack of protection from Russian air power means “a large number of soldiers will die” in the counteroffensive. 

Ukraine would have liked to have more Western-supplied weapons for the coming campaign, he said. Still, Ukraine is ready to move. “We would like to have certain things, but we can’t wait for months,” he said.

Zelensky said Ukraine’s ground forces were “stronger and more motivated” than the dug-in Russian troops trying to hold on to the roughly 20% of Ukraine they control in the country’s east and south. 

The counteroffensive is a pivotal moment for Zelensky, a former actor and comedian whose leadership during the war has propelled him to global prominence. The outcome will shape the contours of Western military backing and diplomatic jockeying over Ukraine’s future.

Ukraine’s backers have provided billions in military and financial support that has been essential to Kyiv’s war effort, and calls for Zelensky to seek a peace deal could grow if the counteroffensive fails to deliver a significant breakthrough.

Zelensky veered from expressions of gratitude to Western supporters for weapons deliveries to words of frustration over their reluctance to give Ukraine greater quantities of powerful arms to fend off the Russians. 

His statements reflected the balance he must find between pressing to get what he needs to retain Ukraine’s independence and domestic political support while not pushing allies too far and eroding their backing. 

Zelensky said he was aware that Western leaders sometimes take offense at his harsh tone, but couldn’t understand why, in his view, they were drip-feeding more-advanced arms that they know would protect lives and help Ukraine win. ¤ If Ukraine isn’t able to withstand Russia, Zelensky said, “that animal, that beast will develop a taste” for conquest and go further.

“Let’s not compare who should be grateful to whom,” he said.

Zelensky spoke at a government residence after a day visiting wounded soldiers, meeting military commanders and visiting the port to discuss how to increase exports. Wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with his country’s name, he looked a touch weary, but perked up when asked how he keeps his spirits up. 

“There is no place for weakness,” he said. …

Biden has an emotional attachment to Ukraine that has underpinned his administration’s support for the country, Zelensky said. Trump’s presidency came before the full-scale invasion, and “I’m not sure how Trump would have acted,” he said.

Still, Ukraine’s president said he was encouraged by bipartisan support in the U.S. and the backing of ordinary citizens, and hoped that both parties and Congress would continue to support Ukraine and pressure any new administration to keep up flows of assistance.

A more immediate concern for Zelensky is to secure a clear path to NATO membership at a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July. … …

🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian reporter Sladkov, who is known for his reassuring posts, says the Russian army is completely lacking counter-battery fire, and notifies of “unpleasant events” in Zaporizhzhia direction, a place where an important Ukrainian strike might occur during the counter-offensive. He says Ukrainian artillery is better than the Russian.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1664922561400938496?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] ZAPORIZHIA DIRECTION. THE SITUATION IS UNPLEASANT.

Our positions are under heavy artillery fire. I know a lot of bad details, but I won’t reveal them. The trend: they shell us – we don’t respond, and there are very bad reasons for this, there are several of them and all of them do not depend on the battalions, regiments, divisions in combat. Hundreds of shells are flying at us, zero in response.

What kind of war is this? Counter-battery fire, as the primary, constantly used method of countering enemy artillery, is absent in our SMO. It doesn’texist, no matter what anyone says. This is nothing new to the enemy, nor to any of us, so don’t stick your own head in the sand. We waste people because of our own shortcomings. Yes, I agree, we are causing serious damage to the enemy with our rear missile strikes. But the front line also needs to be protected, our people are standing there.

From the Book for Young Commanders: “Counter-battery firing is considered successful if the enemy’sfirepower and their crews are suppressed or destroyed. Suppression implies the further inability of the enemy’s firepower to continue firing. ¤ Adult big commanders probably read other books. And they don’t say that in reality the Ukrainian artillery beats the Russian one, which no one could even imagine to be the case a year ago.

🐣 RT @Fireblade577 Russia having to deploy their former elite (now depleted but still some of their best units) to the Bakhmut front, will further reduce the capabilities of the operational reserve they have to counter the upcomming Ukrainian offensive [via @DefenceHQ]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Fireblade577/status/1664924507360972800?s=20/photo/1

● Russia has continued to redeploy regular units to the Bakhmut sector, as Wagner Group assault detachmentcomplete their withdrawal to rear areas.

● Russian VDV (airborne forces) have assumed an increasingly important role in Bakhmut: elements of the76th and 106th divisions and two additional separateVDV brigades are now deployed to the sector.

● The VDV is much degraded from its pre-invasion ‘elite’ status. However, Russian commanders have likely attempted to maintain some of these still relatively capable units as an uncommitted reserve. Because they have instead been forced to deploy them to hold the front line in Bakhmut, the whole Russian force is likely tobe less flexible in reacting to operational challenges.

⭕ 2 Jun 2023

TheAtlantic, Tim Alberta: Inside the Meltdown at CNN https://tinyurl.com/46uhjtbj #longread
// CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong?

🐣 RT @ukrainiansquad It’s time to fight and to kick the occupiers out of Ukraine . God will be with you guys every step of the way, soldiers.
💽 https://twitter.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1664981570501988353?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DefMon3 This is a great read. It addresses a lot of the issues regarding the training and command structure of Ukrainian armed forces. There are some great suggestions on how to improve things in the article
⋙ War on the Rocks, Erik Kramer and Paul Schneider: What the Ukrainian Armed Forces Need to Do to Win https://tinyurl.com/4ck3ptxw 

💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: McCarthy got rolled. But it’s good for him — and America. https://tinyurl.com/4nmh5h42 “This week provided Republicans with a road map to escape from Trumpism. The only excuse not to use it is cowardice — or complicity”

But this time, McCarthy didn’t cower and cave. He made these vulgarians clean their plates. He told the right-wing hooligans to stuff it, and he took his debt compromise to the House floor — where something remarkable happened Wednesday night.

More than two thirds of Republicans stuck with McCarthy, leaving the 71 GOP holdouts isolated. At the same time, nearly 80 percent of Democrats voted for the package, putting more D’s than R’s in the yes column and lifting the bill to passage by a lopsided 314-117.

Watching from the gallery, I felt more hopeful about our politics than I had in some time. For a brief, glorious (and probably fleeting) moment, the madness had stopped.

McCarthy discovered that, if he’s willing to be reasonable, Democrats will lend him their support. He also proved that the Trumpian forces within his party can be sidelined — if sensible Republicans would only show some courage.

All of the usual forces of destruction on the right were aligned against the debt-and-budget deal and, by logical extension, in favor of default: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the Fox Industrial Complex; Ron DeSantis; the House Freedom Caucus; Heritage Action; and the Club for Growth; former Trump aides Stephen Bannon, Peter Navarro and Russell Vought. Donald Trump himself, though he went quiet as the vote neared, told Republicans they should default rather than budge from their original absurd demands for $4.8 trillion in deficit reduction and the repeal of much of Biden’s agenda.

Instead, McCarthy accepted a modest $1.5 trillion in projected savings over 10 years and left Biden’s agenda intact while agreeing that there would be no more debt limit hostage-taking before the next elections. Most Republicans tolerated the compromise, and Democrats leaped at it.

“This is fabulous,” McCarthy replied at a post-vote news conference when The Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell asked him to square the overwhelming Democratic support with his claims that Democrats got “nothing” in the negotiations. “This is one of the best nights I’ve ever been here,” he went on with exaggerated cheer. “I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be almost impossible just to get to 218 [votes]. Now, I found there’s a whole new day here.” …

McCarthy faced a choice in the debt ceiling negotiations: save the country from economic calamity or protect his own job. It’s not clear whether he made a conscious decision or whether, as Democrats and House Freedom Caucus members suspect, he simply got bested in the negotiations. Whatever the motive, he did the right thing for the country.

And now, sure enough, the MAGA crowd wants to hobble, if not terminate, his speakership. … ¤ The hard-liners called for reinforcements, but the cavalry never came.…

To answer his critics, McCarthy had a ready approach: He would make stuff up. ¤ He gathered the rank and file for a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday night, fed them cartloads of We the Pizza pies, and told them, “I’m going to go on record and vote for the biggest spending cuts in history!” ¤ This wasn’t remotely true, but McCarthy repeated it endlessly over the following days. …

But if McCarthy didn’t have the facts, he did have the votes.

During Wednesday night’s debate, Jeffries gloated a bit about saving McCarthy from his MAGA hard-liners. “Earlier today, 29 House Republicans voted to default on our nation’s debt and against an agreement that you negotiated,” he needled, later adding: “Extreme MAGA Republicans attempted to take control of the House floor. Democrats took it back for the American people, and we will continue to do what is necessary.”

McCarthy’s allies evidently didn’t appreciate the taunt. The presiding officer, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (Ohio), took the extraordinary step of gaveling down the Democratic leader midspeech — on dubious grounds. But in the end, Democrats bailed out McCarthy again. In the final tally, most of the no votes came from Republicans; most of the yes votes came from Democrats. …

… This week provided Republicans with a road map to escape from Trumpism. The only excuse not to use it is cowardice — or complicity.

🧵 RT @SquireDigital 1/ Urazovo – Verigovka thread.
This short message from WarGonzo could be the start of something big. ¤ Even if this turns out to be nothing, this thread will look at an action that can be what a major feint would look like, before the main counter offensive in the south.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/SquireDigital/status/1664608927265308672?s=20

NYT: In Finland, Blinken Calls Russia’s War ‘Strategic Failure’ https://tinyurl.com/4k3dejxc “Mr. Blinken argued … that Mr. Putin had unwittingly exposed and compounded the weakness of Russia’s military, hobbled its economy and inspired NATO to become more united, and even larger”

🐣 RT @ @BlogUkraine #464dayofwar ¤ ⚡The US will help #Ukraine build the “army of the future”, – Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State ¤ #UkraineWar#UkraineRussiaWar

🐣 📋 RT @POTUS Folks, today is a good day for our economy. ¤ We learned the economy created 339,000 jobs last month – bringing us to over 13 million jobs since I took office. ¤ That’s more jobs in 28 months than any President has created in a four-year term. The Biden economic plan is working.

KyivPost: Trump’s Plan to Stop Russia’s War on Ukraine ‘in 24 Hours’ is as Terrible as You’d Expect https://tinyurl.com/4c38krza (what an embarrassment)
// The former president launched into a largely nonsensical tirade on Thursday evening, even claiming Kyiv is covering up the true numbers of people killed by Russian missile strikes

⭕ 1 Jun 2023

😅 RT @ProjectLincoln Bet Biden couldn’t do any of this. Thankfully.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1664421707107520513?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @igorsushko While in Moldova, Ukraine’s President Zelensky warned Russian troops occupying Transnistria in Moldova to leave if they want to survive. A joint operation between Moldova and Ukraine to liberate the territory may be on the horizon.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer PUTIN’s WÜNDER-WEAPON DUDS: With much hype and bluster, Russia threatened the world with the Kinzhal ‘hypersonic’ missile, the Su-57 ‘super fighter’ the T-14 Armata and the BMPT ‘Terminator’– all weapons that severely underperformed on the battlefield.
⋙ ModernWarInstitute: Hypersonic Hype? Russia’s Kinzhal Missiles and the Lessons for Air Defense https://tinyurl.com/57m75aw4 “In terms of maneuverability, the Kinzhal is more akin to a giant lawn dart loaded with explosives”

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Unlucky Putin, #Brazil not sharing the love anymore. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reiterated his position in favor of #Ukraine’s territorial integrity, condemning Russia’s invasion. As trade with the EU is more profitable than with Mordor.
⋙ TheGuardian: The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reiterated his position in favor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, condemning Russia’s invasion. https://tinyurl.com/yswhr8fb
//. The comments came after a meeting in Brasília with Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, who is making an official visit to Brazil on 1-2 June 2023. ¤ The Brazilian leader said he also hoped for a “balaced” trade agreement between Mercosur and the EU that could support Brazil’s push for reindustrialisation and sustainable development.

TheHill, Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth: In Ukraine, Russia is nearly down to its nukes https://tinyurl.com/yezk2bs4 “The head games continue — real and imagined, including action, reaction, counteraction — only this time, it is Ukraine dictating the conditions”

[…] The Kremlin, in the absence of a sustained conventional offensive capability, was increasingly resorting to propagandists selling Putin’s retaliation strikes against Ukrainian civilians as though they were decisive battlefield successes. Yet as Russian missile and drone strikes lose effectiveness against a U.S. and NATO supplied integrated air defense network, Putin is shifting back to implied threats of nuclear escalation and Chernobyl-like environmental disasters. 

This past week, Putin signed two documents designed to send one nuclear message to the U.S. and NATO. The first provided for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, although control is solely retained by the Kremlin. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko claimed that the “tactical nuclear weapons were already on the move.” 

Then, on Monday, Putin signed legislation into law withdrawing Russia from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. Both decrees are creating an ominous new dimension in regard to the four Ukrainian regions Moscow illegally annexed — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. In the past, Putin has vowed to defend Russia territories, “including the annexed regions, with any means at his military’s disposal, including nuclear weapons.” …

New reports from the Ukraine Defense Ministry on May 26 also suggest Russia is planning a major accident at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in a ‘false flag’ operation to “thwart Ukraine’s imminently expected counteroffensive.” In faking a Ukrainian attack on the plant and causing “the leakage of the radioactive substances,” the Kremlin is apparently anticipating it can “trigger an international investigation which would require a ceasefire, allowing Russia to use the break in fighting to better prepare for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.”

Ukraine, however, remains undeterred and unwilling to give in to Russian nuclear blackmail. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly announced on May 29 that a decision had been made concerning the timing of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The head games continue — real and imagined, including action, reaction, counteraction — only this time, it is Ukraine dictating the conditions.

Deep strikes, raids, reconnaissance in force, supporting efforts, main effort — Gerasimov must now prepare for all contingencies along a 900-mile front. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army gets stronger and the Russian soldier in his foxhole is left to wonder.

Putin, essentially, is down to his nukes in Ukraine. And even he likely knows that they are not a viable or winning option. The question is no longer whether Russia conventionally loses in Ukraine, but when.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople The terror filled rants are getting longer as more info leaks out🍿
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1664342678572789761?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonald Trump Just like the Democrat inspired Fake Dossier, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the “No Collusion” Mueller Report, and so much else, the illegally leaked, by the DOJ, FBI, and Special “Prosecutor,” Document story is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time and, like all of the others, Fake News! I did nothing wrong, they did, and have been doing so for a long time. GREAT POLL NUMBERS – ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Today, and every time we prepare and make decisions for the sake of our Europe, for the sake of our values, we must remember that every doubt we show here in Europe is a trench that 🇷🇺 will definitely try to occupy. I said this at the second meeting of the European Political Community, which is taking place today in Moldova.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1664260023592054784?s=20/photo/1

Since February 24 last year, the limits of security in Europe have in fact been the limits of our determination, our ability to act together for the sake of the interests of our peoples and the whole Europe. As much as we can reject doubts, we can reject the evil of aggression.

This year – is for decisions. In summer – in Vilnius, at the @NATO summit – the clear invitation to membership for 🇺🇦 is needed, and the security guarantees on the way to NATO membership are needed. In fall, on our accession to the 🇪🇺 – clear positive decision is needed. And we are also preparing the Peace Summit, which will guide the world majority to implement the joint #PeaceFormula, and it is a global need. The time has come, and the doubts must vanish. We openly say that only a strong air defense, namely the coalition of “Patriots”, namely the coalition of modern fighter jets can defeat 🇷🇺 terror. ¤ We are offering appropriate decisions and promoting appropriate decisions. 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

🐣 RT @Tendar Germany has also increased the military aid package for Ukraine. Following positions have been added:
– 2x truck tractor trains 8×8 HX81, plus 3x semi-trailer
– 66x APC (probably Fuchs)
– 64x tracked all-terrain vehicles Bandvagn 206 (BV206)
– 7x tracked and remote controlled infantry vehicles TheMIS UGV systems
– Leopard 1 ammunition
Source: https://bundesregierung.de/breg-en/news/military-support-ukraine-2054992
#Germany #Ukraine

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer DEFENDERS OF KYIV: During last night’s sustained attacks, Ukrainian air defense is reported to have intercepted 10 out of 10 Russian Iskander short range ballistic missiles. This was a ‘type against target’ interception rate of 100%.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1664223311369236481?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @GresselGustav 1/ Some noteworthy stuff here. First AIM-7 for air defence. They will be launched from Buk-M1 launchers. Integrating Sparrows in Buks was a bumpy ride, took longer than expected. But finally solves an ammo issue for a prolific system in 🇺🇦.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GresselGustav 2/ 105mm tank rounds. That ends the discussions on where to get ammo for Leopard 1 tanks.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GresselGustav A Soviet aircraft only needs to launch, but not guide a Storm Shaddow. ¤ A Buk launcher needs to provide a radar signal for a Sparrow, one that works under adverse EW conditions.

🚫 🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA There is unconfirmed information from several Russian sources that Putin has decided to remove Shoigu from his post. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

🐣 RT @ NatalkaKyiv I don’t know who put the footage of the destroyed Ukrainian cities and intercepted conversations of Russian soldiers together, but I can’t think of a better illustration of ‘Russki Mir’.
💽 https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1664161632350502913?s=20/photo/1

It’s hard to watch and hard to listen to, but it’s important to do both so that none of this will ever be repeated in the future.

The world had already said ‘never again’ on multiple occasions. ¤ This time we must mean it and make it so. ¤ Never again!!!

#StandWithUkraine #Russia #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar #RussianWarCrimes #RussiaIsATerroristState

🚫 🧵 RT @generalsvr_en Details of the #China Peace Plan and #Putin’s Reaction ¤ #Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday held a meeting via video call with several trusted people from the country’s leadership. Putin holds meetings in this format and composition very rarely and only to… 1/9
📌 https://twitter.com/generalsvr_en/status/1664197204083367937?s=20

⋙ discuss issues that require immediate decisions and on which the fate of the country’s leadership depends. Thus, yesterday they discussed a proposal from the #Chinese comrades that had arrived the day before. The gist of the proposal is as follows: 2/9

⋙ #Russia withdraws its troops to the borders as of February 23, 2022. The “Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics” remain within the borders as of February 23, 2022, for a transitional period of up to five years, after which they return to… 3/9
⋙ #Ukraine on terms of limited autonomy. […]

The #Crimea issue is a topic for negotiations, which will start in five years. Until then, Crimea is effectively under Russian control. According to the #Chinese comrades, if the #Russian leadership is prepared to… 4/9
⋙ end the conflict on such terms, this package would include the removal of most of the sanctions imposed after February 24, 2022. The #Chinese comrades practically explicitly promise in such a case to help restore and increase #Russia’s military capacity within… 5/9
⋙ two to three years and “create better conditions for further negotiations”.

The proposal was not presented to #Ukraine. The #Russian leadership has to make a decision first. However, the plan was ALLEGEDLY presented to a number of politicians from… 6/9
⋙ #European countries actively supporting #Ukraine and was met with a cautiously positive response. If #Putin agrees, the #Chinese comrades are ready to start active negotiations to put these plans into practice, but they demand an immediate response from… 7/9
⋙ the #Russian president. […]

Participants in the meeting praised such “peace initiatives” and asked the president what he thought of them. #Putin irritatedly replied that he “does not have two or three fucking years” and just “gets fucked” with such proposals. 8/9
⋙ Those taking part in the meeting tried to persuade the president to think about it and perhaps discuss better terms but without much success. The president said he was not yet ready for such solutions and, promising to think about it further, closed the meeting. 9/9

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, commenting on the latest series of attacks on Russian territory, said that Ukraine has every right to defend itself. ¤ He added that the allies are determined to support Ukraine as long as necessary, and this does not make NATO a party to the conflict. ¤ “NATO has two tasks in this situation: to support Ukraine, which we are doing, and to prevent Russia’s aggressive war from going beyond the borders of Ukraine,” added the Secretary General

🐣 RT @rshereme Support for russia has fallen to historic lows, and now in no region of the world does it rise above 35% of the population. Even in the post-Soviet Eurasia and Africa, where russia held significant support, most people view russia unfavorably.
📊 https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1664181633941897218?s=20/photo/1
// Gallup poll

🐣 RT @, GlasnostGone Today attending the European Political Community summit, it’s good to see president Zelensky in #Moldova with president @sandumaiamd. Zelensky said #Ukraine’s ready to be in the #NATO & that Kyiv was waiting for the bloc to be ready to admit his country [Guardian] https://tinyurl.com/5frfsn8w

⭕ 31 May 2023

PravdaUA: White House: We are against strikes on Russian territory, but it’s up to Ukraine to decide https://tinyurl.com/2j6ajwbn

🧵 RT @DonbasDIY As Russia preaches denazification, Since 2004 it has covertly partnered & financed Neo Nazi & far-right movements around the world. Following a Neo-Eurasianist strategy popularized by Dugin, these fringe groups are causing division, spreading lies & subverting societies. 1/
📌🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/DonbasDIY/status/1664000637560934402?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /2130 UTC 31 MAY/ RU forces in the N area of operations conducted a failed attack at Orikhovo-Vasylivka. This comes as Wagner Group continues phased withdrawals from its contiguous positions. In the S area of operations, UKR forces broke up an attack at Bila Hora.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1664018461796753409?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @petestrzok Lordy there are tapes

CNN: EXCLUSIVE: Trump captured on tape talking about classified document he kept after leaving the White House https://tinyurl.com/ydkadptf Trump “acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document … , undercutting his argument that he declassified everything”

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an “important” piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and “automatically” declassify documents.

Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident. …

NYT: Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert https://tinyurl.com/zs36rvwe “Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a ‘fraud on the American public’”
// The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted baseless claims by the former president that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.

The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.

The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”

Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.

The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter. …

WaPo: Biden suggests using 14th Amendment to stop future debt ceiling standoffs https://tinyurl.com/5n6j6yd2 “The idea, as expressed by the president, would be to test the novel legal interpretation that holds that the debt ceiling is incompatible with the Constitution”
// The president has suggested invoking the Constitution after the current impasse. It is unclear whether a court would take up the case.

NYT, Thomas Edsall: The Politics of Delusion Have Taken Hold https://tinyurl.com/3mtsnzef Hyper-partisanship is self-reinforcing and possibly exaggerated, but is stuck until Republicans are able to reject the delusion that Trump won the 2020 election

PravdaUA/LondonTimes: Freedom of Russia Legion is recruiting Russians to storm Moscow – The Times https://tinyurl.com/yhmj9bks

A fighter of the Freedom of Russia Legion with the call sign Caesar said that the Russian partisans, who attacked the Kremlin’s forces from the territory of Ukraine, have “thousands” of people willing to join their ranks and will continue to raid the border until their forces are large enough to storm Moscow. Source: The Times

Quote: “We have serious capabilities. We have mortars, armoured vehicles, stinger manpads, portable anti-tank systems and a highly effective drone reconnaissance unit.”

Details: He said the Freedom of Russia Legion is the size of a battalion but plans to expand as an increasing number of Russians realise they can fight Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and prevail. ¤ A battalion typically consists of 500-1,000 soldiers.

Quote: “We will keep performing these harassment raids to the point we have our own piece of Russian territory, so that real Russian sons and daughters, real patriots, will be able to join us. Once that happens we will quickly grow our force and numbers and it will end with the Kremlin campaign.”

Details: Caesar joked that the weapons for his military formation were purchased from AliExpress and eBay, as well as from Russian military stores.

He emphasised that all of the members of his Legion were Russian citizens but admitted that they had served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces: “We are not a band of criminals or a private military company like Wagner. We fight within the structure of Ukrainian forces. Our main goal and task is the defence of Ukraine and de-occupation of its territories. After that we will go to free our home”.

He added that the raid on Russian territory was intended to support Ukraine’s planned counter-offensive while also acting as a recruitment campaign and encouraging Russians to overthrow Putin before the war comes to them.

According to him, Russians enter Ukraine through certain neutral border states. “We have a steady flow of incoming recruits and it grows. More and more Russian people understand that this war is criminal and it should be stopped”.

Alexei Baranovsky, a spokesman for the Legion’s political wing, told The Times that the Legion is “a politically neutral organisation with no ideological stance. [Its] only task is to overthrow Putin’s regime.” ¤ As he stated, the legion is biding its time: “We aren’t saying we will get to Moscow tomorrow. This will happen when the Ukrainian armed forces liberate Crimea. Putin’s political system will be paralysed by defeat in Crimea. This is when we will need to strike a devastating blow against Moscow. This is what we are preparing for.” …

🐣 RT @ Apex_WW The U.S. and its NATO allies haven’t acted on lessons learned from the war in Ukraine and aren’t prepared enough to defend Europe from a Russian attack, the Army’s former top commander on the Continent told an audience this week at a major security forum.
⋙ Stars&Stripes: ‘We’re not ready’ to defeat Russian attack on NATO, retired US general says https://tinyurl.com/287sz93t

The U.S. and its NATO allies haven’t acted on lessons learned from the war in Ukraine and aren’t prepared enough to defend Europe from a Russian attack, the Army’s former top commander on the Continent told an audience this week at a major security forum.

Transporting troops swiftly to the front lines, producing enough ammunition and communicating with allied armies remain challenges for NATO in defending against Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said Tuesday at the Globsec conference in Bratislava, Slovakia.

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer ATACMS: Though many consider it likely that UKR has 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 used US-made ATACMs missiles against the Kerch Bridge & the Saki airbase in Crimea, the Biden administration has definitely left the door open to overt US provision of the ATACMS to
UKR. https://tinyurl.com/2xe8jbbh
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1663980123442298893?s=20/photo/1
// (mainly, Chuck thinks this)

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️The 🇺🇸USA announced a new $300 million military aid package for 🇺🇦Ukraine, — Kirby.
It will include:
● ammunition for the “Patriot” air defense system;
● ammunition for artillery and HIMARS;
● aircraft missiles “Zuni”
● SAM “Avenger”;
● MANPADS “Stinger”.
// Defense budget

🧵 RT @ChuckPfarrer BURN RATE: @ukraine_map reports that Russia continues to expend its supplies of long range precision strike missiles. Putin is estimated to have less than 194 Kalibr, Kh 101/Kh-555, Iskander and Kinzhal missiles remaining in stock.
📌 ◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1663965385442377734?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @ukraine_map Russia’s Long Range Missile Stocks based on Ukraine’s reporting as of May 31, 2023 ¤ Russia is currently estimated to have 194 Kalibr, X-101/Kh-555, Iskander, and Kinzhal missiles in stock
◕ https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1663953650467602445?s=20/photo/1
// 96 of 950 Kalibr, 50 of 900 Iskander, 48of 53 Kinzhal
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @juha_remes It’s almost as if Putin regime gangs are using Shahed-136 drones as poor man’s replacement system for missiles such as Iskander or Kalibr.

🧵 RT @sentdefender According to Photos which were recently released, the Headquarters of the Main Directorate of Intelligence for the Ukrainian Armed Forces (GUR) appears to have suffered multiple “Direct Hits” from Russian Cruise Missiles and/or Shahed-136 Drone Strikes over the last few days; this seems to align with earlier claims by the Russian Ministry of Defense and President Putin that the Russian Military had Targeted “Decision Making Centers” in Kyiv alongside Buildings related to Ukrainian Military Intelligence.
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1663940375596212225?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: truth bombs are landing on Russian state TV, as experts struggle to define what Russia’s victory in Ukraine would look like. More in my latest article for @thedailybeast, linked below⤵️ [ytube link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s propagandists insist Russia has to win. Trouble is, none of them seem to know what victory would look like, or whether it’s even achievable. Exasperated panelists drop truth bombs on state TV: “In some Russian cities, they are running out of men!”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Team Putin Spars Over Baffling Russian ‘Victory Plan’ in War https://tinyurl.com/bpat26ts
// The Kremlin’s communication problems are triggering awkward moments and fiery clashes between Russian state television’s biggest stars.

🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en Prigozhin praised the Ukrainian Army and blamed Russia for concealing the real bad state of things from its population. ¤ Interesting choice of floor mat colors behind him, by the way.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1663831169614458880?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/ 1535 UTC 31 MAY/ RU sources indicate that units of the Wagner Group are conducting a phased withdrawal from positions in the northern portions of the Bakhmut Area of Operations (AO). Their stations are being turned over to Russian MoD forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1663929579478609925?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @ This was a small part of a very enjoyable conversation with @IAPonomarenko. ¤ The article is a good description of the challenges with fielding, maintaining & integrating the M1-series of tanks (and some other equipment). ¤ Ilia didn’t mention how the conversation started. 1/15 [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1663920394724679681?s=20
// how allies decide what equipment to provide and when

🐣 RT @USNATO The brutality with which Putin is conducting this full-blown assault against Ukraine is incomprehensible. In response, the United States continues to do all we can to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, including coordinating support with our NATO Allies. ¤ Allied Ministers of Foreign Affairs will discuss practical and political support to Ukraine at tomorrow’s informal #ForMin in Oslo.
💽 https://twitter.com/USNATO/status/1663884613725331461?s=20/photo/1
// video of destruction

🧵RT @rshereme There is no neutrality in the face of evil. The russian war and genocide against Ukrainians have changed me. The russians killed three of my friends; they have beheaded, tortured, raped, and castrated thousands of my countrymen; they have destroyed the livelihood of millions. 1/n
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1663803169288122369?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1663803169288122369.html

2/ I used to be much more tolerant and accepting of different points of view. But now, my vision is more black and white. The war became personal. The pain became personal.

3/ When you are bombed almost every night for 1.5 years straight and have your country invaded, it is personal. I think everyone of us has lost someone, either on the battlefield or when rockets or Iranian drones bombed civilian infrastructure.

4/ Almost every day and night, you hear explosions in the sky. You start your day by reading reports about the next few people hospitalized or dead because Iranian drones or russian rockets crashed into one more building. And that might be the building where your loved ones live.

5/ So when I meet a person who claims to be neutral regarding the russian war and genocide against Ukrainian people, I hold them responsible for the atrocities committed by russians. There cannot be neutrality in the face of evil.

6/ A Ukrainian is judged because he or she didn’t shake the hand of a russian, belarusian, or iranian athlete, and some people dare to cast a judgment? How morally bankrupt do you have to be to judge a victim who doesn’t want to shake hands with the aggressor?

7/ Oh, but maybe these athletes don’t support their governments. Well, if they don’t support their governments, then speak up! Put on a shirt condemning the actions of their government. But no, they are silent. Morally bankrupt.

8/ Oh, but their government would put them in prison for their position. Give me a break! We, Ukrainians, at the cost of many lives, have overthrown several political regimes that wanted to become dictatorships. We stood up. We are free people!

9/ We paid the price and will continue to pay the price. Because freedom is not free. It comes with a price. For us Ukrainians, the price is especially high. But we are willing to pay it. Because it is better to die than to live as a slave.

10/ If you choose to remain neutral and silent, it’s your choice. But that choice defines who you are. You are a coward, a silent supporter, a “good russian,” and history will judge you as such.

11/ To end, I want to quote some people who understood very well that there is no neutrality in the face of evil.

12/ Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil; God will not hold us guiltless. To not speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

13/ Elie Wiesel: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

14/ Dante Alighieri (paraphrased): “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality”

🚫🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel Usually Zelenskyy’s schedule is not revealed due to security concerns. The information about possible arrival of Zelenskyy and Putin in Turkey could benefit Turkey who wants to be a mediator for peace. Or Russia to use it in propaganda later, trying to show Putin as someone who wants peace. Many try to put Putin and Zelenskyy at negotiations table

⭕ 30 May 2023

🐣 RT @anno1540 230530 Time: 22.00 @ZelenskyyUa[:]

Now, in Ukraine, on our land, in our sky, it is being decided whether freedom and civilization will retain global leadership in this century. Decided by us, together with America, together with Europe, together with all our allies and partners. I thank everyone in the world who helps us!

And, of course, today, as always, I thank our warriors. All those who are now fighting for Ukraine. All those who are on combat missions. At combat posts. The Avdiivka sector, Bakhmut, Maryinka, Shakhtarsk sector. I thank everyone who defends our positions in Luhansk and Kharkiv regions. I am grateful to each and every one who defends Zaporizhzhia and Kherson region. I thank everyone who keeps our border strong.

Our brigades that are fighting. Our brigades that are ready to move forward. And our intelligence. Our security forces. On all fronts and at all levels, the enemy must feel that Ukraine has become stronger.

Glory to our heroes! ¤ Glory to Ukraine!

🐣 RT @KateGoesTech How many F-16s are gathering dust in each country:
🇺🇸 USA: 2,256
🇮🇱 Israel: 362
🇹🇷 Turkey: 270
🇪🇬 Egypt: 220
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 213
🇰🇷 South Korea: 180
🇬🇷 Greece: 170
🇹🇼 Taiwan: 150
🇵🇰 Pakistan: 111
🇦🇪 UAE: 80
🇩🇰 Denmark: 77
🇯🇴 Jordan: 64
🇸🇬 Singapore: 62
🇧🇪 Belgium: 54

TheGuardian: Trump lawyer said to have been waved off searching office for secret records https://tinyurl.com/yj23rzsd “… as the special counsel Jack Smith examines whether his incomplete search was actually a ploy by Trump to retain classified documents”
// Exclusive: Evan Corcoran said he was steered away from Trump’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials

Donald Trump’s lawyer tasked with searching for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the justice department issued a subpoena told associates that he was waved off from searching the former president’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials anywhere on the property. ¤ The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, recounted that several Trump aides had told him to search the storage room because that was where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency ended up being deposited.

Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room. He then asked whether he should search anywhere else, like Trump’s office, but was steered away, he told associates. Corcoran never searched the office and told prosecutors the 38 papers were the extent of the material at Mar-a-Lago.

The assertion that there were no classified documents elsewhere at the property proved to be wrong when the FBI seized 101 classified documents months afterwards, including from the office, which was found to be where the most highly classified documents had been located. ¤ Corcoran’s previously unreported account, as relayed to the Guardian by two people familiar with the matter, suggests he was materially misled as the special counsel Jack Smith examines whether his incomplete search was actually a ploy by Trump to retain classified documents. ¤ It was not clear who waved off Corcoran from searching elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago – whether it was Trump himself or Trump employees …

A Trump spokesperson said: “This is completely false and rooted in pure fantasy. The real story is the illegal weaponization of the justice department and their witch-hunts targeted to influence an election in order to try and prevent President Trump from returning to the White House.”

The criminal investigation, which appears to be nearing its end, has recently focused on why the subpoena was not complied with, including whether Trump might have arranged for boxes of classified documents to be moved out of the storage room so he could retain them.

In particular, prosecutors have examined why Trump ordered his valet, Walt Nauta, to move certain boxes out of the storage room before and after the subpoena was issued – as Nauta later told the justice department – and crucially where the boxes might have been taken. ¤ The movement of boxes has taken on added significance for prosecutors after they saw on surveillance tapes that boxes were returned to the storage room on 2 June 2022, the day before the justice department travelled to Mar-a-Lago to collect what Corcoran had found, the Washington Post reported.

It was also not clear when Corcoran was waved off from searching other parts of Mar-a-Lago; it could be notable if it came before the boxes were brought back to the storage room, as it would raise questions as to whether he was held off while classified documents were moved back. ¤ The Guardian has previously reported that prosecutors determined Trump and Nauta knew when and where Corcoran intended to search because Corcoran needed Nauta to unlock the storage room, according to Corcoran’s roughly 50 pages of notes that were turned over to the grand jury in the case.

Corcoran also memorialized how he told Trump he could not retain any classified documents at Mar-a-Lago when Trump asked what he was allowed to keep, as well as when he took breaks during the search by walking out to the pool deck nearby, and therefore leaving the storage room unattended.

To obtain Corcoran’s account, otherwise off-limits because of attorney-client privilege, prosecutors persuaded a US appeals court to pierce the protection because Trump may have used Corcoran’s legal advice in furtherance of a crime, according to another lawyer briefed on the case.

While Corcoran testified that Trump did not personally mislead him about where to search at Mar-a-Lago, he also acknowledged that Trump did not suggest he look anywhere else. The New York Times earlier reported a summary of his testimony. ¤ Corcoran appears to have been told the prevailing belief among Trump aides and employees at the time: that any classified documents would probably be in the storage room with the rest of the material brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency. ¤ Before he could start his search, Corcoran ended up telling Nauta about the subpoena, where at Mar-a-Lago he was searching and when he was searching, because Corcoran needed Nauta to unlock the storage room so he could gain access.

Once he gained entry, Corcoran realized he needed a deadline extension because he was the only Trump lawyer dealing with the subpoena and had underestimated the number of boxes there. The justice department agreed to a shorter extension that he wanted, and pushed the reply date to June. ¤ As the new subpoena deadline approached, Corcoran asked around whether there were other locations at Mar-a-Lago that he should search to ensure the response would be complete. Corcoran was told just searching the storage room should be sufficient and he did not look anywhere else.

Corcoran completed his search of just the storage room and told the justice department on 2 June 2022 to collect some documents the next morning. When prosecutors arrived, he provided a certification letter signed – and caveated – by another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, which attested to a “diligent search”.

The subpoena had been issued to Trump’s political office, and Corcoran treated it as an administrative subpoena and assumed he would be in recurring contact with the justice department about the documents matter, he has told associates.

When Corcoran turned over the 38 classified documents, according to court filings, he told the department the “records that came from the White House were stored within one location at Mar-a-Lago, the storage room … [and] he was not advised there were any records in any private office space”.

But that advice turned out to be wrong. When the FBI returned with a warrant months later, agents found in Trump’s desk drawer two classified documents mixed together with three other documents dated after Trump left the presidency, the Guardian has reported.,

😅 RT @jackryan212 I don’t know what this is. I found it on a Ukrainian telegram page but I almost cried laughing
💽 https://twitter.com/jackryan212/status/1663402529894309889?s=20/photo/1
// Ukraine Nato dancing

⭕ 29 May 2023

🐣 RT @maria_drutska We have approved the terms for the movement of our troops, decisions have been made – Zelensky in the evening address. ¤ So it begins.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HR_Attorney “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” Eisenhower, June 1944

🐣 RT @ officejjsmart PRES. ZELENSKY 🇺🇦 TO AMERICANS 🇺🇸
Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy 🇺🇦 has published an address to Americans on the occasion of Memorial Day in the United States 🇺🇸.
💽 https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1663262786003124230?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa The world needs to see that terror is losing.

When Patriots in the hands of Ukrainians ensure one hundred percent downing of any Russian missiles, terror is losing. When the world increases pressure on Russia, including sanctions, when the terrorist’s isolation grows, when its former partners are ashamed of any closeness with Moscow, terror is losing. And of course, there is no greater humiliation for terrorist state than the success of our warriors.

No one else in the world uses weapons against evil more effectively than Ukrainians. And this is a common global task – to prevent Russia from making terror something usual to the world so that it leads to someone else catching this evil virus.

🐣 RT @ yasminalombaert President Volodymyr Zelensky said a decision had been made on the timing of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in his nightly address yesterday.

“As usual, the Commander-in-Chief and the commanders of the operational directions reported to the Staff.

Not only the supply of ammunition, not only the training of new brigades, not only our tactics.

But also the timing. This is what is most important. The timing of how we will move forward. We will. The decisions have been made.

I thank every soldier and sergeant, officer and general, and every prepared brigade.”

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom GOPers figured out that just pandering to the most retrograde voters was easier than fighting for ideas. A big part of it is that nutball right-wing donors decided that they’d waited long enough and wanted a new right-wing Valhalla on earth *right now*, and democracy be damned.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MiaMcCall18 Why did it happen? Why is everything GOP-connected suddenly mad as a hatter?

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA BREAKING ¤ “All those who tried to intimidate us – our answer will not be long in coming, you will regret it very soon” – the address of the head of the GUR Budanov. [Uk 💽]

⭕ 28 May 2023

ABC/AP (May): Jan. 6 rioters are raking in thousands in donations. Now the US is coming after their haul https://tinyurl.com/3u7c2mxs
// 5/28/2023; A growing number of Capitol rioters are facing hefty fines on top of prison sentences at their sentencing hearings

💙 🐣 RT @Sytheruk Absolutely one of the greatest leaders of all time
💽 https://twitter.com/Sytheruk/status/1662998505638580224?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky video

WaPo: Ukrainians fighting outside Bakhmut see Russian mercenaries withdrawing https://tinyurl.com/2taxx464 “Moving regular Russian units to defend Bakhmut could create vulnerabilities at other locations along the front, which stretches hundreds of miles”

🐣 RT @POTUS Speaker McCarthy and I reached a bipartisan budget agreement that will prevent the worst possible crisis – a default for the first time in our nation’s history. ¤ This deal is good news for the American people. ¤ I strongly urge Congress to pass the agreement right away.

🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 Watching President Biden right now gives me comfort. He is strong. He is steady. He & his team know exactly what they’re doing. Don’t even try to tell me that Donald Trump could’ve pulled this off. Joe Biden was made for this moment & he has delivered for all of us.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 President Biden opened by saying there is good news. He then emphasized the fact that not everyone will be pleased but that this is what the job of the government is & that the alternative would’ve been much worse. Reiterates to Dems that he didn’t concede much. Strong address.

💙 🐣 RT @RabbiUkraine Today is a holiday in Ukraine – Kyiv Day! I recently recorded the song “Kyiv Heroy” and today I gave it to all Ukrainian people! https://youtu.be/7VwvPC60vys
♫ https://twitter.com/RabbiUkraine/status/1662826053973278722?s=20/photo/1

💙 EuromaidanPress, Paul Goble (2015): Ukrainian conflict is between ‘heirs of Kyivan Rus’ and ‘heirs of Golden Horde’ https://tinyurl.com/4sn43drv
// “The Ukrainian-Russian conflict is to a significant degree a conflict between the heirs of Kyivan Rus [Ukraine] and the heirs of the Golden Horde” [Moscow], according to Andrey Piontkovsky, and one of its key results will be “an intensification of the swallowing of Russia by China.”

In the course of a wide-ranging interview yesterday with Artem Dekhtyarenko of Ukraine’s Apostrophe news agency, the Russian commentator argues that it is a mistake to see what is taking place in Moscow as “a strengthening of the ties of Russia and China.”

Instead, he argues, it is part of a long ongoing process that has accelerated in the course of the Ukrainian crisis of “the swallowing of Russia by China.” At the recent Victory Day parade in Moscow, something “symbolic” happened that had never occurred “in the thousand year history of Russia:” three units of the Chinese military took part. …

The Chinese had never permitted themselves to express such notions so boldly, the Russian analyst continues; but it is clear that they now have “complete confidence that having cut itself off from Western civilization, Putin’s Russia will become an easy catch” for Beijing.

That is all the more so, Piontkovsky continues, because there are influential people in Russia itself who “welcome this process” because they “consider the Golden Horde to have been the golden age of Russian history.” Thus, “the swallowing of Russia by China is a return to its deepest historical roots.”

Those who think in this way have a certain measure of truth on their side, the Russian commentator concludes, and that in turn meansthat the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia is “to a significant degree” a conflict between the two states these two countries emerged from, Kyivan Rus in the case of Ukraine and the Golden Horde in the case of Russia.

💙 EuromaidanPress, Yaroslav Dashkevychm (2014): How Moscow hijacked the history of Kyivan Rus’ https://tinyurl.com/mr2d27nz “Moscow was created in 1277 as a subservient vassal region … to the Golden Horde …. By that time, Kyivan Rus had existed for more than 300 years”

[…] At the time of the Kyivan Empire there was no mention of a Moscow nation. It is well known that Moscow was created in 1277 as a subservient vassal region or ‘ulus’ to the Golden Horde, established by the Khan Mengu-Timur. By that time, Kyivan Rus had existed for more than 300 years.

There are no indications of any connection of Kyivan Rus with the Finnish ethnic groups in the land of ‘Moksel’ or later of the Moscow principality with the Principality of Kyivan Rus up until the XVI century. At the time when Kyivan Rus had officially accepted Christianity, the Finn tribes in ‘Moksel’ lived in a semi-primitive state.

How can anyone speak of ‘an older brother’ when that ‘older brother’ did not first appear until centuries after Rus-Ukrainians? He has no moral right to call himself an ‘older brother’, nor to dictate how people are to live, nor to force his culture, language, and world views. It is clear that until the end of the XV century, there was no Russian nation, there was no older brother ‘Great Russian’, nor were there any Russian people. Instead, there was the land of Suzdal: the land of Moksel, later the Moscow princedom, which entered into the role of the Golden Horde, the nation of Genghis Khan. From the end of the XIII to the beginning of the XVIII century, the people in this land were called Moskovites. And Moscow historians are silent about this question of their national origins.

During the IX to the XII cent. the large area of Tula, Ryazan, and today’s Moscow region – all this was inhabited by the people called ‘Moksel,’ including the tribes of Muromians, Merya, Vepsians, Mokshas, Chudes, Maris and others. These tribes eventually became the foundation of the nation who now call themselves ‘Great Russians’.

In 1137, sixth son of the Kyivan prince Volodymyr Monomakh, Yurii Dolgorukii (who had been left without a princedom in the Kyivan empire) arrived in this land. ¤ Yurii Dolgorukii began the rule of the ‘Riurykovyches’ in ‘Moksel’, becoming prince of Suzdal. To him and a local Finnish woman was born a son Andrei, called ‘Bogoliubskii’. Born and raised in the forest wilderness among the half savage Finnish tribes, prince Andrey cut all ties with his father’s entourage and with their old Kyivan customs.

In 1169 Andrei Bogoliubskii sacked and destroyed Kyiv. He destroyed all the churches and religious artifacts, something unheard of in those times. ¤ Andrei was a barbarian who did not feel any familial ties with Kyiv, the holy city of Slavs. …

… Up until the XII century, only Finn tribes lived in the land of ‘Moksel’ … And the anthropological investigations of human skulls by A. P. Bohdanov and F. K. Vovk support the differentiated characteristics of the Finnish and Slavic ethnoses.

In 1237 the Tatar-Mongols entered the lands of Suzdal. … The princes of Vladimir, Yurii and Yaroslav Vsevolodovich accepted subservience to Khan Batey. In this manner, the land of ‘Moksel’ entered the ranks of the Golden Horde Empire of Genghis Khan. …

Living with the Horde of Batey from 1238 to 1252, Alexander, only much later named “Nevsky,” adopted all the customs and organizational ideas of the Golden Horde. …

The big lie was introduced: that Moscow was founded in 1147 by Yuri Dolgoruky. This is a myth with no supportive evidence. Moscow was established as a settlement in 1272. That same year the Golden Horde conducted their third census of the populations in their domain. Both in the first census (1237-1238) and in the second census (1254-1259) there is no mention of any Moscow at all. … Thus for over 270 years, Moscow was ruled solely by khans of the Genghis dynasty. …

Based on these facts, it becomes clear that Moscow is the direct inheritor of the Golden Horde Empire of Genghis and that actually the Tatar-Mongols were the ‘godfathers’ of Moscow statehood. The Moscow princedom (and tsardom from 1547) up until the XVI century had no ties or relationships with the princedoms of the lands of Kyivan Rus.

The tribe of Great Russians, or the Russian people as known today, appeared around the XV to XVII centuries from among the Finn tribes: Muroma, Mer, Ves and others. This was when their history started. There is no history of Great Russians on Kyivan lands!

The history of Great Russians starts with the ‘Beyond the Forests Land’ in Moscow, which was never Kyivan Rus. The Tatar-Mongols who entered these lands were a big element in the formulation of ‘Great Russians’. The Great Russian psychology absorbed many characteristics – the Tatar-Mongol instincts of a conqueror and despot, with the ultimate aim: world domination.

Thus by the XVI cent. was established the type of a conqueror who was horrible in his lack of education, rage and cruelty. These people had no use for European culture and literacy. All such things like morality, honesty, shame, justice, human dignity and historical awareness were absolutely foreign to them. A significant amount of Tatar-Mongols entered the makeup of Great Russians from the XIII to XVI centuries and they accounted for the genealogy of over 25% of Russian nobility. …

In order to appropriate the history of Kyiv lands and to immortalize this theft, the Great Russians had to squash the Ukrainian people, drive them into slavery, deprive them of their true name, exterminate them via famine, etc.

Ukrainians had emerged as a nation in the XI to XII centuries, and probably, even earlier. Later they were labeled ‘Little Russians’ when Russians began to brainwash the world with their ‘version’ of history. For the smallest deviation from this official version, people were tortured, killed, and sent off to the GULAG. The Soviet period was especially brutal and vicious. During that time, Ukraine lost over 25 million of her sons and daughters, who perished in wars for Russian interests, and during collectivization, tortures, and forced relocations. ¤ This is the way the ‘older brother’ forced the ‘younger brother’, the ‘Little Russian’, to live in the savage ’embraces of love’. […]

⭕ 27 May 2023

WaPo: Russians snitch on Russians who oppose war with Soviet-style denunciations https://tinyurl.com/4nme296d “As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime cracks down on critics of the war and other political dissenters, citizens are policing one another”
// … “in an echo of the darkest years of Joseph Stalin’s repression”

🐣 RT @snno1540 Attacks on Russia must be deterred: GUR ambitions are beginning to worry Western intelligence – The Times

Western special services note the professionalism of Ukrainian spies. At the same time, the growing ambitions of Ukrainian military intelligence somewhat worries Western partners, so in some places they even try to restrain the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine from some attacks on Russia.

Journalists claim that the “treasury” of the GUR MOU contains a number of very ambitious operations on the territory of the Russian Federation, some representatives of Western intelligence even refer to the military intelligence of Ukraine as the “Ukrainian Mossad” [link in Ukr]

🐣 RT @officejjsmart BIG WIN FOR UKRAINE 🇺🇦
In the largest drone strike since the war began, tonight Kyiv successfully shot down 40 drones. ¤ This is the security that Europe 🇪🇺 and USA 🇺🇸 give Ukraine 🇺🇦 through air defense systems. Thank you! Everyday closer is 🇺🇦 victory over evil 🇷🇺!
🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦!

🐣 RT @DefMon3 You know you are winning when your enemy spend all their cruise missiles and long range drones attacking your capital city, instead of military targets which make sense. On top of that, most of them are being shot down.

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Never ending barrage of Iranian drones tonight on Kyiv.

WaPo: What’s in the McCarthy-Biden deal to lift the debt ceiling? Here are 6 takeaways. https://tinyurl.com/z2ybkpaj
// The president and House speaker can claim a victory that appeared elusive just days earlier
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1662653979833122816?s=20/photo/1

● Raises the debt ceiling beyond the 2024 election
● Largely holds funding flat for domestic programs
● Claws back some money for the IRS
● Slight funding boosts for the military, veterans affairs
● New work requirements on federal programs [but not Medicaid]
● Out of the deal: Closing tax loopholes, cutting student debt relief

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Biden, McCarthy reach ‘agreement in principle’ to raise debt ceiling as default looms https://tinyurl.com/2h72kpff

🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ The Russian Army is holding public show trials of soldiers accused of refusing to fight in Ukraine. Soldiers in Vladikavkaz and Yekaterinburg have been given lengthy sentences after being tried in front of their comrades by military courts.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1662486514498936836?s=20

🧵 RT @RALee85 Russia achieved limited tactical gains at high cost over the winter. Ukraine correctly held back resources and spent time regenerating offensive potential to give itself a better chance of achieving operational-strategic level gains this summer.
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1662585307269570560?s=20
⋙⋙ 19fortyfive: Sad Reality: The Ukraine War Is Now Going Russia’s Way https://tinyurl.com/2p98m2zu
// Recent evidence indicates the Russian side has made tactical and operational improvements that are having an impact on the ground in Ukraine.

⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 If Ukraine had committed all of its resources to the front over the winter, Russia likely wouldn’t have made any gains but Ukraine would have reduced its chances for achieving a breakthrough this summer.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 I think some people assume that both sides commit all of their resources to the front line at all times and that wars are linear, but that isn’t how it works. Ukraine has a much better chance of making serious gains this summer than Russia had over the winter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 I think the focus on Bakhmut has given some people the wrong perception of the war, conflating a tactical-level battle (Bakhmut) with the strategic level. There were several other battles over the winter and none were successes for Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 There are still important long-term questions about ammunition availability and other variables, but I’m more optimistic about Ukraine’ chances after Russia’s failed winter offensive and recent announcements of more capable weapons’ deliveries from NATO members.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Russia made some slow and costly gains last spring before that offensive culminated. Similar arguments were made then about the war’s trajectory favoring Moscow, but the attrition Russia sustained set the conditions for Ukraine’s successful offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Russian equipment issues are growing, and they are increasingly relying on convicts to fight/hold their lines. I’m skeptical that Russia can restore sufficient offensive potential to make serious gains. The question is whether they can defend the territory they currently control.

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa When Russia started this aggression, they looked at the world as if they were looking at themselves in a mirror. They thought that supposedly everyone in the world was cynical and despised people in the same way as the owners of Russia do. But the world is different – the world helps us protect life. And anyone who goes against the world will become marginal. Russia will gain nothing and lose everything. Glory to all who defend our state! Glory to all who help! 🇺🇦

🐣 RT @maxseddon Talk of a “time of troubles” among warring Russian elites has been strong behind closed doors since the war effort really began sputtering last fall, but it’s still quite something for it to spill out into the open like this
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin accuses Prigozhin of preparing for a coup in Russia. He says the insults towards the Russian army by Putin’s cook are unacceptable, and signal a rift in the elites which Prigozhin will take advantage of with his private army that is being withdrawn from Bakhmut. Girkin adds that if Russia misses the upcoming counter-offensive, the political situation in the country may become unrecongisable by the end of summer. ¤ Watch an excerpt from a longer video posted today.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1662429293719298049?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Podolyak_M [tr] Regarding conditions, requirements, statements… One must call a spade a spade. The civilized world must recognize that the accused of war crimes #Путін and his clique are no longer the legitimate representatives of Russia in the world, and therefore there is nothing to talk about with them. Today’s Russian government must lose its place in all international institutions, including in the Security Council #ООН . There will be a regime change – let’s talk with the successors. In particular, about compensation payments and the nuclear disarmament program.

🐣 RT @CinC_AFU The time has come to take back what belongs to us.
⋙🐣 RT @lamatzzi For I set to defeat the enemies of my homeland
The killers of my Brothers
The rapists of my Sisters
Let my hand be firm
To destroy my enemies
Let my weapons serve well
To destroy my enemies
Let my will be of steel
To destroy the enemies
Your blessing
For our sacred revenge

🐣 RT @s_hnizdovskyi Russian society is polarised between the “elite” and the regular people, says Prigozhin. With the number of Russia’s war losses (btw, he names a bigger number than 🇷🇺 MoD), he predicts the repeat of the 1917 revolution in Russia and the execution of the elites.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/s_hnizdovskyi/status/1662454451720929280?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Hromadske Russia has named new requirements for “achieving peace” with Ukraine, including Ukraine’s refusal to join NATO and the EU. The Ukrainian President’s Office has already responded.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Podolyak_M “Demands of #Russia” told through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the RF rather confirm the legal and factual incapacity of the Russian leadership. Therefore, only “the conditions of #Ukraine” are realistic…

Immediate withdrawal of all troops from the sovereign territory of Ukraine. Final recognition of the collapse of the #USSR and full sovereignty of the post-Soviet countries. Extradition of war criminals and authors of war. Fixing the demilitarization zone (buffer zone) on the territory of the #RF. Reduction of offensive weapons (missiles with extended range). International conference to organize control over the nuclear arsenal of the RF. A legally fixed program of reparation payments, including a voluntary renunciation of Russian assets seized in other countries in favor of Ukraine…,

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa It’s peace that we will pass on to our children and grandchildren as an inheritance of the present generation. We don’t have and don’t want other alternatives. But to pass on peace as the inheritance, we must get to the day when we can say that we are ending this war with our victory.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress PMC Wagner owner Prigozhin’s revelations expose the extensive losses and failure of Wagner Group in Bakhmut, demonstrating Ukraine’s success in destroying capable Russian army elements – Frontline report
⋙ Euromaidanpress: Frontline report: Prigozhin’s video exposes high losses and failure of Wagner Group in battle for Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/55kxyc4k
// Wagner Group owner Prigozhin’s revelations expose the extensive losses and failure of Wagner Group in Bakhmut, demonstrating Ukraine’s success in destroying capable Russian army elements.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s Telegram channel published a post saying “It’s time to get back what’s ours” with Ukraine Army’s enlistment ad video ¤ Media are speculating whether it may mean the beginning of the long-expected counter-offensive ¤ https://t.me/CinCAFU/505
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1662332269162381313?s=20/photo/1
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/DenesTorteli/status/1662318450172108801?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en For the first time on Russian TV, propagandists said that Putin and the country’s leaders must resign and others need to be elected.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1662352521858252800?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 26 May 2023

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IT’S NOT A WIN WHEN YOU RUN: Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, announces that his forces are withdrawing from Bakhmut. RU’s Pyrrhic ‘victory’ in the city is estimated to have cost its forces as many as 40,000 dead and tens of thousands wounded.

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1420 UTC 26 MAY/ RU sources indicate that Wagner Group forces have initiated withdrawal from the N areas of the Bakhmut Aera of Operations (AO). RU MoD forces including elements of the 9th, 200th, 6th and 123rd Motor rifles are now operational N of Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1662099611958345728?s=20/photo/1

Politico: Yushchenko: ‘Putin has Putin-nized Europe’ https://tinyurl.com/yckd5c48 “[]efore the war, Russia was still a major trade partner … [W]ith Russia no longer being a trade partner, a lot of sources of corruption have disappeared” ~ Former Ukraine President Yushchenko

[…] The real change in Putin, in how he behaves, in how he talks, in how he looks at other countries, I first noticed when he spoke in the Munich security conference in 2007. That speech was so undiplomatic and arrogant. Even how his voice sounded changed. He was trying to sound tough, like a thug, while lecturing the world on how he believes the world should be. How he thinks the security arrangements in Europe should be organized.

I really felt ashamed when I watched him speaking. It was so striking. I remember sitting next to Chancellor [Angela] Merkel, and she kept turning to me, and she said, “I cannot believe he is saying all that.” …

Putin has Putin-ized Europe. The highest level politicians in Europe serve on the board of his companies, and make money in Russia. We see how former chancellors, ministers, vice chancellors of different countries, become members of supervisory boards of Russian state companies. The political corruption, or as I call it, Punitization, has been so deep in all aspects of political and business life in prominent European countries.

Europe, divided by Putin, failed to really build effective security systems and arrangements.

We need to go back and reflect very thoroughly and seriously on what we did wrong to allow this fascist regime in the 21st century, after all the lessons that we were supposed to learn from the 20th century. I think additionally that political leaders of Russia, and the military leadership should be eventually brought to court and tried. For that we need to have a consolidated foreign policy related to these matters. …

Whatever happens with the current situation is pretty much dependent on two countries, China and the United States. … Russia now, is just the vessel, just a subordinate component to Chinese foreign policy. Russia has no say anymore in how to run the world.

Of course, a lot of agreements need to be reached by China and the United States on many matters. But I think that every day, when we talk about the United States, senators and congressmen, more and more people are thinking in the following way: Russia is a gas station.

Q: You’ve talked about how Russia shouldn’t be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Is there a path to remove Russia from that position?

As of now, there is a team of lawyers from different countries looking for mechanisms. They are putting a list of all the instruments that could be used to take that right from Russia to be a permanent member of the council. Once that system is in place, by the end of the summer, we will come up with a list of people who will be contacted and who could be the voices of this initiative, who could actually influence, and bring this into the agenda of the United Nations. …

… [K]eep in mind that before the war, Russia was still a major trade partner. And they were the ones who were imposing and profiting and arranging these corruption schemes in the way they liked, in the dirtiest and most improper way. So this is why, with Russia no longer being a trade partner, a lot of sources of corruption have disappeared. …

What I see is that the people of the United States are more consolidated than ever when it comes to providing Ukraine with military and other assistance. Most of the people — I’m not saying 100 percent — but most people speak in support of Ukraine.

President [Joe] Biden came to Ukraine, and I don’t remember a case when the president of the U.S. or any other important country would come into a war zone.

That was the most important support, expressed in a very courageous way. And that meant so much to every citizen and soldier in Ukraine. Biden walked through downtown Kyiv, at the same time, there were air raid sirens going on, and the president was not being pulled into some shelter or basement. He behaved like every American with dignity, with a sense of freedom and respect to those who fight for freedom.

🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava ❗️ Ukrainian counteroffensive will be the biggest battle in Europe since World War II, – former German Foreign Minister

🐣 RT @Suomiperkele7 Ukraine, my country will support you until the end, so will 50 countries. Ukraine you are in our hearts, you are in our soul. We don’t get tired, we don’t get sick, we don’t give up, but we fight until the end. We are from all over the world, but our hearts are yellow and blue, ¤ Russia will not wi!! Justice, Caring, equality, friendship, union and humanity. Ukraine Will Win🇺🇦❤️

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer. NUCLEAR ROULETTE: The official account Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (@DI_Ukraine) released a statement at 1503 PM CST indicating that it had information of a planned Russian provocation at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1662230302754734081?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DI_Ukraine ‼️ Russians are preparing massive provocation and imitation of the accident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the nearest hours. ¤ They are planning to attack the territory of the ZNPP. After that, they will announce the leakage of the radioactive substances.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DI_Ukraine They obviously will blame Ukraine. Russians sabotaged today’s planned rotation of the staff of the IAEA monitoring mission. They aim to provoke the international community and conduct a detailed investigation requiring a ceasefire.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DI_Ukraine Russians are going to use this so desirable pause for the regrouping of the occupational personnel and to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

PravdaUA: Russians prepare large-scale provocation at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant https://tinyurl.com/bdef63bc “[T]he invaders will announce an emergency leak of radioactive substances [at the ZNPP]. Ukraine will, as ever, be blamed for the incident” ~ Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence

Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence has reported that in the coming hours, Russian invaders are preparing a large-scale provocation to simulate an accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). ¤ Source: press service of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence

Details: According to Defence Intelligence, it will be carried out directly on the territory of the ZNPP. After that, the invaders will announce an emergency leak of radioactive substances. Ukraine will, as ever, be blamed for the incident. ¤ In order to conceal what they are doing as much as possible, the Russians have disrupted the IAEA permanent monitoring mission personnel rotation scheduled for 26 May, Defence Intelligence notes.

The purpose of this action is to provoke the international community into conducting a detailed investigation during which all hostilities will be suspended. In this way, the invaders hope to gain a much-desired pause, which they will use to regroup their ranks and stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the intelligence officers summed up.

PravdaUA: Zelenskyy’s office responds to Chinese envoy’s call for occupied territories to be given to Russia https://tinyurl.com/s2fpbp2a Would be “the defeat of democracy, the victory of Russia, the preservation of Putin’s regime &…the sharp increase in conflicts in global politics”

Quote from Podoliak: “Any ‘compromise scenario’ envisaging the liberation of NOT all territories of Ukraine, which ‘anonymous sources’ in the European and American elites periodically talk about, is tantamount to admitting the defeat of democracy, the victory of Russia, the preservation of Putin’s regime and as a consequence the sharp increase in conflicts in global politics.”

DailyBeast, Wajahat Ali: CNN Can Never Wash Away the Trump Disaster Stench https://tinyurl.com/2rwhfrw4 “CNN viewers might not be leaving their ‘silo’ but they’re definitely leaving CNN, whose ratings have plummeted since the Trump town hall”

UACrisis: “It’s either victory and the birth of a new world, or annihilation” -Russian Propagandist Dugin https://tinyurl.com/ax3daueu “Dugin contends that Russia has no choice but to join forces with other nations labelled ‘nomads’ by the West”

[…] Dugin contends that Russia has no choice but to join forces with other nations labelled “nomads” by the West in order to forge a new world order free of Western dominance.

According to Dugin, Russia has two options: complete isolation from the rest of the world, which would strengthen Russian identity and beliefs, leading to victory and a promising tomorrow, or opening up to other civilizations while keeping the West out. He harshly criticises the West, comparing it to hell in terms of lies, double standards, and hostile values.

Dugin emphasises the importance of Russia taking a different path, one of which centred around Africa, the Islamic world, China, Iran, and Latin America. He says that the West has attempted to marginalise Russia, but claims that Russia has risen above this and is moving forward. “The west has indeed swept us on the western map, but we have risen up, gathered ourselves, and stayed put – instead, we are developing.”

“We will never return to our previous course. It’s either victory and the birth of a new world, or annihilation, as our President has repeatedly warned.” ¤ Dugin’s thoughts reflect his desire for Russia to assert its independence and pursue alliances outside of Western influence, implying a shift in Russia’s global perspective, however instead comes across as delusional and desperate.

WSJ: Did Merkel Pave the Way for the War in Ukraine? https://tinyurl.com/29pwcvy7 “Putin had told her that he wanted to destroy the European Union. But she still forged ahead with plans to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Germany directly to Siberia’s natural gas fields”
// The former German chancellor is unapologetic as critics reexamine her deals with Putin and reluctance to punish his previous aggressions.

[…] Merkel was a key architect of the agreements that made the economies of Germany and its neighbors dependent on Russian energy imports. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has destroyed that strategic partnership, forcing Germany to find its oil and natural gas elsewhere at huge costs to business, government and households. Berlin was able to secure enough natural gas to carry its economy through last winter, but it is unclear how Germany will meet its long-term supply needs. …

Most controversially, former allies of Merkel and other experts say that her refusal to stop buying energy from Putin after he seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014—she instead worked to double gas imports from Russia—emboldened him to finish the job eight years later. …

At an event last year, Merkel recalled that after annexing Crimea, Putin had told her that he wanted to destroy the European Union. But she still forged ahead with plans to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, linking Germany directly to Siberia’s natural gas fields, in the face of protests from the U.S. Merkel’s government also approved the sale of Germany’s largest gas storage facilities to Russia’s state-controlled gas giant Gazprom.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was set to double Russian gas exports to Germany at a time when the country already depended on Putin for 55% of its gas supply. The pipeline was built but never came online, and it was later scrapped by Merkel’s successor because of the war in Ukraine.

Since leaving office, Merkel has defended the pipeline project as a purely commercial decision. She had to choose, she said, between importing cheap Russian gas or liquefied natural gas, which she said was a third more expensive. …

⭕ 25 May 2023

🐣 RT @djrothkopf This is roughly what I said I expected the other day. If it happens this way and they get it through both houses, it will be another example of Biden’s really remarkable ability to work with difficult situations on the Hill.
¤ https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1661926915643432962?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @JStein_WaPo Can confirm @jimtankersley‘s scoop tn If it holds – big if – we are looking at essentially flat funding for domestic programs like anti poverty, rental aid, transit, science, etc ¤ I had been expecting a major cut based on everything in the prior few days
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TomBlock_FS Deal will require bipartisan vote and moving new deadline until 2025 is a big get for Ds. R House bill had end date of 3/31/24. This is worth a lot for Ds to get.

🐣 RT @goterrands2 The Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers and healthcare providers to stop using certain lots of recalled SD Biosensor, Inc. Pilot COVID-19 At-Home Tests distributed by Roche Diagnostics. ¤ The product recall is due to significant concerns of bacterial contamination in the Pilot COVID-19 At-Home Test liquid solution provided in the test kit.
// COVID-19 test recall

🐣 RT @FBI Today two Oath Keepers leaders were sentenced for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/3y5bx33w
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/FBI/status/1661898741731794944?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Today’s sentencings reflect the FBI’s commitment to do our part to hold accountable individuals who committed criminal acts on January 6, 2021, as well as those who plotted to interfere with the lawful transfer of power. We will continue to work with our partners to bring to justice those who violated our laws in connection with the siege on the U.S. Capitol.
FBI DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson If only there was a phrase to encapsulate this effect…
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianstelter “In the weeks after the former president appeared on CNN, the network’s ratings have plummeted. In fact, its ratings last week were the worst the network has posted since June 2015.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @newrepublic The Trump town hall earned CNN no end of mockery on the day of the event. Weeks later, however, we’re seeing knock-on effects in the form of staggeringly low ratings. https://trib.al/4eaaed0

NYT: Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case https://tinyurl.com/2kd38bae “Prosecutors have been trying to determine whether Mr. Trump had documents moved around Mar-a-Lago or sought to conceal some of them after the subpoena”
// A maintenance worker for the former president recounted helping to move boxes into a storage room a day before a Justice Department official came seeking the return of classified material

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Oath Keepers Leader Is Sentenced to 18 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case https://tinyurl.com/32mayx5d “The sentence … was the most severe penalty so far in any of the more than 1,000 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack” and the first for terrorism
// The sentence for Stewart Rhodes was the longest so far in the federal investigation of the Capitol attack and the first issued to a defendant convicted of sedition.

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges for the role he played in helping to mobilize the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. ¤ The sentence, handed down in Federal District Court in Washington, was the most severe penalty so far in any of the more than 1,000 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack — and the first to be increased for fitting the legal definition of terrorism.

It was also the first to have been given to any of the 10 members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group, the Proud Boys, who were convicted of sedition in connection with the events of Jan. 6. ¤
For Mr. Rhodes, 58, the sentence was the end of a tumultuous and unusual career that included Army service, a stint on Capitol Hill and a law degree from Yale. His role as the Oath Keepers’ founder and leader thrust him into the spotlight and will now send him to prison for what is likely to be the better part of his remaining days.

At a dramatic, nearly four-hour hearing, Judge Amit P. Mehta chided Mr. Rhodes for seeking for years through his leadership of the Oath Keepers to have American democracy “devolve into violence.” ¤ As the hearing opened, prosecutors urged Judge Mehta to sentence Mr. Rhodes to 25 years in prison, arguing that accountability was needed for the violence at the Capitol and that American democracy was on the line.

Kathryn L. Rakoczy, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, told Judge Mehta that Mr. Rhodes had been calling for attacks against the government for more than a decade and that his role in the Jan. 6 attack was part of a longstanding pattern.

The Oath Keepers leader, Ms. Rakoczy said, exploited his talents and influence to goad his followers into rejecting the results of the 2020 election and ultimately mobilized them into storming the Capitol in two separate military-style “stacks” in a violent effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in office. ¤ “It is conduct that threatened — and continues to threaten — the rule of law in the United States,” she said. ¤ Ms. Rakoczy also noted that Mr. Rhodes had shown no remorse for undermining the lawful transition of power and continued to advocate for political violence. Just four days ago, she said, Mr. Rhodes gave an interview from jail, repeating the lie that the election had been marred by fraud and asserting that the government was “coming after those on the political right.”

“It’s not going to stop until it’s stopped,” Mr. Rhodes said during the interview, adding that the country needed “regime change.” ¤ As if to prove the government’s point, Mr. Rhodes — in an orange prison smock and his trademark black eye patch — gave a defiant address to the court, blaming the news media for demonizing the Oath Keepers for leading the Capitol attack. He also compared himself to the Soviet-era dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and to the beleaguered main character in Kafka novel “The Trial.” ¤ “I am a political prisoner,” Mr. Rhodes said. …

In court papers filed this month, prosecutors dwelled on the importance of severely punishing Mr. Rhodes and his subordinates, stating that the acceptance of political violence was on the rise in the United States and that lengthy prison terms were needed to serve as a deterrent against future unrest. ¤ “As this court is well aware, the justice system’s reaction to Jan. 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether Jan. 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment,” the prosecutors wrote. “Left unchecked, this impulse threatens our democracy.” …

In the end, Judge Mehta said he had imposed a harsh sentence because seditious conspiracy was “among the most serious crimes an individual in America can commit.” ¤ He also scolded Mr. Rhodes, telling him that he had not been prosecuted because of his political beliefs but rather because he had “prepared to take up arms and foment revolution” simply because he did not like the results of an election. …

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️Thanks to the most modern air defense systems, such as Patriot and other systems transferred by European partners, Ukrainian forces are successful in repelling missile attacks, – the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin.

🐣 RT @alanfeuer JUST IN: A federal judge has agreed to apply a terrorism enhancement in the sentencing of Oath Keepers’ leader Stewart Rhodes–the first time in more than 1,000 Jan. 6 criminal cases that the terrorism penalty provision has been approved.
⋙ 🐣 RT @alanfeuer Prosecutors argued for the enhancement by saying Rhodes set up an armed force outside DC on Jan. 6 and repeatedly called for violence vs the govt. ¤ “This wasn’t blowing up a building,” prosecutors said. But “organizing an armed force” and advocating “civil war” came close.

🐣 RT @Podolyak_M Once again about the #counteroffensive. Without further questions.
1. This is not a “single event” that will begin at a specific hour of a specific day with a solemn cutting of the red ribbon.
2. These are dozens of different actions to destroy the #Russian occupation forces in different directions, which have already been taking place yesterday, are taking place today and will continue tomorrow.

🐣 RT @pravda_eng Official of Ukrainian President’s Office @Podolyak_M states Ukraine’s counter-offensive already began
⋙ Pravda: Official of Ukrainian President’s Office states Ukraine’s counter-offensive already began https://tinyurl.com/4zfp8zu4

⭕ 24 May 2023

🐣 RT @apmassaro3 John McCain had russia exactly right. russia is provoked by weakness. You have to show strength. If only we’d listened
💽 https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1661321152235536384?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA Nowadays of 🇺🇦 and 🇵🇱 are already a subject of historical books. International Book Fair in Warsaw attended by 45 🇺🇦 publishers, is yet another confirmation of this closeness. I had the honor to personally express gratitude to organizers for a honorable reception of Ukraine. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA This book fair is possible due to the help of my colleague, the First Lady of 🇵🇱 Agata Kornhauser-Duda, the Ukrainian and Polish Book Institutes, and the Embassies and Governments of our countries. Unity across cultural lines gives us a power that will defeat any evil. 2/2

🐣 RT @jamiedupree I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the occupant of the Chair openly mocked like this before.
// MTG calls for “decorum”

🐣 RT @TheTweetOfJohn “Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “And that’s just the candidate.”
⋙ NBCNews: A glass of wine and a laughing-crying emoji: Trump team trolls Ron DeSantis launch https://tinyurl.com/5tajm3us
// The former president’s aides and allies mocked the Florida governor after his technology-challenged 2024 presidential launch

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Yevgeny Prigozhin told Russia’s elites to retrieve their kids from foreign countries and send them to the frontlines. He says that only when the rich and powerful start burying their children like everyday folk, people will believe that all is fair.

💙 😅 RT @fireman452a THIS is PURE GENIUS!! Wait for it!!
💽 https://twitter.com/fireman452a/status/1353906078774403075?s=20/photo/1
// 2021, from @jimmykimmel; dancing iconic patriotic statues

🐣 RT @pravda_eng Putin is afraid he will be killed, and we are getting closer – Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence
⋙ Pravda [UA]: Putin is afraid he will be killed, and we are getting closer – Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence https://tinyurl.com/2pm426ff

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 As a symbol of Russia’s military, the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow is on fire 🔥
💽 https://twitter.com/OlgaNYC1211/status/1661514143428378624?s=20/photo/1

😅 RT @ProjectLincoln Lincoln Project co-founders @TheRickWilson and @ReedGalen with a brief message for #RonDeSaster on his dumpster fire campaign rollout.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1661505275625349123?s=20/photo/1

📋 NYT: Jan. 6 Rioter Who Reclined in Pelosi’s Office Given Sentence of More Than 4 Years https://tinyurl.com/274u3r8e “More than 480 people have been sentenced so far in connection with the Capitol attack, and about 275 are serving at least some time in prison, DOJ officials say”
// Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who was pictured with his foot on a desk in the speaker’s office, had been convicted of eight crimes for his role in the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.

WaPo: Prigozhin says war in Ukraine has backfired, warns of Russian revolution https://tinyurl.com/2n4cj8yc “Prigozhin professed to be guided by love for his motherland and loyalty to Putin. But he also delivered blistering criticism of the war”

Pravda [UA]: Prigozhin believes Ukraine has one of world’s strongest armies https://tinyurl.com/yckj25z5

We barged in and stomped all over the place in search of Nazis. While we were looking for the Nazis, we beat up everyone we could, then we went to Kyiv, then we f**ked up and moved on. Then on to Kherson. F**ked up and moved on. After that or before that? At times I get confused – Izium, Lyman… And somehow nothing works out for us.

The special operation [the war in Ukraine – ed.] was carried out for denazification and demilitarisation. The Ukrainians were just a former republic of the USSR. They had the Ukrainian language, and everyone respected it, including those in the USSR. 

So as far as denazification goes… we have made Ukraine a nation that’s known to everyone worldwide. Ukraine has become a country that is known absolutely everywhere. It’s like the Greeks during the heyday of Greece. We have legitimised Ukraine.

Now, as for demilitarisation… they had, say, 500 tanks at the start of the special operation, now they have 5,000 tanks. They had 20,000 people who could fight back then, now 400,000 can. In what way have we demilitarised it [Ukraine]? It turns out we did the opposite – we f**king militarised it.

We’ve fought in a lot of places, with a lot of people. We know how the Americans fight, the French, the cowardly UN troops, African tribes. Today, the Wagner PMC is the best army in the world. We beat everyone, always. But after it [Wagner]… I think that the Ukrainians today are one of the strongest armies. They have a high level of organisation, training, weapons, and intelligence. They use Soviet and NATO [weapons] equally successfully. They’re philosophical about the losses they suffer. Everything they do is to achieve the supreme goal, like we did during the Second World War. But with more technology and more precision.

If the system is built on the fact that you have to kiss someone’s ass, then the Wagner PMC will not do this. The main problem is Shoigu and Gerasimov. These two people blocked everything for us by their decisions, even though the president said ammo was available.s If [Colonel General Mikhail] Mizintsev became defence minister today and Surovikin became the chief of the General Staff, then it would be a decent structure. [Mizintsev is deputy commander of the Wagner PMC – ed.]

My political creed is: I love my homeland, I listen to Putin, Shoigu should be fired, we will keep fighting.

WaPo: The deepening radicalization of Donald J. Trump https://tinyurl.com/34f42vp5 “To experts who have reviewed his proposals, Trump is sketching out the contours of a second term potentially more dangerous and chaotic than his first”
// Watch how the former president’s positions and rhetoric have grown more confrontational and extreme as he seeks a second term

⭕ 23 May 2023

🐣 RT @atrupar Rep. Dan Goldman demolishes a lot of the spin surrounding the Durham report in short order
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1661099791051268108?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Rep. Goldman: “So why are my colleagues trying to undermine the FBI? Why are they asking to defund the FBI? … if you can undermine the investigator … then you can undermine our entire system of democracy. That is the authoritarian playbook 101.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1661100628725096449?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @JohnWDean This is poster-boy authoritarian personality behavior. I witnessed it first with G. Gordon Liddy. Trump, like Liddy, cannot obey the law. Being law abiding is being weak in their minds.
⋙ 🐣 RT @OccupyDemocrats BREAKING: Donald Trump melts down after E. Jean Caroll announces that she is amending her successful defamation lawsuit to seek at least another $10 million in damages due to the smears he lobbed at her during his CNN interview. […]
¤ https://twitter.com/JohnWDean/status/1661218910430199809?s=20

🐣 RT @albafella1 There is Ukraine on the map shown to Putin: photo fact.
🌎 https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1661187337739554816?s=20/photo/1 -4

The map was compiled in the 17th century by the French cartographer Guillaume Sanson. On it, Ukraine is designated as the “land of the Cossacks,” and Crimea as a separate state called the Crimean Khanate.

Ukraine is marked on a French map from the time of Louis XIV, although the President of Russia and the head of the Constitutional Court argued otherwise. A snapshot of the map is published on the website of the digital library of the National Library of France and its partners Gallica. ¤ The map was created by cartographer Guillaume Sanson in the 17th century.

If you look at the picture, you can see that the lands that are part of modern Ukraine are designated there as ‘Ukraine pays des cosaques’ ( Ukraine is the land of the Cossacks.). At that time it was part of the Commonwealth.

Moreover, Crimea, annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014, was designated by the cartographer as a separate state – the Crimean Khanate, which, in alliance with the Ottoman Empire, fought against the Russian kingdom.

And the area where Emperor Peter I will erect Petersburg – the city in which Vladimir Putin was born – is designated as Ingria and belongs to Sweden.

Recall that on May 23, Vladimir Putin launched a new fake about Ukraine. The Russian President believes that before the creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) in 1919, Ukrainians never had their own state. Putin also insisted that the territory of modern Ukraine at one time was part of the Commonwealth, and then the population of this territory allegedly “asked to be part of the Muscovite kingdom.”

In addition, on December 21, 2021, Vladimir Putin said at a press conference that Ukraine was created by the Soviet statesman Vladimir Lenin. According to the President of the Russian Federation, for this (creation of Ukraine), the Bolsheviks used “primordially Russian lands.”

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Putin’s 17th Century map not only shows Ukraine existed. It’s called “PAYS”—literally “country” in French, making Putin’s map fiasco even more farcical. ¤ Don’t be surprised if eminent Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin has a date with a window in the coming days.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Putin can’t read French? The 17th Century map he dug up w/o Ukraine (checks map) HAS UKRAINE! ¤ VKRAINE ou PAYS DES COSAQUES=Ukraine or Land of the Cossacks ¤ 15 months & the pathetic war criminal is still trying—& failing—to justify his catastrophic blunder of a genocidal war.
🌎 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1661167989368954882?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @UaNews_online Ukrainian Intelligence Chief: Kyiv has the minimum number of weapons required to begin counteroffensive
¤ https://twitter.com/UaNews_online/status/1661183174813073411?s=20

💙 🐣 RT @NatalkaKyiv Did Prigozhin switch sides or is he talking like this in preparation for the upcoming military coup? ¤ My money is on the latter. I think all will be blamed on ‘happy grandpa’ and he will be forced out of the Kremlin shortly. ¤ #Russia #Prigozhin #RussiaUkraineWar #Ukraine #UkrainianArmy
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1661144879450161158?s=20/photo/1
// praise for Ukraine and their war capabilities; blame for Russian MOD war effort and military leadership

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russia’s leading propagandist Solovyov portrays the invasion of Ukraine as a struggle of traditional values against Satanic America. The same man sent his lover to the U.S. so that their children could have American citizenship.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1215 UTC 23 MAY/ Russian Wagner Group forces are consolidating positions in Bakhmut and the NW urban area of Khromove. During the last 24 hours, RU has resumed widespread artillery strikes in the Bakhmut Area of Operations (AO).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1660982408500375552?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AVDIIVKA AXIS / 1915 UTC 23 MAY/ This TACMAP reflects information promulgated in the 1800 (Kyiv) 23 May briefing of the UKR Gen’l Staff. It is reported that RU conducted no offensive operations in the last 24 hrs.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1661088097268842515?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa The strength of our state now, the strength of our defense now, is the basis of the strength of the rules-based international order. That is why the key task of our country and the purpose of virtually every international communication of ours is to strengthen, to bolster our defense, to increase the capabilities of our warriors and our country as a whole. Every foreign visit and almost every negotiation allows to become stronger. ¤ We will win together!

NYT: The Kremlin blames ‘Ukrainian militants’ amid a rare cross-border assault https://tinyurl.com/2pwwwpdy “The Free Russia Legion, a group of Russian volunteers who have taken up arms to fight for Ukraine, claimed responsibility for the incursion”

WaPo: Anti-Putin militias mount cross-border incursion in western Russia https://tinyurl.com/yeynu7sj “Putin ordered officials to tighten security in regions adjacent to Ukraine, but the new attack shows that Russia is still unable to protect the border zone”

🐣 RT @igorsushko Lightly armed Russian revolutionaries now control close to double the area of Bakhmut in Russia’s Belgorod region after 2 more successful incursions from Ukraine today.
🌎 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1661080819853840386?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Russia will not “win” in Ukraine. They also cannot “lose” because nothing in Ukraine is theirs to lose. They can and will be defeated.

WSJ: Special Counsel Is Wrapping Up Trump Mar-a-Lago Probe https://tinyurl.com/3evcx4hr
// Some Trump associates anticipate an indictment—and raising funds off it

🧵 RT @ wartranslated Self-proclaimed “fighter against nazis”, the president of the so-called Russian Federation had a lackey bring him a 17th-century map to show that no Ukraine existed back then. Typically, this is enough grounds for him to kill several hundred thousand of foreign and own people in the 21st century. After over a year of getting beaten, having ran his country into the ground, and leaving it with no future, the accused child kidnapper continues pushing the line he made up just to stay in power for the rest of his life.
📌 💽 🌎 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1661043248402399238?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ wartranslated Notice the words “quasi-state developments” he used: he is not just talking about Ukraine, he is also talking about the Baltic countries, perhaps Finland, Central Asia, and other nations and territories that were fully or partially annexed by the Russian Empire. For this individual, none of these states should exist, they should be eliminated and annexed back to Russia.

💙🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava In a time of severe trials, when the deadly darkness came upon us, swallowing up our native lands, every Ukrainian had to make a choice: to submit or to become a hero. And a country of heroes emerged, defending their homeland, living, working and dreaming for it!
💽 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1660901266057314306?s=20/photo/1
// inspiring

TechnologyReview (Apr), Masha Borak: How Russia killed its tech industry https://tinyurl.com/3fzca4fn
// 4/4/2023; The invasion of Ukraine supercharged the decline of the country’s already struggling tech sector—and undercut its biggest success story, Yandex.

🧵 RT @ general_ben A very good thread by @bctallis on the strategic considerations for winning the war against Russia and what the post-War conditions should be. Also, excellent point about improving our “nuclear IQ”. We talk about the threat of ‘nukes’ without understanding nuclear deterrence.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bctallis How to deal with #Russia – Short thread based on my talk at #LennartMeriConference 2023. #NeoIdealism
1. Ukraine’s war is our war – & must be won.
That means restoring UA’s 1991 borders & ensuring UA’s ability to defend them – & the people within them.
📌 https://twitter.com/bctallis/status/1660896948897869825?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660896948897869825.html

2. After victory we have to get #Ukraine into #NATO & the #EU as fast as possible.
– As @SwedishPM has said:
This should be merit based but cannot again be an excuse for going soft or going slow on UA’s accession.
– we have to institutionally tie our future to UA’s.

3. We have to overcome any residual fears of #Ukraine’s victory and #Russia’s defeat.
As @EliotACohen said in Warsaw – RU must lose & know it has lost:
on the battlefield, its offensive military capability for 10 years & has lost Ukraine for good.

4. We should not be afraid to embrace the systemic competition against autocratic regimes
– but we have to equip democratic societies to win: militarily, economically, but also ideationally. We have to have the right mentality & ensure the substance behind our claimed superiority

5. We must focus resolutely on deterring & containing #Russia.
– over time this *may* spur change in RU but this is not our priority.
– we must focus on stopping RU from doing harm beyond its current borders.

6. To properly deter & contain #Russia we have to improve our deterrence & nuclear IQ
– too many western societies lack understanding of how effective deterrence works
– we strengthen our deterrence by boosting our will & ability to fight – precisely so that we don’t have to.

7. Boosting capabilities & communicating our effective effective deterrence will also help counter nuclear blackmail.
– we have effective nuclear deterrence with Russia and China & need to explain that more clearly to our populations, taking lessons from e.g. UK, US & NCEE.

8. If we do think about #Russia we must stop valorising illiberal elements within the so-called Russian opposition (eg Navalny).
– & stop the endless hunt for ‘good Russians’ which obscures the fact that we have a Russia problem not a Putin problem.

9. – BUT, we also need to stop buying into BS Russian exceptionalism: there’s no reason why, over time, RU *cannot* become a democratic, liberal state
To claim otherwise fuels the dangerous exceptionalism that lets Russians think they can get away with especially awful things.

10. We also need to drop any lingering great power exceptionalism of our own – we need to drop the great power lenses that see CEE thru the prism of Russia & Inso-Pacific thru prism of China.
– We need to arm ourselves like great powers but see the world like smaller states.

11a. Lastly, we need to fix our own roof- & more than that, do some serious home improvement.
– #Russia works in the cracks in our societies that we made. We need to fix those – but more generally build societies that are politically, economically &environmentally sustainable.

11b. We rightly claim that liberal democracy is a superior system – but we have to make its benefits more tangible to more of our people.
– we have to offer meaningful hope of progress to turn the costs of geopolitical, tech & green transitions into investments in a better future
And that’s how we deal with #Russia
– by prioritising #Ukraine’s victory & equipping ourselves to win the systemic competition against autocratic regimes.
Its fundamentally about ensuring free societies can not only survive but thrive. #NeoIdealism

🐣 RT @ Rail_splitter1 This is not Ukraine. Don’t play into the hands of Putin’s propagandists. These are Russians fighting against the Putin regime. Knowing what kind of Russians they are, I fear this is nothing but an ongoing FSB project. I do not trust them and don’t think Ukraine should, either.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheWarMonitor The Belgorod event is even bigger than it seems. Russia, already low on troops, fearing a counteroffensive, now is forced to recall from occupied towns to secure their entire western border. Expecting it in the south, RU was completely caught off guard. Genius strategy by UA.

🐣 RT @DefenceHQ Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine
23 May 2023. ¤ Find out more about Defence Intelligence’s use of language: http://ow.ly/aoQP50OtWCp ¤ 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1660884230174560256?s=20/photo/1

● Between 19 and 22 May 2023, Russian security forces highly likely clashed with partisans in at least three locations within Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, near the Ukrainian border. The identity of the partisans remains unconfirmed, but Russian anti-regime groups claimed responsibility.

● The most serious incident took place near the town of Grayvoran. As well as small-arms fire fights, there was an uptick in drone or indirect fire attacks near the incidents. Russia has evacuated several villages and has deployed extra security forces to the area.

● Russia is facing an increasingly serious multi-domain security threat in its border regions, with losses of combat aircraft, improvised explosive device attacks on rail lines, and now direct partisan action. Russia will almost certainly use these incidents to support the official narrative that it is the victim in the war.
,

🐣 Bilhorod (Belgorod) is Ukraine
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1660898833797201921?s=20/photo/1-4
// 4 maps four maps

⭕ 22 May 2023

NewYorker, Luke Mogelson: Two Weeks at the Front in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yw8yn6ep
// 5/22/2023; In the trenches in the Donbas, infantrymen face unrelenting horrors, from missiles to grenades to helicopter fire.

🌎 BBC: Ukraine war: Satellite images reveal Russian defences before major assault https://tinyurl.com/46zw2rer
// Russian fortifications

🐣 RT @officejjsmart PRIGOZHIN (of course) BLAMES SHOIGU[:] Wagner founder, Prigozhin, blames 🇷🇺 Minister of Defense Shoigu for the invasion of Russia 🇷🇺 today by Russians seeking to topple the Putin Government.

The head of PMC “Wagner” Prigozhin believes that the Ministry of Defense is unable to protect Russia ¤ “As far as I know, the 🇷🇺 military is not doing anything to strengthen our borders… the Ukrainian Army can just come in.

The 🇷🇺 Army is obliged to secure the border: it is its direct responsibility. ¤ The 🇷🇺 Army cannot attack – they’re not the Ministry of Offensive – but the Ministry of Defense. ¤ Therefore they are obliged to defend their country.” ¤ Essentially, the 🇷🇺 Army is the definition of failure according to Prigozhin.

🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem HUR: “Today the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion…have launched an operation to liberate these territories of the Belgorod region from the so-called Putin regime…in order to create a…security zone.”
⋙ TheGuardian: Anti-Putin militia claims to have overrun village in Russia border region of Belgorod https://tinyurl.com/33kuctzc
// Self-described partisans the Freedom of Russia Legion say they launched cross-border raid from Ukraine

🐣 RT @anno1540 NATO Parliamentary Assembly recognized Russia’s crimes against Ukraine as genocide, and the regime in Russia as racism ¤ This was announced by the head of the permanent delegation of Ukraine to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Yegor Chernev. ¤ #NATO
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1660863149593993217?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Tangentially, the other unit, the Freedom of Russia Legion, was the last time I checked a nebulous affair, and it’s unclear how many fighters it has, where it’s fought, or whether it even exists. ¤ Unless @IAPonomarenko has updated information since then?
⋙ MoscowTimes (2022) [UA]: Switching Sides: The Elusive ‘Russian Legion’ Fighting With Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/37zf4p9r
// 8/8/2022

The Kremlin’s war against Ukraine is one many Russians don’t want to fight. ¤ And some are so vehemently opposed that they are apparently prepared to take up arms against their country and fight alongside the Ukrainian army.

The Freedom of Russia Legion claims it was formed in March, when over 100 Russian soldiers gave themselves up to Kyiv’s forces.

“I ended up in this war anyway. I thought I would either die as an occupier and murderer or die with a good conscience. So I switched sides,” said a 26-year-old former Russian soldier turned legion member who asked to be referred to by his nom de guerre of Arni.

Along with ex-soldiers, the legion is apparently also made up of Russians who traveled to Ukraine alongside other foreigners to fight with the Ukrainian army in the months after the invasion. It is one of many units — from Georgians to Belarusians — operating as part of the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine set up by Kyiv at the start of the war. …

🐣 RT @saintjavelin The Ukrainian government is concerned about the civil conflict erupting across its border in Bilhorod ¤ Ukrainian authorities suggest a referendum to be held in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms

🧵 RT @NOELreports SitRep – 22/05/23 – Bilhorod People’s Republic ¤ An overview of the daily events in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Today the Belgorod region (now called BPR) was attacked by Russian anti-government units of the Russian Volunteer Corps and Freedom Legion of Russia.1/X
📌 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1660762093790851074?s=20

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople siren 🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Jack Smith’s prosecutors investigating Trump’s handling of classified docs issued a subpoena for information about Trump’s business dealings in SEVEN countries since he took office—China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE & Oman
⋙ NYT: Prosecutors Sought Records on Trump’s Foreign Business Deals Since 2017 https://tinyurl.com/29m92wk4
// The special counsel scrutinizing the former president’s handling of classified documents issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization seeking records related to seven countries.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAD DAY IN BELGOROD: The FSB building in the Russian city has been torn by explosions. The blasts come amid numerous reports that an armed anti-Putin group has conducted a cross-border operation against the city.
⋙⋙ BBC: Russia battles armed group in border region https://tinyurl.com/mc5eeczm
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar Explosions reported from Bilhorod/Belgorod. It says that the local FSB building and the interior ministry got hit. ¤ Source: https://t.me/box_of_pandora/29315 #Ukraine #Russia #Bilhorod #Belgorod

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1315 UTC 22 MAY/ Wagner forces have consolidated gains in Khromove district, securing the remaining contiguous urban areas of Bakhmut. UKR maintains Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS); its positions at Chasiv Yar prevent RU advances beyond the city.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1660633437047345153?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WHO KNEW? Turns out Vladimir Soloviov, Putin’s pet and virulent anti-US propagandist, and his mistress, basketball star Svetlana Abrosimova, have 2 children– both born in the US. Soloviov (who’s already married) has 8 kids from different marriages.
⋙ YahooNews/Ukrainska Pravda: Investigators find secret family of Russian propagandist with children born in the US https://tinyurl.com/2uee9z4w

🐣 RT @ ForeignAffairs “For Putin, Wagner has become a crucial means to rein in the military, which he has long viewed as a potential threat to his power.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs: Why Putin Needs Wagner https://tinyurl.com/2chzdvcy
// The hidden power struggle sustaining Russia’s brutal militia.

🧵 RT @MarkHertling What’s going on in Belgorod? ¤ I’d suggest it may be continuance of shaping operations, prior to Ukraines’ offensive. ¤ Some things we may see in the near future are types of “strikes” or deception operations like raids, feints or demonstrations. Here’s some info on each. 1/6
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1660640657218629639?s=20

😅 RT @Teoyaomiquu Breaking! A biolab operated by russians is discovered in Belgorod! ¤ According to an informant, they have run multiple bio experiments and tests, including those with viruses, human blood, and genes

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag The Belgorod People’s Republic may be the greatest example of geopolitical trolling in world history. Ukraine appears to be mirroring Russia’s own hybrid war tactics while denying all involvement and deploying the Kremlin’s own cynical lexicon of civil war and internal conflict
🌎 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1660723559008706568?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv With armed Russian opposition to Putin’s regime now getting a foothold in Russia, the western weapons pouring into Ukraine will allow the Ukrainians to increasingly pass Russian weapons to the hands of Russian rebels. ¤ This is going to be wild.

🐣 RT @maria_drutska 90% of russia’s military is in Ukraine preparing for the AFU counter-offensive ¤ Meanwhile, the Free Russia Legion has moved in to positions around Belgorod ¤ Either russia loses Belgorod, or moves their exhausted soldiers from the front

🐣 RT @officejjsmart US RESPONSE “We have made it very clear to Ukrainians that we do not encourage attacks outside Ukrainian borders. But I think it’s important to remind the world that Russia started this war. ¤ Ukraine has the right to decide how it wants to conduct its military operations. ¤ But the aggressor in this war is Russia.” Matthew Miller, US State Department Spokesman on the situation in the Belgorod

🐣 RT @Faytuks Igor Girkin on the situation in Belgorod region: Russian volunteer corps has advanced hundreds of meters into Belgorod region with tank and artillery support from AFU. Russian helicopters and artillery engaged. There are several wounded russians. ¤ https://t.me/strelkovii/4982
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1660606734946189314?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] In the Belgorod region, punishers from the “Kraken” battalion and Nazi traitors from the “RDK” (“Russian Volunteer Corps”, by force in an incomplete platoon) raided the border crossing with the support of tanks and artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As a result, they managed to advance several hundreds of meters deep into the territory of the “old” Russian Federation. The border guards and reinforcement units took the fight, attack aircraft (helicopters) and artillery came to the rescue. Our side had several wounded, that one also had losses. In its purely military essence, insignificant hassle.

However, such raids were PREDICTED BY ME earlier as likely signs of an imminent enemy offensive on other fronts – in order to divert the forces and means of the RF Armed Forces to more reliable security of the “old state border”. How much this attack is connected with the upcoming offensive of the enemy – time will tell. But what can be absolutely certain is that the raid has a pronounced “propaganda effect – the enemy seeks to understand the morale of his troops and the population after the withdrawal from Bakhmut. “Cheap and cheerful” – as they say in such cases. In general, it worked. Resource costs are “cheap”, the media effect is loud

🐣 RT @KarinaVinnikova “Maybe something is happening, maybe not” – the official comment of Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.

🐣 RT @officejjsmart LIBERATION FOR BELGOROD
“⚡️The Legion “Freedom of Russia” and the RDK report that they have completely taken the settlement of Kozinka, Belgorod Region.”
🇷🇺 actively supported the “liberation” of🇺🇦 – let’s return the favor: Time to liberate 🇷🇺.
Bye bye, fascist Putin Regime! 👋
🌎 https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1660618900986294274?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @officejjsmart LIBERATION FOR BELGOROD
“⚡️The Legion “Freedom of Russia” and the RDK report that they have completely taken the settlement of Kozinka, Belgorod Region.”
🇷🇺 actively supported the “liberation” of🇺🇦 – let’s return the favor: Time to liberate 🇷🇺.
Bye bye, fascist Putin Regime! 👋

🐣 RT @officejjsmart ALL GOING WELL IN BELGOROD 🇷🇺
Russians, who are fighting on the side of Ukraine 🇺🇦, are invading Belgorod 🇷🇺.
In this video from Belgorod 🇷🇺, you note some building burning off to left, you hear air raid sirens wailing & the driver saying on the phone: “Stay home – don’t go anywhere right now.”
Three days to capture Kyiv isn’t working as planned 😂 😂 😂

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa It is our historic task to bring justice to all our people, to guarantee freedom for our entire country without any exceptions. The task of all those who defend freedom, all those who chose Ukraine and, therefore, will win.

🐣 RT @nafoprospect BREAKING: little green dogs with no tags have been spotted all around Belgorod oblast.
🖼 https://twitter.com/nafoprospect/status/1660588444702089218?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated Same time as the unexplained incident in Belgorod is taking place, Ukrainian GUR head Kyrylo Budanov published an appeal, in Russian, to all Russian servicemen to surrender via the “I want to live” project to save their lives from the “upcoming meatgrinder”. “It will get worse”, says Budanov.

🐣 RT @NOELreports “It will get worse. You have a choice – to die or save your life,” Major General Kirill Budanov addressed the Russian military

🚫🐣 RT @wartranslated While the situation is still developing, the incursion into the Belgorod territory today reminds me of the raids a few months back, but with several major differences.
¤ https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1660601786921623553?s=20

The attack is much more brazen, a larger number of combat vehicles are being used this time, with much heavier artillery and mortar support. It is also being conducted in broad daylight, and drone footage is immediately being published online, to reach the maximum psychological effect.

In the previous incident, we began finding out details when forces were already withdrawn, and the attack began early in the morning when it was still dark.

What is also interesting is that both “Russian Volunteer Corps” and “Free Russia Legion” have left their marks today, they could potentially be operating in two separate areas (Legion in Dronivka, RDK in Grayvoron).

🚫 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Another organization, calling themselves “Russian Volunteer Corps”, published videos showing the organization’s members by different village signs in Bryansk and Belgorod regions of Russia. ¤ “RVC is back to the motherland. We’re home. The time to fight for Russia’s freedom has come.” – one of them said.

🚫 🐣 RT @officejjsmart FREE RUSSIA LEGION ¤ Allegedly the Free Russia Legion, which fights on the side of Ukraine but is composed of Russians, is invading southern Belgorod, Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1660598094847696896?s=20/photo/1

🚫🐣 RT @JayinKyiv All signs point to Ukrainian tanks having crossed the Russian border into Belgorod within the past 2 hours.

🚫🐣 RT @ officejjsmart 🇷🇺 NEARING A CIVIL WAR? “It is reported that Russian volunteers, who are fighting for Ukraine 🇺🇦, destroyed the border checkpoint with the 🇷🇺 Belgorod region. The number of killed and wounded is dozens of people.”

🚫🧵 RT @albafella1 The “Liberty of Russia” Legion @legion_svoboda also says it is returning home to end the Kremlin’s dictatorship.
📌 https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1660558086052929538?s=20
// my guess it’s a diversion or excuse for Ru to escalate; if not, it’s a suicide mission

“We are Russians just like you. We are people just like you. We want our children to grow up in piece and be free people, so that they can travel, study and just be happy in a free country.

But this has no place in today’s Putin’s Russia, rotten from corruption, lies, censorship, restrictions on freedoms, repressions. In that Russia where a person’s life means less than an official’s wallet. In that Russia where a separate railway is being laid to the residence of the bunker grandfather instead of repairing roads in the regions. In a dictatorial country where children are separated from their parents for calling for peace, and teenagers are given life sentences.

It’s time to put an end to the Kremlin’s dictatorship. Thanks to all those who support us. To everyone who sends us donations and smokes where necessary. Your support is what every day reminds us of our final goal on Red Square [in Moscow]. Be brave and don’t be afraid, because we are coming home. Russia will be free!” — he says

⭕ 21 May 2023

NYT, David French: Why Ukraine Needs F-16s https://tinyurl.com/5n6nb259 “Providing Ukraine with advanced fighters [is] a sign the Biden administration is ready to turn the page from helping Ukraine simply avoid defeat. Now we are starting to help Ukraine achieve victory”

🐣 RT @ yasminalombaert Finally!
💽 https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1660371472127279104?s=20/photo/1

António Guterres backed the reform of the U.N. Security Council and the international financial system to align them with the “realities of today’s world.”

Both the U.N. body and the financial architecture reflect the power relations of 1945 and need to be updated, Guterres told a press conference on the margins of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.

“It’s my deep believe that the Security Council not longer respond to the realities of today’s world. ¤ I think it is important to have the possibility of new members, namely new permanent members. ¤ And I think, it is also important a renewal of the working methods in order to make it more affective in guaranteeing peace all over the world.” he said.

It’s a shame that Russia is still permanent member of the Security Council and Russian Vladimir Voronkov, Under Secretary General for Counter-Terrorism. ¤ It’s about time that rogue states can’t dominate the agenda and the functioning of the UN Security Council anymore.

WaPo: As hold on Bakhmut slips, Ukrainian forces push to encircle city https://tinyurl.com/yhmmm2dp “[T]he Russian side has been riven with internal differences … Ukrainian forces have been able to exploit these differences to hold off an enemy that greatly outnumbers them”

🐣 RT @cepa “China now finds the way clear for a push into Central Asia, to become its dominant power and to set its primary strategic direction.” @emilavdaliani
⋙ CEPA: China Walks Unopposed into Central Asia https://tinyurl.com/4xreknnx
// 5/17/2023; China’s growing power and Russia’s declining strength mean a new era for Central Asia.

🧵 RT @ BrynnTannehill Lot of virtual ink being spilled on F-16s to Ukraine over the past few days. It’s looking like it will become a reality. So, let’s discuss some of the capabilities, challenges, limitations, and best potential uses of the aircraft. 1/n
📌 https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1660261077026762753?s=20

🐣 RT @DenesTorteli “The enemy failed to surround Bakhmut and lost some of the dominant heights around the city. That is, the advance of our troops in the suburbs on the flanks, which is still ongoing, makes it very difficult for the enemy to be in Bakhmut. Our troops have semi-encircled the city, which gives us the opportunity to destroy the enemy. Therefore, the enemy has to defend itself in the part of the city it controls. Our defenders retain control over industrial and infrastructure facilities and the private sector of Bakhmut in the ‘Airplane’ district,” said Hanna Maliar on Telegram. https://t.me/annamaliar/772

🐣 RT @trajaykay
🇺🇦🔱 President Zelenskys Evening Address with English subtitles ¤ Tonight he is on a plane on the way home from the G7 in Japan
🇺🇦🔱 Zelensky. We are finishing this very difficult yet very important week. On Friday, we had the Arab League. On Saturday and Sunday – G7 plus Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/trajaykay/status/1660414361628803073?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @POTUS Let me be clear. ¤ I will not agree to a deal with House Republicans that protects billions in subsidies for Big Oil while putting the health care of 21 million Americans at risk.Or that protects wealthy tax cheats while putting food assistance at risk for 1 million Americans.

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman Two things to consider re 14th Am:
1) anyone challenging the 14th Am is going to court to make America default on its debts.
2) there is no good argument for an injunction. Courts would likely allow us to pay our debts until a decision is made.
We must not be held hostage.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Land Forces chief says Ukrainian troops may soon encircle Bakhmut. ¤ Ukrainian troops keep advancing on the flanks and are approaching a “tactical encirclement” of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s Land Forces, reported on May 21.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukraine can strike Crimea using US-made weapons, Jake Sullivan, the US national security advisor to President Joe Biden, tells CNN ¤ “We’ve said we won’t allow Ukraine to use US-made weapons to strike Russia. And we believe Crimea is Ukraine,” Sullivan said.

KyivPost: Clandestine Russian Intelligence Ring in Europe Uncovered, OSINT Group Claims https://tinyurl.com/mkk47mhs
// The cover of 167 Russian intelligence officers across Europe has apparently been blown. The best part? It was accomplished by using open-source intelligence (OSINT).

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Biden is president for at least another 20 months. And Trump has been saying this for a year. Presumably, this World War would happen during that time. But he refuses to tell us his secret plan on how to prevent it. So I guess we will all die – including Trump.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1660276882615463936?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Biden continues to bring the world ever closer to nuclear war. I alone am the candidate who can prevent World War 3. I will end the killing and bloodshed and bring peace to Europe and the World!

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Happy Sunday morning from a deranged lunatic:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1660257241973555200?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump They Spied on my campaign, Rigged the 2020 Presidential Election, Weaponized the DOJ & FBI, and yet they continue to go after me instead of the criminals that did all of these things, because I am fighting for you, and leading Biden, and everyone else, in the polls. It’s called Election Interference, and it is totally ILLEGAL!

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin [aka Strelkov] says the Bakhmut battle was unnecessary and turned out to be Phyrric (longread). He notes that all Russian forces are now exhausted while trying to achieve at least some sort of victory for propaganda purposes, and Ukraine is now in a position to deal several strikes where it wants, most likely to be met by weak Russian resistance.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1660273337744982023?s=20/photo/1 -3

[Text:] [I] already briefly expressed my opinion on the conclusion of the assault on Bakhmut in Telegram. But, reading the strainedly joyful comments on VKontakte, I thought that it would be necessary to calmly and in detail once again go through this operation here too, which is now being iflated in every possible way (in order to stick “victorious laurels” on the bald head of “Cook”).

So, in a nutshell.

1. After the humiliating and almost catastrophic autumn defeats in the Kharkiv region, first the reduction of the Kherson bridgehead under the onslaught of the enemy, and then its complete abandonment, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, having carried out a partial “under-mobilisation” since its legal status turned out to be completely incomprehensible and it was limited only by conscripting 250-300 thousand men into the army and nothing more), they tried during the winter campaian (gradually turning into spring) to “take revenge” on the Donbas front. Precisely and only in the Donbas Donetsk-Lugansk). Because ever earlier (in the spring of last year, after the “de-escalation”), the Kremlin adopted (and remained unchanged to this day) a course towards “freezing the conflict through a compromise agreement with partners.” And within the tramework of achieving this agreement,” no offensives deep into the so-called “Ukraine” are considered at all – no matter what strategic prospects they promise. Therefore, only “smashing in the battle of attrition” into the position of the enemy in the Donbas in the hope that “sooner or later the partners will mature [for negitations]. The cretinism of this concept and its stillbirth are exceptional. But it is being implemented with the same gloomy-idiotic stubbornness with which they have been trying to implement exactly the same “non-alternative Minsk agreements” for 8 years. Starting from the end of April last year, all offensive operations of the RF Armed Forces were carried out ONLY in the Donbass. Even having occupied part of the Kharkiv region along the line of the Siversky Donets – they were not going to advance west of it, they were exclusively driven south – to the most heavily fortified Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration. With the corresponding result…

2. Thus, starting an offensive in the Donbas in the late autumn of last year, our “military strategists” again tried to solve for the political leadership the task that our elderly cretins “drew” in their heads: “Completely liberate the Donbas and start bargaining with Kiyy and dear Western partners in order to impose on them the “status quo: Crimea, Donbas and the orridor to Crimea stay with us, we do not pretend to be more. As we can see, this task has not been solved even to a small extent in seven months of bloody battles (which in many areas – near Avdeevka and Maryinka, for example, ore dimost continuous And the fact that “Wagner supplied and replenished until the middle of winter this year on “lux standard” at the cost of almost complete loss of their own infantry, managed to *get “in two towns of Soledar and Bakhmut during the months-long meat grinder is the only tactical victory. And in connection with the complete failure of the strategic task – the capture of Bakhmut is presented as “the crown of military leadership” and “an epoch-making battle of world-historical significance.”

3. Meanwhile – as already noted above – on the whole, the operation ended in a strategic failure of our troops. The enemy has NOT been ousted from the Donbas in all the main directions, in most directions – has not been moved at all. During the offensive, the RF Armed Forces used up a lot of trained manpower, exhausted almost to the bottom the stocks of weapons, equipment and ammunition necessary for further offensive operations. Therefore, increased attention has been paid to Bakhmut’s “capture” for the past 2 months – it was necessary to achieve at least some result “for propaganda” in order to “take a breath” later … Look, we “won* … And yesterday they stopped immediately at outskirts of Bakhmut, as soon as they crawled to it, there is no strength to go further …

4. Now we should be waiting for the “return move” from the enemy. Similar to the one that was made by the enemy in September, right after our valiant generals “finished” the tiny town of Peski on the outskirts of Donetsk throughout a month. Why do I think the enemy will attack soon? – precisely because now he has the best chance of success. The best strike units of the RF Armed Forces are exhausted by many months of battles. The stock of ammunition is minimal. If, for example, the enemy chooses the Donetsk front for attack (for example, the Mariupol direction), then he will be met by units and subunits badly battered and “thinned” by the transfer of reserves to Bakhmut. And if he decides to attack on the Zaporizhzhia front, then he may not worry about the stability of his defense in the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk direction and near Avdiivka.

5. Therefore – I consider the victory near Bakhmut: a) Initially unnecessary (“distraction to an unusable object”, I wrote about this many times); b) Pyrrhic. It was not worth the effort and money spent on it, even approximately. ¤ HOPE TO BE WRONG.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Every word of this is completely insane & delusional.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1660261577743011844?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @reaDonaldTrump Joe Biden REFUSES to give the 1,850 Boxes in Delaware, or the 4 Boxes that were discovered in CHINATOWN, and then sent to his lawyers in Boston to clean them up. Maybe that’s why all of that money from China has gone into his pockets, but I hope not? I went by the Presidential Records Act – Things done correctly!

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1145 UTC 21 MAY/ RU control of the urban area will not materially change the tactical situation. UKR maintains Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS), and its nearly impregnable positions at Chasiv Yar still deter RU advances on either the M-03 or H-32 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1660247983726686211?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AndriyYermak Mr. President @POTUS, when we met in Kyiv you said you would do everything for pilots to train and then get fighter jets. And you did it along with your allies. ¤ Thank you, and the Congress, and all the people for your unwavering support
⋙ 🐣 Despite some loud contrarian GOP members of the House, most have supported this move for some time, especially the Chairmen of the key committees. And the Senate stands firmly behind you. Just wish things moved more quickly. ¤ Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦 🇺🇸

🐣 RT @markomihkelson Kissinger has changed his mind, follow him. Strong NATO is the best peace dividend for the democratic nations.
⋙⋙ TheEconomist: Kissinger: for the safety of Europe, get Ukraine into NATO https://tinyurl.com/3a5n3rv3
// 5/17/2023; Highlights from our conversation with Henry Kissinger; $paywall
⋙ 🐣 RT @grammoflot Kissinger’s happy with Russia keeping Crimea. He also says Nato membership ensures that Ukraine won’t make territorial claims on Russia. Very odd. Marko, you sure about jumping on the Kissinger train?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Estonian01 I could not read all article but I understood from someones tweet- he wants to take to NATO Ukraine in current boarders without occupied areas…

🐣 RT @twitter_dude Pyotr Aleksandrovich, Russia’s Minister of Science and Higher Education has died during a flight from Cuba back to Russia, at the age of 47. ¤ What is the scientific odds a minister of science dies on a 13-ish hour flight at the age of 47?
¤ https://twitter.com/witter_dude/status/1660189178741551104?s=20

[Clarification:] 🐣 RT @maria_drutska The question about Bakhmut was:
– Russians said they have taken Bakhmut.
– I think no. ¤
“We must understand that this does not mean anything. They (the russian soldiers) destroyed everything! There is not a single building left. This is a tragedy for today. But Bakhmut is in our hearts. There are only ruins and many dead russians. But they came to us. Our defenders in Bakhmut did a serious strong job. And of course we appreciate their great work!”
💽 https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1660189833971613696?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ pravda_eng 💔Answering the journalist’s question if Bakhmut is still in Ukraine’s hands, President @ZelenskyyUa said that, “I think no. But you have to understand that there is nothing, they destroyed everything, there are no buildings.” And added that, “Bakhmut is only in our hearts”
// Interviewer asked “Russians say they have taken Bakhmut” acc another tweet
💽 [Full video] https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1660181236554383378?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ front_ukrainian ⚡️The 🇺🇸USA announced a new package of military aid to 🇺🇦Ukraine in the amount of $375 million:
● additional ammunition for HIMARS systems;
● artillery shells, thermal imaging and bridge systems;
● TOW anti-tank guided missiles;
● Javelin and AT-4 anti-tank systems
// Defense budget

⭕ 20 May 202

🐣 RT @MattBoxer94 A sad day for Ukraine but the fact that it took the Russians 10 months to advance on a small city no one knew abt 15 months ago is an indictment of their armed forces and simultaneously Ukraine took back Kherson and Moscow is increasingly getting desperate
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Bakhmut has been captured by Russian forces. ¤ However the picture is not as sweet as they make out, to the outskirt SW districts fighting still rages and on the flanks they are struggling to advance. ¤ A battle of attrition over 10 months which has served its military purpose.

🐣 RT @SophiePerrin18 Fellas: This is a brilliant write up by Michael Podolyak. It stamps a hearty “BS” to all the amplified crying, moaning, & posturing we’re see from Russian quarters on social media yesterday & today. Feel free to copy it & use it just like a meme!
// Note: “Mykhailo Mykhailovych Podolyak[1] (Ukrainian: Михайло Михайлович Подоляк; born February 16, 1972)[2] is a Ukrainian politician, journalist and negotiator, serving as the adviser to the head of Office of the President of Ukraine” ~ Wikipedia
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SophiePerrin18/status/1659974559712391168?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Podolyak_M [Михайло Подоляк] There are few pleasures in the world greater than watching Moscow’s reactions to President Zelenskyy’s visits. Like a demon sprinkled with holy water, the Kremlin is convulsing, using a network of decades-old agents, corrupt media, and agents of influence. It tries to scream, shout, sabotage – and every time in vain, facing humiliation again and again, even in those regions that it imperially considered “its own” or tried to convince the rest of the world of this. In every corner of the globe, President Zelenskyy is being hailed as a strong leader of the free world, paying tribute to the courage and bravery of the Ukrainian people. Such respect cannot be bought with money; it can only be earned. This is true power – greater than a gas pipe or corrupt kickbacks. This is true agency. Ukraine has forced to respect our word and opinion, to reckon with ourselves. At every meeting, it is said directly or signaled indirectly: the time of Putin and his clique of criminals is over; even where they are not considered bad guys, they are considered pathetic. Russia will suffer a military defeat – and it is inevitable. International law will be put back on the agenda. It is time to discuss the post-war world order.

🐣 RT @ front_ukrainian ⚡️The 🇺🇸USA announced a new package of military aid to 🇺🇦Ukraine in the amount of $375 million:
● additional ammunition for HIMARS systems;
● artillery shells, thermal imaging and bridge systems;
● TOW anti-tank guided missiles;
● Javelin and AT-4 anti-tank systems
// Defense budget

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en President @ZelenskyyUa at the G7 meeting. ¤ Congratulations to the great geopolitical strategist Putin (Russia used to be a part of G8, but was excluded after invading Crimea in 2014).
🖼 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1660165187603660803?s=20/photo/1
// group photo

🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky, wrapping up his big G7 appearance in Hiroshima, says Ukraine “proposed its Peace Formula to the world.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Our world is vast, but we are all in it together. And this is our shared cause – peace.

🇺🇦 proposed its Peace Formula to the world. As long as invaders remain on our land, no one will sit down at the negotiating table with 🇷🇺. The colonizer must get out. And the world has enough power to force 🇷🇺 to restore peace step by step.

We have developed the Peace Formula in a way that ensures each of its points is backed by @UN 🇺🇳 resolutions. And in a way that everyone in the world can choose the track they can contribute to. From Japan to the Arab countries, from Europe to Latin America, we find support for our Formula. And we continue this work.

⋙ 🐣 Ukraine’s Proposed Peace Plan via Reuters (12/28/2022) https://tinyurl.com/yndknb7m
The plan calls for:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1660168197100777472?s=20/photo/1 .

Ukraine’s 10-Point Peace Plan

1. Radiation and nuclear safety, focusing on restoring safety around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, which is now-Russian occupied.

2. Food security, including protecting and ensuring Ukraine’s grain exports to the world’s poorest nations.

3. Energy security, with focus on price restrictions on Russian energy resources, as well as aiding Ukraine with restoring its power infrastructure, half of which has been damaged by Russian attacks.

4. Release of all prisoners and deportees, including war prisoners and children deported to Russia.

5. Restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia reaffirming it according the U.N. Charter, which Zelenskiy said is “not up to negotiations”.

6. Withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities, restoration of Ukraine’s state borders with Russia.

7. Justice, including the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.

8. Prevention of ecocide, need for protection of environment, with focus on demining and restoring water treatment facilities.

9. Prevention of escalation of conflict, and building security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space, including guarantees for Ukraine.

10. Confirmation of the war’s end, including a document signed by the involved parties.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Lunatic.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1660114768492101632?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump FoxNews: “Durham Report Slams FBI for Trump-Russia Probe.” So why isn’t DOJ doing something about this, a part of the Crime of the Century, the greatest Witch Hunt in history? Instead they are viciously investigating me about “the Boxes Hoax,” even though Biden is guilty and I am not – I did nothing wrong! They spied on my campaign and Rigged an Election, and these Trump Haters go after me. Congress should make REFERRALSto DOJ, and demand they stop the Witch Hunt against “TRUMP.” MAGA!

🐣 RT @DerekJGrossman No apology for nuking Japan from Biden while in Hiroshima.
🖼 https://twitter.com/DerekJGrossman/status/1660064126645981184?s=20/photo/1
// caption: Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and with U.S. President Joe Biden, right, react after laying a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan, Friday, May 19, 2023, during the G7 Summit. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh,Pool)
⋙ LATimes: Hiroshima attack’s last survivors watch as Biden pays tribute, but makes no apologies https://tinyurl.com/47stsnt6
// Group of 7 leaders convened in Hiroshima and honored victims of the atomic bomb. But they have no new plans to reduce the threat […?] $paywall

🧵 RT @mhmck Battles for the city of Bakhmut do not stop. The Russian fascist invaders conducted unsuccessful offensive actions in the direction of Bila Hora.

🖼 https://twitter.com/TreasChest/status/1660028313530773508?s=20/photo/1
// TIME cover: How Zelensky Leads

🐣 RT @Erdbeerdampfe Sad Solovyov “Nobody takes us serious anymore” ¤ Watch the full video
💽 https://twitter.com/Erdbeerdampfe/status/1660087646436089857?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @McFaul In a few years, Ukraine will be armed with F16s, Patriots & hopefully THAAD missile defense systems, HIMARs & ATACMS and Abrams tanks. Russia will still have MiG29s, S-300s/400s, and T72s. The balance of military power is shifting in Ukraine’s direction.

🐣 RT @Keysfins May 24th: NARA/Archives will hand over 16 presidential records to Special Counsel that demonstrate sad dfg had knowledge of correct declassification process. ¤ Delish.

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski The only thing I can’t believe is that it took this long.
🐣 RT @IndictmentTime Called it! He definitely got a target letter from the DOJ.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Interesting.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1660072595092574208?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonaldTrump Can you believe? They Rigged the Election, and want to
prosecute me!

🐣 RT @sentdefender Russian News Agency TASS, reported today that the Russian Foreign Ministry has Notified the United States and other European Countries that if they decide to follow through with their Plan to provide F-16s to Ukraine it will carry “Colossal” Risk to the West.

🐣 RT @yasminalombaert Words of an increasingly isolated, paranoid, dictator of a sinking ship. ¤ Putin desperately struggles to escape the disastrous trap he set for himself.
💽 https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1659844831206596615?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DAlperovitch This is what’s left of Bakhmut after Russian so called “liberation”
💽 https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1659950022522183681?s=20/photo/1
// drone footage

🐣 RT @yasminalombaert A real bad weekend for pariah Putin.

● The Saudis invited President Zelensky as a guest of honour at the Arab League summit on Friday. Putin was not invited.
● On Friday the China-Central Asia Summit was successfully held in Xi’an. Putin was not invited and he desperately send them greetings.
● Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is taking his pitch for support beyond his western allies with a scene-stealing appearance at the G7 summit, confronting the leaders of India and Brazil after they chose not to back sanctions against Russia.
● The US has approved sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine to enhance the country’s air defence.
● Putin’s effort to shore up more friends in the South Caucasus by scrapping visa requirements for Georgian nationals and lifting a four-year ban on direct flights to the country also didn’t appear to go as smoothly as Putin may has hoped. The first flight that landed Friday in Georgia was met with protests.

🐣 RT @insidermildef Russia adapted to the game-changing HIMARS, but Ukraine’s new Storm Shadow missiles could put the fear back into its commanders, warfare experts say
⋙ BI: Russia adapted to the game-changing HIMARS, but Ukraine’s new Storm Shadow missiles could put the fear back into its commanders https://tinyurl.com/5n87c88z
// Ukraine has pushed Western partners for long-range missiles so it can strike Russian positions deep behind the lines. And now it’s got them.

🐣 RT @FridaGhitis Zelensky meets with Indian PM Modi on the sidelines of the G7. (Not a happy moment for Putin.)
💽 https://twitter.com/FridaGhitis/status/1659953848075665415?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @sentdefender So far the Russian Army has “Struggled” with Defensive Operations to the North and South of Bakhmut so if Wagner is planning to Withdraw and allow Ground Forces to take their Positions the Russian MoD needs to Rethink their entire Strategy for Defensive Operations in the Region.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @sentdefender The Wagner PMC has announced that beginning May 25th they will begin to Withdraw their Forces from Eastern Ukraine in order for them to be Deployed to other “Hotspots” across the World including Sudan and Syria; their Previous Positions in Ukraine specifically across the Bakhmut Front will be replaced by Soldiers and Equipment from the Russian Ground Forces.

🐣 RT @officejjsmart THE FIGHT FOR BAKHMUT CONTINUES
Armed Forces of Ukraine 🇺🇦 are conducting an operation to encircle Bakhmut.
– Spokesman of the Eastern Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

🚫🐣 RT @mfa_russia ⚡️ Russia’s Defence Ministry: ¤ As a result of offensive actions by the Wagner assault units, supported by artillery and aviation of the Yug Group of Forces, the liberation of #Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] has been completed ✅
// Ukr has not yet confirmed

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople 🚨🚨 Trump’s lawyer Parlatore who quit this week throws Trump’s other lawyer under the bigliest bus imaginable 😳
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Reid: You said that Boris [Epshteyn?] tried to prevent you from conducting searches. What searches?
💽 https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1660025084789268480?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /2000 UTC 20 MAY/ Heavy urban combat continues in Bakhmut, with RU /Wagner forces consolidating lodgments in the vicinity of Khromove. UKR broke up a VDV attack again S of the H-32 HWY at Ivanivske. UKR refutes claims that Bakhmut city has been captured by RU forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1660011200594231297?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse This is a long deep dive into the secretive democracy-killing creepshow we are up against. You may want an airsick bag handy when you read it.
⋙ NewRepublic, Nina Burleigh: Who Is Leonard Leo’s Mysterious Dark Money King? https://tinyurl.com/2m28h53y
// America needs to know who Barre Seid is, what kind of country he wants, and just how massive an impact his $1.6 billion gift can have on our political discourse.

🐣 RT @sumlenny Every time I visit Kyiv, I try to manage visiting St.Sofiia cathedral – a UNESCO world heritage site, and one of the most beautiful sacred places I have ever seen in my life. Join me and share my passion for Sofiia!
💽 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1659895722869751809?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @officejjsmart C5 is a new military bloc of China 🇨🇳, with Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬, Uzbekistan 🇺🇿, Tajikistan 🇹🇯, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿and Turkmenistan. Russia 🇷🇺 was not invited

🧵 RT @WriterJackWhite So did the Russians interfere in the 2016 EU referendum to help Leave get the winning 1.9% margin? Yes – Russian spies Udod & Nalobin befriended the organisers of the Leave Campaign including Banks,Boris Johnson, Elliott of Vote Leave. RT & Prigozhin’s IRA
📌 https://twitter.com/WriterJackWhite/status/1659607117119078401?s=20
⋙⋙ TheGuardian (2017): Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit, data shows (This article is more than 5 years old) https://tinyurl.com/2e5za938
// 11/14/2017; Researchers find that accounts run from a St Petersburg troll farm tried to sow discord between Britons over the referendum
⋙ 🐣 Prigozhin and his hacking group were indicted by the US in connection with interference in our 2016 election that gave us Trump. You likely are familiar with our story as I am with yours. Russia has been a malign actor for decades. But we were asleep post-1991.

🐣 RT @maxseddon Take with a grain of salt. Prigozhin says Wagner’s forces have established full control over Bakhmut after a bloody siege that all but destroyed the city. ¤ His declaration of triumph is a long rant about how Shoigu and Gerasimov were no help and Wagner mostly did it on their own
⋙ 🐣 Leave it to Zelensky for this to come at the moment he shows up at both the meetings of the Arab League and the G-7 (where he secures a deal for F-16 fighter jets and more sanctions against Russia)
⋙ 🐣 RT @saabj35 That’s nice but they’re about to be outflanked.

🐣 RT @maxseddon Take with a grain of salt. Prigozhin says Wagner’s forces have established full control over Bakhmut after a bloody siege that all but destroyed the city. ¤ His declaration of triumph is a long rant about how Shoigu and Gerasimov were no help and Wagner mostly did it on their own

🐣 RT @ col_luka Just to summarize this week alone.
G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan
–> no Russia
Arab League Summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
–> no Russia
Central Asian Summit in Xian, China
–> no Russia
This is how a former power disappears from the world stage. ¤ But sending greetings.
⋙ 🐣 Russia won’t be selling arms to many of these countries either. The world now knows Ru mil equipment sucks

🐣 After Zelensky showed up there, did he have a choice?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ mfa_russia ✍️ President #Putin sent greetings to participants in the 32nd #ArabLeague Summit: ¤ Russia has always attached great importance to the development of friendly relations & constructive partner interaction with countries in the Middle East & North Africa ¤ 🔗 https://is.gd/qbTkgA

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Congratulations to the great geopolitical strategist Putin. ¤ The China-Central Asia summit, to which China invited representatives of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – but did not invite Russia – is a very important signal. ¤ This shows that China created a new Central-Asian C5, which China will lead. And Russia has lost its influence in the region where it historically had a lot of impact.

🐣 RT @djrothkopf With more strong support for Ukraine, a unified G7 front against Chinese economic coercion, steady leadership to calm concerns on default and productive meetings w/allies, ¤ @POTUS has had a successful G7 trip and once again shown how he’s restored US leadership worldwide.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf It was not long his disgraced predecessor fought with our friends, shoved them aside to get into photo ops, kowtowed to our enemies, and put us global interests and security at risk every time he opened his mouth. We can’t afford to go back to that. The world can’t.

WaPo: Zelensky makes dramatic G-7 visit as Biden mobilizes allies over China https://tinyurl.com/ydtaaew2
// Leaders focus on supporting Ukraine and countering China’s economic rise

🔄 🧵 RT @VolodyaTretyak Important announcement ¤ Today I will start a thread series #RussiaDecolonized. I will write about each republic and estimate their chances of becoming free. ¤ There are nations that fought for their freedom against Moscow and even declared independence in 1991.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1659634998440239105?s=20/photo/1

KyivPost, John Bryson: Kaliningrad, Königsberg or Królewiec? Putin’s Distorted Definition of the Russian Motherland https://tinyurl.com/26jz38fe
// Putin is being reminded that irredentism works both ways.

🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Looks like Santa Claus does exists. A new jet coalition was born today! Thank you for the decision my colleagues @SecDef @BWallaceMP @DefensieMin @DedonderLudivin @troelslundp ¤ Ukrainian pilots are looking forward to starting their training on F-16 fighter jets. They will now be able to support their brothers and sisters-in-arms on land and on sea to win this war. F-16 were crafted to beat the bad guys. Their time is now!
⋙ 🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov [Dec 31, 2022] 2023 should be the victorious year. ¤ My official address to Santa Claus.

⭕ 19 May 2023

Newsweek: Ex-Trump White House Lawyer Predicts Bad News for Former President https://tinyurl.com/bdepm5dx

Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb believes the “feds are coming fast” for Donald Trump, predicting that the investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents will land him in prison. ¤ Cobb, a former U.S. assistant attorney and member of the Trump legal team between July 2017 and May 2018, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday that a plethora of evidence exists to convict the former president. …

Investigations include Smith looking into Trump’s potential wrongdoing regarding the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021; whether he attempted to overturn the 2020 president election results in Georgia; as well as the indictment already handed down against Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office for an alleged $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels via Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen during the 2016 campaign; and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ tax fraud suit filed in September against Trump and three of his children: Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

CNN reported Thursday that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) informed Trump that 16 records would be handed over to Smith, purportedly showing that the former president and his top advisers had knowledge of the correct declassification process while he was president—which Cobb said would not be “much of a legal hurdle” for Smith should Trump challenge it in court.

“I would not necessarily expand the case to try to prove the Espionage Act piece of it because there is so much evidence of guilty knowledge on the espionage piece that all they really have to do is show that Trump moved these documents at various times when DOJ was either demanding them or actually present, that he filed falsely with the Justice Department, had his lawyers file falsely with the Justice Department, an affidavit to the effect that none existed—which was shattered by the documents that they then discovered after the search—and the many other misrepresentations that he and others have made on his behalf with regard to his possession of classified documents,” Cobb said. ¤ It’s a “tight case” and Trump “will go to jail” because of it, Cobb said …

Title 18, Section 1519 of U.S. Code states: “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.” …

Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, who served in the Trump administration, also forecast Thursday that the classified documents case will be the former president’s biggest legal pitfall.

“It’s very clear that he had no business having those documents,” Barr told CBS News’ Catherine Herridge. “He was given a long time to send them back and he was—they were subpoenaed. And if there’s any games being played there, he’s going to be very exposed.”

Clark Cunningham, law professor at Georgia State University, told Newsweek that he agrees with Cobb and Barr—that Trump’s most urgent risk of prosecution and conviction might be greatest in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

A sworn certification document dated June 3, 2022, and signed by Trump’s records custodian was a response to a subpoena sent to testify before a grand jury. ¤ “I understand that this certification is made to comply with the subpoena, in lieu of a personal appearance and testimony,” said the custodian, whose name was redacted. …

“The sworn certification given by Trump’s lawyers to the Department of Justice at Mar-a-Lago last June that ‘all documents responsive to the [grand jury] subpoena’ were being handed over was clearly a false statement,” Cunningham said. “That document by itself is powerful evidence that the federal obstruction of justice statute was being violated—which carries a 20-year sentence. ¤ “The decision who to prosecute turns on who knew the certification was false: the lawyers who gave it to the DOJ, or—as seems increasingly likely—their client, Donald Trump.”

WaPo: U.S. won’t block transfer of F-16s to Kyiv, officials say https://tinyurl.com/yckztwx3 “While top GOP contenders for the presidency such as Donald Trump have criticized the scale of US aid for Ukraine, senior Republican leaders in Congress have been supportive of it”

The Biden administration has informed European allies that Washington will not block their export of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, U.S. officials familiar with the decision told The Washington Post. Biden has ruled out U.S. deliveries of F-16s to Ukraine, but will train Ukrainian pilots.

The decision follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated requests for fighter jets, including from the Netherlands. In February, Ukrainian officials said they had made significant progress in persuading Dutch officials to send F-16s, but Washington’s approval is necessary because of third-party transfer agreements associated with the purchase of the U.S.-made jets.

A transfer would require the sign-off of the chairs and ranking minority-party members of relevant U.S. congressional committees. While top GOP contenders for the presidency such as Donald Trump have criticized the scale of U.S. aid for Ukraine, senior Republican leaders in Congress have been supportive of it throughout the war.

● Secretary of State Antony Blinken was a major force within the administration in pushing to allow U.S. allies to make the transfers and had also worked extensively with countries within NATO to move the policy forward, said U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

● Blinken played a similar role when NATO was at an impasse over whether to provide sophisticated tanks to Ukraine. At the time, Germany was hesitant to approve the transfer of Leopard 2 tanks — a roadblock overcome when Blinken pushed for the United States to approve the transfer of M1 Abrams tanks, making sure allies on both sides of the Atlantic were making major commitments to the war effort in tandem.

The U.S. said it will join efforts to provide fighter jet training to Ukrainian pilots, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, adding that it would be “a safe bet President Biden will meet” Zelensky.

TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: It’s Not Enough for Ukraine to Win. Russia Has to Lose. https://tinyurl.com/yc3rx6vt “A Russia that prevails would be a Russia even further empowered to meddle in Europe and to expand its influence with unlimited violence”
// Anything less will encourage Russian imperialism and embolden autocrats around the world.

The United States has suffered from a deliberate fuzziness in formulating its objectives in the Russian war in Ukraine. … Bureaucratic mental fog is masquerading as artful policy, and it is dangerous. Strategy is the matching of means to ends. In war it is easy to become obsessed with action rather than purpose, and thereby to fall into Nietzsche’s famous description of the most common human stupidity: forgetting what one intended to do in the first place.

Ukraine knows how it defines victory: the pre-2014 borders cleansed of the invader, its exiles and refugees returned, its society and economy rebuilt, membership in the European Union and NATO attained, and some measure of justice for Russian rapists, torturers, and murderers secured. Similarly, we know how the Russians define victory: a Ukraine broken and severed from the West, much of its territory annexed; a Europe in disarray that resumes its addiction to cheap natural resources and business opportunities in Moscow; and the reconstruction of much of the old Russian imperial state.

We should want victory as Ukraine defines it. But to achieve it, the West must not only aid in the defeat of Russia—it must convince Russia that it has been defeated. ¤ A Russia that prevails would be a Russia even further empowered to meddle in Europe and to expand its influence with unlimited violence; a Russia that will have learned that it can commit slaughter and atrocities with impunity; a Russia whose ambitions will grow with success. A Russian victory would, as well, teach the world that the West—including the United States—lacks the resolve, despite its wealth, to follow through on its commitments, offering Beijing an encouraging lesson.

Conversely, Russian defeat would put Beijing—already somewhat nervous about its partner’s incompetence and wild statements—on the defensive, consolidate the Western alliance, and help preserve some of the essential norms of decent behavior in those parts of the world most important to us. Above all, it would block the Russian imperial project for good, because without Ukraine, as the historian Dominic Lieven has noted, Russia cannot be an empire.

… Russia must be convinced that the military instrument, and its deployment in large-scale war, will inevitably fail, and it must realize that Ukraine is permanently and completely lost.

… Ukraine must not only achieve battlefield success in its upcoming counteroffensives; it must secure more than orderly Russian withdrawals following cease-fire negotiations. To be brutal about it, we need to see masses of Russians fleeing, deserting, shooting their officers, taken captive, or dead. The Russian defeat must be an unmistakably big, bloody shambles.

Russia’s theories of victory in Ukraine have collapsed one by one. Putin began by believing that the country would fall in a week; then that it would succumb to a month or two of hard fighting; then that Europe would abandon it during a cold winter without Russian gas; then that Ukraine could be bludgeoned into submission by attacking its cities. The final theory of victory—that the West does not have the heart to pour vast resources into Ukraine indefinitely—needs to be disproved as well, because there is nothing beyond that.

To that end, with the utmost urgency, the West should give everything that Ukraine could possibly use, including long-range missiles to break for good the 11-mile Kerch bridge between the mainland and Crimea, and cluster munitions to devastate Russian fighting vehicles and infantry. Breaking the Russian army, as we have, by spending only a small fraction of our defense budget and none of our blood is an astounding strategic bargain.

Russians must, moreover, conclude that Ukraine—formerly, in their view, a pseudo-state containing “cousins” or “little brothers”—is gone forever. That means speedy accession to the EU and NATO, but also a deep Western commitment to rebuilding Ukraine economically and, most important, arming it to the teeth for years to come.

The paltering of the administration about giving our superabundant F-16s to Ukraine is foolish and shortsighted. These jets might not make a difference on the battlefield two months from now, but the knowledge that several hundred of them are in the pipeline for the next five years would have profound symbolic importance. We should be talking about how we will rebuild Ukraine’s armed forces, the West’s largest, most combat-tested, and in some ways most determined army.

The West needs an aggressive information campaign to drive home the reality of Russian defeat. Russians need to be reminded that their faltering economy is only a tenth the size of the EU’s; that they cannot build and deploy a modern tank; that their latest high-performance jet, the Su-57, will be outnumbered by the F-35s of the four small Nordic states; that their generals are superannuated and incompetent; that their high command is indifferent to their men’s lives; that their equipment is inferior to that of Ukraine; and that their logistics are rotted by graft and corruption.

Russia must be isolated politically and psychologically as well, thereby playing on the country’s historical ambivalence about the West, represented in its two capitals: St. Petersburg, facing Europe, and Moscow, facing Asia. But Russian literature, art, culture, and political practice are rooted in its relationship with Europe. The time may come—years or, more likely, decades from now—when a postimperial Russia will turn westward again.,…

The key to this strategy is courage. We must conquer our fears of Russian threats and escalation, of its nuclear bravado, and even of Russian collapse. We must be strategic and shrewd, but nothing can be accomplished without courage. In the words of John Paul II—the unarmed, lone old man who did so much to bring Soviet communism to its knees—“Never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.”

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 We must be honest about the violent, imperialist nature of Russia past and present. Putin is the villain of this chapter, not the whole story. Russians must face the future humbled, either as part of the civilized world or as a hollowed-out Chinese supply depot.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Russia defeated completely in Ukraine is the first essential matter. But if Ukraine and the rest of the world are to know real peace, Russia must undergo a transformation. Unstable is better than a rogue gangster state, but we must plan for more.
⋙⋙ Newsweek: Kasparov Predicts Collapse of Russian ‘Empire’ https://tinyurl.com/ykpa8jts

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa I welcome the historic decision of the United States and @POTUS to support an international fighter jet coalition. This will greatly enhance our army in the sky. I count on discussing the practical implementation of this decision at the #G7 summit in Hiroshima.

🐣 RT @uarealitynow Zelensky, on surprise Saudi visit, seeks Arab League support in war. ¤ In a surprise personal appearance at an Arab League meeting in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday delivered an emotional appeal for support from leaders who have voiced only muted criticism of Russia’s invasion and from some, like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who have maintained strong ties to Moscow despite the war. ¤ Washington Post
🖼 https://twitter.com/uarealitynow/status/1659629221642158089?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NadjaUruski
🖼 https://twitter.com/NadjaUruski/status/1659530760812998659?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 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

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA “Joe Biden agrees to joint international support to train Ukrainian pilots on modern fighter jets, including F-16” – Politico
Training will take place outside #Ukraine at one of the European training grounds. It will last several months, and will begin in the coming weeks.

🐣 RT @benshapiro At what point does our civilization’s decline hit terminal velocity?
⋙ 🐣 when you’re in a moving train, you still are walking 3 miles an hour to get to the dining car ¤ address what issues confront you, with your knowledge and values, the best you can

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY/ 1300 UTC 19 MAY/ Heavy urban combat continues in Bakhmut, with RU /Wagner forces consolidating lodgments in the district of Khromove. UKR again broke up a VDV attack S of the H-32 HWY at Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1659543183565504513?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Biden and other G7 leaders vow to crack down on sanctions evasion. “We will starve Russia of G7 technology, industrial equipment and services that support its war machine,” they say in joint statement.

⭕ 18 May 2023

AboveTheLaw, Liz Dye: Trump Claims Magical Declassification Powers As Archives Discloses Contradictory Docs To Special Counsel https://tinyurl.com/2zm4s7ae
// Don’t you hate it when they come with receipts?

🐣 RT @Chris_D_Steele The Durham report’s failure to redact the names of alleged Russian sources is reprehensible. Some are based in Russia, others co-operated with the USG. Putin’s regime is renowned for brutal retribution. But Durham still threw them to the wolves to propagate his partisan theories.

🐣 RT @peaceandteachin Jim Jordan’s FBI whistleblowers turn out to be disgruntled FBI employees who lost security clearance when they espoused conspiracy theories and refused to investigate #Jan6 rioters. ¤ Oh and did I mention they were paid by Kash Patel.?! ¤ #FreshResists #OneV1 [link]

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV: propagandist declares that Russia is the savior of humanity and demands for all critics to be silent. He also claims that Stalin’s repressions were based on love and so is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. [Ru vid]

🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava ❗️ Ukraine has everything to liberate Russian-occupied territories ¤ NATO member states have provided an unprecedented level of support. I am confident that Ukrainian troops have all the means necessary to regain the occupied lands,” – Stoltenberg

🐣 RT @ general_ben Great thread. @ChrisO_wiki One of the reasons I overestimated Russian capabilities was that I failed to appreciate the depth and impact of corruption in the Russian MoD. A liberal democratic government with proper oversight and transparency will defeat an autocracy every time.
⋙ 🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ A major corruption scandal is reported to be unfolding in the Russian Ministry of Defence that implicates several generals and ministers, concerning the hugely expensive construction of Russia’s National Defence Control Centre (NDCC) in 2014. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1659251593890365474?s=20

🐣 RT @FlaDems Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried Statement on Disney Pulling Plug on $1 Billion Development in Florida
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/FlaDems/status/1659290435641122816?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] “Florida just lost 2,000 jobs and millions in additional revenue because of Ron DeSantis’ unhinged personal vendetta against Disney. DeSantis has single-handedly and decidedly made Florida an anti-business state, not only with his continued attacks on companies that dare challenge his fascist policies, but also by forcing draconian laws that will decimate the workforce of the backbone industries of our state’s economy. Unfortunately, today’s news isn’t a shock for those of us who have been living through his reign of terror, and Floridians are already paying a high price,” said FDP Chair Nikki Fried.

🐣 RT @TreasChest The Patriot complex has been “targeted” at hypersonic targets since the 1990s, says Julian Röpke, Bild’s military columnist.

“Since the 1990s, the American Patriot air defense system has been sharpened specifically to shoot down hypersonic Chinese, Iranian, and Russian missiles,” Röpke writes.

“While the Russians exaggerate the characteristics of their weapons, the Americans always give too low estimates of its true striking ability to deprive the adversaries of information,” notes Italian gunsmith Thomas Tyner.

Since the Dagger can carry a projectile with a nuclear warhead, successful countermeasures against these missiles indicate NATO’s readiness to repel Russia’s attempts to use nuclear warheads.

“We have received proof that the Western air defense system is capable of intercepting 100% of tactical nuclear weapons delivery systems even under a time-coordinated attack from several directions,” emphasizes weapons expert Fabian Hoffmann from the University of Oslo. ¤ http://ZN.UA

🐣 RT @VictorKanyense Vladimir Putin’s hype of Russia’s hypersonic missiles have been proved to be false. I kept asking myself how did Russia beat the U.S. in developing hypersonic missiles? It didn’t. Russia has no hypersonic missiles. Putin lied 😂🤣😂
⋙ Newsweek: Russian state TV issues stark warning over threat of defeat https://tinyurl.com/2p932t7a
// “If we lose, we’re taking the whole world with us,” Vladimir Solovyov said on the Russia 1 channel.

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️Due to an accounting error, the 🇺🇸Pentagon overestimated the value of weapons provided to 🇺🇦Ukraine by $3 billion – Reuters
The revaluation means that the US has more money to help Ukraine. This opens the possibility for the transfer of additional weapons.

💙 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Scoop: @YahooNews has obtained a U.S. Air Force assessment of how two Ukrainian pilots did in a 3-week course on F-16s at Morris Air National Guard Base in Feb/March. Conclusion: it’ll take 4 months to train them, not 18, as the Pentagon has said:
⋙ YahooNews: Exclusive: U.S. could train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s in 4 months https://tinyurl.com/mr247msh
// Yahoo News has obtained a U.S. Air Force assessment of two Ukrainian pilots who outperformed stated Pentagon expectations over two weeks in a flight simulator at a U.S. air base.

TheHill: The collapse of Russian influence is widening https://tinyurl.com/yc44t5yh “If Russia cannot keep its occupied territories in line, what would it mean for the Russian-led CSTO, which currently includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Tajikistan?”

🐣 RT @wartranslated Prigozhin’s mouthpiece channel admin GREY ZONE watches a video by the 3rd Assault brigade assaulting a Russian defensive position near Bakhmut which resulted in 300m of progress in 16 minutes. Unable to understand how the enemy [Ukrainians] can calmly send vehicles and infantry to walk along the woodline, meanwhile if Russians tried the same anywhere, they’d be burned on the approach.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1659197340111220738?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] 1/2 Every day for a week I wanted to post this video, but each time I missed the opportunity. Today for the first time I saw another boring video on the channel of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation from Bakhmut, it tells how army units hold the flanks, and how they have everything PERFECT. Perhaps, they decided to take over the agenda Once again, just in case, I’ll say that the Russian Armed Forces are mostly good fighters, but what’s the use to recruit 300, 500, or at least 900 thousand of them, when, in view of the almost complete absence of a built-in combat control system in the troops, coherence of actions, communications, reconnaissance complex, fire support, training, etc., etc., they will simply be crushed as below in the video. Below in the video is how a week ago the 3rd Assault Brigade “Azov” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine took the platoon-strongpoint (48°29’13″N 37°54’57″E) of the Russian Armed Forces, which is located 2.5 km south of those positions that they had taken a little earlier (that footage with the 72nd brigade infantry fleeing from an enemy tank).

2/2 The assault itself lasts about 16 minutes, filmed in one shot. During this time, the enemy crosses 305 meters. Where are the hand-held anti-tank weapons? Where are the anti-tank firing points with ATMs? Where is the minefield with TMs? Where is the fire support from the flanks (from perpendicular woodlines) on the left and right? WHY THE FUCK DOES THE BMP RIDE SLOWLY IN OPEN SPACE FOR 15 MINUTES? What did they say in that video by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation? “We’re burning enemy vehicles as they approach”?

Why were our servicemen simply crushed, on foot? Probably, the “Wagnerites” are to blame for this again, and not the commanders of the RF Armed Forces on the ground. I’ll just say for myself that I can’t imagine that we could go like this along the woodline, hiding behind vehicles, where the enemy is on the defensive. Most likely, we would not even have had time to dismount from the vehicles, we would have been burned on the way. The enemy placed TM mines at all approaches. The BMD could not even go to the line to pick up the wounded, so they were dragged through one more woodline. And when a group of VDV was withdrawn (only 300m) to occupy a site in the “gray zone” they were immediately cut off from the neighboring wood line by enemy fire, preventing us from leaving and gaining a foothold at a previously set point.

🐣 If I were the parent of a trans child, I would move to a Blue state. ¤ However, most Americans do NOT support trans women in women’s sports or gender-affirming care for trans youth. That’s why MAGAts have seized on this, to divide us. ¤ Dems must tread carefully here.
↥ ↧
WaPo: Texas lawmakers vote to ban gender-affirming care for trans children https://tinyurl.com/muhzx9e9 //➔ most Americans oppose gender-affirming care for trans youth per a WaPo/KFF poll, but medical orgs support (see below)
✛ Although ~75% of Americans oppose discrimination against trans individuals in housing, hiring etc, ~65% OPPOSE trans women competing in women’s sports, and most OPPOSE puberty blockers for youth ages 10-14 (68%) and hormone therapy for 15-18 (58%)
WaPo poll (May 6) https://tinyurl.com/44cajbd2
✛ But medical groups SUPPORT gender-affirming care:
SciAm (May 2020): What the Science on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Kids Really Shows https://tinyurl.com/59eutf9e
// Laws that ban gender-affirming treatment ignore the wealth of research demonstrating its benefits for trans people’s health

NYT: Ukraine intercepts Russian missiles fired at Kyiv overnight https://tinyurl.com/mux4xehe “Air defenses intercepted 29 of 30 missiles fired at Ukraine overnight, the country’s military said” ~ not stated if any of these were the same as the 7 hypersonic missiles shot down Tuesday

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian The US Department of Defense is not against the transfer of F-16 fighters to Ukraine, – Politico. ¤ The publication, citing a Pentagon representative, writes that Biden is now under strong pressure to agree to send fighter jets.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 This is the article, I assume, but it’s ambiguous, saying “all types of jets” are under consideration. But here’s the rub: training takes a while, so that can start.
Politico: Pressure campaign on Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine goes into overdrive https://tinyurl.com/44ndy8h6
// Officials signal they’re still open to allowing other countries to send their U.S.-made jets.

While the administration has crossed several other red lines in military aid — approving everything from guided rockets to drones to Abrams tanks they once claimed would provoke Russia — the Biden administration is holding the line for now on the Lockheed Martin-made F-16s.

But momentum may be building for Washington to do the next best thing: allow other countries that fly the F-16 to send their own jets to Ukraine.

A new wrinkle appeared on Tuesday when the U.K. announced the kickoff of an international coalition of countries focused on procuring F-16s for Ukraine. Under the agreement, the U.K. said it would soon start training Ukrainian pilots to fly modern fighter jets; Belgium quickly followed suit, saying it could also train the pilots.

Appearing virtually in front of a gathering of leaders in Reykjavik on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said that given his country’s vast size, “we need additional air defense systems and missiles. We also need modern fighter jets, without which no air defense system will be perfect. And I am sure we will get there.”

The F-16 issue is expected to loom over the G-7 gathering in Japan this week, a preview of the public campaign Ukraine and other world leaders are expected to continue at NATO’s annual leaders summit in Lithuania in July.

“There’s an ongoing discussion about also other types of jets,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of last month’s meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

A spokesperson for Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that “jets are the only thing still missing from Reznikov’s wishlist.”

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa This year, the two meanings are united by one date, May 18.
🖼 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1659091740538576896?s=20/photo/1

79 years ago on this day, the Soviet regime began deporting the Crimean Tatar people. A people they wanted to erase. Deprive of their homes, deprive of the right to life. ¤ But the people survived. And they will live freely! ¤ Today,

I am wearing a special vyshyvanka with ornaments that symbolize the unity of the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar peoples. Symbols of our strength and our desire to live in our home. ¤ Let this year’s Vyshyvanka Day in 🇺🇦 be a reminder of what our people have been through and how strong our culture is. ¤ We honor our peoples, their strength and culture!

🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 18 May 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence’s use of language: http://ow.ly/CuNR50OqKhQ ¤ 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1659073859411144711?s=20/photo/1

● The Russian state is likely effectively banning senior officials from resigning from their jobs while the Special Military Operation’ continues. The measures likely extend to at least regional leaders, security officials and members of the powerful Presidential Administration.

● In private, many officials are likely highly sceptical about the war, as well as often experiencing work stress within the dysfunctional wartime apparatus. The ban is likely enforced with strong hints that resignees will face trumped up
criminal charges.

● As well as being concerned about capability gaps resignees would leave, the authorities are likely also attempting to prevent any impression of defeatism, and to bolster a sense of collective responsibility for the war.

NewStatesman, Michael Lind (Oct 2022): The Anglosphere Needs a Customs Union https://tinyurl.com/bddhbrbr Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US have a combined population of about half a billion people and a combined GDP of $30Tr
// 10/8/2022; The five “core Anglosphere” nations on their own would add up to a very impressive economic bloc.
Ausl 1.5T, Can 2T, NZea .25T, UK 3.1: TOT 7Tr; US 23.3 ALL 30Tr

⭕ 17 May 2023

WaPo: Russian scientists, experts in hypersonic technology, arrested for treason https://tinyurl.com/4j26hxu2 “The noise around the scientists’ case follows Ukraine’s claims to have struck down six of Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles during a barrage of missile strikes on Kyiv”

TheAtlantic, David Frum: A Sinister Flop https://tinyurl.com/2ns38jn8 “As a legal text, the Durham report is limp and meager. As a history of recent events, it is misleading. … [But it] is already proving to be a huge success as a prop and support for the bitterest partisan rancor”
// Special Counsel John Durham served up not an investigation, but an excuse for future partisan abuses.

WaPo, Anna Nemtsova: I’ve never seen the Kremlin so rattled https://tinyurl.com/yss85m8b “[T]he three principal Russian forces in Bakhmut — the Wagner Group, Kadyrov’s Chechen militias and the regular army — are openly feuding with each other as Ukrainian troops advance”

A mysterious drone attack on the Kremlin. A car bombing that wounded a key advocate of the invasion of Ukraine. Four military aircraft shot down in a single day — inside Russia’s borders. ¤ If the Ukrainians and their allies wanted to rattle the Russian leadership, it’s working.

Never, in more than two decades of covering Vladimir Putin’s regime, have I seen it in such an obvious state of chaos and disarray. These days, Kremlin-watchers don’t have to read tea leaves or decode cryptic utterances from the leadership to spot the signs of intrigue — it’s all out in the open, thanks to Putin confidant Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

In one of several recent videos, Prigozhin, founder of the mercenary army known as the Wagner Group, stood over dead Russians in a field and cursed the Russian military leadership, demanding punishment for Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as well as for Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. He blamed the two men — both close Putin associates he accused of neglecting supplies for his troops — for “tens of thousands of Wagner dead and injured.” …

Top officials in Kyiv must have been rubbing their hands in glee. While the Kremlin is primarily to blame for its own troubles, given its obvious corruption and incompetence, the Ukrainians have been doing everything they can to undermine morale and exacerbate divisions among their enemies. A constant drumbeat of drone attacks on military bases, oil refineries and fuel depots has added to the sense of unraveling. (Officially, Kyiv does not acknowledge striking targets inside Russia. It’s also hard to determine whether some of the most mysterious attacks — such as the one on the Kremlin — were actually launched by Ukrainian forces.) …

Another Prigozhin tirade echoed that earlier disaster when he accused soldiers from the regular army of “fleeing” from the front in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, blaming the military command for “betraying the motherland.” (Meanwhile, Prigozhin himself is being accused of betrayal after a Post report revealed that he tried to trade information with Ukrainian authorities earlier in the war — for reasons that remain murky.) Moscow propagandists can’t even begin to address the stunning losses they’ve incurred since Putin launched his full-scale invasion last year. U.S. analysts recently estimated that the Russians have incurred 100,000 casualties since December alone. …

Putin’s own Victory Day celebration stood out for its subdued tone and the presence of only a single tank — a fact that gave the Ukrainians a welcome opening for mockery.

Russian political insiders are increasingly questioning the rationale for the war. Sen. Lyudmila Narusova, the widow of Putin’s political mentor Anatoly Sobchak, recently went public with her concerns. ¤ “Nobody has explained how victory is supposed to look,” she told an interviewer. “If we think of the originally declared goals, ‘denazification’ and ‘demilitarization,’ the entire Ukrainian army must have been already destroyed by now.” Noting that Russian forces now face Ukrainian troops armed and equipped by the West, she went on: “Does that mean we are demilitarizing NATO? That goal is unattainable.” ¤ If Narusova does not understand Putin’s plan for victory, then no one else does, either.

The sense of confusion at the highest ranks of the Kremlin is boosting the chances that Kyiv’s counteroffensive will succeed. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a longtime Prigozhin ally, has now appeared to break with the Wagner chief, harshly criticizing his threats to withdraw from the front. As a result, the three principal Russian forces in Bakhmut — the Wagner Group, Kadyrov’s Chechen militias and the regular army — are openly feuding with each other as Ukrainian troops advance.

Meanwhile, Putin has conspicuously failed to explain to the public how his security forces failed to prevent two drones from reaching the Kremlin and neglected to thwart the car-bomb attack on a key Russian warmonger, Zakhar Prilepin. ¤ Former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov told me the Kremlin is “shaking.”

None of this, of course, guarantees that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be a success. For the time being, though, Kyiv has every right to congratulate itself on the effectiveness of its psychological war against Putin’s regime.

WaPo: Senate Democrats ask Biden to ready 14th Amendment, bypass GOP on debt limit https://tinyurl.com/yh9jdwx6 House Democrats are have also taken steps toward a “discharge petition,” which would force a floor vote without McCarthy putting it forward
// House Democrats also begin a long-shot attempt to force a vote on a debt ceiling increase without other spending cuts

NYT: Gains Near Bakhmut Raise Ukraine’s Hopes of a Turning Tide https://tinyurl.com/4xaztnnf “‘Wagner’s men have entered Bakhmut like rats into a mousetrap,’ the commander of all Ukrainian ground forces, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, told soldiers during a visit to the front”
// The advances have been small, and Russians still hold most of the city, but Ukrainians say they see a meaningful shift in momentum.

NYT, Charlie Savage: After Years of Political Hype, the Durham Inquiry Failed to Deliver https://tinyurl.com/56xb9hz7 After four years, the investigation led to just two failed prosecutions, but many insinuations and disingenuous claims of triumph by Trump acolytes
// A dysfunctional investigation led by a Trump-era special counsel illustrates a dilemma about prosecutorial independence and accountability in politically sensitive matters.

At a time when special counsels are proliferating — there have been four since 2017, two of whom are still at work — the much-hyped investigation by Mr. Durham, a special counsel, into the Russia inquiry ended with a whimper that stood in contrast to the countless hours of political furor that spun off from it.

Mr. Durham delivered a report that scolded the F.B.I. but failed to live up to the expectations of supporters of Donald J. Trump that he would uncover a politically motivated “deep state” conspiracy. He charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either.

Predictably, the report’s actual content — it contained no major new revelations, and it accused the F.B.I. of “confirmation bias” rather than making a more explosive conclusion of political bias — made scant difference in parts of the political arena. Mr. Trump and many of his loyalists issued statements treating it as vindication of their claims that the Russia inquiry involved far more extravagant wrongdoing.

“The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people,” Mr. Trump insisted on social media. “This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so. This totally illegal act had a huge impact on the Election.”

Mr. Trump’s comparison was unintentionally striking. Just as his and his supporters’ wild and invented claims of election fraud floundered in court (Fox News also agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement for amplifying lies about Dominion Voting Systems), the political noise surrounding Mr. Durham’s efforts ultimately ran up against reality.

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski He woke up and went straight to the all-caps. Usually he has to warm up with a few posts first before going full crazy.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1658808346659504129?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonaldTrump I WAS BEING FRAMED BY THE FBI AND THE DOJ. NOW IT CONTINUES WITH THE BOXES HOAX, THE “PERFECT” PHONE CALL IN ATLANTA, THE MANHATTAN D.A., AND THE NEW YORK STATE A.G. SCAM. WHAT A GROUP, BUT ALL REPORT TO THE DOJ IN WASHINGTON. IT’S JAMES COMEY AND THE SLEAZEBAGS ALL OVER AGAIN.THEY ARE PLAYING ELECTION INTERFERENCE IN 2024 THROUGH ILLEGAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST REPUBLICANS, IN PARTICULAR YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT, ME. THESE ARE CHEATING LOWLIFES, BUT WE WILL WIN. OUR COUNTRY IS GOING TO HELL!

⭕ 16 May 2023

🐣 RT @DavidCayJ The Durham Report misleads by commission and omission, not to mention obfuscations. ¤ Marcy Wheeler of @emptywheel does a great job of showing the sins of omission:
⋙ EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Eight Things Not Mentioned in the Durham Report https://tinyurl.com/3jjxhztw

1. All mention of the Italian referral on Trump.
2. All mention of the conspiracy theories Durham and Barr chased in Europe.
3. Durham’s own investigative failures.
4. The Trump Tower Moscow deal.
5. Konstantin Kilimnik’s name.
6. Description of Guccifer 2.0’s initial releases.
7. The biased FBI Agent running the Clinton Foundation informant.
8.The response to Mike Flynn’s lies about Sergey Kislyak.

WaPo Editorial: Durham’s investigation reveals nothing except a broken process https://tinyurl.com/2bska88t “Barr’s handpicked special counsel confirmed only what the public already learned in a previous report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz”

[…] When then-Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Mr. Durham to investigate the investigators of Trump-Russia ties, Mr. Barr appeared determined to uncover a vast plot on the part of government officials who could be criminally prosecuted for their misdeeds. Instead, Mr. Barr’s handpicked special counsel confirmed only what the public already learned in a previous report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

The upshot: There were flaws in the FBI’s handling of the matter, especially involving dubious Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications to surveil 2016 Trump adviser Carter Page, but they flowed from confirmation bias rather than politically motivated misconduct. Though Mr. Durham continues to disagree that it was appropriate for the FBI to open a full investigation, rather than a preliminary one, he makes no finding that doing so was prohibited under agency rules. There was no involvement by the CIA, National Security Agency or any other snoops. And there is no reason to send anyone to prison. Indeed, the special counsel faced two acquittals in the cases he developed and a guilty plea resulting from a referral by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

So what has this $6.5 million process accomplished? Plenty — but none of it good. Even now, conservatives are seizing on Mr. Durham’s report, which contains indignant rhetoric that suggests dramatically more wrongdoing than its substance backs up, to assert a deep-state plot. The probe’s very existence during an election cycle already served as a talking point for Mr. Trump’s allies, who promised time and time again that Mr. Durham was going to lay bare the “crime of the century.”

This story could have been even worse: The New York Times reported in January that Mr. Barr pressured Mr. Durham to deliver an interim report centered on the Clinton campaign ahead of the 2020 election.

The special counsel’s only recommendation for reform is narrow — to create a sort of devil’s advocate role within the FBI to challenge investigators’ assumptions in politically sensitive investigations. And even this suggestion does less to address flaws in the FISA process and in high-profile FBI investigations more generally than others that were in the Horowitz report, many of which the agency has already implemented. The best way to ensure investigating agents’ claims are appropriately scrutinized before the government takes them to court, for instance, might be to further empower prosecutors by ensuring they get all the information, both exculpatory and inculpatory, that they need. Further reforms to make the FISA adjudication process more adversarial would also help.

But all this speaks to a bigger problem: Matters such as these shouldn’t even be in the purview of a special counsel, whose role is to decide whether to bring charges, then pack up and go home. These individuals operating under the Justice Department’s purview yet imbued with extra independence have a history of overspending resources and reaching beyond their mandates. The attorney general, technically still in charge, has some power to constrain them — yet this case shows clearly what happens when he does the opposite instead. ¤ The current attorney general, Merrick Garland, overseeing two separate special counsel investigations into Mr. Trump and President Biden, should take note.

🐣 RT @JackFought_1 Dmitry Medvedev claimed Poland and the Baltics as part of Russia today.
Please tell me more about how no one needs to Join NATO again, because Russia never invades its neighbors, Russian trolls.
#Ukraine #Poland #Estonia #Lithuania #Latvia #Russia #NATO #War
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JackFought_1/status/1658611527627444224?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @MedvedevRussiaE A certain person calling himself the president of France said that Russia had already lost geopolitically, and was transforming into the othercountries’ vassal. ¤ The president of the Republic was obviously harmed by socializing withthe Kiev junkie. ¤ He inhaled too much of the warm Paris air mixed with Ukrainian cocaine waste, that his guest was emitting.

A geopolitical loss?
It was back in 2022 that NATO was lazily shooing us away when the matter concerned the security guarantees. Like, leave us alone, no time for you. And now, all of the NATO member states go to bed at night, and wake up in the morning thinking of Russia. Moreover, some of the especially cowardly and suffering from phantom pains, like temporarily occupied Poland and our Baltic provinces, have well soiled themselves. So, if there has indeed been a loss, it is that of the primitive NATO politics, with its underlying ambition to play the exceptional role in the 21st century.

Speaking of vassal dependence… Look who’s talking! Europe the beauty, including France, has turned into an elderly wench who is especially thoroughly satisfying all of the most perverted whims of Americans. And in the process, it is hurting its own economy and ordinary Europeans with masochistic lust. ¤ As they put it, tel maître, tel valet.

🐣 [Re: Trump says he’ll release JFK files ]
… and he’ll make Mexico pay for the wall
and pass a better healthcare plan than Obamacare
and rebuild America’s infrastructure
and pay off the National Debt
and lock up Hillary Clinton etc etc etc
😂 😆 😂

🔊 BulwarkPodcast: Anne Applebaum: The Case for a Complete Ukrainian Victory https://tinyurl.com/49m6pk7 “Ukraine’s freedom is on the line, but America’s role in the world is also at stake. And if a democratic Ukraine can win against autocratic Russia, the world’s geopolitics could be altered for a generation”

🐣 RT @noclador Weapon systems that impressed the world in the last year:
🇺🇸HIMARS / GMLRS
🇺🇸Patriot PAC-3
🇩🇪IRIS-T
🇸🇪🇬🇧NLAW
🇺🇸Javelin
🇫🇷CAESAR
🇩🇪PzH 2000
Weapon systems that made the world laugh:
🇷🇺Su-34
🇷🇺Su-35
🇷🇺Iskander
🇷🇺Kinzhal
🇷🇺Pantsir
🇷🇺T-90
🇷🇺S-400
🐣 Once could have been a fluke. ¤ Six? Russia’s “unstoppable” hypersonic missiles were ALL shot down over Kyiv by the US’s Patriot air defense system. ¤ “What air defense doing?” ~ Killing the Kinzhal 🇺🇦🇺🇸

🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Ukrainian commander-in-chief Zaluzhny says Russia attacked Ukraine from “north, south & east with 18 air, sea, & land-based missiles.” 6 Kinzhals launched from MiG-31K aircraft; 9 Kalibr cruise missiles launched from ships in Black Sea; 3 S-400 land-based missiles. All shot down.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Yet another massive Russian air attack on Ukraine last night.
Ukrainian Air defense shot down all of them:
– 6 aeroballistic Kinzhal rockets; [“hypersonic”]
– 9 Kalibr cruise missiles;
– 3 ballistic/anti-aircraft rockets (being confirmed);
– 6 strike Shahed drones;
– 3 drones.
Glory to Ukrainian Air Defenders! ¤ Thankful to Allies who provide Ukraine with air defense!
Source: Air Forces of Ukraine
◕ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1658349478192054272?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @PStyle0ne1 It seems all of this, if not all, was fired at Kyiv, the most protected area of Ukraine. ¤ 9 ballistic missiles, 6 of them hypersonic, that without Patriots and SAMPT Ukraine is uncapable to intercept. ¤ With 100% interception rate, it is a humiliation for Russia.

⭕ 15 May 2023

🐣 RT @SenatorRomney Putin’s aspirations look beyond Ukraine—he is seeking to reestablish the old boundaries of the Soviet Union and bring more nations under his control. Ukraine must win the war in order to shed Russia’s imperial ambitions and halt the rise of autocracy’s sway on the global order.
// We must stop Putin from rebuilding the old Soviet Union. ¤ At a SFRC hearing to discuss what comes next for U.S. policy towards Russia, Senator Romney recalled the success of our Soviet Union strategy.
💽 https://twitter.com/SenatorRomney/status/1658528138584809483?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @sumlenny Without NATO countries’ support, peaceful Kyiv would have been devastated tonight with the Russian missiles. Hundreds of people would have been killed. I don’t mention what consequences for millions of Ukrainians Russian occupation would have (Bucha). NATO is peace, NATO is life.

🐣 RT @davidfrum
Mueller: indictments and convictions
Durham: vibes
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidfrum [Feb 3]
Russia helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election.
Trump welcomed Russian help.
Trump’s intimates sought even more help.
Trump’s campaign manager shared information.
All repeatedly lied about it.
In office, Trump supported Russian policy goals
Saved you 24,000 words.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @davidfrum Mueller: hard news
Durham: opinion column

🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “the war in Ukraine is a fight not over territory but over the country’s future. Russia is determined to control Ukraine’s political destiny…Ukraine’s security lies with — and in — the West, and the conflict cannot end until Ukraine is part of it.”
⋙ Politico [EU]: The conflict cannot end until Ukraine is part of the West https://tinyurl.com/599vvtdy
// The question is not whether Ukraine should become a part of the Euro-Atlantic institutions, but when and how.

🐣 RT @danielsgoldman The Durham Report is a political hatchet job. The only thing more pathetic is the outcome of his prosecutions. ¤ It retreads the same material that both Mueller and the IG found to justify the opening of the 2016 Russia investigation. ¤ Why the different outcome? 2 main reasons:
⋙ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman 1) it ignores that Wikileaks had just made its first dump of DNC emails — which corroborated the FBI’s info — when the investig was opened; and
2) tries to lump in the Steele Dossier even though it came much later and had nothing to do with the opening of the Russia investig.

Axios (2020): All the Trump associates convicted or sentenced in the Mueller investigation https://tinyurl.com/3smyh9d4
// 2/20/2020

NYT: In Final Report, Trump-Era Special Counsel Denounces Russia Investigation https://tinyurl.com/2p82eyze //➔ Indictments in Durham probe: 2 (BOTH found Not Guilty); Indictments, Convictions/Guilty Pleas in Mueller Investigation ⬇️ via Axios (2020); Pardons do not expunge Guilt
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1658219145744326656?s=20/photo/1
// After four years of investigating the Russia inquiry, John Durham turned in a report that was made public on Monday.

Mr. Durham’s 306-page report appeared to show little substantial new information about the F.B.I.’s handling of the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations impugning the bureau that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies had once suggested that Mr. Durham would find.

Instead, the report — released without substantive comment or redactions by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — repeated previously exposed flaws in the inquiry, including from a 2019 inspector general report, while concluding that the F.B.I. suffered from a confirmation bias as it pursued leads about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.

WaPo: Durham report sharply criticizes FBI’s 2016 probe of Trump campaign https://tinyurl.com/scba86yf
// Special counsel says “extremely troublesome” failures appear to stem from bias
⋙ [Doc:] https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf 316p

🐣 RT @LuisMorenolg Bakhmut will become, (if it hasn’t already) a legendary, iconic battle in the world’s military history. It’s an inspiration for the invaded, the outnumbered and people fighting for a just cause. It’s also the harbinger of Putin’s much deserved end. Superb analysis here.
⋙ KyivPost, Jonathan Sweet & Mark Toth: Bakhmut Rising https://tinyurl.com/yfrstdwr “The main event – Ukraine’s full-throttled counteroffensive – has yet to come. However, it is rapidly building … while many on both sides are ready for it to happen ¤ Rise Bakhmut, rise” 🇺🇦
// Is the ongoing battle for Bakhmut, to quote Churchill, the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Bakhmut is becoming increasingly bleak, if not tactically hopeless, for Russian President Vladimir Putin. May 9 has come and gone, and General Valery Gerasimov has still failed to capture the city, as ordered. Routed Russian troops have been captured on video as they fled fighting positions, abandoned weapons, and surrendered, as Ukrainian forces begin to aggressively capitalize on a growing military and psychological edge. 

Bakhmut is rising up again, much like an ancient Greek Phoenix and Yevgeny Prigozhin has reduced himself to that of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Repeatedly, over the last few days, the founder of the Wagner Group has popped up on Telegram to detail every strategic blunder by Gerasimov and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Bakhmut, blaming the hapless duo for the reasons why Russian “troops were fleeing” and for the overall “stupidity of Russian army commanders.”

Things seem to be only getting worse for the Kremlin. Putin’s house of cards is teetering on collapse. His grand design, of holding a celebratory Victory Day Parade in Red Square to mark the fall of Bakhmut, has now, humiliatingly, given way to Russian soldiers parading as fast as they can to get out of the Ukrainian salt mining town and surrounding area. All well-deserved but, it is important to remember: one rout does not win a war. 

And still the plot thickens. The Washington Post  reports that the leaked U.S. intel documents indicated that Prigozhin allegedly offered to reveal the locations of regular Russian troop formations in the Donbass, in January, if Kyiv would withdraw its own forces from the Bakhmut frontline. The report seemed to be confirmed by two Ukrainian officials who said that Prigozhin “has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. Whether a Russian trick or Ukrainian disinformation, it seems that Prigozhin’s relationship with the Kremlin continues to deteriorate. 

The primary challenge now, for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is to quickly identify and remove that one remaining elusive card which could bring Putin’s house down. The decisive blow has yet to be struck by Zelensky’s Generals. Although, in the global media’s eyes, Bakhmut is the focal point of the war and they have zoomed in on Ukrainian success there, the challenge Ukraine faces is bigger than just that one city. …

… At the beginning of the war, Putin’s army “consisted of professional soldiers; was largely equipped with reasonably modern vehicles; and had been regularly exercised, aspiring to complex, joint operations.” That was then, this is now. Today, it assesses Putin’s forces to be “mostly poorly trained mobilized reservists” who are “increasingly reliant on antiquated equipment.” More succinctly as we wrote last month in these pages, Putin’s army is running on empty. 

In what was already a bad week for Putin and Gerasimov, the UK announced it had recently delivered  the precision deep strike capability Ukraine needs to help win the war – the Storm Shadow air launched cruise missile, extending its operational reach beyond 250 kilometers, bringing Crimea squarely into play.  

As a result, the strategy of making Crimea “untenable,” as advocated by retired Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, is fast becoming possible. Storm Shadow also puts Russian cruise missile and drone launch sites, as well as staging areas for Russian troops beyond Ukraine’s border, ‘at risk’ – negating the arbitrary sanctuary Russian territory has so far offered. In essence, it helps levels the playing field in favor of Ukraine, much as HIMARS did; a new reality that is driving Russian propagandists into full crisis mode. The despondent head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, who, as Russian media expert and Daily Beast columnist Julia Davis reported, “now wonders whether Russia can protects its territories.” 

Even Russia’s much vaunted Kh-47M2 ‘Kinzhal’ hypersonic missile system is now a casualty of Putin’s Ukrainian ‘special military operation’. On May 4, a U.S.-supplied Patriot missile battery, manned by Ukrainian troops, shot down Putin’s declared “Wunderwaffe.” Rubbing salt in Putin’s wounds, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat commented: “They were saying that the Patriot is an outdated American weapon and Russian weapons are the best in the world. Well, there is confirmation that it effectively works against even a super-hypersonic missile.” He added “successfully intercepting the Kinzhal was a slap in the face for Russia.”

Putin is now also faced with his own ‘Mussolini moment’. Not only was his Victory Day Parade embarrassingly small, just a solitary WWII-era T-34 tank to symbolize Russia’s much-vaunted armor, it may have also marked the loss of a key Putin ally. During the parade, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko seemed to be ill and was forced to return immediately to Minsk. Rumors are flying that Lukashenko is dead. Jason Jay Smart reported a Russian Dassault Falcon business jet landed in the Belarusian capital on Saturday on board of which were several senior Russian officials. Dead or not, a key Russian ally is now in domestic turmoil and potentially paralyzed by uncertainty.  

For now, at least, Bakhmut is rising, from which, a Phoenix is resiliently and boldly sporting yellow and blue Ukrainian colors. Putin’s red Phoenix is on the run and is increasingly under attack by Prigozhin. The Institute for the Study of War in its May 13 report, assessed that “Ukrainian forces had liberated 16.85 square kilometers in the Bakhmut area during recent counterattacks” and that even more “significant” gains might be possible in the short-term, if “Russian forces fail to stabilize the frontline.” 

The main event – Ukraine’s full-throttled counteroffensive – has yet to come. However, it is rapidly building and while many on both sides are ready for it to happen, Zelensky and his generals will not be rushed. Zelensky has made it clear he wants more time and weaponry to ensure its success. Meanwhile, Prigozhin continues his war of words with the Kremlin while Ukraine begins to raise its flag over more and more of once Russian-occupied parts of Bakhmut and the surrounding region that forms Russia’s flanks. 

Rise Bakhmut, rise. 🇺🇦

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Putin will hold an unscheduled Security Council meet after the flight of the army from Bakhmut, several downed fighter jets/helicopters, and a few dead colonels over the weekend. Things are going according to plan

🐣 RT @officejjsmart PUTIN PANICKING ¤ “⚡️Putin urgently convened the Security Council after the “flight” of the 🇷🇺 Army from Bakhmut. Putin decided not to wait until the scheduled meeting this Friday and will instead hold a video conference today, says the Kremlin.” ¤ Putin: Soon you’ll lose it ALL.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1245 UTC 15 MAY/ RU & Wagner Group forces continue ineffective offensive operations. UKR broke up RU offensive actions at Bohdanivka, Bakhmut, and Stochney. RU air strikes were conducted against Ivanivske and Stupochky. Combat within the W urban area is ongoing.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1658087843544150016?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 14 May 2023

🐣 RT @tribelaw If McCarthy and the members who pull his strings keep throwing a tantrum and invoking the ceiling they could easily lift to threaten the nation with a disaster of their own making, the 14th Amendment’s command that we pay all our debts will have to take priority over the ceiling

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer TRAITOR: The Washington Post reports that Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine if it pulled its own forces back from the beleaguered city of Bakhmut, where Wagner mercenaries were taking heavy losses.
🐣 RT @ michaeldweiss Whether HUR has cultivated and manipulated Prigozhin or it just wants the world (read: the Kremlin) to think it has, this is an absolutely banger psyop.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate and extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once. Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin.
‼️ ⋙⋙ WaPo: Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says https://tinyurl.com/ydprs3vp
// THE DISCORD LEAKS | Yevgeniy Prigozhin said he would tell Ukraine’s military where to attack Russian troops if they pulled their own forces back from the beleaguered city of Bakhmut, where Wagner mercenaries were taking heavy losses

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer. ¤ Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord.

Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal. ¤ The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose.

But there is no debating Prigozhin’s bitter frustration with the grinding fight in Bakhmut. He has complained, publicly and privately, that the Russian Defense Ministry has not given his fighters the ammunition and other resources they need to succeed. Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Over the past few months, in a grinding back and forth measured by city blocks, Ukrainian and Russian forces have taken steep casualties. …

Prigozhin, who promised to take control of the city by May 9, in time for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, has recently threatened publicly to pull his forces out of the fight.

Other leaked documents reveal Russian Defense Ministry officials privately wondering how to respond to Prigozhin’s criticism of the military’s performance and his demands for more resources, which they apparently conceded were not illegitimate grievances. The documents also speak to a power struggle between Prigozhin and top officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. …

The documents also suggest that Kyiv suspects, or may know, that the Kremlin is aware of Prigozhin’s communications with Ukrainian intelligence, if not his secret negotiations over Bakhmut. ¤ One document, based on “sigint” — or intercepted communications — states that Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, “expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the HUR and his meetings with their officers in Africa to make him appear to be a Ukrainian agent.” It doesn’t specify whether Budanov suspects Moscow may already know that Prigozhin is talking to HUR officers. …

⋙ 🐣 RT @PStyle0ne1 ‼️The Russian Ministry of Defense confirms the death of 2 colonels near Klishchiivka, Makarov and Brovko, one commanded the 4th motorized rifle brigade (as I mentioned yesterday), and the other one was the commander of the army corps for military political work. ¤ The rumor goes that Wagner gave out their location to the Ukrainians🤣
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PStyle0ne1 On a separate note, the photo illustrating yesterday’s tweet is not from Klishchiivka as @GeoConfirmed indicated to me privately but from a village 30 km south. My apologies for this mistake. ¤ Nonetheless, the Russian command has been decapitated as confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Defense

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate and extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once. Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin.
‼️ ⋙ WaPo: Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says https://tinyurl.com/ydprs3vp
// THE DISCORD LEAKS | Yevgeniy Prigozhin said he would tell Ukraine’s military where to attack Russian troops if they pulled their own forces back from the beleaguered city of Bakhmut, where Wagner mercenaries were taking heavy losses

RawStory: ‘We can’t track down the informant’: James Comer says he lost top witness in Biden investigation https://tinyurl.com/5epbet5 The informants are “either currently in court, they’re currently in jail, or they’re currently missing” ~ Rep. Comer

[…] “The nine of the ten people that we’ve identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens,” he added, “they’re one of three things, Maria, they’re either currently in court, they’re currently in jail, or they’re currently missing.”

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Moscow says 2 Russian colonels killed in battle for Bakhmut. ¤ Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Colonel Vyacheslav Makarov, the commander of Russia’s 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade, and Colonel Yevgeny Brovko, deputy commander of an unspecified army corps for political work, had been killed in the Bakhmut area.

🐣 RT @ wartranslated Russian volunteer Murz posted another long update last night on the battle situation in and around Bakhmut: he says the Ukrainians have massive superiority in air recon and “unlimited shell supply”, softening targets before any infantry advances. He confirms officer kills in the 4th Brigade of the DPR yesterday. The defensive lines built by Russia are too weak and shallow, and unlike regular forces, Wagners have been bullshitting their way out of holding these positions.
[TextLink: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1657675029813796866?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @ Heroiam_Slava 🇩🇪🤝🇺🇦 €2.7 billion military aid for Ukraine:

– 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles
– 30 Leopard tanks
– 4 IRIS-T-SLM air defense systems
– 200 reconnaissance UAVs
– 100 armored vehicles
– 100 logistics vehicles
– 15 Gepards
– a large amount of ammunition.

// Zelensky is in Berlin: what a haul!

⭕ 13 May 2023

🐣 RT @TreasChest The Armed Forces continue to carry out successful counterattacks at once in several directions near Bakhmut — Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Citing reports from Russian military personnel and satellite images of the area, analysts write that Ukrainian troops established new positions on the outskirts of Kurdyumivka (14 km southwest of Bakhmut) and pushed back the Russian forces behind the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas channel in this area.

Also, the defense forces probably advanced towards Klishchiivka (7 km southwest of Bakhmut) from the direction of Predtechyny (16 km southwest of Bakhmut). As of May 13, ISW calculated that during the latest counterattacks, Ukrainian troops liberated 16.85 square kilometers in the Bakhmut area, which actually confirms the words of Serhiy Cherevaty, the spokesman of the Eastern Group of Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said the day before.

ISW notes that the retreat of occupying troops in relatively small areas of the front line has a negative impact on their defensive ability in the Bakhmut area and believes that these “regroupings” may become more significant if Russian forces are unable to stabilize the front line in the near future. ¤ #counteroffensive_ukraine http://ZN.UA

🐣 RT @Tendar Just to summarize the most important developments of the last 48h:

– Russian lines at Bakhmut crumbling
– Losing 2 jets and 3 choppers
– Rear bases in Russian-occupied Luhansk getting eliminated
– Russians deploying T-54/55
– Panic and chaos among Russian pilots/troops
– Prigozhin calling for rebellion

And the Ukrainian counteroffensive hasn’t even started, yet.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Russia’s colonial view of history is used to justify its imperial conquest of Ukraine. They falsely claim to be Kyivan Rus’ legitimate successor. We’re dispelling these misconceptions in #UkrainesTrueHistory.
💽 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1657536206719303682?s=20/photo/1
// subscribed

🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian defenders are making small advances and gaining tactical advantage against the Russian fascist invaders in the direction of Svatove in Luhansk region, on the flanks of Bakhmut and around Vuhledar in Donetsk region, and towards Polohy in Zaporizhzhya region.

🐣 RT @TrentTelenko This is a very interesting Russian translation 🧵 by @wartranslated on how screwed, blued and tattooed a Russian volunteer thinks Russian ground forces in Ukraine are. ¤ Check it out ⬇️
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Really interesting but long post from Murz (Russian volunteer) on the upcoming Ukrainian offensive. This is in two tweets because there’s just so much text, so scroll down. He essentially explains how Ru army is depleted and is going to struggle to defend.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1657297370722312192?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Continuation of the post, with some conclusions on how it may all end – not very well at all, and by end of summer Ukrainians might be already near Crimea, Mariupol, and in Donetsk.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1657297373318586368?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @carlbildt What’s happening? Rumors are circulating all around on the health status of Lukashenko. And if it’s really serious we can expect a serious contest and crisis over the future of Belarus – with undoubtedly aiming for a complete and quick takeover.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HannaLiubakova #Belarus Lukashenka’s motorcade reportedly went to a hospital but left after two hours. The secrecy around his health is not new yet they don’t even try to calm down the elites or the Kremlin. If they don’t reveal any information about his health, it might be really serious.

🐣 RT @SamRamani2 BREAKING: Zelensky says the “first important steps” of Ukraine’s counter-offensive “will be taken soon”

🐣 RT @pravda_eng ⚪️🔴⚪️ @ZelenskyyUa: 70% of Belarusians oppose Russia’s war and support Ukraine
¤ https://twitter.com/pravda_eng/status/1657521105400389633?s=20

🐣 RT @anno1540 The entire area must be liberated. But this is not enough: Valeriy Zaluzhny on the victory of Ukraine

According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, after the liberation of all the occupied territories, Ukraine must do everything to ensure that what happened and began on February 24, 2022 never happens again.

“Victory for us is a liberated territory and powerful ultra-modern and, perhaps, very large Armed Forces, combat-ready, which will not allow the Russian Federation to repeat what happened and what is happening now. This is what victory is. ¤ And world history knows states that live and always show by their behavior that “it is better not to touch”. The state of Ukraine should become just like that,” said Valery Zaluzhny in Dmitry Komarov’s special project “Rik. Behind the scenes”.

WaPo: Alleged leaker fixated on guns and envisioned ‘race war’ https://tinyurl.com/bdfkje99
// Videos and chat logs reveal Jack Teixeira’s preparations for a violent social conflict, his racist thinking and a deep suspicion of the government he served

PravdaUA: Armed Forces moving forward on Bakhmut front – Ukraine Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Syrskyi https://tinyurl.com/mrx4x9wu

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1345 UTC 13 MAY/ UKR forces have continued a series of successful counter-attacks south of the city of Bakhmut. RU attacks were broken up at Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Hyrhorivka, & Stupochky during the day of May 12. RU conducted air strikes on Bohdanivka and Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1657378250950078466?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 12 May 2023

🐣 RT @tribelaw “The debt limit — created during World War I to free up the U.S. Treasury to issue new debt without needing a congressional vote every time — is now a deeply stupid and dangerous weapon of mass destruction.” — POLITICO Nightly (5/12/23)

🐣 RT @officejjsmart ABANDONED BY THEIR OFFICERS ¤ The order of the Russian troops is breaking down, and Russian soldiers are surrendering. ¤ There is mayhem and chaos on the Russian side as the Kremlin abandons its troops.

EuromaidanPress: Ukraine liberates 17.5 km² near Bakhmut, unblocks supply route https://tinyurl.com/27enmbbp “After Ukrainians saw how Russian troops from the 9th Motorized Rifle Brigade started to abandon their positions, it was decided to maintain the momentum”

WaPo: How Ukrainian forces denied Russia victory in Bakhmut by Victory Day https://tinyurl.com/cyfb6hvh “Ukrainian forces scored a rare advance this week south of the city and held fast in the city center”

◕ 📊 WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump supporters are neither underrecognized nor half the country https://tinyurl.com/mr427hzt //➔ good charts, but moot with revelation of instructions given to participants in “town hall,” which resulted in amplifying proTrump sentiments
// media attention given to individual candidates

NYT: Ukraine’s Advances Near Bakhmut Expose Rifts in Russian Forces https://tinyurl.com/mwv2rhj9 “Ukrainian advances this week have … erased what Moscow’s forces had painstakingly achieved over several months”
// Russia’s pro-war bloggers were quick to claim that Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive had begun, but Ukrainian officials downplayed the advances.

NYT: Ukraine’s Advances Near Bakhmut Expose Rifts in Russian Forces https://tinyurl.com/mwv2rhj9 “Ukrainian advances this week have … erased what Moscow’s forces had painstakingly achieved over several months”
// Russia’s pro-war bloggers were quick to claim that Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive had begun, but Ukrainian officials downplayed the advances.

🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 NEW: we polled 18-29-year-olds & found not only do the majority of them SUPPORT President Biden but they also prefer Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 28 points & Joe Biden over Ron DeSantis by 34 points. Republicans, you should be terrified. We are not taking any of your BS.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 More on the poll we at @VotersTomorrow conducted below. Alarming statistics for the GOP & encouraging signs for President Biden. Among them 1.) the majority of young people support Biden & 2.) would vote Biden more than ANY other Republican by a long run.
⋙⋙ 📊 New Poll by Voters of Tomorrow Shows Joe Biden with Strong Support Among Gen Z, leading GOP Challenger https://tinyurl.com/4jdmj47b
◕ https://twitter.com/EdKrassen/status/1657144109998436356?s=20/photo/1
// Overall 53, Dems 75, Indy 43, GOP 20

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think former President Trump can actually end this war today. All he needs to do is pick up the phone call Putin and tell him that he is not running for President, because that is the only thing that Putin is hoping for.” @igornovikov w/ @NicolleDWallace

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /2030 UTC 12 MAY/ RU sources indicate Ukraine carried more than 26 attacks on the Bakhmut axis. RU army and Wagner forces were reported to have been driven back NW of the urban area and S of the H-32 HWY at Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1657121948965523470?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DonLew87 EPIC FAIL. Mark Pomerantz testified to Jim Jordan’s committee today. Basically said that Jordan is conducting a clown show while licking Trump’s boots. Another failure for Jim. Details here…
⋙ Law&Crime: ‘This deposition is for show’: Manhattan DA’s ex-deputy scorches Jim Jordan’s ‘cynical histrionics’ in Trump probe, pleads Fifth https://tinyurl.com/5n86exxp

Scorching the committee’s chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, ex-Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz flatly declared in his opening remarks: “This deposition is for show,” later labeling it “political theater” and “cynical histrionics.”

“I do not believe for a moment that I am here to assist a genuine effort to enact legislation or conduct legislative ‘oversight,’” Pomerantz said in a three-page statement. “We are gathered here because Donald Trump’s supporters would like to use these proceedings to attempt to obstruct and undermine the criminal case pending against him, and to harass, intimidate, and discredit anyone who investigates or charges him.”

Jordan, a Trump loyalist from Ohio, says he’s investigating whether Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president is politically motivated. In early 2022, Pomerantz and his then-colleague Carey Dunne resigned from the probe, believing that Bragg was too reluctant to charge Trump with tax crimes. Dunne faded to the sidelines, but Pomerantz went on to write a tell-all memoir of his time inside the DA’s office titled “People v. Trump,” named at the time for the case that wasn’t. …

Bragg and Pomerantz now view the House GOP’s actions as attempted interference with the judicial process. ¤ “The charges against Mr. Trump should be heard and decided by a judge and a jury before politicians second-guess their merits or the decision to bring them,” Pomerantz wrote. “That’s how our system works. Those who claim that they respect the rule of law should wait for the courts to do their work.” …

BoingBoing/Mediaite: Town hall audience was “disgusted” and “bewildered” by Trump, but CNN told them not to boo, only to applaud https://tinyurl.com/yvxk2jzr

Republican political consultant Matthew Bartlett says CNN’s town hall with Trump was rigged to make it look like everyone in the audience was in agreement with Trump, even though many in attendance were “disgusted” and “bewildered,” reports Mediaite.

“The floor manager came out ahead of time and said, Please do not boo, please be respectful. You were allowed to applaud,” Bartlett told Puck News senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri. ¤ From Mediaite:

Bartlett claimed that, while many in the audience applauded and cheered the former president, “there were also people that sat there quietly disgusted or bewildered.” He estimated that while around half of the audience expressed vocal support for Trump, the other half sat in silence. Bartlett also alleged that Trump repeatedly “lost the audience” when he spoke about topics like January 6 or the results of the 2020 election, despite the appearance on CNN that the audience was consistently on his side.

“In a TV setting, you hear the applause, but you don’t see the disgust,” Bartlett told Palmeri. “So Trump did not have the entire room on his side, make no mistake, even if it certainly came across that way on TV.”

🐣 RT @atrupar “Fascism is a mass movement … And, yes, millions of neighbors, relatives, and good, pure people can participate in the rituals of victimization, bigotry, and blood. Who is fascism for, after all, if not the good, pure people?” — @nberlat
⋙ PublicNotice, Noah Berlatsky: CNN’s Trump town hall was a fascist ritual https://tinyurl.com/2dn557fz
// Trump calls his supporters to their worst selves.

🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien If this is true, and it is plausible if terrible, then Ukrainian losses in the whole war on all fronts are a little less than US intelligence estimates of what Russia has lost trying to take just Bakhmut in the last 5 months
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent
⚡️Euractiv: Internal EU memo puts Ukrainian troop losses at 13,000.
An internal EU memo suggests that Ukraine has lost 13,000 troops since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, Euractiv reported on May 12.
The memo also says 35,000 Ukrainian servicemembers were wounded.

🐣 RT @StateOfUkraine Prigozhin’s statements today:
🇷🇺 units fled from the flanks (video👇), front collapsing
🇷🇺 losses today: 5 sq. km.
🇺🇦 controls Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut road
🇺🇦 has gained strategic territories, inc. tactical heights
🇺🇦 forces entering Berkhivka will initiate the encirclement of Bakhmut

🐣 RT @parrot_soldier A whole russian squad surrendered to the AFU in the outskirts of Bakhmut. ¤ The panic among muscovite ranks is growing each passing day.

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️For three days of counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Bakhmut direction, 17.3 km² were liberated, — the speaker of the Eastern Forces Group, Cherevatyi reports.

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @GlasnostGone #Ukraine says its recaptured ground in Bakhmut. Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said 🇺🇦 forces advanced 2km in a week. Said for Russia Bakhmut has an “almost sacred” importance. Accused Kremlin of claiming false victories & lying about ammo shortages.
⋙ BBC: Ukraine claims gains in Bakhmut after Russia denials https://tinyurl.com/25atjyt3

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “Capturing Bakhmut means nothing because flanks are crumbling, the front is failing…it will lead to global tragedy for Russia” – Prigozhin continues blaming the Russian army for fleeing and leaving 5 km near Bakhmut.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1657054335270830080?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1230 UTC 12 MAY/ Over the past 48 hours, UKR forces have mounted a series of successful counter-attacks N and S of the city of Bakhmut. UKR forces advanced in the vicinity of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Hyrhorivka, Bohdanivka, Khromove, Ivanivske and Stupochky.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1656998826580869122?s=20/photo/1

🔄 📋 📊 WaPo, Philip Bump (Feb 28): Underrecognized: Extremist murders are usually from right-wing actors https://tinyurl.com/3kt9vbem Data for 2013 to 2022 from the Anti-Defamation League (Jewish hate-monitoring organization)
// 2/28/2023
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1656944250142040066?s=20/photo/1 -3

The first chart shows the ideologies of politically motivated murders.
● 90% of incidents and 75% of deaths were by rightwing extremists.
● About 5% of inclidents and 20% of deaths were by Islamic radicals.
● About 5% of inclidents and 5% of deaths were by leftwing extremists (like “antifa”)

The second chart shows the that during the last 7 or so years (since Trump), almost all incidents and deaths were by right wingers.

This last chart shows who people think is responsible, leftwing or rightwing. It is msybe not surprising that Democrats blame the rightwing and Republicans blame the leftwing. But it’s the Republicans who are wrong.

⭕ 11 May 2023

🧵 RT @ThreshedThought Ukraine counteroffensive thread ¤ This may be a long thread. …
Here is a round up of where we are so far. [edited for clarity]
📌 https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1656727045076819969?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1656727045076819969.html

Ukraine has been conducting ‘shaping operations’ for the last few weeks or so.
These have had many strands:
– Information
– Attacks on logistics and command
– Dislocating operations on Russian territory
– Probing operations / establishing of bridgeheads

The aim of all of these elements of the shaping operations is to create lots of ambiguity in the Russian military command about:
– where exactly the major blows of the Ukrainian counteroffensive will fall
– when exactly it will start

The continual activity by Ukraine – blowing up oil dumps in Crimea here, flying drones over Moscow there, hitting logistics behind the Zaporizhzhia front etc. – is designed to raise, and keep maintained, levels of anxiety among the Russian command, and Russian soldiers.
Exhausted and anxious soldiers do not make good decisions

Now there are several basic premises that underlie the Ukrainian counteroffensive

1) The aim is not to kill every last Russian in Ukraine, but to affect the minds of decision makers in Moscow. This requires some sort of battlefield spectacular, localised defeat, major encirclement of Russian forces, or serious momentum to be generated by the Ukrainians.

2) This diagram is still pertinent. Ukrainians have interior lines; Russians have exterior lines (in hostile territory). This means the Ukrainians can move troops, equipment and supplies backwards and forwards along the font line much easier than the Russians can.

3) The Ukrainians probably don’t have a developed plan about where their main blow will fall. Eventually they probably want to strike south from Zaporizhzhia to cut the Russian forces in two. See here (the X is knocking out the Kerch bridge which isolates the Russian troops in…
but until that point they should just probe in one area, see if the Russians respond, if they do, fine, head to another area, if they don’t respond, then exploit that axis. ¤ They can just move up and down the front line to keep the Russians moving resources up and down…
but until that point they should just probe in one area, see if the Russians respond, if they do, fine, head to another area, if they don’t respond, then exploit that axis.

They can just move up and down the front line to keep the Russians moving resources up and down… And we are already staring to see these probes. …

Here is probably the most interesting thing. There are early reports of a Ukrainian assault on the Russian flanks at Bahkmut, which if they collapse will enable the Ukrainians to encircle the Russian forces that are currently themselves encircling Bahkmut. This is called a double… [map]

There’s also lots of activity on other areas of the front – and depending on how the Russians respond, will determine how which the Ukrainians reinforce. ¤ It’s all about creating dilemmas for the Russians. …

🧵 RT @MarkHertling In discussing the upcoming Ukrainian offensive yesterday with a group of govt officials, one asked me “when will it start?” ¤ I said: “in the attack, it starts when the commander feels it’s the right time…that’s an advantages of the offensive.” ¤ I then explained RSOI. 1/10
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1656800463461785601?s=20

RSOI is Reception, Staging, Onward Movement & Integration. ¤ When units enter a combat zone, they are “received” in country, “staged” to move forward, then “moved” to the combat area, and then integrated into a larger unit. ¤ How is this related to Ukraine, you ask? 2/

Remember that Ukraine’s army has been receiving all kinds of different equipment from many different countries, and they are training at different EU training areas on new skills with that equipment. ¤ Some training takes longer than other, depending on the kit. 3/

When finished in, say, Germany, Poland, Estonia or other countries, they travel back to Ukraine & are “received” & “staged” with other types of partner units. ¤ Once all together, they “move” forward, closer to the front lines, & are “integrated” into even larger units. 4/

Now, multiply this by the estimated 9 Brigades – armor, engineers, artillery, logistics, staff & commanders, etc. (many of whom are coming together for the first time) – and it’s easy to understand why…it takes as long as it takes. ¤ Commanders assess when they’re ready. 5/

I once heard a Sergeant Major say “RSOI is converting piles of puzzle pieces into combat ready units.” ¤ Spot on. ¤ BTW, these “puzzle pieces” are being put together all across the 400+ km front lines, at points of Ukrainian general’s plan. 6/

A few days ago, Czech President Pavel publicly told Zelenskyy “don’t be pushed, attack when you’re ready.” ¤ I’m sure others have said the same to Gen Zaluzhnyi, chief of Ukraine’s Army. ¤ A mentor once told me (as I prepared a division for combat) “go slow to go fast!” 7/

Ukraine’s army will attack when they’re ready, at time and place(s) of their choosing, & they will be successful in their operation to regain sovereign territory, transitioning to offense takes significant preparation, coordination & synchronization. ¤ This ain’t a video game. 8/

In 2007, I had the honor of commanding the Germany-based @1stArmoredDiv. ¤ We were the first “plug & play” division…we deployed with our division staff but all our combat brigades came from 7 different divisions in the US & our support units came from 13 different states. 9/

Each unit’s RSOI execution during this “surge” was critical to getting forces into the fight. ¤ This execution is what the Ukrainian Army is doing now. ¤ Those wanting the offensive to start need to be patient. ¤ It will go slow, then it will go fast. 10/10

TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: The Moment That You Knew https://tinyurl.com/ydjf4363
// What CNN’s disastrous town hall showed us.

Critics had worried that giving the indicted, twice-impeached, coup-plotting, chronically lying sexual predator an unedited, live television forum might turn out badly. ¤ The reality, however, was far ghastlier: a sh*tshow for the ages, and a moment that captured the thorough degradation of both our politics and the media. ‘It was a f**king nightmare,’ remarked one savvy observer, ‘and it was programmed to BE a f**king nightmare.’”

TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: CNN Went Full Jerry Springer https://tinyurl.com/mwpbc82h //➔ the “town hall” was a MAGA “event”, not journalism; it energized the MAGA base and left the rest of us feeling helpless and unrepresented
// The network’s president made an indefensible decision in airing an episode of Trump’s ongoing reality show.

… CNN’s decision to run a town hall with the former president enabled that behavior and managed to harm journalism, the network’s reputation, and the American political process all at once.

I have long argued that Americans need to see more, rather than less, of Donald Trump.  Because I believe that Trump is an existential menace to American democracy, I have encouraged covering Trump as closely as possible. … Trump built a following over the years by being on television, and his base can’t get enough of him, so why should the media encourage more adoration? But for ordinary Americans who did not join the cultish following that congealed around Trump in 2016—many of whom are the independent voters who will decide the next election—“Trump exhaustion” is a real thing, and the more of it, the better.

Watching Trump for any extended period of time is enervating and deeply uncomfortable. The man is a quivering bag of weird verbal and physical tics. And when he gets rolling, listening to a Trump speech is like standing nearby while someone throws a match into a box of cheap bottle rockets: When the fusillade of annoying noise, misfires, duds, and smoke is over, all that’s left is a general stink in the air.

This discomfort is exactly my point: If you want to stop Donald Trump from returning to power, putting him on TV is the way to go. But doing so requires either that you hand him a microphone and let him immolate himself, or that you sit him down with a reporter who will not let up on calling out his lies and fantasies until he melts down.

Last night, however, CNN chose one of the worst possible options. Instead of a candidate interview, CNN Chairman Chris Licht apparently thought it would be a great idea to cast Trump in a remake of The Jerry Springer Show, complete with vulgar jokes, hooting fans, and a mild-mannered host—in this case, the CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins—stuck with the thankless of job of trying to intervene in the shouting and angry finger-pointing. Instead of an important one-on-one interview with a dangerous and malevolent demagogue, CNN presented another episode of Trump’s ongoing reality show.

The result was a disaster that was not only foreseeable but also as predictable as the laws of physics, a cringe-inducing display that damaged CNN’s reputation, put one of its rising stars in a no-win situation, cheapened journalism, and undermined our political process—all in the span of little more than an hour.

… But “covering” Trump does not mean packing an audience with supporters and then setting the resolutely misogynist Trump against a young female reporter in a situation that practically could have been designed by the Trump campaign itself.

Indeed, Licht and his producers seemed determined to place Trump right in his comfort zone. Although Collins tried repeatedly to contradict Trump, Licht had to know—perhaps was even expecting—that Trump would simply steamroll her, as he did. (She also missed several opportunities—particularly on abortion—to stop Trump as he rocketed beyond the Van Allen belts, but I accept that correcting him is basically impossible.) Only once did she finally manage to get under his skin with repeated questioning, and in response, he pulled out his standard insult of calling her “nasty.” …,

[ Audience: ] Whoever they were, Trump was jazzed by their support. Every slimy comment got a laugh or applause, including many about E. Jean Carroll, the woman who successfully sued Trump for sexual abuse and defamation this week. (Trump was so vile, Carroll says, that she is reportedly thinking of suing him again.) Collins had to ask about Carroll, of course, but after that, the plan—if one existed—seemed to be for her to stand there and take it while Trump talked over her, made dirty jokes, and basked in audience laughter. Trump’s sleaziness, like everything else in this train wreck, was completely foreordained—and, again, Licht and his producers had to know it. …

How anyone—especially the head of a news network—can believe that this group of people has been ignored is astonishing. Perhaps he missed the many years of journalists conducting ritual pilgrimages to America’s diners and asking every angry old guy in a red hat to please, please tell us what he wants.

Perhaps what Licht really meant is that CNN should see MAGA world as an underserved community that is up for grabs while Fox News reels from its scandals. It seems an odd strategy, however, to push Collins onstage as the blood sacrifice for an hour, and then follow that up with Jake Tapper and other CNN hosts wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of talking about what a miserable fiasco their own network just splattered across the nation’s screens.

As many observers have noted, CNN has learned nothing since 2016. Or maybe CNN has learned everything since 2016, and intends to do it all over again.

🐣 RT @NOELreports Ukrainian troops have increased their local activities in Bakhmut. A barrage of 4 full MLRS was recorded.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Ukrainian troops comply with Prigozhin’s request. More ammunition.
💽 🔥https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1656778065920311298?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian Aleksandr Kots says Ukrainians are putting pressure on Wagner flanks in Bakhmut in order to encircle them.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1656736681280536608?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] The enemy continues to put pressure on the flanks of Artemovsk [Bakhmut]. Unfortunately, in some areas they managed to take the frontiers which we took were with considerable bloodshed. Actually, after Zelensky said that they would not leave Bakhmut under any circumstances, it became clear that an operation was being prepared to de-block the city. When the retreating Ukrainian units began to undermine high-rise buildings behind them, an upcoming attempt of revanche became obvious.

They destroy the dominant heights in Artemovsk. To deprive us of the advantage in the coming
defense. While fighting was going on in the city, the enemy formed strike groups, which should bypass Bakhmut on the flanks, encircling the Wagners. Only coordinated actions can stop the enemy now, without division into us and them. Guys, hold on!

🐣 RT @mhmck On May 11th, Ukrainian defenders made small, tactical gains on the flanks of Bakhmut. ¤ This is not the counter-offensive. This is the Armed Forces of Ukraine effectively counter-attacking and the Russian invaders failing to adopt a sound, defensive posture.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1656788527323938816?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: CNN leadership under fire after ‘disastrous’ Trump town hall https://tinyurl.com/5fd9ykr2
// A furious backlash raised questions about the future of chief executive Chris Licht and the larger challenges facing the news media going into the 2024 election

CNN’s prime-time broadcast of a raucous town hall with Donald Trump propelled a tsunami of criticism from inside and outside the network Thursday — and renewed questions about how the news media will handle the challenge of covering the serial falsehoods of the Republican Party’s leading candidate going into the 2024 election.

The former president repeatedly dodged or sneered at questions from CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, during the live, 70-minute forum at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. He doubled down on false claims that “a rigged election” led to his 2020 ouster and referred to writer E. Jean Carroll, who just prevailed in her lawsuit against him for defamation and battery, as a “whack job,” to cheers and laughter from the audience, made up of local Republican voters. ¤ And when Collins pressed him on why he removed classified documents from the White House, he replied: “You are a nasty person.”

“Predictably disastrous,” wrote former network TV news executive Mark Lukasiewicz, part of a chorus of media critics and political observers who bemoaned the on-air spectacle. “Live lying works. A friendly MAGA crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punchlines … and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”

At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, with Nielsen reporting just 3.1 million viewers overall. That was a big boost over CNN’s typical 8 p.m. telecast, but a smaller audience than CNN’s town hall with President Biden last summer (3.7 million) and six previous Trump town halls carried by Fox News — calling into question both CNN and Trump’s drawing power.

The more profound impact, however, may be the damage done to the reputation of the network that has long promoted itself as “the most trusted name in news.” It also raised questions about the future prospects of chief executive Chris Licht, who replaced Trump-friend-turned critic Jeff Zucker last year and is charged with striking a more neutral tone at a cable channel that exploded with impassioned commentary during the Trump years.

Journalists at CNN and others outside the organization called the town hall a “debacle,” a “disaster” and “CNN’s lowest moment.” On Twitter, the hashtags and phrases BoycottCNN, DoneWithCNN and ByeCNN trended late Wednesday.

The thrust of the criticism is that CNN’s format, which it has used for other candidates over the years, enabled Trump’s filibustering and thwarted real-time fact checking, allowing him to present a dishonest rehashing of his record. “In terms of sheer control of the stage and WWE-style platform dynamics, the horrible truth is that this outcome was preordained,” tweeted veteran political writer James Fallows. Some compared the program to a modified Trump campaign rally — the kind that CNN sometimes aired live during the 2015-16 campaign cycle, which Zucker later said he regretted.

Licht defended the decision to host Trump in this format during his regular morning meeting with network staff on Thursday. ¤ “I am aware that there have been people with opinions [and] backlash, and that is absolutely expected,” he said, according to an audio recording. “And I’ll say this as clearly as I possibly can: You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say we didn’t get them. … America was served very well by what we did last night. People woke up and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way they didn’t the day before.”

Licht also hailed Collins’s “masterful performance” as moderator and called her “a rock star.”
Licht, however, was hammered by his own journalists. “We did it wrong,” said an on-air personality. “We treated him like a normal politician who could be fact-checked. We ended up dancing around a demagogue.” ¤ “It should have been a taped interview where you could fact-check him,” said one CNN correspondent who, like the on-air personality spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships and careers. “The audience was laughing at his comments about Jean Carroll. Disgraceful.”

In his meeting with staff, Licht defended the decisions that led to a cheering, partisan audience: “That was also an important part of the story because the people in that audience represent a large swath of America. And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring those people exist.” ¤ Another staffer, also speaking on background to avoid retaliation, suggested Licht and other executives who approved the event should resign. …

[T]he Trump town hall is shaping up as another disappointment under Licht’s watch. Despite his tinkering with CNN’s daily lineup and a mandate to reposition the network as a neutral purveyor of news, Licht has been unable to stop its ratings from sliding to historic lows. …

CNN’s daily media newsletter, Reliable Sources, was blunt in its assessment of Wednesday’s event. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” reporter Oliver Darcy wrote Wednesday night.

But the squadron of analysts and commentators that CNN put on the air late Wednesday to assess Trump’s performance in the town hall (“We don’t have enough time to fact-check every lie he told,” said anchor Jake Tapper) said nothing about the network’s own decision to host the forum.

At least one of the network’s paid commentators went public with his objections before the Trump special aired. Michael Fanone, a U.S. Capitol Police officer who was injured while defending the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, wrote an essay published by Rolling Stone that indicted the programming decision. ¤ “Putting him onstage, having him answer questions like a normal candidate who didn’t get people killed in the process of trying to end the democracy he’s attempting to once again run, normalizes what Trump did,” Fanone wrote. “It sends a message that attempting a coup is just part of the process; that accepting election results is a choice; and that there are no consequences, in the media or in politics or anywhere else, for rejecting them.” …

[I]nside CNN, the mood was dark. ¤ “I can’t believe anyone thought this was a good idea,” said one staffer, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid career repercussions. “I’ve been a CNN journalist for many years. I’ve always been so proud to say that. I’ve never, ever been ashamed of CNN until tonight.”

🐣 RT @wartranslated Numerous reports in Russian channels about Ukrainian forces having begun a larger offensive in several directions. This follows reports of Wagner struggling in Bakhmut in the recent days. Current reports are very conflicting, some mention Ukrainians moving towards Russian border. We still have to see if any of this is real, but the situation is rather similar to September and November regroupings.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated So far, I’m seeing the following: Ukrainian advances in Bakhmut and Soledar area, as well as some vehicle movement in Kharkiv Oblast. No info on south – Crimea etc. All of this is obviously only coming from Russian mouths.

TheDrive: Ukraine’s Storm Shadow Missiles Are A Big Problem For Russia https://tinyurl.com/3mfwbzxa “[T]he Storm Shadow should give Ukraine a powerful new ability to hit key targets, including command nodes, supply dumps and bridges, deep behind the front lines”
// Britain confirmed that Ukraine is getting advanced air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles, some of which may already have been delivered.

NYT, Frank Bruni: Trump’s ‘Stupid,’ ‘Stupid’ Town Hall https://tinyurl.com/2p887td9

NYMag: CNN Staffers Pissed After Trump Trashes Their Town Hall https://tinyurl.com/yns3mdsj

🐣 RT @justicedems 1.1 million people died from COVID in the US due to policy failure. ¤ We need a healthcare and economic system built on keeping everyone safe and healthy, not on shareholder profits. [?]
🌎 https://twitter.com/justicedems/status/1656706323872989196?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NYT: As Emergency Ends, a Look at Covid’s U.S. Death Toll https://tinyurl.com/c92bpfhh

🐣 RT @brianstelter Just in: CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump averaged 3.1 million total viewers. The event outrated Fox and MSNBC, as expected, but these are not 2015/16 level numbers for Trump — not even close.

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @mlcalderone “I don’t know anyone who was happy with last night,” says one CNN journalist. “The mood is absolutely the lowest it’s been in the Licht tenure, and that’s saying a lot.”
⋙ VanityFair: CNN’s Donald Trump Town Hall Was Essentially a Campaign Rally https://tinyurl.com/mscztn28
// The network gave Trump a platform to spout lies and insults—and a cheering section! Network boss Chris Licht is defending the debacle, but inside, says one CNN journalist, “the mood is absolutely the lowest.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SUNDAY PUNCH: The UK has confirmed it’s supplying UKR with long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The Stormshadow has a range of over 250km (155 miles), giving UKR new capabilities as it prepares a counter-offensive against Russia.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1656636182027984896?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer PERFECT TIMING: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country needs more time to prepare a much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russian forces, as the military awaits the delivery of promised aid.
⋙ BBC: Zelensky says Ukraine needs more time for counter-offensive https://tinyurl.com/mvsp9bbr

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1230 UTC 11 MAY/ UKR forces have mounted a series of successful counter-attacks in the urban area and south of the city of Bakhmut. RU air strike reports indicate that UKR forces pushed back an earlier VDV thrust and are in contact at Klishchiyivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1656634137686470656?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ DecodingFoxNews This is an annotated version of Trump’s Town Hall on CNN broken down to 2 minutes. You won’t have to listen to his voice. I break it down for you. It’s Trump without Trump. Trump only neutered.
💽 https://twitter.com/DecodingFoxNews/status/1656527299959832578?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 10 May 2023

NYT: House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden https://tinyurl.com/4wypw7tv
// After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct.

🐣 RT @NeverTrumpTexan “Either let us destroy the economy with draconian cuts or we will destroy the economy with a needless default.” ¤ That is what Republicans call negotiating.

🐣 RT @ Morning_Joe “As long as the end is Donald Trump ends up in power, the rules don’t matter,” says @ChrisMurphyCT on GOP’s defense of former President’s legal issues

🧵 RT @ MarkHarrisNYC Update: The proper thing for Chris Licht to do now is resign.
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/status/1656458551982710786?s=20

⋙ If I were Chris Licht right now, I would be mulling over the fact that my tenure at CNN is going to be completely defined by what happens in the next 36 hours.

⋙ A failure this immense happens when you forget that journalism’s only allegiance is to the truth, and decide instead that your highest priorities are to have no opinion about anything and to platform lies by calling them “newsworthy” or saying, “But a lot of people believe him.”

⋙ There were so many mistakes here. 1) Agreeing to an entirely partisan audience as a condition of the interview. 2) Deciding that someone could serve as moderator, host, interviewer and corrector of the record simultaneously. 3) Ignoring Trump’s history of lying in your planning.>

⋙ 4) Deciding that it’s your job to normalize a profoundly abnormal candidate via placing him a “normal” format. 5) Not having a separate set of on-set (literally) fact-checkers who could keep up with him in real time. 6) Not pivoting after yesterday and saying that because.. >

⋙ of the verdict, the show would now have to begin with a 15-minute one-on-one interview with no live audience. 7) Ignoring the many people, including in your own organization, who made ALL these points in advance. This isn’t “Who could have known?” People knew, and they said so.

🐣 RT @BruceRFeldman Who in their right mind thinks it would go any other way. Either @CNN wanted exactly this or they wasted millions on the Chris Licht hire. Where was their board on this? They’re supposed to be the adults in the room. If this creates a CNN meltdown, the board has abandoned its fiduciary responsibility.

🐣 RT @ruthbenghiat CNN became a party to Trump’s need to psychologically “undo” his defeat by getting the audience to applaud him *for being an assaulter.* The more approval authoritarians get, the more they feel emboldened to be even more lawless. This is why this “town hall” was so dangerous.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SIfill_ I hate that @CNN allowed E. Jean Carroll’s name to be dragged through the mud again by this terrible man. Sure she could sue him for defamation again. That doesn’t change the hurt & humiliation at the laughter, and at the knowledge that CNN was willing to expose her to this.

🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL Despite the melting down about tonight, this is a GOP train wreck. ¤ Trump is not picking up a single new general election voter. And every voter who came out in 18, 20 & 22 to stop him now remembers why. ¤ Strong night for Trump’s GOP primary. Terrible night for his general.

🐣 RT @TheDeadDistrict Katheryn Winnick ‘Vikings’ actress who played Lagertha visits #Ukraine “I was overwhelmed by the destruction in Irpin, Ukriane, while visiting the area. Seeing it with my own eyes made me realize how many families are suffering. All lives matter.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1656513595709046784?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Also, unrelated to CNN or Collins, Donald Trump is not sane.

🐣 RT @benshapiro This townhall hits everybody’s pleasure centers: CNN gets to broadcast outrage over the oh-so-troubling Trump; Trump gets to shellack a CNN host. The only people who lose out are those who were hoping for, you know, some serious answers to serious questions.

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq All three ongoing criminal cases got new evidence tonight against Trump. He is confessing on live television.

🐣 .@msnbc could cash in on people unhappy w @cnn’s rightward turn if they could lessen the wall-to-wall coverage of shootings, crt-lite and trans (really?); focus on Biden’s winners: middle class/kitchen table/fair shot ✛ Ukraine agenda (@Morning_Joe @DeadlineWH, @AriMelber fine)

🐣 RT @DavidShuster Whether CNN gave Trump the infomercial by design or through sheer incompetence, let’s be clear. This was a humiliating and infuriating night for anybody who still cares about basic integrity and civic responsibility. @CNN deserves all the venom and contempt tonight.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidShuster The irony is that @CNN has some tough. Informed, experienced journalists in @jaketapper @andersoncooper who would have held Trump accountable in a credible and compelling manner. But they were benched by design. What a mistake. t

🐣 RT @mikememoli A Biden campaign adviser’s summary of tonight’s town hall: “Weeks worth of damning content in one hour. … It was quite efficient.”

🐣 RT @MichaelRWear Whether Trump is helping or harming his campaign right now should not be our primary concern. What’s clear now, as it has been for a very, very long time, is the harm he does to the spirit of this country. “A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all that is bad in us” -F.W. Peterson

🐣 RT @richsignorelli Adolf Hitler is no longer around to do a @cnn town hall before Nazi party members, “fortunately or unfortunately.”

🐣 RT @harrisonjaime This was a key clip of the night: Trump bragging about overturning Roe and paving the way for a national abortion ban.
💽 https://twitter.com/harrisonjaime/status/1656478259700195328?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ananavarro .@JoeBiden is the winner of tonight’s town-hall. ¤ Trump showed he commands the GOP base. ¤ Hopefully, it reminds D’s of the awful human & existential threat to democracy Biden’s up against, and they stop fretting about his age & get behind the guy who’s proven he can beat Trump.

🧵 RT @djrothkopf Hard to say what was the worst part of the CNN debacle: Trump repeating the Big Lie, promising to pardon Jan 6 insurgents, further victimizing E. Jean Carroll, not promising to honor the 2024 election result, not calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal…
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1656476896350068737?s=20

…or condemning his invasion of Ukraine, implying that there was equivalency between Russia and Ukraine, attacking our allies yet again, promising to double down on many of his worst policies, taking credit for the abomination that was the Dobbs decision…

…the lies upon lies upon lies, the clear message he sent that if elected again would could face even worse than his disastrous, scandal-ridden, failed first term, his insults to Kaitlan Collins for doing her job, the way the audience was constituted…

…the fact that giving him this platform normalized him, allowed him to spread his disinformation & will help him raise $? Each of those was terrible, each chilling in light of the past 7 years. But no, worst of all was CNN’s decision to air this in the first place. Disastrous.

🐣 RT @brianstelter THIS is the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Look away if you choose, but this is what it’s going to be like. Should news outlets sanitize it or stare it in the face?
⋙ 🐣 it’s bad for the reputation of the US at a critical time for diplomacy, especially when staged in such an irresponsible format ¤ it also bad for the mental health of the unbalanced and, to a certain extent, for all citizens ¤ was it really worth it @cnn?

🐣 RT @SykesCharlie Who could possibly have predicted this would be such an epic clusterf?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuddLegum The audience for the CNN townhall w/Trump will be 400 Republicans & GOP-leaning independents ¤ Allowing Trump to appear in front of an audience exclusively comprised of people who are likely sympathetic to Trump — and then turn over the questions to that group — is irresponsible

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Will you commit to accepting the results of the election? ¤ Trump: If I think it’s honest
⋙ 🐣 RT @BecuJeanne He was claiming the election was rigged BEFORE the election. BOTH TIMES. Before the election. Both times.

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Will you commit to accepting the results of the election? ¤ Trump: If I think it’s honest

🐣 RT @ krassenstein BREAKING: Kaitlan Collins just asked Trump during the CNN Town Hall if he shared the classified documents seized at Mar-a-lago with anyone. ¤ Trump’s incredibly scary answer: ¤ “Not really”. ¤ He then said “it doesn’t matter”. ¤ When Collins continued to push him on what he meant by “not really” he refused to give a straight answer and eventually called Collins “a nasty woman”. ¤ How can anyone support this?

🐣 RT @ruthbenghiat His campaign is traditional if the tradition we are talking about includes Mussolini Hitler Duterte Bolsonaro etc

🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine The world needs #RealPeaceNotAppeasement. Real Peace means:
– restoring internationally recognized borders of 🇺🇦
– a safe homeland for the Tatar people in Ukrainian Crimea
– grainships in the Black Sea, not warships
– a world under the rule of international law rather than force

🐣 RT @hilaryluros Uncle @TheRickWilson has spoken. Pay attention, y’all.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I have words.
💽 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1656460186184298496?s=20

🐣 RT @newrepublic A 65-page report, a press conference, and nothing to show for it.
⋙ NewRepublic: Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden https://tinyurl.com/3rywn9y3
// A 65-page report, a press conference, and nothing to show for it

During a press conference explaining the investigation, Comer was asked if he had evidence directly linking Biden to corruption. The Kentucky Republican hemmed and hawed but ultimately admitted he didn’t.

The memo accuses the Biden family of involvement in a “scheme to peddle influence” in Romania from 2015 to 2017, as well as financial dealings with individuals in China. Hunter Biden’s name comes up repeatedly. But the memo contains scant details of all of these alleged dealings, nor does it contain any evidence that any laws were broken or that Biden was involved in his son’s Chinese business.

Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, slammed Comer for having “failed to provide factual evidence to support his wild accusations about the president.” ¤ “He continues to bombard the public with innuendo, misrepresentations, and outright lies, recycling baseless claims from stories that were debunked years ago,” Raskin said in a statement.

🧵 RT @atrupar My thread about Trump’s CNN town hall starts here
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1656441717665538051?s=20/photo/1

OpenSecrets: Trump made more than $200 million from foreign business interests since 2016 https://tinyurl.com/2p9h2cr3
// 10/8/2020

s 🐣 📊 RT @ianbremmer brazilian public: not in line with lula on russia war
// Brazilians Overwhelmingly Blame Russia for Starting War in Ukraine: 62%/17%

🐣 RT @RFERL Enerhoatom, the operator of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, has warned that Russia plans to forcibly “evacuate” about 3,100 employees of plant.
⋙ RFE/RL: Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant Warns Of ‘Catastrophic Lack’ Of Workers Amid Russian Evacuation Plans https://tinyurl.com/bdxx2cb5

🐣 RT @mhmck On the flanks of Bakhmut, Ukrainian defenders made gains of up to 2 km on the Russian fascist invaders:
–away from the 0505 road near Khromove
–away from the H-32 highway near Ivanivs’ke, in the direction of Klishchiyivka
–away from Stupochky

🐣 RT @NOELreports U.S. attorney general Garland allowed the transfer of forfeited funds from Russia oligarch for use in Ukraine. ¤ “While this represents the US’ first transfer of forfeited Russian funds for the rebuilding of Ukraine, it will not be the last,” he said.
⋙ Reuters: U.S. attorney general OKs transfer of forfeited funds from Russia oligarch for use in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2p99esmz

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA “There is a serious risk of encirclement of the Wagner PMC in Bakhmut as a result of the collapse of the flanks. The flanks are already cracking and falling.” – Prigozhin

NYT, David French: A Guilty Ex-President https://tinyurl.com/4x44z6bm “Donald Trump had his day in court. He lost. Now the GOP faces a very different kind of trial. … [A]nd it is a great tragedy of our time that no one can presume that it’s a test the party will pass”

🐣 RT @IanSams46 Absolutely brutal for @JamesComer ¤ POLITICO: “Comer fails to link president in Biden family probe” ¤ Comer “doesn’t show any way Biden’s decisions were influenced” or “that he had direct knowledge” ¤ “No link has publicly emerged, and that didn’t change”
⋙ Politico: Comer releases Biden family probe update without showing link to president https://tinyurl.com/yckfp677
// nothing here; The Oversight panel chair revealed Wednesday that Biden family members, business associates or related companies received more than $10 million from companies run by foreign nationals.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1300 UTC 10 MAY/ Missing Putin’s 9 May ‘Victory-Day deadline’ to capture the city of Bakhmut, RU forces continue failed attacks N and S of the urban area. UKR counter attacked Russian VDV and Motor Rifle troops who had reached the H-32 HWY S and W of Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1656280137330032641?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 9 May 2023

NYT, Timothy Snyder: Putin Is Fighting, and Losing, His Last War https://tinyurl.com/23tk8bt3 “Russia failed to achieve the explicit aim of the ‘special military operation’ to overthrow Ukraine’s democratic government. There will be no greater humiliation than that”

🐣 RT @KvotheTheArcane Downfall: Tankie and Gopnik edition 2.0
💽 https://twitter.com/KvotheTheArcane/status/1656119092837773312?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RingoBridge Actually, it is thanks to the USA that the Soviet Union still exists. In the 1930s, it was the USA that industrialised the country. Without their support, they would not have been able to defend themselves against Nazi Germany.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RingoBridge/status/1655984654053146665?s=20/photo/1
// lend lease to Russia lend-lease WW2

🐣 RT @anders_aslund Something appears to have broken on the Russian front.
1. Prigozhin’s aggressive complaints against Shoigu, but also Putin.
2. The bizarre drone fireworks over the Kremlin.
3. Putin’s pathetic one-tank parade today.
4. Ukraine’s apparent breakthrough in Bakhmut.
Out of control?

🐣 RT @anders_aslund If Ukraine really has taken a substantial part of Bakhmut, that is a significant breakthrough on the Donbass front.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Leader of the Azov movement, Andriy Biletskiy, states that Ukrainian forces of the 3rd Assault Brigade liberated a 3 x 2.6km strip of land in Bakhmut, destroying 2 companies of the 72nd Brigade, as well as one of Wagner’s assault units.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Footage from earlier today showing 3rd Assault Brigade engaging the Russian 72nd Brigade in Bakhmut, with Prigozhin’s commentary. Explicit content warning ¤ Video courtesy of the 3rd Assault Brigade.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1656064355539058688?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA YEEEEEEESSSSSS #Bakhmut 🇺🇦
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine stormed the front line 3 km wide and 2.6 km deep. The 72nd brigade of the Russian Federation was defeated, the 6th and 8th companies of this brigade, military equipment were actually destroyed, many invaders were captured”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA “Wagner suffered heavy losses” – ex-commander of the Azov Biletsky about the successes of the Third Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

📋 WaPo: What is the future of the war in Ukraine? NATO’s leader offers insight https://tinyurl.com/ye37rasx Also: Stoltenberg’s response to Macron’s (latest) “modest proposal” for “European strategic autonomy,” noting 80% of NATO funding comes from non-EU countries

[…] Hockstader: Tell me, please, your assessment of French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitions for European strategic autonomy.

Stoltenberg: We welcome European Union efforts on defense. What we must avoid is duplication and competition, partly because the E.U. cannot defend Europe. Eighty percent of NATO’s defense expenditure comes from non-E.U. allies. It’s also about geography. If you look at the NATO map, Norway in the north, and Turkey in the south, but also of course the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, they are critical for the defense of Europe. …

And then politically, any attempt to weaken the bond between North America and Europe will not only divide NATO; it will divide Europe. If there’s anything we have learned from the war in Ukraine, it is that North America and Europe have to stand together. Non-E.U. NATO allies like the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have trained Ukrainian forces since 2014. And, of course, they’re providing a substantial part — 78 percent of the support to Ukraine comes from non-E.U. NATO allies. …

No other major power has 30 friends and allies as the United States has in NATO. Neither Russia nor China has anything similar. And together, NATO allies represent 50 percent of the world’s military might and 50 percent of the world’s economic might. So even the United States, which is of course by far the biggest ally, needs friends. If President Putin wins, it’s a tragedy for Ukrainians and dangerous for all of us, including the United States.

WaPo Editorial: The E. Jean Carroll suit brought an astonishing moment of accountability https://tinyurl.com/4k8x8sjr

WaPo: Jury in civil trial finds Trump sexually abused, defamed E. Jean Carroll https://tinyurl.com/msu578j3
// Jurors award $5 million to E. Jean Carroll, who accused Donald Trump of raping her at Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ Russian brigade flees Bakhmut. ¤ Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade confirmed on May 9 that the 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces has fled Bakhmut.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent The news, prior to the confirmation, was originally announced by Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @timinhonolulu 2. If it’s confirmed 72nd redeployed away from Bakhmut, it’s possible 72nd’s command was fearful of the coming offensive because there are three Ukrainian tank units near the line of contact with the 72nd. A rapid assault could cut the 72nd off in short order. #RunForrest

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump never loses, because everything is rigged.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1656062699506216961?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump WHAT ELSE CAN YOU EXPECT FROM A TRUMP HATING, CLINTON APPOINTED JUDGE, WHO WENT OUT OF HIS WAY TO MAKE SURE THAT THE RESULT WAS AS NEGATIVE AS IT COULD POSSIBLY BE, SPEAKING TO, AND IN CONTROL OF, A JURY FROM AN ANTI-TRUMP AREA WHICH IS PROBABLY THE WORST PLACE IN THE U.S. FOR ME TO GET A FAIR “TRIAL.!

🐣 RT @gamelin_m
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gamelin_m/status/1656047657377251351?s=20
[Text:] @FordJohnathan5 Here is what Donald Trump was found liable of in a civil rape case.

● Sexual Abuse
● Forcible Touching
● Injury of E. Jean Carrol
● Willful and Wanton Negligence
● Defamation
● False Statements
● Malicious Intent
● Injury for Defamation
● Acting Maliciously

This is the front runner for the GOP nomination for president of the United States.
// $5M in damages awarded

🐣 RT @CalltoActivism Dear MAGA: ¤ “He wasn’t found guilty of rape, only found liable for sexual assault because E. Jean Carroll couldn’t tell if it was his penis or his finger… ¤ …isn’t the win you think it is.
⋙ 🐣 🍄

🐣 📊 RT @themaxburns Fox News is taking this moment to get in a few swings of their own against Donald Trump:
// WaPo/ABC Poll (Apr 28-May 3) Should Trump face criminal charges in investigations trying to … Illegally overturn the 2020 elections? Should 56%, Should not 38%
◕ https://twitter.com/themaxburns/status/1656016891788369943?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @emoltzen BREAKING: Smartmatic has issued a subpoena to the Trump 2020 campaign as part of its defamation lawsuit against Fox News, seeking a broad array of documents and information. 1/
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/emoltzen/status/1656011319894499329?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ KyivPost ⚡️Putin failed the deadline for the capture of Bakhmut, President Zelensky said during a press conference. ¤ “The increase in missile attacks in recent weeks is explained by the fact that the Russian leadership needs “something to sell to its people because there are no victories”

🐣 RT @DefenceU We watched russia’s “Victory Day” parade today with great interest. Our tribute:
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1656009079830061075?s=20/photo/1
// tune: “All by myself” ~ one tank, first produced in 1940

NBCNews: 14th Amendment option on the debt ceiling would need to overcome DOJ concerns https://tinyurl.com/3f7msx5f
// The Office of Legal Counsel advised President Obama about whether he could raise the government’s borrowing limit unilaterally, but its opinion has never been made public.

Ultimately, the Obama administration ruled the 14th Amendment out. Former White House spokesman Jay Carney, in late 2012, said the administration “does not believe that the 14th Amendment gives the President the power to ignore the debt ceiling — period.” Obama, in early 2013, took it off the table.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY / 1210 UTC 9 MAY/ Despite coordinated attacks and air strikes, RU forces have failed to deliver Bakhmut by Putin’s 9 May “Victory Day” deadline. Russian morale is likely to be negatively affected by heavy looses and minimal gains.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1655903273885265922?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en I think this might be the top-news for today. ¤ While Putin was speaking about “Russian greatness” in Moscow, Russian troops were fleeing in Bakhmut. ¤ Prigozhin said the 72nd brigade and Gazprom “Torch” PMC abandoned their positions after 500 Wagner members died to get them – the true face of “Russian might”. ¤ Please consider sharing this.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1655903508636348419?s=20/photo/1

📊 WaPo: Most U.S. adults say the abortion pill mifepristone should stay on the market, Post-ABC poll finds https://tinyurl.com/mr2khup7
// The survey finds that 66 percent of U.S. adults say mifepristone should remain on the market, while 24 percent say it should be taken off the market

WaPo: Putin says ‘real war’ being waged against Russia on lower-key Victory Day https://tinyurl.com/bddhuc9c

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that a “real war” was being waged against Russia amid muted Victory Day celebrations on Tuesday, with many mass events canceled over security concerns after last week’s drone attack on the Kremlin and a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

“A real war has once again been waged against our homeland. Today, civilization is at a critical juncture,” Putin said at the ceremony marking the end of World War II. “We want to see a future of peace, freedom and stability,” added the leader who more than a year ago ordered what he calls “the special military operation” in Ukraine that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

In his speech, Putin quickly pivoted to blaming the war on the “Western elites.” ¤ “We believe that any ideology of superiority is inherently disgusting, criminal and deadly,” he said. “However, Western globalists and elites still talk about their exclusivity, pit people and split society, provoke bloody conflicts and upheavals, sow hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism, and destroy traditional family values that make a person a person.”

Putin then reiterated his claim that Ukraine had become “hostage to a coup d’etat and the criminal regime formed by its Western masters” and “a bargaining chip in the implementation of their cruel, selfish plans.” …

⭕ 8 May 2023

WaPo: Britain prepares to send long-range missiles to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/ynv7dtnn Several options are being considered
// The U.K. is pushing the Biden administration into providing Ukraine with weapons that can reach further into Russian-held territory

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1320 UTC 8 MAY/ Facing an impending 9 May ‘deadline’ to capture the city of Bakhmut, RU forces have pressed failed attacks N and S of the urban area. Russian VDV and Motor Rifle troops carried out attacks against the H-32 HWY S & W of Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1655560768866099202?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Azovsouth Putin wanted #Bakhmut as gift for the 9th May parade 🙄 ¤ He was wrong! ¤ The 🇺🇦 armed forces counterattacked & recaptured 1.3km terrain within hours. ¤ Typically it took months & heavy orc casualties for them to make control of such areas. ¤ Victory is coming ¤ The clock is ticking 🇺🇦 🇺🇦

⭕ 7 May 2023

🐣 RT @ BruceBartlett Free article. Really outstanding analysis of the the debt limit by Harvard law professor @tribelaw. Makes the essential point that if the debt limit is binding then other laws will be broken. Violating the limit is the least unconstitutional option.
⋙ NYT, Lawrence Tribe: Why I Changed My Mind on the Debt Limit https://tinyurl.com/w5yew99n

The theory builds on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to argue that Congress, without realizing it, set itself on a path that would violate the Constitution when, in 1917, it capped the size of the federal debt. Over the years, Congress has raised the debt ceiling scores of times, most recently two years ago, when it set the cap at $31.4 trillion. We hit that amount on Jan. 19 and are being told that the “extraordinary measures” Treasury has available to get around it are about to run out. When that happens, all hell will break loose.

Taking advantage of that prospect, congressional Republicans are threatening to do nothing unless the administration agrees to slash lots of government programs that their party has had in its sights. If the president caves in to their demands, they will agree to raise the cap — until this crisis occurs again. Then, they will surely pursue the same game of chicken or, maybe more accurately, Russian roulette. It’s a complicated situation, but a solution is staring us in the face.

Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says the “validity” of the public debt “shall not be questioned” — ever. Proponents of the unconstitutionality argument say that when Congress enacted the debt limit, effectively forcing the United States to stop borrowing to honor its debts when that limit was reached, it built a violation of that constitutional command into our fiscal structure, and that as a result, that limit and all that followed are invalid. …

The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.

The president should remind Congress and the nation, “I’m bound by my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution to prevent the country from defaulting on its debts for the first time in our entire history.” Above all, the president should say with clarity, “My duty faithfully to execute the laws extends to all the spending laws Congress has enacted, laws that bind whoever sits in this office — laws that Congress enacted without worrying about the statute capping the amount we can borrow.”

By taking that position, the president would not be usurping Congress’s lawmaking power or its power of the purse. Nor would he be usurping the Supreme Court’s power to “say what the law is,” as Chief Justice John Marshall once put it. Mr. Biden would simply be doing his duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” even if doing so leaves one law — the borrowing limit first enacted in 1917 — temporarily on the cutting room floor.

Ignoring one law in order to uphold every other has compelling historical precedent. It’s precisely what Abraham Lincoln did when he briefly overrode the habeas corpus law in 1861 to save the Union, later saying to Congress, “Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?”

For a president to pick the lesser of two evils when no other option exists is the essence of constitutional leadership, not the action of a tyrant. And there is no doubt that ignoring the debt ceiling until Congress either raises or abolishes it is a lesser evil than leaving those with lawful claims against the Treasury out in the cold.

… What I propose would in truth give the president a lot less power than entrusting him to decide which of the government’s promises to honor and which creditors to stiff — a power that the Supreme Court denied him when it handed down a 1998 decision that prevented him from vetoing line items within a budget. …

🧵 RT @MarkGaleotti Hah, when I recorded this, I said that I thought Prigozhin would be walking back his threat to pull Wagner out of Bakhmut, before his deadline. I just hadn’t appreciate just how quickly he would! A couple of thoughts 1/ [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1655257664471945218?s=20

🐣 RT @DavidAFrench Tucker’s daily example demonstrated that honesty and grace — indispensable qualities in every sphere of life — have no place in the politics of the new religious right, a right full of religious zeal but lacking in fundamental Christian virtues.
⋙ NYT, David French: Tucker Carlson’s Dark and Malign Influence Over the Christian Right https://tinyurl.com/559435zw “If you infuse an issue or set of issues with religious intensity but drain a movement of religious virtue, then profound religious conflict … is the inevitable result”

🐣 Child: Mommy, what does GOP mean?
Mother: It means “Guns Over People,“ dear.

🐣 📋 RT @robdewijk Volgens de Britten [Defense Intelligence of Britain]:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/robdewijk/status/1655110445823320065?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Russia is almost certainly facing its worst labour shortage in decades. The Russian Central Bank surveyed 14,000 employers and found that the number of available employees was at its lowest level since 1998.

Over the last three years, Russia’s population has reportedly decreased by two million more people than expected due to the impacts of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Russia saw up to 1.3 million people leave the country in 2022, including many younger and well-educated people in high-value industries. The Russian Ministry of Communications said that about 10% (100,000] of the IT workforce left the country in 2022 and did not return.

Mobilisation, historically high emigration, and an ageing and shrinking population is limiting the labour supply. ¤ This will likely lead to a reduction in the potential growth of the Russian economy and risks stoking inflation.

🧵 RT @ RYP__ [Robert Young Pelton] The forces being sent to Bakhmut are Kadyrovites aka TikTok soldiers aka Pointy Beardy YouTube Warriors who have displayed great courage in the making of videos. Disclaimer: No Trees Were Harmed In the Making of This Film
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/RYP__/status/1655224970749022208?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ RYP__ Kadyrovites make videos and die in large numbers. Watch PMC Convoy which is being ramped up in Crimea. There may be other PMCs/ militias used to create a network of insurgent groups when Ukraine slices through. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ RYP__ We are seeing that war for Russia is a zero sum game. What works on paper in Putin’s office doesn’t translate to those notional numbers in fielded gear or manpower. I wish Ukraine luck in chainsawing their way to the Black Sea. #ThunderRun [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ RYP__ Russia has troops in perilous positions. There are two weak points to be exploited. Donetsk/Luhansk and Crimea. So far depots in Crimea are being attrited. But isolating Russian troops is a good starting point for negotiations. On when the rest leave.
⋙⋙ BeyondHorizon, Jannis Figura (Jan): The potential directions of the Ukraine War in spring 2023 https://tinyurl.com/2rhyuuws
🌎 https://twitter.com/RYP__/status/1655229594189045760?s=20/photo/1
// 1/25/2023

🐣 RT @anneapplebaum “No publicly traded company would consider naming Trump to an executive position… None of his billionaire friends would trust him with their money.” He couldn’t work in a school or a lawfirm. And yet we might elect him president, @SykesCharlie
writes:
⋙ TheAtlantic, Charlie Sykes: America’s Lowest Standard https://tinyurl.com/vmnr96kw
// Try to imagine anyone like Trump surviving in any other segment of our society—business, entertainment, sports, the military

[…] There is, of course, a lot more evidence that suggests that Trump is not a character of preeminent virtue. The twice-impeached, defeated former president has been indicted on multiple felony charges and may face more. He is a chronic liar and fraudster. He also played a role in fomenting the January 6 insurrection. Trump has called for the suspension of the Constitution and dined with a white supremacist, and he traffics in racist invective and conspiracy theories.

And yet, Trump has already been elected to the presidency once and is now poised to seize his party’s nomination for a return to office. An NBC poll last month found that two-thirds of Republican voters stood behind Trump. Given the mathematics of the Electoral College in which Alexander Hamilton invested such high hopes, Trump has a good chance of winning the presidency again.

Hamilton thought that he had fireproofed the presidency from mountebanks and charlatans because we would seek out only the best and the brightest among us. Instead, we have apparently saved our lowest standards for the presidency.

At this point, the Senate would be unlikely to confirm Trump’s appointment to any other position of trust. Someone with Trump’s character would not be granted a security clearance at any level of government. We wouldn’t let the man babysit our children or even walk the dog. We would definitely not buy a used car from the guy. But we might give him back the nuclear codes and control over the military, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, and the Department of Justice. Americans might make him, once again, the face of America. …

After the release of the Access Hollywood tape, the GOP decided that character did not, after all, matter. Seven years later, neither the indictments for paying hush money to a porn star nor the accusations of assault—and rape—are disqualifying for Republican voters. In the 2024 contest for the presidency, they hardly even register.

🐣 RT @ VolodyaTretyak Igor Girkin is very pessimistic today. He says it is time to start thinking about preventing Russia from falling apart because military defeat is near. ¤ Translation:
¤ https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1655186960577703941?s=20

Regular readers and listeners should remember the assessment of the situation that I laid out (and expressed) last winter. One of the theses was: “If the necessary national measures for the successful conduct of the war are not taken before May, we will not be able to win this war.

I state: NO MEASURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN. Neither organizational nor personnel. The goals of the war have not been determined, and the inhabitants of the Planet of the Pink Ponies(PRP) have not understood that “this war will be fought until one side is victorious. Accordingly, since there is no goal, there is no strategy. No strategy – no conscious work on its implementation. But the enemy has a strategy from the beginning and is being implemented with all its might. More and more successfully since the Kremlin is “playing giveaway” with an inexplicable enthusiasm and childlike confidence in the ultimate “contract” that is comfortable for the elderly Ponies, Elephants, and Unicorns.

Now we have to think about how to preserve the state, the country and the people in a situation of impending military defeat. ¤ And, yes – even for a “worthy non-fatal defeat” (in which our enemies will be forced to abandon their plans for the complete fragmentation of Russia and the elimination of its sovereignty) we will have to fight long and hard. Harder and longer than it would have been if we had fought to win decisively from the outset. And the longer the occupants of the PRP will linger in the “sweet languor” of confidence in their peaceful and happy old age (which has long come for most of the VIPs) – the less chance that in the end the Russian ship will manage to get out of the military storm and systemic crisis, without sinking (after a long and bloody Troubles) into History.

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Putin’s passive response to Finland joining NATO debunks the myth that NATO expansion caused the war in Ukraine. In reality, Putin has always known NATO poses no security threat to Russia but used the issue as a smokescreen for his invasion of Ukraine
⋙ AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson (Apr): NATO poses a threat to Russian imperialism not Russian security https://tinyurl.com/2yn5m73h
// 4/6/2023

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russia-Ukraine war “has seen drones go from next frontier of parcel delivery to cutting edge of warfare technology, with the rapid development of AI set to accelerate things even faster.”
⋙ SkyNews, Sean Bell: Ukraine has set the stage for a new era of war – and AI could supercharge it https://tinyurl.com/45da6sza
// The Ukraine war has seen drones go from next frontier of parcel delivery to cutting edge of warfare technology, with the rapid development of AI set to accelerate things even faster.

🐣 RT @dcjohnson It used to be illegal for a company to purchase its own stock. It is price manipulation & brings no value to society. ¤ The Reagan era brought in misunderstanding of what a corporation legally is. ¤ Ask yourself WHY a democracy would let corporations harm the public interest?
⋙ 🐣 RT @dcjohnson Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation. It was Reagan’s SEC that opened the floodgates to their abuse. ¤ Stock buybacks don’t create more jobs. They don’t increase wages. They don’t grow the economy. ¤ They make corporate execs richer. Hello?

⭕ 6 May 2023 👑 Coronation Charles III

🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD: DOJ SENTENCING RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY: ¤ Just finished reading the 183-page sentencing memo and motion for upward departure for the Oath Keepers convicted of Seditious Conspiracy over two trials in November and January, and WOW, the DOJ MEANS BUSINESS 1/
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/44can7ku
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1654940362480439296?s=20

WaPo: Senior Ukrainian officials fear counterattack may not live up to hype https://tinyurl.com/38y6uhzu “Offensive military operations typically require overwhelming advantage, & with Russian forces dug into heavily fortified defenses…, it is hard to gauge how far Ukraine will get”

Reuters: Biden says not yet ready to invoke 14th Amendment to avoid debt default https://tinyurl.com/mtkuzvab “Section Four of the amendment, adopted after the 1861-1865 Civil War, states that the ‘validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned’”

🐣 RT @USAmbOSCE [Michael Carpenter] Honored to meet President @ZelenskyyUa and underscore the resolute support of the United States for an independent, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.
🖼 https://twitter.com/USAmbOSCE/status/1654871381723557892?s=20/photo/1
// Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: “The OSCE has a comprehensive approach to security that encompasses politico-military, economic and environmental, and human aspects. It therefore addresses a wide range of security-related concerns, including arms control, confidence- and security-building measures, human rights, national minorities, democratization, policing strategies, counter-terrorism and economic and environmental activities. All 57 participating States enjoy equal status, and decisions are taken by consensus on a politically, but not legally binding basis.”

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress US and Ukraine top military chiefs discuss Ukrainian counteroffensive ¤ During the phone call, the Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces, Gen. Zaluzhnyi, told the US Chairman of Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Milley, about preparations for the future counteroffensive. https://tinyurl.com/bdz8a4xt

🐣 RT @ ChrisFlaherty8 In regards to the 1990 Saddam Line: “Just because the enemy fortifies its positions using WWI-era defenses doesn’t mean attackers have to use WWI-era tactics to defeat them.” A core-out strategy deeply inverted the battle, and then there is armour circumventing defences:
◕ [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ChrisFlaherty8/status/1654437185008070657?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisFlaherty8 A fortification-barrier-fence line is used to direct an opponent to an apparent gap, or weak point. Which is a trap. A common WW1 Turkish defence, was locking-up a landscape using many strongpoints covering each other, creating mutually supporting defence that absorbed an attack.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ChrisFlaherty8/status/1654473863433187328?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisFlaherty8 The Saddam Line takedown in 1990, following core-out strategy deeply inverting the battle, had massed armour circumventing defences, and directly punching-through in a ‘Bulldozer Assault’; this also saw the US Army opt out of Trench Warfare’
⋙⋙ Military[.]com: The ‘Bulldozer Assault’ of Desert Storm Saw the US Army Opt Out of Trench Warfare https://tinyurl.com/37czcy5k

🚫 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Kadyrov confirmed that his people are getting ready to go to Bakhmut to replace Wagner PMC. He said they are already developing a strategy with the ministry of defense.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1654903986808315904?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA I was honored to speak to the Princess of Wales @KensingtonRoyal and the First Lady of 🇺🇸 Jill Biden @FLOTUS at the official reception for the coronation of His Majesty Charles the III. A real pleasure to meet these exquisite ladies with open hearts and the great friends of 🇺🇦.
🖼 https://twitter.com/ZelenskaUA/status/1654568648692887558?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @f_o_r_Ukraine This isn’t an animation, this is #Bakhmut shelled by the incendiary ammunitions. Hell on Earth. #UkraineWar
💽 https://twitter.com/f_o_r_Ukraine/status/1654907266603024388?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Ukraine says it shot down hypersonic Russian missile with Patriot system https://tinyurl.com/2xfzy6w2 “The destruction of the missile, reported to be a Kh-47 fired by a Russian MiG-31K fighter jet, demonstrated the potentially game-changing role of the Patriot system”

Michael Kofman, a military expert at CNA, a U.S.-based policy institute, said that too much was being made of the Kinzhal and that it was not particularly different from other ballistic missiles. The Kinzhal is a variant of Russia’s Iskander-M. ¤ “Don’t understand the interest in Russian use of Kinzhal. There’s nothing special or particularly exciting about this system,” Kofman tweeted. ¤ “Iskander-M is a long standing system. Hundreds have been fired. Kinzhal is an air launched variant of this system,” he wrote. “It uses the aircraft for added range and initial velocity. Otherwise it seems unremarkable. It is ‘hypersonic’ in the same way as many other ballistic missiles.”

🐣 RT @ @brit_engr BBC posted a photo of the US First Lady and her granddaughter on their way to the coronation wearing complementary blue and yellow outfits in support of Ukraine. #Ukraine #Coronation

⭕ 5 May 2023

🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: The Russian Ministry of Defense appears to have deprioritized the #Bakhmut offensive in favor of preparing to defend against an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, putting #WagnerGroup & its financier #Prigozhin in a potentially difficult position http://isw.pub/UkrWar050523
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1654635589302403073?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @igorsushko Prigozhin audio: May 6 2023 12:00. He’s been ignored by Ministry of Defence, so he is transferring Bakhmut to Dob Don Kadyrov. He is starting the transition (retreat) without delay and on May 10 00:00 Kadyrov will have control of positions in Bakhmut.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko The target audience of Prigozhin’s speech appears to be the Russian public, and it’s an ominous one: ¤ “We will be waiting until we are again needed by the people of Russia – I think that’s about to happen.” ¤ It’s intentionally ambiguous to not exclude an insurrection against the current Russian government.

⋙ His theme throughout:
⋙ 1. I am not a traitor to the motherland.
⋙ 2. I am a hero of the people.
⋙ 3. Shoigu and Gerasimov do not deserve to be in their positions (well, who put them there? Putin!)”

⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko [cont.] Prigozhin announced Wagner PMC’s Bakhmut withdrawal for May 10, so as not to “rob the people” of the pride for the May 9 Soviet Victory Parade. He says they’re low on munitions. One may have a gut instinct that he is lying to entrap the Ukrainians by attacking now. However, the trap would never work because of Ukrainian and Western intelligence on the ground. Ukraine knows exactly what they’d face if they were to attack now. ¤ (Subtitles by Dmitri @WarTranslated)
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1654519828231880704?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @INNAfo2023 Bakhmut – now. Russian invaders want to burn the city to the ground. #RussiaIsATerroristState #RussiaIsCollapsing #NAFOExpansionIsNonNegotiable #NAFO #NAFOCatsDivision #NAFOfellas
💽 https://twitter.com/INNAfo2023/status/1654603004450881537?s=20/photo/1
// incendiary 🔥

🐣 RT @DFENS3000
🖼 https://twitter.com/DFENS3000/status/1654592042738098179?s=20/photo/1
// Prighozhin with dead soldier in body bag ⇈ ⇊
⋙ 🐣 “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 is a painting by Russian realist artist Ilya Repin made between 1883 and 1885” ~ Wikipedia
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1654616373153394689?s=20/photo/1

🚫 WaPo: At least eight Trump electors have accepted immunity in Georgia investigation https://tinyurl.com/y5t6pr4c “‘[T]hey continue to say they have done nothing wrong and they are not aware of anyone else doing anything wrong, much less criminal’” [meh]
// In a new filing, the lawyer for the eight electors accused prosecutors of knowingly making false accusations in an effort to have her removed from the case.

… The electors who accepted immunity did so without any promise that they would offer incriminating evidence in return, and they all have stated that they remain unified in their innocence and are not aware of any criminal activity among any of the electors, Debrow said. ¤ “In telling the truth they continue to say they have done nothing wrong and they are not aware of anyone else doing anything wrong, much less criminal,” said an individual familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity to discuss the case.

Among the electors who appear to remain targets are David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party who presided over the gathering, and Shawn Still, a state senator who at the time was state finance chair for the party and who told congressional investigators he played a role confirming electors’ identities and admitting them into the room at the Georgia Capitol where they convened. …

Under federal law, electors for the winning presidential candidate in each of the states must meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December to cast their votes. The Republican electors said that if they had not met and voted, and if Trump had prevailed in his lawsuit, Biden’s electoral votes would have been invalidated but there would have been no Trump votes to replace them. …

HudsonInstitute, Luke Coffey (Oct 2022): Ten Myths about US Aid to Ukraine and Why They’re Wrong https://tinyurl.com/s7z5b4km “It is in America’s interest that Ukraine wins the war, and that Russia is decisively defeated”
// 10/20/2022

As the war continues, Congress will likely pass additional spending. It is in America’s interest that Ukraine wins the war, and that Russia is decisively defeated. Even though polling overwhelmingly shows broad and bipartisan support for Ukraine, some in Congress are against further US aid for Ukraine ¤ Here are the top ten myths and misconceptions about US aid for Ukraine and why they are wrong:

Myth 1: There is not enough oversight of US aid to Ukraine.
Myth 2: We have written more than $66 billion worth of “blank checks” for Ukraine.
Myth 3: Congress hasn’t had “enough time to debate” US aid to Ukraine or “read the bill.”
Myth 4: This money to Ukraine would be better spent on “the wall” or “baby formula.”
Myth 5: Europe needs to “spend more” before America does.
Myth 6: The US should only give “military aid.”
Myth 7: US weapons are ending up on the black market or are not getting to the front lines.
Myth 8: Ukraine is too corrupt to receive aid responsibly.
Myth 9: Russia is a distraction. US focus must be on China.
Myth 10: Aid to Ukraine puts “America last.”

🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder Georgia Republicans passing legislation allowing statewide officials to remove local, elected prosecutors from office, just as one of those prosecutors is preparing to potentially indict Donald Trump, is dangerous to democracy.
⋙ WaPo: Kemp poised to sign bill that allows ouster of local Georgia prosecutors https://tinyurl.com/mtjrwssf

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is poised to sign legislation as early as Friday that would create a commission with the power to remove local prosecutors from office, a move Democrats in the state have decried as a power grab that usurps the will of local voters.

Atlanta-area prosecutor Fani Willis, who is considering bringing charges against former president Donald Trump and his allies over 2020 election interference, has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the legislation, suggesting she is among those being targeted by its Republican sponsors.

The bill, which Democrats have vowed to challenge in court, would create an oversight panel that could recall any of the state’s elected district attorneys or solicitors general for several reasons, including “willful misconduct” or “persistent failure to perform his or her duties.”

The bill’s sponsors have not focused on Willis’s investigation of Trump but say they are seeking to rein in reform-minded prosecutors and crack down on crime. They have raised concerns about prosecutors in liberal areas who won’t seek charges against low-level drug offenders or those who violate Georgia’s abortion law banning the procedure at six weeks.

Kemp voiced support for the measure ahead of this year’s legislative session, saying it was needed because “far-left local prosecutors are failing their constituents and making our communities less safe.” ¤ Still, some Democrats have said the bill appears to be retaliation for Willis’s investigation of the former president.

🐣 RT @KensingtonRoyal [The Prince and Princess of Wales] Lovely to see @FLOTUS and
@ZelenskaUA this evening 🇺🇸🇺🇦 #Coronation
🖼 https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1654552726611849217?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Ramzan Kadyrov says his forces will enter Bakhmut if Wagner leaves ¤ Kadyrov plans to create a PMC in the future that could compete with Wagner but he recently met with Prigozhin to show solidarity against Western sanctions

🐣 📊 RT @ @daveweigel 70% support for the original version of Florida’s Parental Rights bill policy (which opponents successfully branded as “Don’t Say Gay”). Just 36% for expanding it through grade 12, as DeSantis now wants.
◕ https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1654561011725115392?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @SenWhitehouse With Leonard Leo’s Judicial Education Project resurfacing, it’s worth taking a minute to understand how this slimy group works. Here you see how the Judicial Education Project goes about lobbying SCOTUS on behalf of the far-right Bradley Foundation – via Leo. Watch:
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1654564155360268291?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse In Bradley’s own words, the right-wing foundation funds the Judicial Education Project to “orchestrate high-caliber amicus efforts” that support “Bradley’s previous philanthropic investments in the actual, underlying legal actions.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Translation: creepy right-wing outfit pays Leonard Leo’s Judicial Education Project to lobby SCOTUS in the very same cases creepy right-wing outfit is paying to get before SCOTUS.

🐣 RT @therecount Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaking in Texas on the lifting of Title 42: ¤ “The border is not open, it has not been open, and it will not be open subsequent to May 11th.”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1654564482574700547?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mbk_center [Khodorkovsky] The Putin state has lost control over creating and enforcing rules, violence, and the delivery of justice. Without these things, a state turns into a gang, where the strong with no moral limitations rule. The “address” by Prigozhin is a vivid exemplification of this
💽 https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1654565480563355648?s=20/photo/1
// Khodorkovsky gloss of Prigozhin rant

🐣 RT @atrupar holy crap Trump mistook E Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples during his deposition
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1654552867972214786?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @trajaykay President Zelensky[:] I met with a delegation of U.S. congressmen Such visits to Ukraine are a powerful signal of support from the United States for our state and the entire Ukrainian people. ¤ We appreciate the strong bicameral and bipartisan support. Thank you for the comprehensive […] assistance provided by the United States to Ukraine in our struggle for our own future and for the future of our common values ​​– freedom and democracy. ¤ Continued assistance is a guarantee of Ukraine’s success in the fight against Russian aggression.
💽 https://twitter.com/trajaykay/status/1654548542998863873?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @BisforBerkshire Thanks @ThePlumLineGS for reporting on the growing move to chill classroom discussions of current events. Agree with @Malinowski: *Undermining the civic education of future adult citizens is itself the goal*
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: A nasty development in the culture wars invades an affluent N.J. suburb https://tinyurl.com/2p8unk2y //➔ the White-washing of high school civics education

By now, many of the goals of the reactionary culture-warriors working to reshape American education are sickeningly familiar. They are attempting to restrict classroom discussion of sex and gender, to sanitize the teaching of our white-supremacist past and to purge schools of anodyne romance novels under the guise of targeting pornography.

But there’s another story threaded throughout all this that has been overlooked: These campaigns appear increasingly designed to chill critical perspectives on current events in a way that undermines public education’s core goal of developing civically informed democratic citizens. …

Another objection: The book’s description of antifa didn’t mention its supposed role in the “2020 riots.” The book already describes antifa as “far left” and “extreme,” but apparently kids must also be taught wildly absurd right-wing agitprop suggesting that America is overrun with violent leftist terrorism.

Yet another objection faulted the book’s claim that research shows voter fraud is “rare and that when it does occur it is often perpetuated by Republicans.” That statement is true. But the member objected to the book’s citation of reports from The Post and Reuters to back them up, even though they rely on academic and official sources.

Such offenses led objectors to absurdly label the book as “factually destitute” and “trash.” One even preposterously argued that material such as this is why conservative students feel ostracized.

In the meeting, some board members aggressively defended the book. They noted that nixing it would deprive other parents of the choice of having their kids learn the book’s lessons. They said overriding educators who had approved the book — which is used in other New Jersey districts — devalued those educators’ professionalism.

To some liberal parents in this district west of New York City, all this offends their values. They see it as a violation of school district policy that seeks to encourage kids’ exposure to controversial, challenging issues — which, believe it or not, these parents take pride in.

“The sense of outrage and frustration is palpable,” Neslihan Montag, a local parent, told me. “The whole point of the sociology curriculum is to promote critical thinking and debate,” she added, noting that the decision “leaves our entire community in a horrible position.” …

There’s another side to this story, as the parental backlash to this New Jersey decision shows. Surprising outbreaks of local resistance are challenging this sort of reactionary culture-warring all over the country. That’s likely to escalate.

“So long as normal Americans get organized at the local level against this nonsense,” Malinowski told me, “I’m convinced the extremists are going to fail.” As the right attacks one of public education’s most cherished missions, that resistance will only intensify.

🐣 📋 RT @atrupar Biden: “My predecessor, in the 4 years he was president, increased that total debt by 40 percent.”

🐣 RT @nytimes Month after month, the U.S. unemployment rate for Black workers continues to hit record lows. But Black workers, on average, are out of work at a rate that is more than one and a half times higher than their white counterparts. https://nyti.ms/426YEat
◕ https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1654554363208036352?s=20/photo/1

PravdaUA: HIMARS systems less effective due to Russian electronic jamming – CNN https://tinyurl.com/4pnsk56v

🐣 📋 RT @ABlackPolitical President Joe Biden has been the most successful job creator in our nations history. His record 12.7 million jobs since January of 2021 is historic. ¤ We added 253,000 new jobs in April and hit a 54 year low unemployment rate of 3.4%. Wages are up, pandemic induced inflation is coming down and we are clearly not in a recession.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ABlackPolitical/status/1654504154998489094?s=20/photo/1
// “Average jobs created per month by party since 1939:
GOP presidents: 67,192
Dem presidents: 175,748”

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Trump this morning referred to the criminals convicted of seditious conspiracy yesterday as “Great American Patriots”. He has zero remorse for what he did on January 6th, and if given the opportunity, he would do it all again.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1654497426634579968?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] Back in the USA, but sadly I see so many really bad things happening to our Country. The DOJ and FBI are destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots, right before our very eyes. The Court System is a RUBBER STAMP for their conviction and imprisonment. All this while the Radical Left protects and coddles extremists and murderers at a level, and with intensity, never seen before. GET SMART AMERICA, THEY ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!

🐣 RT @olliecarroll Wagner seemed to be on the way out of Bakhmut in any case. And if they leave Bakhmut, where are they headed next?
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Evgeniy Prigozhin declares in a video that he will be ordering the withdrawal of Wagner mercenaries from Bakhmut due to an acute shortage of ammunition allegedly ordered by the Russian General Staff. He says Wagner will stay in the city until 9 May to avoid shame on this day. He appears to require a military order from Gerasimov for the withdrawal, however, to carry out the withdrawal.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1654412610069037057?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @faineg Reactions to the Prigozhin/Wagner pullout from Russian milblogger Swodki:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/faineg/status/1654438117351235585?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @igorsushko Mikhail Mizintsev was fired from his role as Deputy Defence Minister responsible for Logistics recently. He was fired by Shoigu because he was diverting munitions to Wagner. He now holds an official position at Wagner PMC under Prigozhin.

🐣 RT @saintjavelin A new video by Prigozhin has just emerged on the Internet. It’s pretty long, so here’s the summary of what he’s saying:
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1654403598724345856?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @saintjavelin “I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on 10 May, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @saintjavelin “I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly.”

🐣 RT @nycjim BIG: Leader of Wagner mercenary force says he’ll pull his fighters out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies from Moscow. ¤ *It’s time to “lick our wounds,” he says

⭕ 4 May 2023

🧵 RT @Jack_Mrgln Prigozhin shares graphic video of Wagner fighters killed today, with the most furious message he has yet directed personally at Shoigu and Gerasimov. “Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where are the fucking shells!”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/Jack_Mrgln/status/1654254614114344962?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @DenysDavydovUA I’ve took some effort to translate the Prygozhyn’s emotional speech …
💽 https://twitter.com/DenysDavydovUA/status/1654269880726609921?s=20/photo/1
// Prigozhin’s explicative-laden tirade demanding more ammunition (dead bodies)

WaPo: Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’ https://tinyurl.com/2p8t37vd //➔ “I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “… I prefer that”
// Leonard Leo told GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill nonprofit, then use money to pay spouse of Supreme Court justice

📊 WaPo: Trump is inviting Dems to make 2024 about Jan 6. They’re obliging. https://tinyurl.com/yzrwbp7p “In an Economist/YouGov poll last month, 53% of independents said they strongly disapproved of the Jan. 6 participants, and 67% at least somewhat disapproved”; only 13% approved
// 📊 multiple polls; The day has featured prominently in campaign launches by Biden and Senate candidates. Here’s how it might play, relative to 2022.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for a special tribunal to prosecute Russian officials during a speech at the Hague on May 4; at least one drone shot down over Kyiv, with debris causing a fire; and more.
⋙ KyivIndependent: Ukraine war latest: Zelensky in The Hague calls for special tribunal; Drone shot down over Kyiv https://tinyurl.com/3x9xx94n “Zelensky: We all want to see Putin in The Hague”

🐣 RT @SenSchumer 7 former Secretaries of Defense from Republican and Democratic administrations are not mincing words: ¤ They’re saying GOP Senator Tuberville’s blanket holds on the nominations of senior military leaders are “harming military readiness and risks damaging US national security”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1654192302372409348?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln It’s a bad day for the bad guys and @TheRickWilson couldn’t be happier… but wait, there’s more! There’s a layer of people, from Roger Stone to Alex Jones to Steve Bannon, who were giving these street thugs their orders. Next up, Donald J. Trump.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1654206866619002881?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1930 UTC 4 MAY/ UKR forces have initiated offensive action in the vicinity of Heologiv Street, west of the H-32 HWY loop. UKR Lines of Communication & Supply assessed as secure; UKR will continue urban operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1654204051259621376?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SimonWDC Want to see why Democrats should launch a heavily funded national voter registration drive this year? Here you go, via the @WashingtonPost (h/t @Markos)
◕ https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1654191457496977426?s=20/photo/1
⋙ WaPo: New data shows how little the electorate looks like the population https://tinyurl.com/4u7v2ph7

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Among the reasons you don’t want Trump on the witness stand, he has no self control. It will be interesting to see how the judge reacts to this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SMurphyTV Breaking: Donald Trump rails against rape accuser E Jean Carroll’s “false accusations”, and tells us he will “probably” attend the trial in New York, which he calls a “scam” and a “political attack” – he says he will “confront” the claims, which he denies #Trump #Doonbeg
💽 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1654167505064034315?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ jjabbott Holy $#!% — this clip is a nightmare for @HouseGOP. What a gift. ¤ “90% of this bill has been written by the House Freedom Caucus. We are driving and pulling our entire conference — and with this, the entire Congress — to the right.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @AllAboutPA Rep. Scott Perry, leader of the extreme MAGA House Freedom Caucus, says the quiet part about the GOP’s disastrous plan to cut vital programs and put the U.S. at risk of economic catastrophe: ¤ “90% of this bill has been written by the House Freedom Caucus”
💽 https://twitter.com/jjabbott/status/1654164565020557312?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Our foreign and trade policy with respect to Hungary should reflect the fact that their government is actively seeking to tamper with our election. And it should reflect that for the next 5.5 years at a minimum.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv Viktor Orban: “I am sure that if Mr. Trump were president of the United States, no war would be any war in Ukraine or in Europe. Mr. President, come back, make America great again and bring us peace again!” 💽

🐣 RT @lawfareblog Here’s a breakdown of the Proud Boys verdict, by charge and defendant:
◕ https://twitter.com/lawfareblog/status/1654172737919647758?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MarquardtA WH’s John Kirby tells @CNNThisMorning Peskov is “lying” with accusations that the US was pulling the strings behind the Kremlin attack. “Ludicrous claim,” Kirby said, adding that: “we don’t know what happened here.”

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio, 3 others guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy https://tinyurl.com/mu6hvdk8 ‘Prosecutors alleged that the Proud Boys saw themselves as Trump’s “army,” … inspired by his directive to “stand by” during a presidential debate’
// Prosecutors alleged defendants viewed themselves as Donald Trump’s army, intent on keeping him in power through violence

A jury deliberated for seven days in Washington before finding Tarrio, 29, and other defendants guilty on 31 of 46 counts. The jury returned not guilty verdicts on four counts and continued deliberating on 11 remaining counts. The result was another decisive victory for the Justice Department in the latest of three seditious conspiracy trials held after what it called a historic act of domestic terrorism to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election. …

Legal analysts said the convictions on the historically rare and politically weighty crime of seditious conspiracy sent a necessary signal of deterrence to extremists contemplating political violence. The verdict also could pose repercussions for the former president as Special Counsel Jack Smith investigates whether Trump or those around him broke the law in seeking to hold onto power by fanning false and incendiary claims that the election was stolen, pressuring state and federal officials to assist the effort, and sending thousands of supporters who heard him speak at a Jan. 6 rally to march to the Capitol.

“The verdict empowers the special counsel to bring indictments for the efforts to overturn the election,” said New York University law professor Ryan Goodman. “It underscores the enormous stakes in mobilizing Americans to believe the Big Lie and directing an armed crowd to interfere with the congressional proceedings.”

Over nearly 15 weeks of proceedings, prosecutors alleged that the Proud Boys on trial saw themselves as Trump’s “army.” Inspired by his directive to “stand by” during a September 2020 presidential debate and mobilized by his December 2020 call for a “wild” protest, prosecutors said, the men sought to keep Trump in power through violence on the day that Congress met to certify the presidential election results. …

🧵 RT @innercitypress OK – Carroll v. Trump trial resumes, with Trump’s deposition being played for the jury again. Inner City Press is covering the case https://tinyurl.com/463xj9dt & https://tinyurl.com/sssea58j and will live tweet, thread below
📌 https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1654126081224626180?s=20

🐣 RT @richsignorelli If Trump takes office in ’25, he will pardon every 1/6 person who didn’t cooperate & others. Don’t think he can get elected again? He’s leading by far for nomination. We could be going into severe recession. He will lie/cheat/crime to win. He won before. He will run as an outlaw.

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING: Proud Boys verdict: huge win for the government and our democracy–domestic terrorism group, unleashed by the former President, held to account. Makes char[g]ing the leader of the seditious conspiracy, one Donald J. Trump, imperative.

🐣 📊 RT @BrennanCenter A new poll shows nearly 1 in 3 election officials has been harassed, abused, or threatened. None of them signed up for this, and many are quitting.
⋙ BrennanCenter: The Great Resignation . . . Of Election Officials https://tinyurl.com/mttwawbm

🐣 RT @kyledcheney There have been *14* convictions to seditious conspiracy stemming from Jan. 6 [list: 9 Oathkeepers (3 plea deals), 5 Proud Boys (1 plea deal)
[List:] https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1654147439744413699?s=20%5D

🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @Brandi_Buchman ON THE TOP CHARGE OF SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY, PROUD BOYS Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl have been found GUILTY:
⋙ 🐣 RT @Brandi_Buchman NOW: Jurors have delivered a partial verdict in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case.
On Count 1 – SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY:
Enrico (Henry) Tarrio: GUILTY
Ethan Nordean: GUILTY
Joseph Biggs: GUILTY
Zachary Rehl: GUILTY
[Dominic Pezzola: [NO VERDICT]]
⋙ 🐣 RT @Brandi_Buchman On Obstruction to impede or interfere with law enforcement during a civil disorder: [All 5]
⋙ 🐣 RT @Brandi_Buchman On Conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties: [All 5]
⋙ 🐣 RT @Brandi_Buchman On Destruction of government property (the black metal fencing bolted into ground): [All 5]
⋙ 🐣 RT @Brandi_Buchman On Destruction of government property (the Senate window that was smashed apart): Pezzola (only): GUILTY

🚫 💽 WaPo: Behind Trump’s musical tribute to some of the most violent Jan. 6 rioters https://tinyurl.com/3h84b95t

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1245 UTC 4 MAY/ Heavy urban fighting resumed in the W urban areas of Bakhmut. RU conducted wide-spread artillery barrages over the entire axis. Russian attacks at Ivanivske and Predtechyne were broken up.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1654100572927139842?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivPost (1/2) President #Zelensky said that Ukraine is actively preparing for a counteroffensive and there are no options for failure ¤ However, according to Zelensky, it is wrong to talk about “success” when losing people. ¤ 🎞️: Office of the President
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivPost (2/2) “I cannot say that 100% success is guaranteed because no one knows. I think it is wrong to talk about success when you’re losing people. In any case, we are moving forward,” #Zelensky said at a press conference in #Netherlands.

🐣 RT @KyivPost ⚡️CIA Director William #Burns held a closed briefing on the explosions over the #Kremlin. According to the chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, there is no indication that Ukraine is behind the drone strike on Moscow, CNN reported. 🎞️: AFP

⭕ 3 May 2023

DefenseOne: The Pentagon’s AI Chief Is ‘Scared to Death’ of ChatGPT https://tinyurl.com/5yf2ba67
// But other defense leaders are more eager to deploy new artificial-intelligence tools.

“I’m scared to death,” about how people might use ChatGPT and other consumer-facing AI agents, Craig Martell said Wednesday. ¤ Such tools, which can respond to simple prompts with long text answers, have raised concerns about the end of academic essays and have even been floated as a better way to answer medical patient questions. But they don’t always produce factually sound content, since they pull from human-created sources. Martell, who comes to the job with experience in academia as well as managing machine learning at Lyft, didn’t mince words when asked his opinion on what large language models like ChatGPT  mean for society and national security. 

“My fear is that we trust it too much without the providers of that service building into it the right safeguards and the ability for us to validate” the information, Martell said. That could mean people rely on answers and content that such engines provide, even if it’s inaccurate. Moreover, he said, adversaries seeking to run influence campaigns targeting Americans could use such tools to great effect for disinformation. In fact, the content such tools produce is so expertly written that it lends itself to that purpose, he said. “This information triggers our own psychology to think ‘of course this thing is authoritative.’” …

The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, which Martell heads, is primarily responsible for the Defense Department’s AI efforts and all the computer infrastructure and data organization that goes into those efforts. Martell made his comments during AFCEA’s TechNetCyber event in Baltimore to a room full of software vendors, many of whom were selling AI platforms, tools, and solutions. 

“My call to action to industry is: don’t just sell us the generation. Work on detection,” so that users and consumers of content can more easily differentiate AI-generated content from humans, Martell said. 

In terms of his own priorities for the Defense Department, Martell said the first is putting in place data sharing infrastructure and policies to allow the military to realize its aspirations for Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2. …

Martell isn’t necessarily opposed to deploying AI even in very high-stakes instances. His concern primarily is that the ease of use of such tools conveys the notion that the user doesn’t need to do the hard work of training and monitoring them. AI, in Martell’s view, is a highly human-driven asset. 

“No model ever survives first contact with the world. Every model ever built is already stale, by the time you get it. It was trained on old data, historical data, because that’s what they had to train…. We need to build tools that allow the systems to be monitored to make sure they’re continuing to bring the value that they were paid for in the first place.”

🐣 RT @krassenstein BREAKING: 4 major legal stories regarding Trump are breaking this evening:

1) Special counsel Jack Smith and team are investigating the Trump Organization’s handling of Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage. Trump Organization executives Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son Matthew Calamari Jr. are expected to appear Thursday before the grand jury.

2) Reports indicate that Jack Smith sat in while Mike Pence testified for over five hours last week. The two men interacted in a respectful manner according to reports. Pence was asked to recount his conversations with Trump prior to the January 6th riot at the Capitol Building.

3) Donald Trump has been ordered to pay all legal fees for the New York Times and his niece Mary Trump, after New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed said Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law.”

4) The only witness for Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation/rape case failed to appear today because of “health issues”. Trump will offer NO defense in the case.

Things don’t look good in any of these cases in my opinion. Thoughts?

🐣 RT @ryanjreilly NEW: The ex-FBI official who allegedly urged rioters to kill police at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was on the FBI New York Field Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. ¤ His duties? ¤ Supervising the homegrown violent extremism squad. ¤ Story with @jonathan4ny:
⋙ NBCNews: Ex-FBI agent who feds say urged Jan. 6 rioters to kill police worked terrorism task force https://tinyurl.com/3x4wh8kh
// Jared Wise was part of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and was supervisory special agent in charge of the Homegrown Violent Extremism unit.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian military have placed explosives in the fourth energy block of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – @iaeaorg informed Ukrainian State Atomic Regulation body. ¤ Nuclear terror continues.

🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Thank you to @SecDef and the people of the United States for your unwavering support! ¤ For more than 9 years, Ukraine has been fighting for its freedom and independence. ¤ And the #UAarmy needs weapons and ammunition to liberate our land and people. I’m grateful to our partners for their understanding of our needs and for the assistance they are providing.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1653838836823105552?s=20/photo/1
// Defense Budget

[Text:] S300 MILLION IN ADDITIONAL SECURITY ASSISTANCE FOR UKRAINE
Capabilities in this package include:

ADDITIONAL AMMUNITION for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
155mm HOWITZERS;
155mm ARTILLERY ROUNDS;
120mm, 81mm, and 60mm MORTAR ROUNDS;
AT-4 and CARL GUSTAF anti-armor weapon systems
HYDRA-70 aircraft rockets;
Small arms and small arms ammunition;
Demolition munitions for obstacle clearing;
Trucks and trailers to transport heavy equipment; Testing and diagnostic equipment to support
vehicle maintenance and repair;
Spare parts and other field equipment.

🐣 RT @mehdirhasan So we are seriously expected to believe that the Fox board fired Tucker Carlson for his ‘how white men fight’ text but not for all this stuff that he said in public, on air, on *their* network, for years and years? Seriously?
💽 https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1653792295433412610?s=20/photo/1
💽 https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1653598366876459010?s=20/photo/1

USEmbUA: Security Alert: Heightened Threat of Missile Attacks, Including in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast https://tinyurl.com/4559ck56

🐣 RT @NOELreports Good night, sleep well. ¤ I hope I’m wrong, but my gut tells me that we should expect a Russian attack this night in retaliation for what happened in Moscow today. ¤ Let’s hope we speak tomorrow without any of this!

CNN: Exclusive: Special counsel sat in on Pence’s testimony to federal grand jury https://tinyurl.com/5xau9np8

🐣 RT @justartsndstuff “Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Podolyak: ¤ The Kremlin’s statement about the drone over the Russian President’s residence points to the Russian leadership’s preparation of a large-scale terrorist attack.”

🧵 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Strelkov says some are arguing Russia will surrender by Autumn 2023 or latest Spring 2024 in a Khasavyurt accord redux: “The Russian Federation will have to agree to a ‘negotiation’ of such a kind that it will be a poorly disguised capitulation.”
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1653613914079514625?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ 🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem This, however, is not doomer enough for Strelkov, who says “There WILL BE NO ‘Khasavyurt-2.0’…we will be destroyed as a state and as a country, plunging into several regional wars at once, losing half (or more) of the territories and population…”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1653614462707068930?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem #pt Strelkov agrees that Russia will lose and surrender soon. His only argument is that it won’t be like Khasavyurt, but that the surrender will lead to the dismemberment and disappearance of Russia.

WSJ: Jeffrey Epstein Documents, Part 2: Dinners With Lawrence Summers and Movie Screenings With Woody Allen https://tinyurl.com/wa7374js
// 5/1/2023; Schedules and emails show deeper relationships between the disgraced financier and a range of prominent people, including the former Treasury secretary and the filmmaker
⇈ ⇊
WSJ: Epstein’s Private Calendar Reveals Prominent Names, Including CIA Chief, Goldman’s Top Lawyer https://tinyurl.com/4bfb4sjn
// 4/30/2023; Schedules and emails detail meetings in the years after he was a convicted sex offender; visitors cite his wealth and connections

🐣 RT @igornovikov This kremlin attack stinks of a false flag operation to justify whatever bloody theatrics they are planning for their victory day. Wonder if they’ll cancel the parade… 😆 ¤ PS the videos are beautiful though

🐣 RT @francis_scarr Astonishing footage of last night’s drone attack on the Kremlin
💽 https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1653734878075142150?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @APonomarenko The Kremlin under a drone attack. Something tells me that Putin’s three-days-long walk in the park to seize Kyiv is not going very well.
💽 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1653731384958017536?s=20/photo/1

💙 NYT, Thomas Edsall: Why Trump Won’t Let Go of His Dream of Domination https://tinyurl.com/2huzr4he Trump “harkens back to an older evolutionary paradigm for achieving status in primate groups. It is the paradigm of brute dominance…a proclivity whose primal appeal never seems to fade”
// tags: social evolution social anthropology language alpha male v beta males egotism coalitions cooperation Declaration of Independence authoritarianism norms polarization

My comment: Trump seems to have hijacked the use of insurrection AGAINST the alpha male by transforming himself into a victim and calling on a coalition of beta & gamma males to defend him. Clever feint, if one accepts the arguments in this piece.

Historically, the closest analogy I can think of would be movements to restore a “rightful” monarch (both alpha and victim). Such movements are powerful and have long memories (the French Dauphin, Bonny Prince Charlie, Anastasia of the Romanovs).

⭕ 2 May 2023

🐣 RT @United24media A massive fail for a Russian propagandist who tried to ask US Speaker of the House a question. We love to see it. ¤ Kevin McCarthy: “I support aid for Ukraine and don’t support what your country is doing to Ukraine, I don’t support your killing of the children either.”
💽 https://twitter.com/United24media/status/1653321129942036480?s=20/photo/1

📋 WaPo: Spike in Russian combat deaths fuels fears of worse carnage to come https://tinyurl.com/58ujavtf

The leaked U.S. intelligence assessment from late February says that American officials believed with “low confidence” that between 35,000 and 42,500 Russian soldiers had been killed at that stage of the war, with another 150,500 to 177,000 wounded. The same assessment listed Ukraine’s losses at between 15,500 and 17,000 dead after a year of war. Another 106,500 to 110,500 were believed to have been wounded.

🐣 RT @highbrow_nobrow 🚨”A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race.”
⋙ NYT: Carlson’s Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: ‘It’s Not How White Men Fight’ https://tinyurl.com/msse9v2b “For years, Mr. Carlson espoused views on his show that amplified the ideology of white nationalism. But the text message revealed more about his views on racial superiority”
// The discovery of the text message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Tucker Carlson’s firing.

WaPo: White House leaves door open to deal that resolves debt ceiling crisis https://tinyurl.com/ysrpwrtz The “wink wink, nudge nudge solution” or
McC: ♪ “Sometimes I think it’s a sin
When I feel like I’m winning, when I’m losing again”
// The president and House speaker could reach an agreement they both claim adheres to their incompatible negotiating positions

🔄 📋 AtlanticCouncil: Russia Sanctions Database https://tinyurl.com/yv9kybrs

🐣 RT @ArmedMaidan Hell ride to Bakhmut: This is what it looks like when democracy makes a stand against fascism and Ukraine fights for its freedom – and yours ¤ #UkraineRussiaWar️ #Bakhmut #Ukraine #Russia
💽 https://twitter.com/ArmedMaidan/status/1653481120640520213?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Blinken: Ukraine’s success on battlefield quickest way to ‘just and durable peace.’ ¤ US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Fox News on May 2 that Washington knew Ukraine was contemplating a counteroffensive “in the coming weeks,” and it was monitoring the course of events.
⋙ .KyivIndependent: Blinken: Ukraine’s success on battlefield quickest way to ‘just and durable peace’ https://tinyurl.com/4jvnubwd

🧵 RT @mbk_center [Khodorovsky] Not all tyrants are plucked from obscurity like Putin. Some, like Hitler, have relied on certain conditions in their rise to power. Paradoxically, while Putin did not come to power under conditions similar to Hitler’s, he is creating them in Russia now ¤ Striking observations >
📌 https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1653483208921731072?s=20

🧵 RT @VickerySec [5/29/2022: memes on this]
⋙ 🐣 RT @elonmusk Unless it is stopped, the woke mind virus will destroy civilization and humanity will never reached Mars
📌 https://twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1527477250718740480?s=20

⭕ 1 May 2023

🐣 RT @therecount When a Russian reporter asks him if the U.S. will send more weapons and aid to Ukraine, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — despite previously saying there should be no “blank check” — says he supports helping Ukraine: ¤ “I support aid for Ukraine … We will continue to support.”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1653052864447791105?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @MarkHertling I believe Ukraines’ upcoming offensive operation will achieve huge tactical and perhaps large operational success. ¤ But for those who believe it will be represented by large arrows on maps, that will not be indicative of this phase. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1653055180433244160?s=20

This will be a tough fight, with newly-formed Ukrainian units conducting (for the first time) large-scale combined arms breeches against prepared Russian defensive positions. ¤ This will be a new phase of the campaign that will be very different. 2/

My belief is that Ukraines’ forces will perform well (even better than before) & the Russian force will continue to perform poorly (though not as bad as they have in the past). ¤ That is partly due to switching roles (attacking vs defending, and time spent by each preparing). 3/

Both sides are now probing each other. ¤ Russia in the air (to determine Ukraine troop location & air defense positioning), Ukraine is starting to conduct Recon in Force (RIF) after months of intelligence prep of the battlefield & waiting for better weather. 4/

Be wary of those who are looking for big moves & huge or fast gains. ¤ That could happen in some areas, but pushing logistics to support the Ukraine offensive will be the big test for each side. ¤ This is where I believe Ukraine will out perform Russia, due to meticulous prep. 5/

Make no mistake, the next phase will likely be the toughest for both sides…and friction, fog & chance – as well as the commanders will & coup d’oeil (as described by Clausewitz) will play a part. ¤ The prepared side will carry the day. 6/6

⋙ 🐣 RT @AndropovPicov Great thread. Brings this to mind:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AndropovPicov/status/1653058347657236481?s=20/photo/1
// Eisenhower’s letter to troops be fore D-Day

🧵 RT @iimstewartson Imagine a bank was robbed 28 months ago and multiple people were murdered during the crime. ¤ What if people had warned the police about the robbery ahead of time and pointed out who the perpetrators would be but nothing was done to prevent it? ¤ That would be weird, right?
📌 https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1653159270861643776?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @iimstewartson […] A week before the insurrection, I wrote this thread and submitted numerous FBI tips along with my friends. ¤ Not only was there nothing done to prevent it, nothing has been done since except put a few foot soldiers in jail. ¤ Chris Wray knew. We told him. @POTUS #FireWray
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @iimstewartson [12/30/2020] OK, guys. I regret to inform you that the QAnon finale appears to have arrived. ¤ Here is the hashtag I will use for this part of our collective nightmare:
#tEhStorm 😑 1/
⋙⋙ 📌 https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1344478680542638081?s=20

🐣 RT @juliaioffe NSC spox John Kirby just told reporters that, according to U.S. intelligence, Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties in Bakhmut *just since December.* That includes over 20,000 killed. Over half of the casualties, Kirby said, were Wagner troops, many of whom are ex-convicts.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin’s update for April: concludes that Wagner is bloodless and unable to finish Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian side achieved its goal of holding out while preparing for an offensive. Practically no achievements by the Russian side during both winter and spring.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1652953765836738565?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom “Any outcome short of a Ukrainian victory would endanger the rest of the world. There is a reason,” @RadioFreeTom writes, “that so many nations, movements, and individuals are waiting to see what happens.” Read his report on our June cover story:
⋙ TheAtlantic: The World Awaits Ukraine’s Counteroffensive https://tinyurl.com/maxcyjy9
// As the country approaches a battle for its ultimate fate, democracy and Western civilization hang in the balance.

The democracies face a coming year of decision. In the next 12 to 18 months, we will know whether Americans have the collective will to resist yet another attempt to hand power to a would-be autocrat; as astonishing as it seems, one of the likely presidential candidates in the 2024 election is a man who incited a violent attack against the government and the Constitution of the United States. We will also know whether the free world (and yes, it’s long past time to start using that expression again) has the will to resist the onslaught of Russian butchery in Europe.

These two battles are inextricably linked. If America stumbles even deeper into authoritarian darkness than it already has, Ukraine is lost. If Ukraine is lost, Europe and the West face an existential threat not only to our physical security but also to our democratic civilization.

As Jeffrey Goldberg notes in his editor’s introduction to the June issue, The Atlantic went to Ukraine because the war there “is about much more than Ukraine; it is about the very subjects that animate this magazine: democracy, freedom, justice, humanism.” In Kherson, he and Anne were interviewing Ukrainian soldiers when the Russians bombed a nearby supermarket parking lot, the kind of indiscriminate attack that reinforces the stakes for Ukraine and the world. The Russian missile, Jeff writes, “was meant to murder and terrorize; mission accomplished.”

And this is what the Russian war on Ukraine has become: a campaign of revenge by an infuriated despot who is determined to show that democracy will bow to dictatorship, even if he has to bomb every home and kill every Ukrainian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, of course, is trapped in a vortex of his own grandiose miscalculations and strategic ineptitude. He expected Ukraine to collapse within hours of his first attacks more than a year ago. As the Ukrainian defense minister told Anne and Jeff, so did the U.S. and NATO, who expected a war between “a big Soviet army fighting a small Soviet army” and thought that the “big” Soviet army would win.

I made the same miscalculation in my early analyses of the conflict. As we now know, however, the Russian military had for years managed to hide its shocking incompetence and poor logistics from the world—and especially from Putin, whose small circle of sycophants was too terrified to tell him the truth. … Putin has apparently decided that he must destroy what he once hoped to possess whole. He will rule over whatever is left—and then continue his attempted march westward. …

[W]ithout a powerful counteroffensive and eventual victory, there can be no peace in Ukraine, and no stability in Europe or the world. What does “victory” mean? Obviously, the survival of an independent Ukraine is the immediate goal, but a lasting peace has to mean more than living through successive Russian conquests and partitions. The Ukrainians, who have lost so much already, are unlikely to accept such an unjust truce, even if the Russians had any interest in offering one. If the Ukrainians lose sovereign territory, if they are not safe from Russian attack, and if there is no reckoning with Russian war criminals, then any Ukrainian “victory” is just a temporary respite from another round of Russian aggression. …

🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Long but important piece about the US and Ukrainian role in the battle for freedom and democracy globally. Ukrainians are dying in this cause; what we’re asked is to get them the weapons to win decisively. “Arsenal of Democracy” is a proud U.S. role.
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg: THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE https://tinyurl.com/29456hdj
// The future of the democratic world will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a stalemate with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out of Crimea for good.

[…] But something even deeper is at stake as well. As Zelensky put it, this is a war over a fundamental definition of not just democracy but civilization, a battle “to show everybody else, including Russia, to respect sovereignty, human rights, territorial integrity; and to respect people, not to kill people, not to rape women, not to kill animals, not to take that which is not yours.” If a Ukraine that believes in the rule of law and human rights can achieve victory against a much larger, much more autocratic society, and if it can do so while preserving its own freedoms, then similarly open societies and movements around the world can hope for success too. After the Russian invasion, the Venezuelan opposition movement hung a Ukrainian flag on the front of its country’s embassy hall in Washington. The Taiwanese Parliament gave a rapturous welcome to Ukrainian activists last year. Not everyone in the world cares about this war, but for anyone trying to defeat a dictator, it has profound significance.

America is linked to the war in this deeper sense. The civilization that Ukraine defends has been profoundly shaped by American ideas not just about democracy, but about entrepreneurship, liberty, civil society, and the rule of law. When we asked Zelensky about Ukraine’s tech sector, he happily began talking about his dream of building a university devoted to computer science, and about the projects created by his country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, among them a unique app that allows Ukrainians to store documents on their phones, a godsend for refugees. He talks more readily about Silicon Valley than he does about Potemkin’s bones, and no wonder: The former defines the world he wants to live in. ¤ Zelensky did not share our preoccupation with the history of Russian imperial desire. “I don’t love the past,” he said. “We have to jump forward, not back.” …

The status of this particular drone workshop might confuse Americans who think that “the military” is a unitary institution, or that “defense production” is something that involves billion-dollar companies. The patron of this project is a former Ukrainian-special-forces commander and current member of Parliament, Colonel Roman Kostenko. The “employees” are all engineers, now mobilized into the army as pilots and designers of drones. The financing is private, and the entire enterprise is based on the belief that if Ukraine can’t compete with Russian quantity, it can exceed Russian quality: “The only way we can win is by being smarter,” Kostenko told us. He said he speaks regularly with the military leadership, though he is no longer in the chain of command. “It’s not Lockheed Martin,” he said, surveying the room. But when we pointed out that Lockheed Martin probably started this way too, he agreed.

… Along with similar teams around the country, the team here also works on new kinds of drones that can do new things, including carrying out sophisticated electronic warfare and underwater attacks, all at relatively low cost. Kostenko described a drone that he said had destroyed 24 pieces of enemy equipment, including tanks.

But this basement-and-garage-based Ukrainian tech army doesn’t just build drones; it also builds the software that coordinates the work of the drones. Sometimes it does so in partnership with NGOs, not companies; an executive at one of these groups described the software it develops as “an invention, not a product”—and, more important, as an invention that is constantly being redesigned. One widely used program collects information and distributes it to the laptops and tablets of ordinary soldiers up and down the front line, providing the situational awareness that has been one of Ukraine’s unexpected advantages. A tiny command post we visited had a bank of screens, each showing a different view of the battlefield.

Several foreign companies cooperate too. The most advanced, such as Palantir, the U.S.-based software and defense company, have software that can draw on multiple data sources—commercial-satellite images, reports from partisans—to identify and prioritize targets. This form of “algorithmic warfare” isn’t new, but the Ukrainians have the incentive to develop and expand it: Lacking warehouses full of spare ammunition, they have to hit the largest number of enemy vehicles with the smallest number of missiles.

Maxwell Adams, an engineer at Helsing, a European defense-tech company working pro bono in Ukraine, told us that the Ukrainians impressed his team with their ability to use everything available, from simple messaging apps to sophisticated artillery, all in unpredictable conditions. Together with their Ukrainian colleagues, his employees work to “get our software to run right on the edge, meaning on tiny little computer chips on the back of a rusty old vehicle, or in the backpack of a soldier, or on the payload of a drone.” The Ukrainians “absolutely get how to make AI operational,” he said.

They also get the need to use whatever they have. Reznikov described the combination of weaponry that the Ukrainians have received from dozens of different countries as a “zoo,” a menagerie of weapons (“We have approximately 10 systems of artillery,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers), and they all have to be made to work together, under conditions of limited ammunition, limited manpower, and sometimes limited satellite connection.

This high-tech world exists alongside and within an extraordinarily diverse citizens’ army, one that includes NATO-trained officers; grandfathers guarding their own villages; and every conceivable level of training, experience, and equipment in between. …

The old Ukrainian army had been shaped by years of negative selection, attracting the least educated and the least ambitious. The new one is now being shaped by the best educated and the most ambitious. In recent months, that army has evolved even further. In training camps in NATO countries, Ukrainian troops are learning to use Western battle tanks, to operate new kinds of artillery, and above all to carry out the combined-arms operations that will be part of the summer offensive—to achieve “interoperability,” as Reznikov put it, at a level the army has never previously attempted.

Sometimes, the war is described as a battle between autocracy and democracy, or between dictatorship and freedom. In truth, the differences between the two opponents are not merely ideological, but also sociological. Ukraine’s struggle against Russia pits a heterarchy against a hierarchy. An open, networked, flexible society—one that is both stronger at the grassroots level and more deeply integrated with Washington, Brussels, and Silicon Valley than anyone realized—is fighting a very large, very corrupt, top-down state. On one side, farmers defend their land and 20‑something engineers build eyes in the sky, using tools that would be familiar to 20‑something engineers anywhere else. On the other side, commanders send waves of poorly armed conscripts to be slaughtered—just as Stalin once sent shtrafbats, penal battalions, against the Nazis—under the leadership of a dictator obsessed with ancient bones. “The choice,” Zelensky told us, “is between freedom and fear.”

Versions of these two civilizations still exist within Ukrainian society too, though the division is not ethnic or linguistic. It is now exceedingly rare to find Ukrainians who describe themselves as “pro-Russian,” even in the Russian-speaking east. The streets in the center of Russian-speaking Odesa are lined with Ukrainian flags; Odesa’s mayor, the Russian-speaking Gennadiy Trukhanov, told us he believes Ukrainians are “the front line of the struggle for the civilized world.” But autocratic, top-down, hierarchical ways of doing things are hard to discard, especially in state institutions. The instinct to control and centralize decision making remains. Citizens’ groups and volunteers have arisen around the military partly to combat the vestiges of Soviet bureaucracy. …

… Some of them have an almost mystical faith that it’s their country’s turn on the world stage. Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, told us that victory is “very near,” that you can “feel it in the atmosphere.” Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, talks about “history turning its wheels,” a process that cannot be stopped. …

But what is “victory”? That’s the question asked repeatedly of every American official, of every pundit, at every public debate dedicated to Ukraine, often in a querulous, demanding tone, as if this were a question difficult to answer. In Ukraine itself—in the office of the president, in the defense ministry, in the foreign ministry, in private apartments, on the front line—the question isn’t perceived to be difficult at all.

Victory means, first, that Ukraine retains sovereign control of all of the territory that lies within its internationally recognized borders, including land taken by Russia since 2014: Donetsk, Luhansk, Melitopol, Mariupol, Crimea. “Every centimeter of our 603,550 square kilometers,” Kuleba says. Ukrainians believe that the de facto ceding of territory to Russia in 2014 gave Putin the idea that he could take more, and they don’t want to repeat the error. Instead of ending the conflict, a cease-fire that leaves large chunks of Ukraine under Russian control could give him an incentive to regroup, rearm, and try again. …

Victory means, second, that Ukrainians are safe. Safe from terrorist attacks, safe from shelling, safe from missiles lobbed at supermarket parking lots. Zelensky talks about safety “for everything. From schools to technologies, for everything in the education sphere, in medicine, in the streets. That is the idea. For energy. For everything.” Safety means that the airports reopen, the refugees return, foreign investment resumes, and buildings can be rebuilt without fear that another Russian missile will knock them down. To achieve this kind of safety, Ukraine, again, will need more than a cease-fire. The country will have to be embedded in some security structure reliable enough to be trusted, something that resembles NATO, if not NATO itself. Ukraine will also have to reconceive itself as a frontline state like Israel or South Korea, with a world-class defense industry and a large standing army. Deterrence is the most important guarantee of peace.

Victory means, third, some kind of justice. Justice for the victims of the war, for the people who lost their homes or limbs, for the children who have been taken from their parents. Justice might be delivered in different ways: through reparations, through the transfer of captured or sanctioned Russian assets, or through the International Criminal Court, which recently issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the crime of kidnapping Ukrainian children and deporting them to Russia. More important than the means of justice is the perception of justice—neither Putin nor Russia can enjoy impunity. Victims need the acknowledgment that they were unfairly targeted. Until this kind of justice is achieved, millions of people will not feel that the war ended, and will not stop trying to seek reparations or revenge.

Victory can be defined. But can it be achieved? Part of the answer is military, technical, logistical. Part of the answer, however, is political and even psychological. The Ukrainian theory of victory includes all of these elements.

In Russian history, military victory has often reinforced autocracy. Potemkin’s conquests reinforced Catherine the Great. Stalin’s defeat of Hitler reinforced his own regime. By contrast, military failure has often inspired political change. Russian losses to Germany during World War I helped launch the Russian Revolution. Russian losses in Afghanistan in the 1980s helped trigger the reforms of the Gorbachev years, which in turn led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. …

Ukrainians need a military success … , one with enough symbolic power to force change in Russia. This might not mean a revolution, or even a change of leadership. Zelensky believes the West spends too much time thinking about Putin, worrying about what’s inside his head. “It’s not about him,” he told us. Kuleba, the foreign minister, says he thinks the future of Russia is unknowable, so there is no point in speculating about what it would or should be. “The capacity of the best analysts to foresee the future under these circumstances is largely overestimated,” he told us. “Will it fall apart?” he asked rhetorically. “Will there be a regime change? Will the regime be forced to focus on its internal problems, meaning that the potential for external aggressive policies will decline?”

Only one thing matters: Russia’s leaders must conclude that the war was a mistake, and Russia must acknowledge Ukraine as an independent country with the right to exist. The Russian elite, in other words, must experience an internal shift of the kind that led the French to end their colonial project in Algeria in the early 1960s—a change that was accompanied by the collapse of the French constitutional order, attempted assassinations, and a failed coup d’état. A slower but equally profound shift took place in Britain in the early 20th century, when the British ruling class was forced to stop talking about the Irish as peasants incapable of running their own state, and let them create one. When that happens in Russia, the war will be over. Not suspended, not delayed for a month or a year—over. …

[T]he strongest symbol is Crimea. The annexation of Crimea in 1783 inspired Putin’s love of Potemkin. Putin’s own occupation and annexation of Crimea, in 2014, rejuvenated his presidency. The slogan “Krym Nash”—“Crimea Is Ours”—spread across Russia in a burst of imperialist emotion and Soviet nostalgia, reproduced on posters and T‑shirts, inspiring a slew of memes. This year Putin marked the anniversary of the annexation by visiting the peninsula, walking stiffly around a children’s center and an art school in the company of local officials.

Crimea became a symbol for Ukrainians too. The 2014 invasion marked the start of the Russian war on Ukraine; the subsequent annexation warned Ukrainians that the international legal system would not protect them. The history of the Crimean Tatars, a Muslim people who constituted the majority of the peninsula’s population before Potemkin arrived, echoes the history of the rest of the country: The Tatars were the targets of repression, intimidation, and ethnic cleansing under both czarist and Soviet rule. In 1944, Stalin deported all of them, some 200,000 people, to Central Asia. They returned only after 1989. …

Knowing that Crimea is being built into a fortress, the Ukrainians talk about the “political military” liberation of Crimea, not a purely military counteroffensive. Once they have cut off the roads, railroads, and waterways to the peninsula, and targeted the military infrastructure with drones, the presumption is that many Russian inhabitants, especially recent immigrants, will become convinced that they would be better off living somewhere else. Some have reportedly fled already, following an explosion on the Kerch Strait Bridge (which connects Crimea to Russia) and other explosions on the peninsula. “Crimea we will take without a fight,” Reznikov told us. …

Regarding Crimea, the difference between the two civilizations is stark. For Russia, Crimea is and always will be a military base. For Ukraine, “Crimea is a place of diversity—our bridge to the global South.” Tasheva wants to build better road connections to Europe, restore destroyed Tatar monuments, and revitalize the use of the Ukrainian and Tatar languages on the peninsula. Plans to reverse environmental damage, reduce the use of fossil fuels, and revive cultural festivals have been drawn up, printed out, translated into English. If set into motion, they would undo not just Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, but Potemkin’s annexation in 1783.

Do Americans share that vision? It is true that the U.S. has supported Ukraine, not a traditional American ally, at a level that was also once unimaginable, comparable only to the Lend-Lease program of World War II. We have provided Ukraine with intelligence and weapons, taken care of Ukrainian refugees, put strict sanctions on Russia. So far, there has been no secondary disaster. Despite a thousand predictions to the contrary, Europeans did not freeze to death last winter when they were compelled to seek alternatives to Russian gas. World War III did not break out. But over the next few months, as the Ukrainians take their best shot at winning the war, the democratic world will have to decide whether to help them do so. Sovereignty, safety, and justice—shouldn’t Americans want the war to end that way too?

Of course. That is what any senior official in the Biden administration, any European foreign minister, would say if asked on the record. Privately, answers are less clear. The support the U.S. has given Ukraine so far has been enough to help its army hold off Russia, enough to take back Kherson and some territory in the Kharkiv region. But America has not yet given Ukraine fighter jets or its most advanced long-range missiles. Nor is it clear that everyone in Washington, Brussels, or Paris believes it is either possible or desirable for Ukraine to take back all of the territory lost since February 2022, let alone territory taken in 2014.…

… [T]he Ukrainians aren’t the only ones hoping that their success can support and sustain a civilizational change. Russia, as it is currently governed, is a source of instability not just in Ukraine but around the world. Russian mercenaries prop up dictatorships in Africa; Russian hackers undermine political debate and elections all across the democratic world. The investments of Russian companies keep dictators in power in Minsk, in Caracas, in Tehran. A Ukrainian victory would immediately inspire people fighting for human rights and the rule of law, wherever they are. In a recent conversation in Washington, a Belarusian activist spoke about his organization’s plans to reactivate the Belarusian opposition movement. For the moment, it is still working in secret, underground. “Everyone is waiting for the counteroffensive,” he said.

And he is right. Ukrainians are waiting for the counteroffensive. Europeans, East and West, are waiting for the counteroffensive. Central Asians are waiting for the counteroffensive. Belarusians, Venezuelans, Iranians, and others around the world whose dictatorships are propped up by the Russians—they are all waiting for the counteroffensive too. This spring, this summer, this autumn, Ukraine gets a chance to alter geopolitics for a generation. And so does the United States.⚜️

⭕ 30 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @GeorgeArtwell Casablanca, Ukraine #NAFO
💽 https://twitter.com/GeorgeArtwell/status/1652761317088940033?s=20/photo/1

💙 WaPo, EJ Dionne: Biden is inviting us to argue about freedom. We should. https://tinyurl.com/44x9m9yj 1) For women to make own health choices, 2) From fear of gun violence, 3) To vote & have that vote counted, 4) For seniors to live in dignity, 5) To have a fair shot at a good life

Biden’s video opened with the word “freedom,” used it four more times and threw in a mention of “bedrock freedoms” for good measure. During a 90-second campaign ad that followed, the word was mentioned six times. In addition, the video declared: “Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency.”

You can get a feel for where Biden is going when he explains what “basic freedoms” he has in mind: “The freedom for women to make their own health-care decisions, the freedom for our children to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to vote and have your vote counted. For seniors to live with dignity, and to give every American the freedom that comes with a fair shot at building a good life.”

TheAtlantic, Conor Friedersdorf: Ron DeSantis’s Orwellian Redefinition of Freedom https://tinyurl.com/3f7vtnmy “The [Disney] case will subject DeSantis’s understanding of freedom and what protecting it requires to the crucible of constitutional law”
// Disney’s lawsuit will put the Florida governor’s understanding of freedom to the constitutional test. And his position will likely shatter.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has long presented himself as a principled champion of “freedom.” In Congress, he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. He refers to himself as “governor of the free state of Florida.” And while laying the groundwork for a possible presidential run, he is promoting a book on his approach that he titled The Courage to Be Free. …

On Wednesday, Florida’s biggest employer, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, filed a lawsuit alleging that DeSantis is violating its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. According to the complaint, “a targeted campaign of government retaliation—orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech—now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights.”

The case will subject DeSantis’s understanding of freedom and what protecting it requires to the crucible of constitutional law. And his position is likelier to shatter than to withstand the heat.

“The facts and law in this case are not good for Governor DeSantis,” former Representative Justin Amash, who was also a member of the Freedom Caucus, said on Twitter. “He and his allies took action not to make all companies live by the same rules but instead to target Disney with harsh conditions that apply to Disney alone—all as punishment for constitutionally protected speech.”. …

In Charleston last week, DeSantis questioned the legitimacy of seeking change through civil society rather than elected legislatures, a practice that is inextricable from life in a liberal democracy. According to DeSantis, the “constitutional” way to change policy is, “You run elections and you can put people [in office] to influence policy.” Woke companies, in contrast, “know their policies would never be able to pass muster at the ballot box. So what they’re trying to do is an end run around the constitutional system, use their economic power to impose these policies outside the normal system,” with no electoral recourse. “If you want to preserve freedom in this country,” he said, “we need to be fighting back against woke capital.”

But working for cultural change through nongovernmental institutions and associations is not an end run around the constitutional system––the Constitution explicitly protects our ability to associate with whomever we like and to speak collectively on behalf of or against any policy or practice, whether as Disney or Hobby Lobby, the ACLU or the NRA, Dylan Mulvaney or Matt Walsh. In our constitutional system, politicians who don’t like that cannot lawfully do anything about it. …

WaPo Editorial: Florida’s surgeon general played loose with facts about vaccine risk https://tinyurl.com/3rttwwyv “[T]e analysis was altered by Dr. [Joseph] Ladapo to emphasize the risks. Five previous drafts of the analysis — before he edited it — did not reach such a conclusion”

[…] Dr. Ladapo, appointed in 2021 by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a well-known vaccine skeptic and critic of the pharmaceutical industry who has also questioned pandemic lockdowns and face masks, and was an advocate for the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to fight covid-19 — a drug that studies showed to be useless against the coronavirus.

The first draft of the Florida analysis concluded there was “no increase” in the risk of cardiac-related deaths from the mRNA vaccine, and by the fifth draft, it still said there was “no increased risk for cardiac mortality following mRNA vaccinations.” But version six, the one edited by Dr. Ladapo and released to the public, warned “covid-19 vaccination was associated with a modestly increased risk for cardiac-related mortality 28 days following vaccination.” The sixth version had a notation that it contained “Dr. L’s edits,” according to Politico.

Moreover, in the second draft of the analysis, the authors attempted to balance the risk of cardiac-related death against the risk of death from coronavirus infection. They found the risk of death was higher from infection than from vaccination for all age groups, including young men. But this text and analysis disappeared from the report in subsequent drafts. The final report also made no mention of a sensitivity analysis performed by the authors which called into question the reliability of the results.

“This is not how science or evidence-based policy is done,” say epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina and physician Kristen Panthagani, who dissected the changes.

By playing loose with the facts, Dr. Ladapo cast doubt on the safety of the coronavirus vaccines. His misdirection contributed to vaccine hesitancy, and that, in turn, led to a higher pandemic death toll. His actions also underscore how anti-vaccine activists create fear and suspicion. Rather than rely upon scientifically sound research, they traffic in half-truths and unsubstantiated declarations. In so doing, Dr. Ladapo betrayed the trust of the people of Florida and the nation.

⭕ 29 Apr 2023

🧵 RT @igorsushko 🚨#Bakhmut may very well end up being the catalyst for a Russian civil war.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1652399267179565057?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 1) Putin has ordered that Bakhmut must be taken by May 8th, in time for the Soviet Victory Day parade on May 9th. He has threatened Shoigu and others with dire consequences.
2) Prigozhin has Putin’s blessing as head of Wagner PMC, a mercenary group established and largely controlled by the FSB & GRU (Russian Military Intelligence).
3) Army and intel services famously hate each other. The jockeying for power between the various factions has been ongoing.
4) Expect Wagner PMC to retreat from Bakhmut in the coming days to completely screw over Shoigu and the Russian army. This is a perfect way for Prigozhin to setup Shoigu and other generals.
5) For May 9th, Ukrainians may end up controlling all of Bakhmut, and possibly much, much more. This would have highly unpredictable domino effects domestically in Russia.
6) Right now, the Russian Game of Thrones is just backstabbing, scheming in the shadows, assassinations, and so on. But Bakhmut may turn out to be the catalyst to ignite a ‘hot’ civil war among the factions in Russia.

⋙ Just published by Osechkin:
“We are witnessing the process of closing down the Wagner PMC and ending the use of Yevgeny Prigozhin for military purposes. The coming weeks will show a lot. The source reports that dozens of search warrants have already been prepared for Prigozhin’s and his associates’ residences. There is also information about a series of searches of Wagner PMC members, seizures of unregistered weapons and interrogations about Wagner PMC’s war crimes.”

It appears the Kremlin and Defence Ministry want to maximally distance themselves from Prigozhin’s war crimes.

This begs the question – why wouldn’t Prigozhin give up Bakhmut and royally screw over Shoigu and the entire MoD for May 9th?

⋙ Just in from Osechkin:
Prigozhin has not been invited to the May 9th Soviet Victory Parade on the Red Square. Wagner PMC will have no presence at the parade in any form whatsoever, including simple attendance.

According to Osechkin’s sources, FSB investigators are collecting criminal evidence against Prigozhin and Utkin through interrogations Wagner members. Several Wagner members are already in prison.

Prigozhin claims to have kompromat on Shoigu, Ivanov (deputy Defence Minister), and Tsallikov (deputy Defence Minister) at the Defence Ministry and appears to be blackmailing them.

He has already publicly thrown under the bus several officials who were his accomplices at the MoD , including deputy Defence Minister Mizintsev and Surovikin, former Commander of the Russian forces for invasion of Ukraine demoted back in January 2023.

⋙ On why Prigozhin publicized Putin spokesman Peskov’s son, Nikolai Peskov, as a Wagner PMC mercenary artillerist in Ukraine: ¤ It’s a made up story and not true, but an attempt by Prigozhin to establish leverage with the power players. He is offering a service to Russian politicians to avoid domestic public criticism of hypocrisy about how their own sons are not serving as soldiers in the war by falsifying their participation as Wagner mercenaries.

⭕ 28 Apr 2023

NYT: Prosecutors in Jan. 6 Case Step up Inquiry Into Trump Fund-Raising https://tinyurl.com/3mr5j22k
// The Justice Department has been gathering evidence about whether the former president and his allies solicited donations with claims of election fraud they knew to be false.

As they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.

The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory. …

The possibility that the fund-raising efforts might have been criminally fraudulent was first raised last year by the House select committee investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power. …

… [P]rosecutors have developed more information than the House committee did, having targeted communications between Trump campaign aides and other Republican officials to determine if a barrage of fund-raising solicitations sent out after the election were knowingly misleading, according to the three people familiar with the matter. …

Prosecutors have also been examining the plan to assemble alternate slates of pro-Trump electors from swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the broader push by Mr. Trump to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.

On Thursday, former Vice President Mike Pence, a key witness to Mr. Trump’s efforts, testified for hours to the grand jury gathering evidence in the investigation. …

Prosecutors have been looking at the nexus between research the Trump campaign commissioned almost immediately after the election to try to prove widespread fraud, public statements that he and his allies made at the time, the fund-raising efforts and the establishment of Save America. ¤ The Washington Post reported earlier on the efforts by the campaign to fund research into claims of fraud and the new round of subpoenas.

The Washington Post reported earlier on the efforts by the campaign to fund research into claims of fraud and the new round of subpoenas. …

Immediately after the election, an adviser to the Trump campaign reached out to Ken Block, the owner of a Rhode Island-based firm, Simpatico Software Systems, to have him evaluate specific allegations of fraud.

Mr. Block ended up researching multiple claims of possible fraud that Mr. Trump’s aides brought to him. He never produced a final report. But each time he investigated a claim, he said in an interview, he found there was nothing to it.

Mr. Block said he had disproved “everything that came in and found no substantive fraud sufficient to overturn an election result.” He said he was isolated from what was taking place within the campaign, as Mr. Trump railed at aides about staying in office and continued to insist he had won an election that he was repeatedly told he had lost.

“I was kept very walled off from all of the insanity,” said Mr. Block, whose firm was paid $735,000, records show. He received a subpoena for documents, but declined in the interview to discuss anything related to the grand jury.

Days after starting to work with Mr. Block and Simpatico, the Trump campaign hired a second firm, the Berkeley Research Group. The federal grand jury has received evidence that Berkeley was hired at the suggestion of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who was overseeing the political operation.

The grand jury has been asking questions related to whether Mr. Trump was briefed on findings by Berkeley suggesting there had been no widespread fraud.

The company ultimately submitted a report indicating there had been no fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election, and was paid roughly $600,000 for its work. …
During the House Jan. 6 committee’s proceedings last year, several people close to Mr. Trump testified that they had informed him that there had been no fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the voting.

Within two weeks of the election, the Trump campaign’s own communications staff drafted an internal report debunking many aspects of a conspiracy theory that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had been hacked and used to flip votes away from Mr. Trump. That report was written before pro-Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani promoted the false Dominion story at news conferences and on television. …

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski I swear we had this amazing whistleblower who was going to finally reveal all to the world but we just can’t find him.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1651912349035503619?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @gatewaypundit Whistleblower Who Was Reportedly About to Reveal “Explosive” Information On the Biden Crime Family’s Corruption Has Disappeared

🐣 RT @alegalnerd As @AWeissmann_ states: Trump’s embracing insurrectionists who violently attacked the Capitol is additional evidence he intended to incite imminent and likely violence–an insurrection–by his speech and tweets on Jan. 6th. 18 USC 2383 beyond a reasonable doubt. [ https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2383 ]

18 USC 2383: 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.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

⋙ 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “[Trump’s] own direct actions where he is embracing, literally embracing people who participated, and saying they should be pardoned… he’s making it impossible to come up with any sort of plausible defense to a jury on this” – @AWeissmann_ w/ @NicolleDWallace

WaPo: Republican debt-limit rhetoric isn’t as potent as it used to be https://tinyurl.com/yw4j6yzv The debt limit was never like a spending limit on a credit card. “The money was spent; the question now was whether you were going to obliterate your credit score”
// Americans are increasingly likely to support clean debt-limit hikes

🐣 RT @SpencerGuard The West (and mainly the U.S) should provide Ukraine F-16s, ATACMS, more MLRS and artillery systems, 10x more ammo, more tanks, IFVs, APCs, trucks, and much more.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @richardbranson As missiles hurtle down on blocks of flats in Kyiv, one thing is so important. As President @ZelenskyyUa said, no one can expect Ukraine to fly and push Russia out with one clipped wing. Give Ukraine whatever wings they need. As quickly as possible.
⋙⋙ TheEconomist: The West should supply Ukraine with F-16s https://tinyurl.com/y3kca8vb
// Or Russian fighter jets may win control of Ukrainian skies

🐣 RT @mbk_center The destruction caused to Mariupol is heartbreaking and infuriating. ¤ There should be no doubt that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, he will go further into Europe.
💽 https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1652047216360685569?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, George Will: Voters do not want a Biden-Trump rematch. A third option might appeal. https://tinyurl.com/5422evcx
// 4/28/2023;
¤ Link to my comment: https://tinyurl.com/ys5n7zm3

Comment: The 10th Amendment led to the inevitability of two parties as it established the foundation of federalism: the struggle between national versus states’ prerogatives. For a long time, the Republican party was the states’ rights party. That may be in flux now, with Democrats claiming states’ rights to defy national abortion mandates, but the structure is baked in.

Third parties exist mainly as spoilers and helped defeat both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. No Labels, according to The Lincoln Project, is funded by rich Republicans intending to draw votes away from Biden. The point is this: Third parties don’t win. The question becomes: Who do they cause to lose?

🐣 RT @judgeluttig @tribelaw and I are in complete agreement on Congress’ indisputable constitutional power to legislate ethical standards of conduct that would be binding as to the non-judicial conduct and activities of the Supreme Court.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Congress has ample power to enact ethical standards to govern the non-judicial conduct of SCOTUS Justices, derived from the Necessary & Proper Cl of Art I, Sec 8, coupled with Art III, Sec 1’s vesting of the judicial power in one Supreme Court. Such a code would enhance, not erode, the currently endangered independent judiciary.

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just watch, Fox News isn’t even close to being done wreaking havoc on our democracy. They’ll replace that lying jackass with someone far worse in an effort to get those MAGA ratings back.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BGrueskin The cataclysmic drop in Fox’s 8 pm audience:HALF (not a typo) of the viewers have left in the few days post-Tucker. Via @oliverdarcy https://tinyurl.com/46e5ajnf
◕ https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1651922249241227266?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @andrewmichta Since my last post about how democracies need to move urgently to wartime production of weapons and munitions has generated a lot of comments and questions, let me elaborate as to why I believe this should be our top priority, and why every citizen should speak up on this issue.1/7
📌 https://twitter.com/andrewmichta/status/1651984892979281921?s=20
⋙ 🐣 […] RT @andrewmichta I don’t care how much a country spends on defense in GDP percentage terms. I care what it spends it on. If the majority of your country’s defense spending goes to personnel costs, retirement, etc. you are not contributing to allied defense. You bring little to the fight. 5/7
⋙ 🐣 RT @andrewmichta Before it’s too late our gov’ts need to switch to wartime defense production—to build weapons and munitions, not “just-in-time” but “just-in-case.” We must rearm our countries so that should the worst happen democracies will prevail. 7/End

NYT: U.S. Wires Ukraine With Radiation Sensors to Detect Nuclear Blasts https://tinyurl.com/tprzpcss “Public knowledge of such defensive planning, nuclear experts say, can deter Moscow by letting it know that Washington can expose what is called a false-flag operation”
// The federal National Nuclear Security Administration is setting up an advanced network that can verify an attacker’s identity.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1250 UTC 28 APL/ While UKR Lines of Communication & Supply (LOCS) are assessed as secure, heavy fighting is ongoing in the city and adjoining suburbs. RU forces have expanded control of the NW urban area. UKR air defense downed six Russian UAVs of various types.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1651930610099793920?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua Ukraine and the Czech Republic have prepared six projects for the joint production of weapons and ammunition, training aircraft and tank repair with the possibility of full implementation of production works on Ukrainian territory – Petr Pavel

🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger Has anyone noticed the Russia defenders and alt right getting mad when you point out that Russia is losing the war? It’s obviously losing. ¤ Weirdly they are trying to convince us that Russia isn’t losing. There is no metric where Russia is not losing. ¤ Losers like Russia lose.

🧵 RT @generalsvr_en #Putin demands results ¤ Yesterday was a very busy day for a man who resembles the president of #Russia. The Russian president’s double was even used in such a representative international event as the ceremony on the occasion of… 1/11
📌 https://twitter.com/generalsvr_en/status/1651858813400629248?s=20

⋙ 🐣 RT @generalsvr_en The [real] president opened the meeting with the military with the words: “It’s almost midnight, but still no Artemovsk (#Putin calls #Bakhmut like that). Where the fuck is Artemovsk? Has it already been liberated?” Representatives of the military leadership assured him that… 4/11
⋙ 🐣 RT @generalsvr_en all imaginable and unimaginable efforts were being made to ensure that Artemovsk was liberated in the next few days, but that they could “guarantee” its liberation only by May 9. #Putin asked what was happening in other directions and received a vague answer that… 5/11
⋙ 🐣 RT @generalsvr_en This is affecting his perception of reality. He is no longer immersed in the state of affairs at the front but only demands results. The situation in #Russia is of little interest him. All the problems, in his opinion, will soon become a real boon for the country. 11/11

Informatión: Defense confirms: Russia had special vessel near Nord Stream’s detonation point https://tinyurl.com/tm6t5mu4 “The…special craft SS-750, which has a mini-submarine on board, was photographed [4 days before] near the place where the Nord Stream pipes were sabotaged”
// [Tr] The Russian special craft SS-750, which has a mini-submarine on board, was photographed near the place where the Nord Stream pipes were sabotaged, the Defense Command confirms

The Russian special vessel SS-750 was near the Nord Stream pipes four days before the pipes were blown up on September 26 last year. The special vessel is designed to carry out operations under the sea and has a mini submarine of the AS-26 Priz type on board.

The Norwegian Defense Command confirms in a response to a document inspection that 26 photos of the Russian vessel were taken from a Danish patrol boat that was in the area east of Bornholm on 22 September 2022. ¤ “It’s incredibly interesting. The SS-750 is a special vessel that is designed precisely for underwater operations,’ says the Swedish researcher, Russia expert and intelligence expert Joakim von Braun.

🖼 WaPo: Newly released White House photos capture the day bin Laden was killed https://tinyurl.com/45jf5tj5

⭕ 27 Apr 2023

NYT: Joe Biden and the Struggle for America’s Soul https://tinyurl.com/2pauhn4e “The contest between Biden and Trumpism is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one”

🐣 RT @harrylitman We’re so close to events that some times it’s hard to see their significance. The former VPOTUS just testified in a criminal investigation of his former POTUS. That is basically breathtaking.

🐣 Narcan should be in every medicine cabinet and widely available free of charge ~ right alongside “Plan B” which is an emergency contraceptive (not an abortifacient), also available free

🐣 RT @ukraine_world The total cost of restoring Ukraine, according to the latest joint estimate with the EU, is 411 billion US dollars, and this figure is growing with each shelling by Russia, — the Head of the Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa. #RussianWarCrimes

🐣 RT @BLaw (Bloomberg) US District Judge Mark Walker has previously shown little sympathy for Gov. DeSantis’s policy objectives in the past.
⋙ Bloomberg: Disney Suit Against DeSantis Assigned to Obama-Appointed Judge https://tinyurl.com/45jx869v
// Walt Disney Co.’s lawsuit against Ron DeSantis alleging political retaliation was assigned to a federal judge who has frequently ruled against the [governor?]

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff First, Trump’s lawyers ask House Judiciary Republicans to interfere in the NYC prosecution of Trump. ¤ Now, they want House Intel to interfere with DOJ’s investigation of obstruction at Mar-a-Lago. ¤ Both ask Congress to abuse its authority to protect Trump. ¤ Neither will succeed.

🐣 📊 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Most Americans support common-sense gun safety regulations. ¤ Congress MUST act NOW.
// Fox News poll
◕ https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1651808554641137665?s=20/photo/1

87% BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR GUNS
81% ENFORCE EXISTING GUN LAWS
81% LEGAL AGE 21 TO BUY ALL GUNS
80% REQUIRE MENTAL HEALTH CHECKS
80% FLAG PEOPLE DANGER TO SELF
77% REQUIRE 30-DAY WAITING PERIOD
(APRIL 21:24, 2023; REGISTERED VOTERS)

⋙ 🐣 Wish list: ● Ban assault rifles
● ban high capacity magazines
● ban high caliber ammunition
● require fingerprint tech to assure gun is used only by authorized user(s)

🐣 RT @QuoteDigging “In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” —Dick Cheney

WaPo: Conservative dissenters block abortion limits in Nebraska, South Carolina https://tinyurl.com/yjdfwdpc “A near-total ban on abortion failed in South Carolina, just hours before a six-week ban fizzled in Nebraska. Abortion remains legal in both states until 22 weeks of pregnancy”

🧵 RT @MarkHertling A few folks suggested I’ve been “bold” in some of my predictions accompanying the analysis I’ve provided on @CNN regarding this conflict. ¤ Beyond tactical assessments, there are 2 primary reasons I’ve said Ukraine would win this fight. ¤ Here’s a short on why I say this. 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1518604757149143040?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/ym38kfvj

🐣 RT @anno1540 Stoltenberg about Zelensky’s conversation with Xi Jinping ¤ “I welcome the telephone conversation between President Zelenskyi and President Xi. I think it is also important for China to better understand Ukraine’s prospects. This does not change the fact that China failed to condemn Russia’s illegal war, illegal invasion of Ukraine ,” said the general Secretary of NATO. ¤ Details: [Ru:] https://tinyurl.com/nc4yerwu

WaPo: A second firm hired by Trump campaign found no evidence of election fraud https://tinyurl.com/mm2h3e49 The firm, “Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were ‘all false’”
// The founder of the company has been interviewed by federal prosecutors investigating the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 results

Former president Trump’s campaign quietly commissioned a second firm to study election fraud claims in the weeks after the 2020 election, and the founder of the firm was recently questioned by the Justice Department about his work disproving the claims.

Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he said. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.” …

Federal records show the Trump 2020 campaign paid Block’s firm more than $750,000 in six different payments. The first for $390,000 came three days after the election, records show, and the final payment came around Thanksgiving of that year. The payments were labeled “Recount.”

Separately, prosecutors have interviewed multiple employees from the Berkeley Research Group in recent weeks, another Trump-paid firm that produced a 29-page report ultimately undermining many of Trump’s fraud claims, according to three people familiar with the matter. Berkeley’s study contradicted claims made by Trump and his advisers that there were extensive numbers of dead voters and cases of fraud in states such as Georgia and Nevada. …

Prosecutors are trying to show that Trump and his advisers definitively knew — or had good reason to believe — that their myriad fraud claims were false as they continued to spread and fundraise off the claims. The claims ultimately convinced many voters the election was stolen and inspired rioters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The falsehoods also brought in more than $250 million to Trump and his allies.

Key to building such a case, experts say, is proving that Trump and other advisers making the claims publicly did not believe them or had evidence to know they were false. …

🐣 📊 RT @accountable_us NEW POLL: 4 out of 5 Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy to reduce the deficit instead of cutting Social Security & Medicare programs. ¤ @SpeakerMcCarthy & @HouseGOP, your MAGA Debt Default Plan isn’t what the American people want. ¤ via @NavigatorSurvey
◕ https://twitter.com/accountable_us/status/1651618503802212354?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @davidfrum It’s not only Biden, down-ballot Ds are headed for big wins in 2024 as well – Trump’s consistent unpopularity plus state GOP surveillance and harassment of women plus strong Biden economy = MAGA doom
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: The Coming Biden Blowout https://tinyurl.com/ydc8s2nb
// Republicans thought about running without Trump in 2024—but lost their nerve. They’re heading for electoral disaster again.

🧵 RT @generalsvr_en #Putin’s health problems ¤ The #Kremlin’s attempts to saturate the information space with news about the hectic work of #Russian President Vladimir Putin continued. Thus, official sources of the Kremlin say that yesterday Putin had two telephone conversations:… 1/10
📌 https://twitter.com/generalsvr_en/status/1651512350590095362?s=20

KyivPost: EXPLAINED: Global Reaction to Zelensky’s Call With China’s President Xi https://tinyurl.com/ydp8rz8w
// The US and the EU lauded the call, but Moscow reacted angrily and accused Kyiv of undermining any peace attempts, more than a year after it launched its illegal invasion.

⭕ 26 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: The U.S. will cooperate with South Korea on nuclear weapons in return for an agreement that Seoul will not pursue its own nuclear arsenal.
⋙ NYT: In Turn to Deterrence, Biden Vows ‘End’ of North Korean Regime if It Attacks https://tinyurl.com/597h9t84
// During a state visit at the White House, Mr. Biden and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea sought to bolster America’s nuclear umbrella guarding against threats from the North.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Every day, Prigozhin comes up with a new mood for himself, anywhere between victorious and defeatist. Today, he’s once again hysterical: in a 5-minute audio rant he declares that the Ukrainian offensive is inevitable, will start after 2nd May when the soil dries up, and that Wagner will last 2-3 more weeks in the current conditions.

He goes on to accuse the military of holding up ammunition (again) which results in a 5-time increase in casualties among the mercenaries. Prigozhin says those responsible will be answering before the family members of mobiks who will suffer when the AFU start moving. ¤ The transcription of the audio recording is below. …
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1651306010907115552?s=20/photo/1 -3

1/ What is happening today with the AFU counter-offensive? Today, it’s raining. On 2 May, the last rain should pass. Another week is needed for the wind to dry the soil. After this, the AFU will be ready to move. Whether they will do it on 9 May, in order to “ruin the celebration”, perhaps yes, or not. It’s only in Russia that is accustomed to do everything on 8 March or 9 May. The AFU are fully ready to go and cut the flanks. No one was covering our flanks. All the talks about the prevented attempt of deploying reserves in Bakhmut is complete bollocks. Not a single serviceman made a single shot. No one is giving ammunitions to us, neither to them. The criminal command to not give ammo, the ammo is accumulated in stockpiles in droves, like I said before. The number of people in Wagner PMC is drying up. Dead, wounded, and those who left after the end of contract. We’re preparing the new reserves. We won’t be throwing in new реорle until fully prepare them, until they become the fighters ready to defend the interests of the state.

2/ In general, the Wagner PMC completed its historical mission, but will continue doing so until the last fighter. As I said before, we grinding down the AFU reserves. Today, well-prepared enemy units are thrown to Bakhmut. All day there is Polish speech. If previously I said there were few mercenaries, now there’s a huge number of them. Ukrainian spetsnaz. The bloodiest of battles is ongoing. We are not given shells, and we’re doing everything possible with the minimal amount that we have today. But again. These scumbags making this decision, they must answer before the mothers of the deceased, because instead of one, several people die. Ratio of 1 to 5. Instead of one dying assault a building, five are dying, because there are no shells. We have nothing to destroy the enemy artillery with. The lastnames of these scumbags are on paper. When the time comes, the Russian people will ask this question. I will confidently answer it. Conclusion: the Ukrainian offensive is inevitable. The betrayal within the Russian Federation is taking place. We’re not allowed to create defence and advance further. But! We will advance at any cost, exclusively to drag down the AFU army and disrupt this offensive.

3/ Thanks to our actions, the rest of formations along the whole frontline territory are able entrench, can prepare for this AFU counter-offensive. And they can advance themselves, both on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Why they are not doing it, is a question that will be dealt with by military counter-intelligence and the FSB, in their time. What is happening today is a crime before Russia and the Russian people. And this cannot be left unattented. Criminals must take responsibility. Every shell you didn’t give = some fighter has died. And you will have to explain to their wives, mothers and children why you killed them. Because you were sitting like roosters on a perch and held this ammunition in your pockets, not allowing them to the army. And when the Ukrainians will be advancing, the mobilised will also ask you this question: where is our ammunition? And then they’ll ask, where’s our leadership, our commanders? And where is this Rubylovka [street] where they are relaxing all day long? Once again, the question: crime against Russia. Today, a crime against the Russian Federation is taking place. We will last another 2-3 weeks until the last bullet remains in the rifle. And then the machinators must bear responsibility for what is happening on the frontline.

WaPo: Conservative dissenters block abortion limits in Nebraska, South Carolina https://tinyurl.com/yjdfwdpc “A near-total ban on abortion failed in South Carolina, just hours before a six-week ban fizzled in Nebraska. Abortion remains legal in both states until 22 weeks of pregnancy”

WaPo: Pence appears before Jan. 6 grand jury in Trump special counsel probe https://tinyurl.com/34evrtcn “Despite his appearance at court, Pence — a key potential rival to Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has positioned himself as a reluctant witness”
// The former vice president received a subpoena in February in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn 2020 election results

NYT: On Eve of Trial, Discovery of Carlson Texts Set Off Crisis Atop Fox https://tinyurl.com/ycyrvetc “One person briefed on the contents of the redacted material said one of the messages was particularly offensive, adding to the concern at the top of the company”
// Private messages sent by Tucker Carlson that had been redacted in legal filings showed him making highly offensive remarks that went beyond the comments of his prime-time show.

TheGuardian: Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago boxes contained foreign leader briefings https://tinyurl.com/mwdap59a
// New letter sent to Congress attempts to paint Trump’s retention of classified-marked documents at Florida home as inadvertent
[Document:] 4/26/2023 letter: https://tinyurl.com/3rtd3wst

[…] But the 10-page letter https://tinyurl.com/3rtd3wst that was sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees also revealed the order in which the documents were placed, as well as their contents, inside 15 boxes the National Archives struggled to retrieve for months and precipitated the criminal investigation.

The investigation into Trump’s potential retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice led by special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, though it may be near its end given prosecutors have subpoenaed almost everyone who conceivably could have knowledge of the matter.

Trump’s two main lawyers involved in the documents investigation – Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty – in late December last year formally asked the National Archives for access to the 15 boxes that Trump had returned through the relevant provision in the Presidential Records Act.

The request was granted several weeks later, and Parlatore and Trusty went to one of the top floors in the main National Archives building overlooking the National Mall and started going through the boxes, which they found preserved just as when Trump had sent them up from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

The boxes, according to the letter, contained a mixture of documents from the White House that were grouped by date and included newspapers, magazines, notes, letters and daily presidential schedules.

Where there had been classified documents – which was what prompted the National Archives to first alert the justice department to start an investigation last year – officials had inserted placeholder pages that described the document that had been removed, the letter said.

“That allowed Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in proximity … The vast majority of placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”

The letter then described the ensuing criminal investigation as “misguided” because, in their eyes, the way the boxes were packed was indicative of White House staff pulling all documents into the boxes during a chaotic “pack-out” process at the end of the Trump administration.

Left unsaid was that the criminal investigation has evolved since the initial referral. ¤ The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena last May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.

Last June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.

But the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, according to court filings, and when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.

Last month, Corcoran was ordered by a senior US judge to testify and hand over his notes to the grand jury hearing evidence in the case, piercing his attorney-client privilege protections through the crime-fraud exception because Trump might have used his advice in furtherance of a crime.

The special counsel is also investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, and prosecutors have recently asked witnesses whether Trump ever showed a map to donors or a book author, a person familiar with the matter said.

🐣 RT @costareports From @FaceTheNation on Sunday
⋙ 🐣 RT @FaceTheNation (Apr 23) “We’ll obey the law, we’ll tell the truth,” fmr. VP Mike Pence says about his expected testimony with the grand jury investigating the Jan 6. attack on the Capitol, which is probing former Pres. Trump’s past pressure campaign on Pence.
💽 https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1651401220983074825?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russia’s most important propagandist was deplatformed. And so now Russian platforms are falling over themselves to offer him a job.

🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade With court ruling that Pence just testify at GJ, Jack Smith is inching closer to completing his investigation.
⋙ WaPo: Trump can’t stop Pence from testifying to Jan. 6 grand jury, court rules https://tinyurl.com/42zupc7a

🐣 RT @chrislhayes I mean this quite seriously when I say this is the race the country deserves.
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @USA_Polling Presidential Polling:
Biden (D): 49%
Trump (I): 26%
DeSantis (R): 25%
Ipsos / Apr 24, 2023 / n=729

🐣 RT @big_cases (Automated) New filing: “U.S. v. Teixeira (pentagon leak)”
Doc #19: Exhibit ¤ PDF: https://tinyurl.com/yeynpfrf
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/big_cases/status/1651402371032031232?s=20/photo/1 -3

🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: #Russia appears to be continuing a deliberate depopulation campaign in occupied areas of #Ukraine in order to facilitate the repopulation of Ukrainian territories with Russians. w/ @criticalthreats: https://isw.pub/UkrWar042623

💽 🐣 RT @ DecodingFoxNews This is the full segment from PBS. It’s exceptional. It includes an extended interview with Brian Stelter. Stelter has covered Fox News for years. ¤ What Tucker Carlson’s departure could mean for the future of Fox and the… https://youtu.be/FxDMxk1_vNc via @YouTube

WaPo: For the Murdochs, Tucker Carlson became more trouble than he was worth https://tinyurl.com/y7ae2xrw Murdoch “was disturbed by Carlson’s stance on Ukraine … These stances had made Carlson a star on Russian state-controlled TV”
// Precise reasons for the top-rated host’s dismissal remain clouded, but the move reflected a reversal for the exasperated family that once championed him

These stances had made Carlson a star on Russian state-controlled TV. But they had drawn furious blowback from powerful Republicans who see U.S. support for Ukraine as a bulwark in a fight for freedom and democracy — some of whom had Murdoch’s ear. After one such on-air segment in mid-March, Murdoch joined a Fox newsroom meeting to loudly challenge Carlson’s message, according to people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of newsroom confidentiality policies.

WaPo: Disney sues Gov. Ron DeSantis, alleging political retaliation https://tinyurl.com/2687vm3d “DeSantis’s poll numbers have slipped in recent weeks and Republican opponents are seizing on the feud to cast him as a zealot bent on punishing a private enterprise”
// The Florida governor is working with the legislature to overturn the entertainment giant’s latest oversight agreement

🐣 RT @lyssafella Shocked. Shocked I tell you!
⋙ 🐣 RT @7Smite4 Within hours of his firing, Tucker Carlson was offered a job by Russian TV. ¤ Yesterday, the Russian foreign minister felt compelled to chime in. ¤ The. RUSSIAN. FOREIGN. MINISTER. ¤ (Btw, he didn’t mention Don Lemon) ¤ Tucker Carlson is 💯 a Russian asset.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/lyssafella/status/1651223619534745600?s=20/photo/1

💙 🧵 RT @MechINF126 Yesterday @RepJoeWilson R and @RepCohen introduced House Res.322 – Expressing the sense of the House of Rep. on Ukrainian victory. ¤ This thread will help US supporters of understand the leg process and ways to directly help this resolution gain public and political support.
📌 https://twitter.com/MechINF126/status/1651229885103259653?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MechINF126 So first, the steps to pass a simple resolution in the house
1. Introduction
2. Committee on Foreign Affairs-Debate and vote
3. Full House debate and vote
4. House passage-
The link below will allow you to track the process and support of this Resolution
⋙ https://tinyurl.com/3kyhks38

🧵 RT @P_Kallioniemi In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss Russian online information operations, and how they are perceived around the world. In the West, we often perceive this propaganda only targeted at us, which is far from the truth. 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1651208606262390784?s=20

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “This is going to end in hell”: Russian oligarchs believe that Russian authorities are leading the country into abyss. ¤ While the Kremlin pretends that everything is under control, the oligarchs will soon start talking openly about the upcoming catastrophe.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1651197159054749696?s=20/photo/1

💙 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa I had a long and meaningful phone call with 🇨🇳 President Xi Jinping. I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine’s ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations.

🐣 RT @ @jmart Maybe the most significant element of Carlson’s firing, at least if ya talk to GOP hawks and DoD, which @laraseligman did:
⋙ Politico, Lara Seligman: ‘Good riddance’: Pentagon officials cheer Tucker Carlson’s ouster https://tinyurl.com/2t3hfpxu
// The former Fox host ridiculed top DoD leaders over Biden-era policies.

The tension between the former cable host and Pentagon leadership isn’t new. Carlson drew the ire of top DoD officials early in the Biden administration for personal attacks on a number of military leaders, as well as ridiculing the armed forces’ efforts to increase diversity. A slew of conservative leaders quickly followed Carlson’s lead, giving rise to a small but vocal minority that to this day continues to hammer DoD officials, saying they’re focusing personnel policies at the expense of preparing for war. The Pentagon says only a small percentage of troops’ time is spent on diversity training. ¤ Most memorably, Carlson’s remarks disparaging female service members in March 2021 prompted a rare rebuke from then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Prigozhin on the current perception of the future role of PMCs in Russia: (1) they can play some role in domestic politics, (2) someday there will be a struggle for power and everyone needs to have their own private army. [Vid Ru]

🔄 🐣 Biden is 80 and sane. Trump is 76 and nuts. ¤ Imagine knocking a 60 year old vs a 56 year old. ¤ It’s absurd.

NYT, Alexander Baunov: I Wrote a Book About the End of Dictatorships, and It Became a Best Seller in Russia https://tinyurl.com/2srfr693 ‘The book is not about Russia or Vladimir Putin. It’s about how Spain, Portugal and Greece became democracies, returning to the global fold’

⭕ 25 Apr 2023

WaPo Editorial: Biden is right. We’re still fighting a battle for the soul of America. https://tinyurl.com/4jythfsa “More than most, this election will be a referendum on who we are — and who we want to be — as Americans”

DefenseOne: How Tucker Carlson Helped Turn Americans Against the Military https://tinyurl.com/mrx5zawf … and Ukraine
// The partisan firebrand told viewers that uniformed leaders were out to weaken the armed forces and the country itself.

🐣 RT @mcspocky Jack Smith is NOT playing around!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/mcspocky/status/1651058169035264000?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked former Fox producer Abby Grossman’s lawyer for recordings – some of which include new audio of Ted Cruz plotting a coup
and Rudy Giuliani admitting there wasn’t any election fraud. This Is Huge!

📊 WaPo, Marc Thiessen (R): If voters choose between Trump and Biden, Republicans won’t like the results https://tinyurl.com/msjk7bja WSJ poll (by a pro-Trump pollster): Among voters who want neither Biden or Trump to run, “Biden leads Trump by a massive 39 points”‼️

As he announces his reelection campaign, President Biden is extremely vulnerable. According to NBC News polling out this week, his disapproval rating is at 54 percent (just two points shy of his all-time high) while a whopping 70 percent of Americans say they don’t want him to run again. With those numbers, his campaign should be politically dead-on-arrival.

But here’s the problem for Republicans: Sixty percent of voters also don’t want Donald Trump to run again. Americans are sending a clear message to both parties: They want new candidates to choose from in 2024. As Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who helped conduct the NBC poll, explains, “people do not want a Biden-Trump rematch.” But it looks increasingly likely the country will get exactly that.

A Wall Street Journal poll (conducted by pro-Trump super PAC pollster Tony Fabrizio) suggests the answer: It found that among voters who disapprove of both Trump and Biden, Biden leads Trump by a massive 39 points: 54 percent to 15 percent. Clearly, swing voters who dislike Biden dislike Trump even more.

To beat Biden, Republicans need the votes of the 54 percent majority who disapprove of his performance in office. And Trump appears to be the one candidate who can’t deliver those votes. If Republicans force these voters to choose between Trump and Biden, they will push these voters into a position they don’t want: picking Biden. ¤ Trump is effectively Biden’s “get out of jail free” card …

YahooNews: Exclusive: House lawmakers to introduce resolution for bold Ukraine victory terms https://tinyurl.com/45vr25pc “[T]he resolution must first be approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, … chaired by Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, a strong supporter of helping Ukraine”

At a time when many Americans, and some of the legislators who represent them in Washington, are growing weary of supporting the defense of Ukraine, a new bipartisan House resolution to be introduced Tuesday calls on the United States to support an outright victory over Russia.

“We must not repeat the error of Sept. 1, 1939,” the resolution’s chief sponsor, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., told Yahoo News, referencing Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which followed desperate efforts to appease Nazi Germany and prevent a second world war.

Notably, the resolution, which requires review from the House Foreign Affairs Committee before a vote from the full chamber, “affirms that it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders.”

The return to that year’s borders is significant because 1991 marked the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent Ukraine that included the Crimean Peninsula.

Russian President Vladimir Putin seized Crimea during an initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which the United States and many European nations condemned but did not stop. The Kremlin also backed Russian separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk, two regions in a part of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas. Russia has since fully annexed those and two other provinces, in a move that has widely been deemed illegal.

Returning to 1991 borders is unrealistic, some experts say, especially since retaking Crimea would likely require an amphibious assault of the sort for which the Ukrainian forces are not equipped.

“They would be pressed to retake all of Donbas; Crimea would take a miracle,” said Ben Friedman, chief analyst at the Washington, D.C., think tank Defense Priorities, which tends to be skeptical of intervention-heavy foreign policy. “It certainly seems unlikely that anything short of a failed offensive will make this clear.”

But for Ukrainians, anything short of a full expulsion of Russian forces is untenable. “All other half measures will lead to the collapse of both international law and the global security system, and the decline of the Western world,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told Yahoo News.

Wilson’s resolution is co-sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. They two men head the Helsinki Commission, a congressional panel founded in 1976 to help keep the Soviet Union abiding by its international agreements. Since the collapse of the USSR, the commission has focused on Russia, which under Putin has sought to expand the so-called Russian world by reclaiming former Soviet regions and republics.

“The only way to maintain peace is through strength,” Wilson said. The phrase represents conservative icon Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, which most historians credit with helping to end the Cold War. Today, however, the GOP’s isolationist strain is stronger than it was then, and a growing number of Republicans say Ukraine is not worth defending.

In addition to affirming support for victory, the resolution calls for Ukraine to join NATO, a move that Russia would certainly consider a major provocation. In addition, Russia is to pay reparations, and Kremlin officials are to be tried for war crimes.

Podolyak called the resolution “brilliant” and praised the House for calling Russia to account. “Perhaps the most important feature of Western civilizational culture is the ability to analyze past experience and acknowledge mistakes,” he told Yahoo News. ¤ A parallel resolution in the Senate appears to be garnering support.

Skeptics worry that prolonging the war, even if for sound reasons, will result in only more suffering on the battlefield and among Ukraine’s population. Pushing for a full victory, instead of merely a partial one, could extend the war for years. The battle for Crimea could be especially brutal, given the peninsula’s cultural and geopolitical significance for Russia.

“If neither side can win outright — which I think we can all agree is not going to happen — then it’s sort of not clear what the path to ending the war is, absent some change in policy that helps both sides overcome the impediments to negotiation,” RAND Corporation senior defense analyst Miranda Priebe told Yahoo News earlier this year. ¤ The new resolution explicitly counters this line of thinking by both defining victory and tethering the United States to that outcome.

“This bipartisan resolution demonstrates the wide support in Congress for Ukrainian victory. We all need to move beyond ‘as long as it takes’ and embrace ‘Ukrainian victory’ as our rallying cry in order for Ukraine to win the war this year,” a congressional staffer familiar with the contents of the resolution and willing to speak only on the condition of anonymity told Yahoo News. “This is the strategy that experts around D.C. have been calling for. It’s time to stop hedging and get Ukraine what it needs to win.”

When the invasion began, most members of both parties readily agreed to send billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine. Lately, however, both progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans have expressed hesitation with the scope of American contributions to the Ukrainian war effort.

A chief figure in stoking anti-Ukraine sentiment has been Tucker Carlson, the primetime Fox News host who was ousted on Monday morning. The program he hosted was watched by 3 million people nightly and served as a frequent stop for Republicans critical of the war; fellow Republicans who did support the effort dreaded being the target of a Carlson segment.

Democrats have generally supported continuing to arm Ukraine, but the House Progressive Caucus sent Biden a letter in October asking him to negotiate a settlement to the war. After heavy criticism from fellow Democrats, the letter was withdrawn and blamed on a staff error.

Last week, a bicameral group of Republicans sent Biden a similar letter. House members, including Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., have vowed to “audit” Ukraine aid while also promulgating conspiracy theories about the conflict that mirror Russian misinformation.

Passage of the new measure is no sure thing. Before a full House vote, the resolution must first be approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The panel is chaired by Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, a strong supporter of helping Ukraine. His office did not respond to a Yahoo News request for comment.

🐣 RT @JoeBiden Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms. I believe this is ours. ¤ That’s why I’m running for reelection as President of the United States. Join us. Let’s finish the job. http://JoeBiden.com
💽 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1650801827728986112?s=20/photo/1
// Biden 2024 announcement video
🐣 RT @MSNBC As Biden eyes a second term, Republicans struggle to find anything wrong with his actual record. Instead, they peddled an attack ad filled with fake images referring to events that haven’t actually occurred. (via MaddowBlog)
💽 ⋙ MSNBC, Steve Benen: RNC accidentally makes an important point in new anti-Biden ad https://tinyurl.com/3mkwsfzc
// Joe Biden’s actual record wasn’t scary, so the RNC found it necessary to peddle literally fake, made-up images referring to events that have not occurred.
💽 // Also, a nice video from Morning Joe about Joe Biden’s calmness

🐣 RT @bfry1981 Joe Biden isn’t just a better candidate than any Republican for president, he’s also better than any other Democrat or independent. Dark Brandon is a historic beast
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @bfry1981 I’m 40. Never in my lifetime has a U.S. president so united the West or faced such a dire foreign policy crisis as Joe Biden, let alone orchestrated our most hostile enemy suffering its worst defeats since 1942. And all astoundingly while facing historic crises at home.

WaPo: Audio of Cruz’s talk with Fox host sheds light on plan to challenge 2020 results https://tinyurl.com/kcayvf4n The recording “sheds new light on the scope of Cruz’s scheming to assist Donald Trump in overturning Biden’s victory”

💽 WaPo: Before Tucker Carlson’s Fox rise, an on-air ‘brawl’ led to his CNN firing https://tinyurl.com/2ajpv5v3 “Here is what I wanted to tell you guys: Stop. Stop, stop, stop hurting America.” Jon Stewart said, “You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you’ve failed miserably”

📔 CREW (Nov 2022): REPORT: Fulton County, Georgia’s Trump Investigation: An Analysis of the Reported Facts and Applicable Law [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/bde45jzb 304p
// by Norman Eisen, Donald Ayer,Noah Bookbinder, Gwen Keyes Fleming, Colby Galliher, Joshua Matz, Debra Perlin, and Jason Powell
⋙ Intro: https://tinyurl.com/yc3c82y3
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1650888634143211528?s=20 /photo/1

We conclude that Trump’s post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes. These charges potentially include:

● criminal solicitation to commit election fraud;
● intentional interference with performance of election duties;
● conspiracy to commit election fraud;
● criminal solicitation;
● and state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act violations

Our conclusions are based entirely on publicly available reporting and evidence, including the recording of Trump’s call to Raffensperger, the false electoral certificates the purported Trump electors issued to Congress and the National Archives, first-hand congressional testimony that Trump and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows tried to influence the Georgia election, and the voluminous relevant evidence introduced into the public record by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (the “January 6 Committee”).6 Our view is anchored by a close reading of the relevant portions of Georgia’s legal code, an unpacking of the extant case law defining the stated crimes, and a searching examination of the main likely defenses. The latter pose some serious questions but (based upon what is currently known of the facts) appear to be unavailing.

⭕ 24 Apr 2023

WaPo Editorial: A look at the US pandemic response reached an unsettling conclusion https://tinyurl.com/2fpvevnx “There is no US national public health operational capability — practically all of it is in a patchwork quilt of states & localities, an anachronism from an earlier age”

🧵 RT @lawofruby Folks have been asking me, since this story broke, “Why is Fani Willis waiting until at least July 11 to announce her charging decision?” That’s a reasonable question–and I *think* there’s a logical explanation. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1650618118174121984?s=20

🐣 RT @gtconway3d If DA Willis is putting out a red-alert all-hands-on-deck memo to law enforcement like this, you can be reasonably confident the caption on the indictment isn’t going to be “State v. Giuliani et al.” or “State v. Meadows et al.” The lead defendant will probably be someone else.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TamarHallerman BREAKING: Fulton County DA Willis say she will announce this summer whether former President Donald Trump and his allies will be charged with crimes related to alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election #gapol
⋙⋙ AJC: EXCLUSIVE: DA says indictment announcement coming this summer in Trump probe https://tinyurl.com/45xckspe

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa,This is exactly what we are fighting for for the whole of Ukraine – for all our children, all Ukrainian men and women in every part of our country to feel free, enjoy freedom and realize themselves in life as they want. And this will happen. Ukraine will defend its freedom.

🐣 RT @GicAriana Brilliantly done. I only wish it could reach the same audience American audience which lapped up the Kremlin propaganda disinfo narratives and anti-Ukrainian hatred parroted by Carlson for such a long time. He may be finished at Fox, but the damage done isn’t.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AccountableGOP We present one and a half minutes of Tucker Carlson parroting Vladimir Putin. New video from RAP:
💽 https://twitter.com/GicAriana/status/1650688363073093632?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump reaction minutes after learning of Tucker’s firing: “I’m shocked, I’m surprised .. That was something, that’s a big one .. Over the last year or so he’s been terrific to me.”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1650667708097126400?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @kaitlancollins “I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes,” Gov. DeSantis, who is in Japan right now, says when asked about polls that show him falling behind Trump.
💽 https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1650445614486892547?s=20/photo/1
// DeSantis bobblehead video
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln “[DeSantis] does not have the talent. That is, a talent to interact with human beings…. Trump went around the state of Florida this week and got all but one of the congressional endorsements that came out.” – @TheRickWilson on The Breakdown.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1650632045977128962?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote ¤ This was the propaganda film played at the Ellipse before trump spoke. Remind you of anything?
💽 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1650353425291571201?s=20/photo/1
// Jan 6 video insurrection

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln So many lies, so little time. In memoriam of Tucker Carlson & Fox News, 2009-2023.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1650587143360905216?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MattGertz It is bad to have to pay out a $787 million settlement.
It is bad to have more legal troubles ahead.
It is bad to lose your most prominent host.
⋙ MMFA: Tucker Carlson’s departure is great news for America (and terrible news for Fox) https://tinyurl.com/yhw53s5t

Tucker Carlson was the engine that made the modern incarnation of Fox News run. And on Monday, suddenly and without warning, that engine was switched off. ¤ “FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” the network announced in a press release that stunned media observers. Notably, Carlson will not appear again on Fox to say goodbye to his viewers and go out on his own terms. According to the network, his last show was Friday; it concluded without indication that it was his Fox finale.

Carlson’s departure is great news for America. ¤ He was the country’s foremost purveyor of white supremacist talking points, pushing the conspiracy theories that inspired massacres from El Paso, Texas, to Buffalo, New York. He was the nation’s most prominent anti-vaxxer, running a brutally effective campaign against public efforts to vaccinate Americans against COVID-19. And his lies and deceptions following the January 6 insurrection helped foil the potential for a consensus against the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol. He worked to radicalize the Republican Party in the direction of its most dangerous, authoritarian elements. 

The country is vastly better off without his demagogic voice reaching through the television screens to millions of Americans every weeknight. 

But his unexpected departure leaves his former employer in a difficult position. The move comes just days after Fox received another blow through its massive Dominion settlement, a payout the company hoped to defray by jacking up its cable carrier fees and attracting new advertisers. Now the network goes into those carrier negotiations and advertiser upfronts with a vacancy in what is traditionally its most prominent time slot.

Carlson has been the face of the network since at least the 2020 election, with executives counting on his personal connection to viewers to keep them coming back as former President Donald Trump receded from the national stage. He used that opportunity to focus the network (and through it, the GOP) on his own particular obsessions, like the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, anti-trans invective, and support for authoritarian regimes in Russia and Hungary.

As of this morning, he may have become the most powerful host in Fox’s history: He not only got his own heavily promoted streaming shows and carte blanche to radicalize his viewers, but he also succeeded in driving away network employees who dissented from his dark vision for the network.

Fox has announced that Carlson’s 8 p.m. program will become “an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.” The content maw must be fed, and there is surely no shortage of right-wing bomb-throwers who will leap at the opportunity to occupy the time slot. But at this particular moment, Fox needs to send two opposing signals at the same time. The network needs viewers to think that it remains committed to the same style of irresponsible bigotry and conspiracy theories that had them tuning in for Carlson’s show. But they also must convince cable carriers and advertisers that Fox is a responsible partner.

With the loss of its top star and still reeling from the blow of the largest known media settlement in history, Fox is weakened and in chaos, vulnerable both to threats to its business model from cable news carriers and to competitors seeking to carve off some of its market share. Time to throw them an anvil.

🐣 RT @MollyJongFast Simply incredible
⋙ 🐣 RT @RT_com Hey @TuckerCarlson, you can always question more with @RT_com

🐣 RT @kurtbardella Jeff Shell, Tucker Carlson & Don Lemon all gone in 24 hours … wow. Just wow.

🐣 RT @lawofruby It remains to be seen precisely why Tucker Carlson is leaving Fox. But my first thought was that it could be related to documents that surfaced in the Dominion litigation, whether or not they were produced to Dominion. Sounds like there might be some there there.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jackmjenkins “…it was Carlson’s comments about Fox management, as revealed in the Dominion case, that played a role in his departure from Fox, a person familiar with the company’s thinking told The Post.”
⋙⋙ WaPo: Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News after Dominion lawsuit disclosures https://tinyurl.com/4um4ees4
// The bombastic conservative was the network’s most-watched prime-time host. Private communications made public in a recent lawsuit revealed his sharp criticism of Fox management.

🐣 RT @oneunderscore__ Recently, Tucker’s A-block was often more extreme than the front page of InfoWars, and I’m not exaggerating. ¤ The path forward here is awfully grim. But at least his Great Replacement lies won’t be aired in America’s waiting rooms or included in basic cable packages anymore.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DecodingFoxNews Tucker Carlson has a full television studio in Maine. Fox News might own it. He could go the InfoWars route and just start producing his own content – which will probably much worse than what he made on Fox News. There’s a number of far right broadcasters he could align with.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Tucker Carlson is leaving Fox to spend more time with his fascism.

🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 BREAKING: Fox just announced that Tucker Carlson is LEAVING the network & will no longer host his show. The person who lied & spread the most dangerous conspiracy theories to his audience is now gone & we should all be very glad. Hallelujah.

🐣 RT @brianstelter The biggest “tell” in Fox’s press release about Tucker Carlson’s exit is that he is not getting a final show. No chance to say goodbye on his own terms or point people to his next home. Fox says “Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st.”

🐣 RT @brianstelter Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News, effective immediately. This is an earth-shaking moment in cable news.

‼️ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Thank you, Dominion.
⋙ TVline: Tucker Carlson Out at Fox News https://tinyurl.com/2p9he639

⭕ 23 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @ ChinaUSFocus The East and West could learn a lot from each other, but current tensions make that type of mutual exchange a lofty ideal. https://tinyurl.com/ykr6c9j7
⋙ 🐣 the “tensions” were the result of China flying a half dozen spy balloons over our territory, preventing international review teams from the WHO from having access to virology labs, and China then cutting off diplomatic channels to discuss the “tensions”

TheGuardian: Baltic states condemn China envoy’s remarks over sovereignty of ex-Soviet nations https://tinyurl.com/2xnd26ud //➔ I’m surprised at the surprise: All you have to do is read China’s “peace plan” to see it weakens NATO and the UN & forges a new Eurasian partnership w no US
// Lu Shaye’s comments raise fresh questions over China’s role in brokering peace in Ukraine

🧵 RT @SariArhoHavren China’s ambassador to France pulled the rug out from under China’s intention of being any sort of mediator between Russia and Ukraine. Not recognising Ukraine as a sovereign state exactly as Russia claims, makes China 100% on Russia’s side. 1/3
📌 https://twitter.com/SariArhoHavren/status/1650032800714706944?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @SariArhoHavren If Lu Shaye misspoke, Beijing should withdraw him and apologise. But even so, this incident raises a lot of questions, including how common this view is, even if not official, among the Chinese foreign ministry. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @SariArhoHavren And finally, Lu Shaye’s comments put Xi’s Global Security Initiative in a strange light. Does it now emphasise the security spheres and interests (of the great powers) on the expense of sovereignty of all nations? And where is the much emphasised UN Charter in all this? 3/3

WSJ: China’s Ambassador to France Says Ex-Soviet States Lack Basis for Sovereignty https://tinyurl.com/yc34p2p9 “Mr. Lu’s comments appeared to brush aside the sovereignty of countries … that formally recognized each other after the Soviet Union’s dissolution”
// France and countries across Eastern Europe condemn remarks from Ambassador Lu Shaye

France and countries across Eastern Europe condemned remarks by China’s ambassador in Paris claiming that post-Soviet states lack a firm basis for their sovereignty under international law. ¤ Ambassador Lu Shaye made the comments during an interview late Friday on French TV, in which he was asked whether he considered the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, part of Ukraine under international law.

“Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretize their status as a sovereign country,” Mr. Lu said.

Mr. Lu’s comments appeared to brush aside the sovereignty of countries, including Russia, that formally recognized each other after the Soviet Union’s dissolution and are represented at the United Nations and in European security organizations. The ambassador’s comments drew a swift reaction in parts of Europe, with the three Baltic states saying they would summon China’s top officials in a coordinated move on Monday for an explanation.

🧵 RT @GicAriana China’s ambassador to France said former Soviet countries “don’t have an effective status in international law” “because there is no int’l agreement that gives substance to their status as a sovereign country.” China is denying existence of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, etc.1/3
📌 https://twitter.com/GicAriana/status/1649965260466421760?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @GicAriana China is very clearly pushing Moscow’s narrative of “fake nations,” etc., to advance Russia’s revanchist agenda of capturing the former soviet space under the pretext of “restoring historic Russia.” ¤ THIS is China’s understanding of international law and relations. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @GicAriana This should serve as a stark warning for those who refuse to see it: Beijing and Moscow have genuine partnership in which they intend to completely upend the existing western-led international security order. ¤ Russia & China have THEIR OWN vision, and it’s anathema to ours. ¤ 3/3
⋙⋙ 🐣 China’s “peace plan,” which few have read, calls for a dismantling of Cold War alliances (NATO), the diminishment of the UN (no use of sanctions), and the creation of a Eurasian association of nations instead

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, repeated Russian propaganda narratives on LCI channel. He called Crimea “originally Russian” and declared that ex-USSR countries “don’t have an effective status in international law”. ¤ Waiting for Beijing’s official reaction. Is it a…

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @ AntoineBondaz 💪🏼👍🏼 Official comment by @francediplo‘s spokesperson:
«We learned with dismay of the remarks of the 🇨🇳 Ambassador to 🇫🇷 concerning the borders of the countries which became independent with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is up to China to say whether these remarks reflect its position, which we hope not. ¤ We mark our full solidarity with all of our allies and concerned partners, who have won a long-awaited independence after decades of oppression.

Regarding Ukraine specifically, it was internationally recognized within borders including Crimea in 1991 by the entire international community, including China, upon the fall of the USSR as a new member state of the United Nations. The annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 is illegal under international law. The Charter of the United Nations, based on the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity, prohibits the acquisition of territory by force. » (My own translation of the French version)

@OmelchenkoVadym @KZAmbFR @nerijusale @LembitUibo @Gocha_Javakhi @tolmajian @Tsahkna @GLandsbergis @edgarsrinkevics @StuartKLau @PedderSophie @laurnorman @KyivIndependent @ZelenskyyUa
⋙ 🐣 RT @AntoineBondaz China’s ambassador to France unabashedly asserts that the former Soviet republics have « no effective status in international law » as « sovereign states » 🤯 ¤ He denies the very existence of countries like Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, etc. 😳 WTF?! [link (Fr)]

🐣 RT @LvivJournal Traffic jams at the Chongar border pass between occupied regions of Kherson and Crimea. There is also traffic coming from occupied Zaporizhzhia region. ¤ I wonder what are they fleeing from? 🤔 #lviv
🌎 https://twitter.com/LvivJournal/status/1650081362089476096?s=20/photo/1 -2

🧵 RT @TimInHonolulu 1. Don Jr has gone quiet today after a long Tweet storm of multiple posts daily. He was my contemporaneous pick for who accompanied Boris Epshteyn to Prague. The Steele dossier assumed it was Michael Cohen. I thought it was Epshteyn and that Don Jr would have accompanied him
📌 https://twitter.com/TimInHonolulu/status/1650007616012320768?s=20
⋙ 🧵 RT @TimInHonolulu 1. Only ABC is running this. Both the Post and Times didn’t run anything about the 2nd day. ¤ Top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn to be questioned for 2nd day by special counsel: Sources
📌 https://twitter.com/TimInHonolulu/status/1649642268566102016?s=20
⋙⋙ ABCNews: Top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn to be questioned for 2nd day by special counsel: Sources https://tinyurl.com/54msyffu
// Epshteyn met with prosecutors for multiple hours on Thursday, sources say.

🐣 RT @BulwarkOnline “‘To be truly human is to bear the burden of our own mortality,’ Kevin Toolis writes…’How to face your own death, how to teach your children to face their deaths.’ Can you imagine that? I have a feeling Biden can.” ICYMI ¤ @DanMcGraw1:
⋙ TheBulwark, Daniel McGraw: Biden in Ireland: Ancestry and Empathy https://tinyurl.com/388tejbf
// 4/13/2023; As the president marks the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, we can glimpse the Irish origins of his famed compassion.

[…] The deceased, whose name was Mrs. Greenhouse, lived in a very small rent-controlled senior housing space; they couldn’t fit the ten mourners in her apartment. So, my friend, Rabbi Michael Beals, then new to the area, decided to move the ritual to the communal laundry room in the basement of the high-rise.

Guess who appeared, unaccompanied and without drawing attention to himself, in the back of the laundry room during prayers for Mrs. Greenhouse? Joe Biden, then a roughly 60-year-old United States senator. ¤ Rabbi Beals continues the story:

At the close of the kaddish, I walked over to him and asked the same question that must have been on everyone else’s mind: “Senator Biden—what are you doing here?”

And he said to me: “Listen, back in 1972, when I first ran for Senate, Mrs. Greenhouse gave $18 to my first campaign. Because that’s what she could afford. And every six years, when I’d run for reelection, she’d give another $18. She did it her whole life. I’m here to show my respect and gratitude.”

There were no news outlets at our service that day—no Jewish reporters or important dignitaries. Just a few elderly mourners in a basement laundry room.

Joe Biden didn’t come to that service for political gain. He came to that service because he has character. He came to that service because he’s a mensch.

There’s something strong and reliable in the character of a mensch—something firmer than empathy by itself, even though empathy is essential to it. This quality, too, is connected to Biden’s heritage—the sense of life that has been tempered through exposure to the reality of death.

The best Irish verse and prose has this sense. Poems by William Butler Yeats and novels by James Joyce and inspirational songs by U2 bespeak the importance of both living and dying.

But Biden’s great literary love is Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who died in 2013. The president often quotes from Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy,” and no doubt the text would be aptly intoned at an Irish wake, or recited into a mic at a political rally.

Consider, finally, the following stanza from “The Cure at Troy”—one more belated gift of the Irish, but to the world.

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

NatRev, Madeleine Kearns: The Origins of the Transgender Movement https://tinyurl.com/5aukkex9 The fear and the loathing: A history from very.long.ago ~ (2019)
// 10/14/2019; We must not ignore cultural blind spots that put children at risk of abuse.

⭕ 22 Apr 2023

🧵 RT @Mylovanov Breaking: @TheStudyofWar reports that Ukrainian forces have established positions in east (left) bank of Dnipro in Kherson Oblast as of yesterday. The institute cites textual and geocofirmed graphical evidence by Russian military bloggers. ¤ This is important. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1650051320332550144?s=20

🧵 RT @Horbyk 1/ We are currently experiencing a decolonization moment in East European and Eurasian Studies that is becoming a new paradigm in the field. Over the last few months, I have attended several conferences in the area, and here are some of the observations and reflections.
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/Horbyk/status/1649726244936720384?s=20/photo/1
// DaVinci drawing of bored angel: Melancholia

TheSun [UK]: STORM THE TRENCHES How Ukraine is preparing for a ‘BIG BANG’ strike to retake Crimea, bulldoze the Russians and humiliate Vladimir Putin https://tinyurl.com/ym55fst4
// UKRAINIAN troops are readying to use their shiny new Western weapons in a “big bang-style” onslaught to humiliate Vladimir Putin, according to top military experts.
// The Sun Online spoke to former US General Ben Hodges, retired British Army Brigadier Ben Barry, and ex-Brit Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon about Kyiv’s next steps to defeat Russia.

Behind the frontline, a new wave of troops determined to protect their homeland have been training with Western weapons. ¤ They will be rolling into battle with key new pieces of kit, such as Challenger 2, M1 Abrams, and Leopard 2 main battle tanks, Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles, and new artillery systems. ¤ With these weapons – in theory should outrange and outmatch the Russians, laying the groundwork for the new offensive.

General Hodges told The Sun Online he believes Ukraine will go big – and concentrate their efforts on finally retaking Crimea, which has been in Russian hands since 2014. ¤ Colonel de Bretton compared a potential Ukrainian strike to “Operation Desert Storm” – with their forces seeking to push up to 200 miles behind the Russian line in a blitzkrieg style assault.

“The key is winning Crimea – that will be the decisive terrain. Once Crimea is liberated, it’s all over, it changes everything. ¤ “Ukraine knows that it will never be safe without taking back Crimea.” ¤ With Hodges’ extensive military experience, he believes that the offensive will focus on isolating the annexed Crimean peninsula by severing the land bridge from partly-Russian controlled areas in Ukraine’s south. ¤ “It will be aimed at breaking this land bridge and more precision weapons to hit targets and make the peninsula untenable for Russian forces,” he explained.

This onslaught he believes will involve hitting Russia’s air bases, ambitious attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and targeting logistics & command centres deep into enemy-held territory in Crimea. ¤ “When it makes sense to,” Hodges said that they may “again” blow up the Crimean bridge – Putin’s favourite bridge that was attacked last October. scUkrainian commanders are presumed to have blown in the £3.2billion Kerch Bridge – a highly symbolic link between Vlad’s mainland and annexed Crimea. …

General Hodges claims that the offensive will be concentrated in a narrow area to break through the well-dug in Russian lines. ¤ “I think Ukraine will pick one or two places to focus their attack on a narrow front a few miles wide and penetrate through the fortified frontlines using tanks, mechanised infantry, engineers and artillery. ¤ He continued: “They will use their air force to help cover them and there will be activity in Russian rear area by special forces and partisans to stop them reacting [to the attack].”

Colonel de Bretton-Gordon also predicts the Ukrainians will be ambitious in their counter strike – with the key being their new arsenal of Ukrainian maine battle tanks. ¤ He said the Western armour will outmatch the ageing Soviet-era tank fleet currently being used by Putin, punching through tank traps, trenches and barbed wire like the so-called “Saddam Line” in the Operation Desert Storm back in 1991. ¤ Saddam Hussein’s fortifications were breached in a matter of hours by the US forces using M1 Abrams tanks – just as the Ukrainians now have in their arsenal. [?]

The Desert Storm ground offensive lasted just 100 hours and saw an army led by American and British forces make mincemeat of Saddam’s tanks and troops – who ended up surrendering en masse. ¤ Colonel De Bretton-Gordon told The Sun Online: “Over four days [in Desert Storm] we covered a couple of hundred miles. The Ukrainians will probably want to go a bit further but not much further.’ …

The key to Ukrainian victory, Colonel De Bretton-Gordon says, will be putting in place the logistics to maintain such an advance until it can get far enough behind Russian lines to cause maximum devastation. ¤ He added: “The Ukrainians are very canny. I’ve been impressed with the way they operate. ¤ “There isn’t much we can teach them. Obviously we taught them how to use our tanks and artillery but in terms of teaching the generals, they are already very impressive. …

[ A senior fellow for land warfare at International Institute for Strategic Studies]: “The longer they delay it, the more modern weapons and armour they will have in service and train people to operate it.”

Ukraine is known to be forming a network of new “Storm Brigades” – with around 40,000 soldiers. ¤ Named Hurricane, Spartan, Chervona Kalyna, Frontier, Rage, Azov and Kara Dag (a mountain in Crimea), Ukraine’s new units are preparing to play their role in a decisive new offensive to push back Putin’s troops.

War analysts at the Conflict Intelligence Team said the main goal of the fresh counter offensive will be to “unblock” Bakhmut. … War analysts at the Conflict Intelligence Team said the main goal of the fresh counter offensive will be to “unblock” Bakhmut.

“The vehicles are already on the territory of Ukraine at the disposal of its military and may be used in combat in the nearest future,” the team wrote in their situation report on March 28.”We expect that the primary goal of the Ukrainian counter-offensive will be to unblock Bakhmut.” ¤ Commander of Ukrainian land forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said recently: “Our task is to destroy as many enemies as possible and create the conditions for us to launch an offensive.”

Russian and Eastern Europe security expert Samantha de Bendern said that she is likewise sceptical that a Ukrainian counteroffensive will take place until at least the summer. ¤ The Chatham House Associate Fellow disagrees that Crimea will be Ukraine’s aim as “there is pressure from the Americans not too attack the peninsula, they are not welcoming to Ukrainian ideals of liberating Crimea”. ¤ Instead, de Bendern believes the attack will be focused East and will wholly depend on when the Western weapons sent to Ukraine will become operational. …

Whatever the plan behind the offensive, de Bendern said: “one thing is absolutely sure – Ukraine will never give up. ¤ “They will fight to the last man.”

🐣 RT @ JohnJHarwood is US debt really a GOP priority? ¤ each of the last 5 presidents took office w/his party holding both houses of Congress ¤ check budget data: ¤ under Clinton, Obama and Biden, deficits as share of the economy had gotten smaller 2 years in under Bush and Trump, they’d gotten bigger
⋙ 🐣 Yessir!
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1650007312264724485?s=20/photo/1

TheAtlantic, Phillips O’Brien and Mykola Bielieskov: What the Battle in Bakhmut Has Done for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3bej2hft
// Skeptics don’t understand why Kyiv insists on holding a city of modest strategic value.

For many months now, Ukrainian and Russian forces have been waging a bloody battle over what might look like the most insignificant of locations. On tiny patches of land around small cities in the Donbas region—such as Avdiivka, Vuhledar, and, most famously, Bakhmut—the combat has been so intense that many Western commentators and outlets have been second-guessing and criticizing the Ukrainian government’s insistence on continuing to fight in those areas. …

… Ukraine does not have the luxury of choosing where it has to fight, precisely because it is preparing a counteroffensive. … Ukraine needs some time to master a wide variety of new equipment provided by its European allies and the United States, while simultaneously wearing down Russian troops and equipment.

Far from being needlessly destructive, the Ukrainian decision to fight for Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar—in what we are calling the Second Battle of the Donbas—has been, like most of the Ukrainian military’s decisions in this war, grounded in solid strategic understanding. … [R]ather than harming any counteroffensive, the Ukrainian decision to prolong the fighting in these cities has more likely been integral to maximizing the chances of success. …

[E]ven after Russia’s 2022 campaign revealed major deficits in its forces’ leadership and effectiveness, Moscow’s military strategists seemed obsessed with the idea of taking the small communities now in contention in the Donbas. … The Russian effort in Bakhmut was particularly intense because the community had become the target of the infamous Wagner Group … [T]he Russians unleashed a deadly competition within their own side, as the army and Wagner each seemed to go to greater and greater lengths to outdo each other for political purposes.

The fighting in Vuhledar produced one of the most extraordinary sights of the war. In early February, the Russians, desperate to take the town, ordered a column of tanks to advance single file down a road without demining equipment. The Ukrainians destroyed the whole column by scattering mines before and behind, leading to losses so catastrophic that the Russian commander was fired. Similarly, Russian formations failed to bypass and surround Avdiivka, failed to seize Kupyansk, made countless unsuccessful attempts to relieve Ukrainian pressure on Kreminna, and were unable to push Ukrainian formations back to Lyman (which Russia occupied before Ukraine liberated it in early October). Each of these failed operations cost the Russians dearly.

Bakhmut has been an even more grisly example of the Russian willingness to sacrifice soldiers. The Wagner Group has adopted a particularly perverse form of warfare. Raw, inexperienced troops of convicts are sent forward to attack Ukrainian lines with almost no hope of survival. Their role is only to be targets—to make the Ukrainians expose their own positions by opening fire. The apparent hope is that Russian artillery and subsequent assault waves can then advance past the bodies of their dead comrades. By applying these extremely costly “human waves” tactics, Wagner has been repeating a Red Army practice from World War II—one that today’s Western admirers of Soviet operational art typically don’t highlight.

However, even this form of self-destructive warfare has yielded only small territorial gains, and the losses of Russian soldiers, especially at Bakhmut, have been particularly shocking. A NATO official told The Guardian in late March that the Russians were suffering 1,200 to 1,500 casualties a day in the Second Battle of the Donbas, with most occurring in and around Bakhmut.

Ukraine has suffered real losses too. In December, when President Volodymyr Zelensky made his famous visit to Washington, one of the most emotional sections of his address to Congress dwelled on the fighting in Bakhmut. “Every inch of that land is soaked in blood; roaring guns sound every hour,” he said, adding, “The fight for Bakhmut will change the tragic story of our war for independence and of freedom.” In March, when Zelensky visited the Bakhmut front, he thanked soldiers for their heroic efforts while also stressing that the fight must continue until Ukraine wins. He has insisted that if Bakhmut falls, then Putin will smell weakness and use a Russian victory to muster international pressure against Ukrainian interests.

The Second Battle of the Donbas has exposed the terrible strategic choices that modern war forces upon combatants. Zelensky’s decision to prolong and play up the significance of the battle might seem callous, but it is part of a considered attempt to reduce Ukrainian losses in the future and prepare for the counteroffensive. Far better for Ukrainian forces to confront a large, unskilled Russian army when it is doing the attacking and exposing itself to great losses. If the Russian leadership keeps trying to press forward under these circumstances, the Ukrainians have to keep taking advantage.

🐣 RT @Commish_Schmidt This was a *unanimous* ruling by the PA Supreme Court: “Let it be known far and wide that this Court can — and will — exercise the full might of its constitutional authority against those who seek to delegitimize this Commonwealth’s elections, or its judiciary.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @GovernorShapiro Let me be clear: we will not tolerate attacks on our democracy and our voting process. ¤ I’ll continue to stand up to dangerous misinformation and attempts to throw out Pennsylvanians’ votes.
⋙⋙ PhiladelphiaInquirer: Pa. Supreme Court angrily sanctions county for violating order on Dominion voting machines https://tinyurl.com/3yzen568
// The sanctions were a message about the authority of the courts, and they followed more than two years of fighting in the wake of the 2020 election.

NYT, Adam Liptak: In Abortion Pill Ruling, the Supreme Court Trades Ambition for Prudence https://tinyurl.com/2w5k9ac4 ‘Kacsmaryk’s ruling, second-guessing the science buttressing the FDA’s approval and regulation of the pill, would have upended a status quo in place for 23 years’
// The court’s order seemed to vindicate a commitment in last year’s decision in Dobbs: to leave further questions about abortion to the political process.

⭕ 21 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @drosha69 Prigozhin adds another 15 yrs to his prison term by discrediting ru army. He describes a sorry state of Aleksandr Nevskiy battalion: “Everyone is dirty and soaking… No weapons, no devices… Men figure out friendly positions by observing gun fire. It’s a genocide of russians” 💽

🐣 RT @ArmedMaidan Ukraine reportedly counterattacks toward Bakhmut city centre retaking 9-11 blocks, threatening Stalingrad-like trap for orcs ¤ “The largest encirclement for the Russians since the beginning of the war” ¤ #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #RussiaUkraineWar #Bakhmut #ukrainecounteroffensive
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ArmedMaidan/status/1649540753750736897?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] “Matryoshka” in Bakhmut and other news According to the Russian and Ukrainian military, MCs really received reinforcements and are trying with all their might to close the encirclement. The battles are heavy, but the APU hold the western outskirts of the city and do not allow the pincers to close. At the same time, in Bakhmut itselt, the pressure and advance of the “Wagnerites” was already stopped two or three davs ago, and in the last two days Ukrainian units have been slowly retaking quarter after quarter, moving trom the west to the city center. We.are talking about moving 9-11 blocks and two streets.

This would be a rather strange tactic for hopelessly surrounded Ukrainians, who would be more logical to go west while there is such an opportunity, rather than break through to the east. and even in urban areas. Then why are the Armed Forces of Ukraine making great ettorts. trying to move towards the center of Bakhmut

According to officers on both sides, the UAF in the city is being attacked because their sitation is tar trom hone ess. While the PaCsand the Kussian Armed Forcos encircle Bakhmut, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are slowly moving north and south of the Russian positions and can at any moment go torward, arranging a cauldron for those who are trving to surround Bakhmut.

Two rings, two ends, and in the middle is Bakhmut. There is matryoshka. We surround them, they surround us. The command insists that the city be completely blocked in the shortest possible time. PaCs have been strengthened, army units have been strengthened by the Airborne Forces, a tank formation, they have been given a weekly ration ot shells, they have not yet arrived, but they should be. I do not understand why this is being done, because the situation for our troops is threatening. By cutting off Bakhmut, we ourselves can find ourselves in the ring, and even with the burning middle which is controlled by the Ukrainians, saws the Russian staff officer.

“The harder they bite into the city, the better for us now. They compactly deploy troops in a small area that can be brpassed trom two sides. moreover. ouckly. won’t talk about plans, but we have a good chance of organizing the largest encirclement for the Russians since the beginning ot the war, explains a Ukrainian staff offcer.

In other directions, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to improve their positions. In recent days, 4 settlements in the Zaporozhye region have been liberated and several small bridgeheads have been created on the left bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region. This is not yet an oftensive, but a clear but a clear preparation for it.
¤ https://t.me/s/volyamedia/623 [Telegram]

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Lol.
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @TheLeadCNN Poll: Biden leads Trump by nearly 40 points among voters who disapprove of both of their presidential performances @PaulBegala, @SarahAMatthews1, @abbydphillip and @catherine_lucey discuss
💽 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1649606355488231425?s=20/photo/1

NYT: Testimony Suggests Trump Was at Meeting About Accessing Voting Software https://tinyurl.com/fr9ran6a “The Trump allies … copied elections software used [in Georgia] and uploaded it on the internet, creating the potential for future election manipulation”
// In a letter to federal officials, a liberal-leaning group highlighted testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee that described then-President Trump attending a meeting about the plan in December 2020.

[…] A number of Trump aides and allies have recounted a lengthy and acrimonious meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, which one member of the House Jan. 6 committee would later call “the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.” During the meeting, then-President Trump presided as his advisers argued about whether they should seek to have federal agents seize voting machines to analyze them for fraud.

… Giuliani, then Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, opposed seizing voting machines and spoke of how the Trump campaign was instead “going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure,” and that the access would be “voluntary.”

… Among those involved in the Oval Office discussion were two prominent pro-Trump conspiracy theorists: Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who spread numerous falsehoods after the 2020 election and who also discussed Mr. Giuliani’s comments in her testimony. …

In its letter, Free Speech for People argued that the testimony and other details that have been made public prove that Mr. Trump “was, at a minimum, aware” of an “unlawful, multistate plot” to access and copy voting system software.

On Jan. 7, 2021, a small group working on behalf of Mr. Trump traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., some 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, and gained access to sensitive election data; subsequent visits by pro-Trump figures were captured on video surveillance cameras. ¤ … At one point, video footage shows the then-chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, Cathy Latham, appearing to welcome into the building the members of a forensics company hired by Ms. Powell. … ¤ Ms. Latham was also one of the 16 pro-Trump fake electors whom Georgia Republicans had assembled in an effort to reverse the election results there.

… The Trump allies who traveled to Coffee County copied elections software used across the state and uploaded it on the internet, creating the potential for future election manipulation.

WaPo, Ruth Marcus: The justices’ abortion pill ruling is as good as it gets for this court https://tinyurl.com/32af48xv “[I]t is significant — and, under the circumstances, comforting — that none of the three Trump appointees noted disagreement” with the majority opinion

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Works for me.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney DA’s office describes this as a joint motion to dismiss, agreed upon after Judiciary Committee permitted a Bragg attorney to be present for Pomerantz deposition.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1649568072322170880?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw “These defendants plotted armed attacks against energy facilities to stoke division in furtherance of white supremacist ideology and now they are being held accountable,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen.
⋙ DOJ: Two Men Sentenced for Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Plot to Attack Power Grids in the United States https://tinyurl.com/y6frpssj
// Domestic Terrorism Plot was in Furtherance of White Supremacy

🐣 RT @mjs_DC BREAKING: Supreme Court stays order banning mifepristone. This means mifepristone remains 100% legal and accessible in states where it is legal. ¤ Thomas and Alito dissent.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1649544640310198282?s=20/photo/1
≣ [CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/mraemnt4
⋙ 🐣 RT @mjs_DC The fact that Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett voted to halt the decisions below—and that Alito did not even try to defend Kacsmaryk or the 5th Circuit, on standing or the merits—strongly suggests that the Supreme Court will NOT use this case to ban or limit mifepristone.

🐣 RT @business [Bloomberg] BREAKING: The US Supreme Court is keeping a widely used abortion pill available, blocking a Texas judge’s restrictions while a legal fight goes forward https://trib.al/dsbOcIe

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Supreme Court Ensures, for Now, Broad Access to Abortion Pill https://tinyurl.com/mt3d7mdv
// The order halts a sweeping ruling by a federal judge in Texas as an appeal moves forward in a case that could have profound implications for abortion access and the F.D.A.’s regulatory authority.

🐣 RT @PopovaProf This piece lacks basic understanding of what Ru-Ukr war is abt. It’s not a civil war, a territorial dispute, or a proxy war between NATO and Ru, as implied. It’s a war of conquest by Ru. For a ceasefire to have a chance to hold, free Ukr should be in NATO tomorrow…
¤ https://twitter.com/PopovaProf/status/1649504305777369090?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardHaass 25 years later, it turns out the Good Friday Agreement is an unlikely but potentially valuable source of lessons for how to build a diplomatic track that could hasten an end to the war between Russia & Ukraine.
⋙⋙⋙ ProjectSyndicate, Richard Haass. What Northern Ireland Teaches Us About Ending the Ukraine War https://tinyurl.com/4v6p2zkw

“It is essential that any diplomatic path does not ask the parties to abandon their ultimate goals or give up their arms. Ukraine has every right to insist on the full return of its territory going back to its independence in 1991, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is sure to insist that the Ukrainian territories he has illegally annexed are part of Russia. It may well take decades (and new leadership in Moscow) to resolve these differences. So be it. The immediate goal of a cease-fire should not be contingent on reconciling what cannot be reconciled now or for the foreseeable future. ¤ As distasteful as it might be, those responsible for the war and for war crimes, including Putin, will need to be able to participate directly or indirectly in the diplomatic process if it is to have any chance of success. The top priority now must be to end the violence; the quest for justice ultimately must be pursued, but it should be postponed.”

⋙ 🐣 RT @PopovaProf Far fr clear Ukr would go for it, but that’s the only meaningful immediate move. The rest of the peace/diplomacy suggestions all put Ru in an advantageous position and provide no credible mechanisms to guard against a 3rd Ru invasion. Ru goals have only escalated since 2014

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: ‘I am your justice’ https://tinyurl.com/tvhbv7u3 //➔ This is terrifying stuff, right out of the Hitler playbook, and I’m not going to apologize for the comparison: #MustRead article
// The former president is proposing deploying the military domestically, purging the federal workforce and building futuristic cities from scratch

Mandatory stop-and-frisk. Deploying the military to fight street crime, break up gangs and deport immigrants. Purging the federal workforce and charging leakers.

Former president Donald Trump has steadily begun outlining his vision for a second-term agenda, focusing on unfinished business from his time in the White House and an expansive vision for how he would wield federal power. In online videos and stump speeches, Trump is pledging to pick up where his first term left off and push even further.

Where he earlier changed border policies to reduce refugees and people seeking asylum, he’s now promising to conduct an unprecedented deportation operation. Where he previously moved to make it easier to fire federal workers, he’s now proposing a new civil service exam. After urging state and local officials to take harsher measures on crime and homelessness, Trump says he is now determined to take more direct federal action.

“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference and repeated at his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco a few weeks later. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Trump’s emerging platform marks a sharp departure from traditional conservative orthodoxy emphasizing small government, which was famously summed up in Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Trump, by contrast, is proposing to apply government power, centralized under his authority, toward a vast range of issues that have long remained outside the scope of federal control.

Experts called some of Trump’s ideas impractical, reckless, self-defeating, potentially illegal and even dangerous. Some of Trump’s specific proposals are admittedly underdeveloped, such as a plan for building futuristic cities from scratch on unused federal land, which has been compared to projects in repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

But Trump has a track record of floating ideas that stoke widespread outrage or confusion, then roiling government and legal institutions to realize them, such as banning citizens of several majority-Muslim countries from coming to the United States and imposing trade barriers. Trump is currently facing federal and local criminal investigations arising from his unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, which ultimately inspired a deadly riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol. …

Supporters have cheered Trump’s continued turn away from longtime conservative orthodoxy, such as free trade and foreign interventions, and credited him for ushering in larger shift in the party. In articulating a vision of a more coercive right-wing government, Trump is finding common ground with his leading rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor has laid out his own doctrine of asserting more government power, exemplified by his flagship bills restricting classroom instruction of diversity, gender and sexual orientation; his moves to punish Disney for opposing him; and his suspension of a Democratic prosecutor.

The shared positioning on executive power by Trump and DeSantis, who lead early primary polls, underscores how much Trump has reshaped the Republican base in the mold of his “Make America Great Again” movement.

“The Reagan limited-government conservatism and emphasis on federalism is being displaced by a new muscular, nationalizing cultural conservatism, with a lot of anger,” said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who studies democracy. “One thing we’ve learned about Trump and authoritarian populists like him is not to dismiss what they’re saying as just idle language and toothless roar. We need to take it very seriously.”

The rise of a more activist view of right-wing governance has sparked a wider debate within the conservative movement. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, another potential presidential aspirant, has criticized Trump and DeSantis as not conservative.

“The reality is we have to meet the government where it is presently,” said Paul Dans, director of the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, an effort by the conservative think tank and other conservative groups to develop policy proposals, personnel recommendations, training and transition plans representing a consensus of the conservative movement. “That’s really where the more activist leaning is coming from in this project, that we need skilled operators to start taking this battleship and pointing it in a new direction.”

The Trump campaign’s policy development is being led by Vince Haley, a former White House aide who previously worked for former House speaker Newt Gingrich. As the current Trump campaign’s policy head, Haley has been coordinating with Heritage and partner organizations the Conservative Partnership Institute and the Center for Renewing America, as well as the America First Policy Institute and Stephen Miller’s America First Legal, to consider policy ideas and potential personnel picks for an administration-in-waiting. …

“I guarantee the stuff we’re putting forward is not going to get thrown in the trash,” said Vought, who contributed the transition project’s chapter on exercising authority through the Executive Office of the President, akin to a playbook for a White House chief of staff. Some of Vought’s ideas have found their way into Trump’s proposals, such as a recent announcement on bringing independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission under White House supervision.

“There’s a glove of power needed to beat back the administrative state or deep state,” he said, “and if you’re not willing to put your hand in that glove you will fail, regardless of how much credibility you have with the base.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has acknowledged the advantage of having more allies to help him prepare to operate the vast expanses of the administration more immediately than after his surprise win in 2016.

“When I went there, I didn’t know a lot of people; I had to rely on, in some cases, RINOs and others to give me some recommendations, but I know them all now,” he said in Iowa last month, referring pejoratively to “Republicans in Name Only.” “I know the good ones, I know the bad ones, I know the weak ones, I know the strong ones.”

‘Freedom Cities’: The new cities proposal consists of a national contest to charter up to 10 D.C.-sized metropolises on undeveloped federal land. Administration officials discussed the concept toward the end of Trump’s term, but he did not campaign on it in 2020. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner pushed the idea in White House meetings after it was initially brought up by Haley and another speechwriter on Miller’s team, Ross Worthington, who is also now on the 2024 campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Trump has discussed the new “Freedom Cities” in utopian terms, with flying cars, manufacturing hubs and opportunities for homeownership, promising a “quantum leap in the American standard of living.” The campaign has provided few details on how the plan would work in practice.

Trump acknowledged that the idea needed more work over a Sunday dinner in mid-March, according to economic adviser Stephen Moore. “He said, ‘I’m still trying to figure out how it’s going to work,’ something like that,’” Moore recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘How do you think we should make that work?’ And I’m going to help him with the idea.” …

“I hate this thing,” one outside economic adviser to Trump said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with campaign officials. “The economic problems facing the nations are so severe, and we’re going to talk make-believe about ‘building new cities’?”

Experts stress that cities have historically grown around natural centers of economic activity rather than state edict. “You can’t just wave a wand and have cities come into being,” said Rick McGahey, an economist at the New School who specializes in urban growth. “This is not where cities come from. The concept does not work.” …

Some Trump allies give him credit for what they see as a bold new idea. One campaign adviser compared the proposal’s ambition to the “Opportunity Zones” economic incentives in Trump’s 2017 tax legislation, scaled up to emulate historic Republican achievements such as Abraham Lincoln’s Homestead Act and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System.

“There is this broad recognition that we don’t build enough things in America and that, you know, obviously, we have great American cities, but we haven’t really built a new model city,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who has endorsed Trump’s presidential bid. “There are a lot of other countries that are trying different approaches out, and I think it’s fine for us to think about doing that here, too.”

Trump has specified that he wants to define architectural standards in existing cities as well, insisting on classical-style buildings, monuments to “true American heroes,” and schools and streets named “not after communists but patriots.” He has also proposed forcibly removing homeless people to outlying tent cities, wading into an area usually left to local governments and relying on unclear federal authority.

“Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they are willing to be rehabilitated,” Trump said in a recent campaign video.

‘Patriotic education’: Trump said he would reestablish a presidential commission to promote a “patriotic” curriculum that rejects scholarship on systemic racism. His “1776 Commission,” which did not include any professional historians, released a report at the end of his presidency that demonized institutions such as federal agencies and universities.

“What Trump is trying to resurrect is something that was thoroughly discredited by the professional historical community in a totally apolitical context,” said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. “There’s lots of places to look and see what happens when history education gets stripped of its professional integrity in the interest of a political party.” …

‘Shatter the deep state’: In another form of enforcing loyalty and suppressing dissent, Trump has proposed making it easier to fire federal workers, cracking down on media leaks, and establishing a “truth and reconciliation commission” to publish records on alleged abuses by spy agencies. He said he will require all federal employees to pass a new civil service test covering due-process rights, free speech, religious liberties, and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

“This is how I will shatter the deep state and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people,” Trump said in a campaign video. In another, he elaborated, “We need to clean house of all of the warmongers and America-Last globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department and the national security industrial complex.”

Some of Trump’s proposals for overhauling the merit-based civil service would require congressional action. The result could be to undermine the ability of professional public servants to reliably deliver government services without political interference, warned Max Stier, chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports federal workforce development.

“He is proposing changes that would create the world that he is objecting to,” Stier said. “It does have real-time consequences in terms of undermining public trust in our government. That’s a real problem because trust in government is a core part of our democracy.”

‘Military resources’: Trump drew widespread criticism as president, especially during the demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd in 2020, for advocating harsh treatment of protesters, clearing peaceful demonstrators outside the White House, and deploying unmarked federal agents in Washington and Portland, Ore. Since leaving office, Trump has said he regrets not going even further to deploy military power domestically and wouldn’t hesitate to do so if he returns to the White House.

“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of public safety, I will send in federal assets, including the National Guard, until law and order is restored,” Trump said at CPAC. “We will use all necessary state, local, federal and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

In campaign videos and messages, Trump has specifically proposed requiring police departments to use stop-and-frisk, a tactic that has been widely criticized for discriminating against people of color and that a federal judge in New York found to violate the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. Trump also said he would order the Justice Department to investigate charging decisions by local prosecutors, challenging the constitutional division between federal and local authorities. He further proposed using federal law enforcement to dismantle gangs and execute drug dealers and human traffickers.

Trump doesn’t envision a national police force, the campaign adviser said, and in practice his initiatives could be accomplished through federal funding or joint operations with state authorities.

The president has no legal authority over local police or prosecutors, and attempts to attach conditions to federal funding usually face litigation, according to Vladeck, the University of Texas law professor. There are legal limits on using the military for civilian law enforcement but allowances for acting in a support capacity that a Trump administration could try to exploit, Vladeck said.

“Republicans have tried to corner the market on claiming the federal government has been weaponized, but that’s what this is,” he added. “And the only way you can do that is by interjecting federal authority into matters that constitutionally or at least traditionally have been reserved to the states.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Texts reveal trump allies wanted to use STOLEN voter data to overturn the 2020 election. This involves Rudy, Sidney Powell, Cyber Ninjas, Coffee County election officials, and the trump White House.
⋙ CNN: Exclusive: Text messages reveal Trump operatives considered using breached voting data to decertify Georgia’s Senate runoff in 2021 https://tinyurl.com/5bjfvxa2

“Here’s the plan. Let’s keep this close hold,” Jim Penrose, a former NSA official working with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to access voting machines in Georgia, wrote in a January 19 text to Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a firm that purports to run audits of voting systems.

In the text, which was obtained by CNN and has not been previously reported, Penrose references the upcoming certification of Democrat Jon Ossoff’s win over Republican David Perdue.

“We only have until Saturday to decide if we are going to use this report to try to decertify the Senate run-off election or if we hold it for a bigger moment,” Penrose wrote, referring to a potential lawsuit.

The plot to breach voting systems in Coffee County, coordinated by members of Trump’s legal team including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, is part of a broader criminal investigation into 2020 election interference led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Willis’ office is weighing a potential racketeering case against multiple defendants and is actively deciding who to bring charges against, sources tell CNN. Willis has subpoenaed a number of individuals involved in the Coffee County breach, including the two men who carried it out who were in touch with Penrose and Logan.

Willis has also subpoenaed Giuliani and Powell as part of her probe. Giuliani has been told he’s a target in the Fulton County probe, CNN previously reported. The special grand jury convened for the case recommended issuing multiple indictments in its final report completed in February, according to the jury foreperson.    

A source familiar with Willis’ investigation tells CNN that Willis and her team have in their possession evidence that Trump allies planned to use the breached voting data from Georgia to try to decertify the state’s senate runoff election. Emails obtained by CNN show Penrose and Powell arranged upfront payment to a cyber forensics firm that sent a team to Coffee County on January 7, 2021.

The Coffee County breach is also under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. ¤ Special Counsel Jack Smith also appears to be examining the broader effort to breach or seize voting machines as part of his federal probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. It’s unclear what if any evidence he has in his possession related to the Coffee County breach. 

Penrose and Logan were also named in a state-level criminal investigation in Michigan alleging they participated in a conspiracy to seize voting machines there.

An attorney for Giuliani declined to comment and referred CNN to his January 6 committee interview transcript. ¤ Powell, Penrose and Logan did not respond to requests for comment.

On January 7, 2021, the day after rioters stormed the US Capitol, two people walked into an elections office in Coffee County, Georgia, a rural part of the state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020. A local election official helped them gain access to sensitive voting data which they downloaded onto a portable hard drive.    

That data was then uploaded to an encrypted server and shared with several Trump allies and operatives, including Logan, Penrose, Powell and Giuliani, according to access logs reviewed by CNN and testimony released by the January 6 committee.

Last year, a former Trump official testified under oath to the House January 6 committee that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during a now infamous Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020,  that included Trump. 

Derek Lyons, a former deputy White House counsel who was in that meeting, testified to the January 6 committee that Giuliani suggested accessing voting machines in Georgia as an alternative to ordering the military or Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines.  

“His point of view was that in some way the campaign, I believe, was going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure,” Lyons said about Giuliani, according to a transcript of his deposition. 

Lyons told the committee that Giuliani suggested the access would be “voluntary” and examination of those machines would “begin to show evidence of the allegations that were being made.”

“That evidence could then be leveraged to … gain access to additional machines,” Lyons said. “Georgia was the topic of discussion at that time.”  

There is no evidence that the Coffee County voting data was used as part of a lawsuit to try to decertify the Senate runoff results. But the fact that the data has yet to be recovered has raised concerns among election security advocates about how it could be used potentially to disrupt future election results.  

In a December 2022 letter to the FBI, Susan Greenhalgh, a senior advisor for election security at the advocacy group Free Speech For People, described how copies of the voting data from Coffee County have been “shared covertly with an unknown number of election deniers.” The letter warned that the data “could be used to sow distrust in elections, fabricate evidence to challenge legitimate election results, or even to manipulate election results in the future.”

The advocacy group is among those involved in a civil case focused on election security in Georgia. Greenhalgh has asked the FBI to investigate the Coffee County breach as recently as this week.

🐣 RT @atrupar It really sunk in for me today that Elon is trying to be Trump. A chaos agent with an endless thirst for attention and validation. The grievances. The narcissism. The incessant punching down and bigotry. The shady business connections. It’s the same toxic brew.

⭕ 20 Apr 2023

‼️🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski With Matt Kacsmaryk’s nomination languishing, he makes a contribution to Josh Hawley, who breaks the logjam to get him confirmed. They then file the abortion pill case in front of him, where Josh Hawley’s wife is the attorney arguing the case.
¤ https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1649079802429579265?s=20

NYT, Jack Resneck Jr: This Could Be One of the Most Brazen Attacks on Americans’ Health Yet https://tinyurl.com/mkxuz6dw Dr. Resneck is the president of the American Medical Association, one of a dozen or so medical organizations that have filed briefs with the court

[…] In seeking to restrict access to abortion across the United States, the plaintiffs in this case have, intentionally or not, seriously jeopardized our nation’s 85-year-old drug regulatory system. We must be cleareyed; upholding any parts of the district court’s dangerous ruling would in all likelihood almost immediately prompt challenges to other longstanding safe and effective F.D.A.-approved drugs that doctors and patients rely on every day.

After three years of politicization fueled by disinformation, this would surely include challenges to many vaccines, including those that reduce the risks of serious illness from Covid-19. We should expect lawsuits against common types of safe and highly effective hormonal birth control, including emergency contraception. Also at risk: drugs used to treat cancer and arthritis that can incidentally affect unexpected pregnancies, drugs to prevent or treat H.I.V., and medications aimed at providing gender-affirming care.

The threat may ultimately include promising drugs and treatments built around stem cell technology to treat Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis or even more common types of chronic disease, such as diabetes. With ever-growing anti-science aggression, disinformation campaigns and vitriol about all types of medical advancements, there is no telling where the court challenges may lead — perhaps even to widely used drugs now sold over the counter to treat pain, allergies or heartburn that happen to have been studied with fetal stem cells.

This would represent a dangerous and reckless step backward for our country. More people would live sicker, suffer more and die younger while the scientifically proven safe and effective drugs they need remain locked away.

We simply cannot be a country where your access to the care you need is determined by the whims of ideologically driven judges and lawmakers without medical or scientific training. That’s why a dozen of the nation’s leading medical organizations, including the one I head, the American Medical Association, strongly oppose this politically motivated assault on patient and physician autonomy and have filed amicus briefs to make our case.

We cannot allow pseudoscience and speculation to override the substantial weight of scientific evidence from more than 100 studies and millions of patients that confirm the safety and efficacy of a drug or course of treatment.

The legal challenge to mifepristone threatens grave harm to our patients, public health and the shared decision-making at the core of the physician-patient relationship. But there are even broader implications of this case: the integrity of the long-established F.D.A.-approval process and whether we want science — or ideologues — informing decisions about our individual and collective health.

TNR, Michael Tomasky: The (Republican) Party’s Over https://tinyurl.com/2fc4kjzr Group interview by Michael Tomasky with Max Boot, Juleanna Glover, Michael Steele and Nicolle Wallace
// We asked four recovering Republicans if the GOP is salvageable. Hint: They laughed.

New Republic editor Michael Tomasky gathered four close observers of the party’s decline and fall via Zoom in early March to discuss the current and future state of the Republican Party: Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011; Juleanna Glover, who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft; Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist and author of The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right; and Nicolle Wallace, who was President George W. Bush’s communications director and senior adviser to John McCain’s 2008 campaign and now hosts MSNBC’s Deadline: White House.

(📊) WaPo: Abortion divides 2024 candidates and confounds many within the GOP https://tinyurl.com/tn5vuwjt “[RNC] officials plan to argue that the issue was one of the biggest reasons the party did not perform as well as expected in the 2022 midterms”
// Presidential hopefuls have struggled to settle on a position amid warning signs that the party is on the wrong side of public opinion on the issue

When Republican donors arrived at the Four Seasons in Nashville last weekend, they were handed a polling memo written by former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway with a startling statistic: Eighty percent of voters disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson last year overturning Roe v. Wade.

… Republican National Committee officials plan to argue that the issue was one of the biggest reasons the party did not perform as well as expected in the 2022 midterms, and some of the party’s leaders are meeting frequently about how to deal with the issue … ¤ … Trump believes the issue should be left up to individual states. “States’ rights,” Trump has said privately when advisers have floated the issue, adding his assessment that they should not talk about it.

In recent weeks, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill behind closed doors that would ban abortions after six weeks, when many women don’t know they are pregnant. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has privately circulated polling to candidates that shows the American public broadly supports a 15-week ban — and she has privately expressed concerns about a six-week ban.

In elections held since Roe was overturned, Americans have overwhelmingly voted to support abortion rights, including in Republican-led states such as Kansas and Kentucky.

In the 2022 midterms — which by historical standards should have been a rout for the party out of power, the Republicans — Democrats overperformed, driving high turnout among women and in the suburbs that allowed the party to narrowly hold the majority in the U.S. Senate, lose the House by only a handful of seats, win key governors’ races and flip a few state legislatures. Exit polls showed that in several states, voters named abortion as their most important issue.

In an off-year state Supreme Court judicial race in Wisconsin, the Democrats’ choice prevailed in a blowout this month — a victory that may signal that abortion remains salient among voters and is likely to still be top of mind heading into the presidential election year.

🐣 RT @washingtonpost Exclusive: A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that n, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Post. https://wapo.st/41sUw4o
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1649074059517231105?s=20

⋙ Cleta Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer and fundraiser who worked closely with former president Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, gave the presentation at an RNC donor retreat in Nashville on Saturday

⋙ The presentation offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.

⋙ Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear whether she delivered the presentation exactly as it was prepared on her PowerPoint slides.

🐣 RT @washingtonpost Exclusive: Election denier Mike Lindell offered $5 million to anyone who could prove him wrong. An arbitration panel just ruled he must pay.
⋙ WaPo: Mike Lindell’s firm told to pay $5 million in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ election-fraud challenge https://tinyurl.com/2p83rrez “Asked why he had decided to [seek] a hearing, Zeidman testified that he wanted the money and wanted to push back against stolen-election claims”

MyPillow founder and prominent election denier Mike Lindell made a bold offer ahead of a “cyber symposium” he held in August 2021 in South Dakota: He claimed he had data showing Chinese interference and said he would pay $5 million to anyone who could prove the material was not from the previous year’s U.S. election. ¤ He called the challenge “Prove Mike Wrong.” ¤ On Wednesday, a private arbitration panel ruled that someone had.

The panel said Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert and 63-year-old Trump voter from Nevada, was entitled to the $5 million payout. ¤ Zeidman had examined Lindell’s data and concluded that it not only did not prove voter fraud, it had no connection to the 2020 election. ¤ He was the only expert who submitted a claim, arbitration records show. ¤ He turned to the arbitrators after Lindell Management, which created the contest, refused to pay him.

In their 23-page decision, the arbitrators said Zeidman proved that Lindell’s material “unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.” They directed Lindell’s firm to pay Zeidman within 30 days.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Zeidman said he was “really happy” with the arbitrators’ decision. “They clearly saw this as I did — that the data we were given at the symposium was not at all what Mr. Lindell said it was,” he said. “The truth is finally out there.”

Zeidman’s attorney Brian Glasser said that the panel’s decision stood as a warning to others who made wild allegations about election fraud. “I think the arbitrators thought it important that these claims be vetted, because they’ve done great harm to our country,” he said.

Lindell said in a text to The Post, “They made a terribly wrong decision! This will be going to court!” His attorneys did not reply to a request seeking comment.

A copy of contest rules submitted in the arbitration said disputes would be “resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration” and noted that arbitration “is subject to very limited review by courts.”

Glasser said that the panel’s decision cannot be directly appealed but that Lindell could ask a federal court to quash it on the basis that it represented a “manifest injustice.” The statutory grounds for such a claim are narrow and it is “extremely rare” for such a claim to succeed, according to Glasser. …

Zeidman’s lawyers wrote to the panel that the data presented at the symposium contained “no recognizable data in any known data format.”

Lindell testified at arbitration that he did not share what he had described as his key data to support the foreign intrusion claim during the conference. He held off, he said, after a man seeking a selfie poked him in the side as the symposium was nearing an end — an act that Lindell called an assault and said he took as a signal the government might tamper with his central information if he made it public.

Lindell told the panel that, after the incident, his “red team” advisers warned him against making that inform public. “They said it could be a poison pill put in the data and we really shouldn’t release the China stuff,” he said.
The arbitrators did not address the substance of Lindell’s claims about vote tampering, noting that they were “not asked to decide whether China interfered in the 2020 election.”

TPM: Where Things Stand: Biden Shreds McCarthy’s Performative Debt Limit Bill https://tinyurl.com/3hs9ab3r “Fundamentally, this is still about Republicans wanting to use the debt ceiling to extract political concessions out of Biden that they’d never get through legislative order”

The 320-page document is a panoply of red-meat base messaging and benefits cuts: It would repeal the green energy tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, add more requirements to benefit programs like SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), cut money allocated to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and rescind the Biden administration’s order forgiving student debt. It would also suspend the debt ceiling until 2024. 

In short: It is dead on arrival in the Senate. It’s meant to show that House Republicans can all agree on a proposal (which is already in doubt), and to give McCarthy a leg to stand on when he criticizes Biden for refusing to negotiate. 

Fundamentally, this is still about Republicans wanting to use the debt ceiling to extract political concessions out of Biden that they’d never get through legislative order. Now, they’ll use this document to bellyache that the White House still won’t negotiate with them, that they’re just being fiscally responsible (ha) and that they have no choice but to conflate the debt ceiling and spending cuts (because a Democrat is in the White House again so it’s time to pretend they care about austerity).

≣ WhiteHouse: Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Speaker McCarthy’s Proposal https://tinyurl.com/ynaeutn5

Yesterday, Speaker McCarthy sided with the extreme MAGA wing of his conference and released a blueprint to devastate hard-working American families. MAGA House Republicans are holding the American economy hostage in order to take a hatchet to programs Americans rely on every day to make ends meet.

Every House Republican who votes for this bill is voting to cut education, veterans medical care, cancer research, meals on wheels, food safety, and law enforcement. To offshore American manufacturing and kill good-paying jobs. To take health care away from millions of Americans and threaten food assistance for hundreds of thousands of older people. To increase energy bills and raise taxes for hard-working families. To slash programs hard-working Americans depend on even as they protect wealthy tax cheats and continue to push tax giveaways for the wealthiest and big corporations.

That stands in stark contrast with President Biden’s Budget, which Invests in America, lowers costs for hardworking families, and cuts the deficit by asking the super-wealthy and largest corporations to pay their fair share. House Republicans must avoid default and stop playing economic brinkmanship with the American people’s livelihoods and retirements. The American people have made clear which economic vision they support.

🐣 RT @SecCardona Speaker McCarthy’s debt ceiling proposal tells us everything we need to know about what he & his allies value—tax cuts for the super-rich, special interests, and big corporations over supporting the 40 million+ working Americans who are eligible for student debt relief.

🐣 RT @saintjavelin Explosion and light in the sky over Kyiv last night, or what the Main Center of Special Control of the Space Agency of Ukraine calls “a high-energy acoustic event,” was caused by “the entry of a cosmic body into the dense layers of the atmosphere.”
⋙ 🐣 in days of yore, such an event was considered a sign, some good, some bad: English history is strewn with them (the Bible, as well) ¤ time will tell⏳

🔄 💙 🐣 💁I’ve studied western civilization for a long time & for me it comes down to a little twinkle in the eye, a playfulness based in freedom of expression, creativity underwritten by a reliable system of justice that is fair & guarantees respect for the uniqueness of each individual

BBC: Mystery white flash lights up skies over Kyiv https://tinyurl.com/3b2xkkry
// Videos from four angles shows the flash in Ukraine’s capital – although it’s not known what caused it.
🖼 https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1648944250346774530?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DeptofDefense NEWS: @SecDef Hopes @NATO Partnership for Sweden by Summer.
⋙ Defense[.]gov: Austin Hopes NATO Partnership for Sweden by Summer https://tinyurl.com/2bzfdj4r
// Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has told his Swedish counterpart he hopes that Sweden will get NATO membership before the summer.

On the first day of a four-day trip to Sweden and Germany, Austin met with Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson for a Tuesday morning defense meeting at the headquarters of the Swedish navy on Musko Naval Base near Stockholm. 

“Mr. Minister, thanks for the tremendous hospitality. We’re delighted to be here, and I really appreciate the warm welcome from your troops this morning,” Austin told his counterpart. “We look forward to continuing to advocate for your swift admission to NATO, and we’ll work hard to get that done before the summer. I think that’s really, really important.”

🐣 RT @IISS_org “Any attempt to work with China on Ukraine, without full coordination with his European partners and the US will further isolate #France.” – @RymMomtaz via @Telegraph:
⋙ TheTelegraph [UK]: Macron ‘working on secret plan’ with China to end Ukraine war https://tinyurl.com/mw6yypk3
// A potential framework could lead to talks ‘by this summer’, according to reports

[…] Responding to Mr Macron’s reported plans, Mr [Tobias Ellwood, chair of the defence select committee] told The Telegraph: “He may think he’s pursuing a noble cause but he is in fact falling into China’s playbook, bypassing common international practices and the recognised machinery to resolve international disputes.

While Sir Iain said Ukrainians have little faith in the French president. ¤ “When I was in Ukraine I found they do not trust the Chinese and they don’t trust Macron, as he put them in this predicament in the first place when he came up with the disastrous agreement with Merkel in 2014,” he said.

“They certainly don’t trust him since he went to China. They are saying: Macron has only one objective, and that is boosting Macron’s image, and he doesn’t care who he sells down the river to achieve that, when he he facing such a domestic mess. ¤ “His behaviour is really bizarre and redolent of a snake in the grass.”

There was similar disapproval in Brussels over Mr Macron’s stance. ¤ Rym Momtaz, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “Macron suffers from a trust deficit with his European partners and allies due to his previous statements saying Nato suffers from ‘brain death’, blindsiding them with his dialogue with Russia in 2019 and calling not to ‘humiliate Russia’ and for building ‘an architecture of security with Russia’ even after it had invaded Ukraine. ¤ “Any attempt to work with China on Ukraine, without full coordination with his European partners and the US will further isolate France.”

Justin Crump, of Sibylline, an intelligence and geopolitical risk firm, said: “The biggest problem is that many in Europe and indeed the West just don’t see or believe China can ever be an honest broker for peace, given Beijing’s questionable position in the conflict and close ties with Moscow. ¤ “In this regard Macron is arguably a classical useful idiot, with actions definitely undermining at least the perception – if not the reality – of unity. ¤ This is likely a thin end of a wedge that will open wider debate, and offer opportunity for adversaries to exploit and further divisions.”

According to Le Monde, French diplomats are “tired of picking up the pieces” of Mr Macron’s foreign flights of fancy. “Diplomats then have to slave away to salvage the matter, ” it cited an anonymous source as saying. ¤ Le Monde reported that fatigue over Mr Macron’s go-it-alone habits could explain why Philippe Errera, the foreign ministry’s heavyweight director of political and security affairs, intends to step down this summer after four years.

Many Ukraine allies have dismissed ceasefire proposals that would allow Russia to keep territorial gains, and have warned that Putin would only exploit peace talks to prepare a fresh offensive.

Top diplomats from the G7 nations, including France, this week backed Mr Zelensky’s “peace formula”, which includes the complete withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

Mr Macron is keen to discuss future security guarantees for Ukraine with various international partners including China, according to reports. Nato leaders will launch similar talks when they meet for the military alliance’s annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania in July.

The Telegraph understands internal talks are currently focusing on bringing Kyiv’s armed forces up to a Nato standard in both the short and long term. This is one method Western officials believe is crucial for warding off future Russian aggression once the current war has drawn to a close.

⭕ 19 Apr 2023

TheBulwark, Kimberly Wehle: The Abortion Pill, the FDA, and Supreme Court https://tinyurl.com/y9zw9ayd “Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Trump appointee responsible for the decision, is clearly out of control on a range of issues that he has no business legislating from Amarillo”
// What will happen to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling effectively banning the sale of the drug?

[…] [T]he case raises disturbing questions as a matter of law. ¤ Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Trump appointee responsible for the decision, is clearly out of control on a range of issues that he has no business legislating from Amarillo. …

The stakes are also high because the legal basis for Kacsmaryk’s decision has nothing to do with the underlying rationale in Dobbs. That case held that there is no constitutional right to abortion; Kacsmaryk’s 67-page ruling strikes at the heart of the FDA’s power to regulate drugs. Over 100 scientific studies covering over 124,000 pregnancy terminations across 26 countries over 30 years have confirmed the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone. Over 99 percent of those who took the medication experienced no serious side effects.

… Under a 1946 statute called the Administrative Procedure Act, Congress authorized federal courts to hear lawsuits challenging rules made by agencies under a standard known as “arbitrary and capricious review.” The test is deferential, the rationale being that agencies like the FDA have specialized expertise that federal judges, who are generalists, do not possess. …

… FDA regulations require that drugs such as mifepristone be “studied for . . . safety and effectiveness in treating serious or life-threatening illnesses.” They must also “provide [a] meaningful therapeutic benefit to patients over existing treatments.”

Kacsmaryk ruled that the agency’s approval of the drug back in 2000 was “arbitrary and capricious” in part because pregnancy is not an illness. He admits that “complications can arise during pregnancy, and said complications can be serious or life-threatening.” But for Kacsmaryk, the key flaw in the FDA’s longstanding drug approval decision was its failure to treat pregnancy as a “natural process essential to perpetuating human life.” Even though chemical abortions avoid surgical ones, he added, they somehow provide no “meaningful therapeutic benefit to patients,” so the FDA’s approval of mifepristone violates the FDA’s own drug approval regulations for that additional reason.

Keep in mind, again, that Kacsmaryk’s legal authority here was limited. The FDA is supposed to get deference as a matter of law. The reason for that deference, again, is that Congress tasks certain agencies with making certain regulatory and policy decisions because of their specialized expertise.

Kacsmaryk’s abject power-grab in one of the nation’s most divisive culture wars is an insult to the rule of law and the legitimacy of the judicial branch of the federal government. This much should starkly be evident to at least five members of the right-leaning Court. The FDA regulates over 78 percent of the U.S. food supply and more than 20,000 marketed drugs, putting over 2.7 trillion dollars in the consumption of food, medical products, and tobacco within the FDA’s jurisdiction. Although there are valid arguments for urging Congress to take back its legislative power from executive branch agencies and do the dirty work itself, there is no conceivable logical basis for handing that power off to federal judges.

The justices will have to decide whether to extend Alito’s decision to stay Kacsmaryk’s maneuver until the Supreme Court can thoroughly consider the issue, or instead do what it did pre-Dobbs by enabling Texas’s six-week abortion ban to take effect while it considered what to do with Roe v. Wade. Let’s hope Alito’s decision is a sign of a shift in the Supreme Court’s judiciousness.

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Fox News has done unspeakable damage to our democracy by peddling claims they know are false. While the $787 million settlement against them won’t reverse the damage done, it’s certainly a step in the right direction of accountability.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1648854013465468929?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @TimInHonolulu 1. Ukraine’s deputy minister of defense spoke today of the counteroffensive making clear that such actions had already begun but would not disclose the ultimate objectives. The announcement had the effect of causing some movement by Russian forces along
📌 https://twitter.com/TimInHonolulu/status/1648876467085012993?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu 2. the Zaphorizhzia front that reportedly included the stepping back of Russian front line units in the area adjacent to the Dnieper. These units would be exposed in a rapidly evolving offensive and they pulled back to less exposed positions. The entire
🌎 https://twitter.com/TimInHonolulu/status/1648876471010885632?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu 3. southern front is likely being probed for weaknesses that that can become the focus of a large offensive without much warning depending on how the conditions evolve. It’s also possible that Ukraine will turn its focus elsewhere. But the psychological effect of announcing
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu 4. that Russian units on this front may be attacked by a large force at any time is likely to be exploited in the coming days. Now that Russia has lost momentum in Bakhmut and in the process consumed a large force of regular airborne troops in failed attacks, the stage is being
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu 5. set for another Russian defeat but this time Russian forces may not be able to withdraw in time to save escape disaster. The Russians appear to think there is a large force in the Kherson region waiting to cross the Dnieper. And that thought may work to create the
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu 6. conditions for a rapid disintegration of the southern front as Russian forces, whose officers are all likely facing war crimes tribunals, may decide their chances are better if they fall back on Crimea or escape via the road to Rostov. All other roads may lead to the Hague

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman The GOP admitted that they came to this hearing to build a case to impeach Sec Mayorkas, but impeachment is reserved for treason, bribery or high crimes – not policy disputes. ¤ Congress must fix our broken immigration system, not use important hearings for political gamesmanship.
💽 https://twitter.com/RepDanGoldman/status/1648841687991500805?s=20/photo/1

🐣📋 Comparing Goodread’s Books to Read Before College https://tinyurl.com/mrxubvpn ¤
with Amazon’s Banned Books List: ✅
https://tinyurl.com/47zkapu7 ¤
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1648860286340702208?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @EHunterChristie Indeed, that’s all there is to it. Hello, multipolar world.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Marco_UKII The ‘new world order’ advocated by Russia and China appears to be little more than the ‘might is right’ principle that led to colonisation, war between nations and ultimately World War.

🐣 RT @NOELreports The US announced a new package of military aid to Ukraine worth $325 million, the U.S. Department of defense reports. https://tinyurl.com/bp6aph9u
// Defense budget

● Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
● 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds;
● Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;
● AT-4 anti-armor weapon systems;
● Anti-tank mines;
● Demolition munitions for obstacle clearing;
● Over 9 million rounds of small arms ammunition;
● Four logistics support vehicles;
● Precision aerial munitions;
● Testing and diagnostic equipment to support vehicle maintenance and repair;
● Port and harbor security equipment;
● Spare parts and other field equipment.

TheAtlantic, Brian Klaas: The Red States Experimenting With Authoritarianism https://tinyurl.com/bde5u34m “American states are now splintering, not just on partisan lines, but on their commitment to the principles of liberal democracy”
// They’ve become laboratories of autocracy.

Democracy requires more than just holding elections. But at a bare minimum, two qualities are nonnegotiable. True democracies must allow voters to determine who governs through elections, and must respect the outcome of those elections. Many Republicans at the state level are undercutting those principles.

Democratic deterioration is not a new problem in red states. Jacob Grumbach, a political-science professor at the University of Washington and the author of Laboratories Against Democracy, measured the democratic quality of American states from 2000 to 2018. He used 51 indicators, including gerrymandering, whether politicians were responsive to public opinion, long wait times to vote, and the availability of postelection audits to verify that the count was accurate. States that had been dominated by Republicans over the previous two decades, Grumbach found, became substantially less democratic. States dominated by Democrats and those with a divided government saw no such drop-off.

🐣 RT @lawofruby NEW: Carroll lawyer Robbie Kaplan caustically responds to Trump’s request that the court tell jurors he is excused from trial because of the burden on the court & NYC. If he’s got time for UFC matches & NRA conventions, she says, he can show up for a trial about rape.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1648795085956325376?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] […] Mr. Trump’s position is especially difficult to credit in light of his own recent activity. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Trump attended the Ultimate Fighting Championship 287 event, spoke at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting,? and appeared for a deposition in the New York Attorney General’s civil case against Mr. Trump, his adult children, and the Trump Organization.’ On Monday, he announced that he has scheduled a New Hampshire campaign event for next Thursday, April 27- in other words, in the middle of the trial in this case.* If Mr Trump can find a way to attend wrestling championships, political conventions, civil depositions, and campaign functions, then surely he could surmount the logistics of attending his own federal trial.

🐣 RT @lawofruby NEW: Carroll lawyer Robbie Kaplan caustically responds to Trump’s request that the court tell jurors he is excused from trial because of the burden on the court & NYC. If he’s got time for UFC matches & NRA conventions, she says, he can show up for a trial about rape.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1648795085956325376?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Monica Hesse: Republicans are digging themselves into a hole on abortion https://tinyurl.com/yc55wnxw “If you find yourself proposing measures that are overwhelmingly disapproved of by the people you represent, you might wonder just whom you are representing at all”
// GOP lawmakers are learning how unpopular severe abortion bans are, but that hasn’t stopped their legal crusade

⭕ 18 Apr 2023

NYT: Torch Carriers in 2017 Charlottesville Rally Are Indicted https://tinyurl.com/4n5p3sha the wheels of justice turn excruciatingly slowly, but they do turn
// The charges came nearly six years after a group marched at the University of Virginia campus, shouting, “You will not replace us,” and “Jews will not replace us.”

🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: HOLY SHIRTBALLS: Fulton County DA Fani Willis has filed a motion to remove the attorney representing 10 of the Georgia fraudulent electors. The attorney’s name is Kimberly Debrow – a former assistant DA, firm partner, and law professor in Georgia. 1
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1648398977417768960?s=20/photo/1
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/3raavntk
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote According to the filing, the court ORDERED Debrow to offer her clients immunity, and Debrow’s associate told the court they had. But recent interviews indicate they NEVER presented that offer to her clients! THAT’S REALLY BAD. 2/ […]

🐣 RT @ .@Jim_Jordan is a hypocrite, a Donald Trump lackey, a political show pony, and an extension of the MAGA machine. He’s supposed to be committed to federalism, yet he’s directly interfering with a state prosecution. @TaraSetmayer on @MSNBC details the absurdity of the current GOP.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1648438981300989953?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated I am somewhat perplexed by Budanov’s words. If by “the war will end very very soon” he implies full liberation of all Ukrainian territory, I am struggling to see how this can be achieved in a brief period. Kharkiv and Kherson operations, as successful as they were, still liberated an arguably small proportion relative to the total occupied area. Thus, from his words, I’m expecting nothing less than a spectacular event that will shock all of us and will be studied for decades.
¤ https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1648458299376029697?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated This is not to say I don’t believe in the Ukrainian capabilities, with Western support, to pull off something amazing on the joke of a country that Russia is. I’m just not sure if what we’re being “sold” if you will, especially Russia’s imminent collapse, could be a certain near-future reality.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ManiatiGeorge Think collapse as in house of cards. Any successful Combined Arms Mechanized offensive will cause unbelievable panic in the undisciplined and poorly trained Russians. They have no capacity to counter an offensive that may involve 300k Ukrainians across a narrow front….
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Curculiunculus There are some numbers that might indicate an imminent collapse. If (hypothetically) the number of Russians crossing the lines to surrender is increasing exponentially from week to week, up 10% one week, 20% the next, 30% the next, that would be significant and easy to count. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @Danger_Rand My take: Russia is exhausted on all fronts. They’re running out of serviceable equipment. Their morale is extremely low. Ukraine is going to exploit their exhaustion with the help of Western weapons and intelligence. I expect for Ukraine to make more than one breakthroug
⋙ 🐣 RT @CrimsonShadowMK Russia is currently running out of train lines by which they can move equipment to major areas of combat. If Ukraine is able to sever the last remaining GLOC to Northeast as well as Zap./Kherson oblasts, their capability to maintain a defense may be drastically diminished.

🐣 RT @DavidAFrench The settlement represents justice for Dominion, but by no means does it cleanse Fox of its corruption. ¤ Liars must be fired. Viewers must be informed. The company must apologize. And then it needs to hire new, honest producers and hosts. ¤ Until then, it’s still corrupt.

🐣 RT @harrylitman Good example of a piece of litigation establishing a social fact: Brown v Board, the fact being separate but equal is not equal. Rare that an important social proposition is in the offing, but Fox v Dominion was one such case. Now it ends inconclusively and Fox can keep on doin’
⋙ 🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield Bad comparison. NYT v. Sullivan is settled law and that’s the law Dominion relied on. ¤ If Fox lost at trial, all that would happen is the rule in Sullivan would have been affirmed. ¤ Brown overturned a previous Supreme Court ruling. Dominion didn’t need to do that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HP_DarthMaul Not a legal expert by any remote means but Dominion is a private company. Its lawsuit has never been to seek social justice but to recover financial damages. ¤ So Dominion succeeds. We just pinned our hope on the wrong actor.

🐣 RT @sentdefender The Department of Defense has announced that roughly 200 U.S. Soldiers have arrived in Taiwan over the last few weeks in order to begin Training the Taiwanese Armed Forces on Western Combat Operations and Methodology this includes Guerrilla Tactics to “Resist” a Chinese Invasion.

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok The @FTC should also pursue companies that profit by spreading false & misleading conspiracy theories and disinformation. @Foxnews is a cesspool of deception & discrimination. Even billion $ lawsuits don’t faze them. The 1st Amendment shouldn’t protect toxic propaganda outlets.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NBCNews The FTC will pursue companies who misuse artificial intelligence to violate laws against discrimination or be deceptive, the agency says.
⋙⋙ NBCNews: FTC says it will target AI that is deceptive or violates civil rights https://tinyurl.com/49xfyjv9
// In a congressional hearing, FTC Chair Lina Khan said that the newest versions of AI could be used to turbocharge fraud and scams and that any wrongdoing “should put them on the hook for FTC action.”

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom As much as I wanted to agree with @nickakerman and his optimism today, I feel closer to what David says in this thread.
⋙ 🧵 RT @djrothkopf Nothing that is broken in our system got fixed today. That is the only meaningful metric of the Fox-Dominion settlement. We seem increasingly incapable of righting wrongs, reversing attacks, reducing threats.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1648497859187343363?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf It’s not that we never see victories for our people. It is that those who are attacking our values, the rule of law, who seek to assert minority rule, are institutionalizing their power, disabling our checks and balances.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf It is a dangerous moment.

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski I’ve been working very hard on him. Glad he’s finally coming around.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @neontaster Trump’s transformation into Ron Filipkowski is now complete.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1648336529289363458?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] DeSanctus is being absolutely destroyed by Disney. His original P.R. plan fizzled, so now he’s going back with a new one in order to save face. Disney’s next move will be the announcement that no more money will be invested in Florida because of the Governor – In fact, they could even announce a slow withdrawal or sale of certain properties, or the whole thing. Watch! That would be a killer. In the meantime, this is all so unnecessary, a political STUNT! Ron should work on the squatter MESS!

🐣 RT @harrylitman I recognize a lot of people I respect greatly don’t share my relative lack of enthusiasm for the settlement. But besides that the good developments already were a given, this was the very rare case that could have gone far to establishing Fox’s atrocious conduct as a social fact.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ No knock on Dominion of course, which has fought a long courageous fight and has to calculate in its own self interest as its lawyers just made clear on @allinwithchris. But Fox can now treat as inconclusive what might well have been conclusive.

WaPo: Fox News still faces $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic https://tinyurl.com/r3ntrnka “Smartmatic alleges that Fox News knowingly made ‘over 100 false statements and implications’ about the company, amplifying false information from … Trump”
// “from former president Donald Trump and his allies that Smartmatic played a role in his election loss”

🐣 RT @@tribelaw Dominion won a spectacular victory not from what it forced FOX to admit, which was nearly nothing, but from (1) how it collected ~6x its provable damages and from (2) all the amazing evidence of deliberate lies it forced into the open — evidence that FOX was desperate to conceal
⋙ 🐣 Fox will, however, be able to continue to conceal the evidence from the only audience that really matters: it’s own viewers ¤ the rest of us already knew Fox lied about Dominion (and a lot more) ¤ Dominion wins, Fox wins. America loses

NYT: The $787.5 million Dominion deal is one of the largest defamation settlements in U.S. history https://tinyurl.com/4z8956uw “Perhaps the only larger penalty came in November, when a jury ordered the Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones to pay more than $1.4 billion”
// “… to families of victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut”

🐣 RT @RachelBitecofer What democracy needed was Dominion to force Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, & Bartiromo to tell their audiences that they intentionally lied about election fraud, that they knew it was a lie the whole time, and that they did it on purpose to keep them from switching to Newsmax.

🐣 RT @ABC BREAKING: Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos calls settlement with Fox News “historic,” adding: “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company… nothing can ever make up for that.” https://abcn.ws/41FoHFm
💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1648423038965411843?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Fox, Dominion settlement leaves outstanding First Amendment questions https://tinyurl.com/mwh5ayzs

⭕ 17 Apr 2023

WSJ, Gerard Baker: If Western Civilization Dies, Put It Down as a Suicide https://tinyurl.com/3juxpsbz Death by virtue-signaling: “We in the West are in the grip of an ideology that disowns our genius, denounces our success, disdains merit, elevates victimhood.” Preach!
// We are in the grip of an ideology that disowns our genius, denounces our success, disdains merit.

[…] The past 50 years have been marked by the genuine eradication of barriers to opportunity for the underprivileged regardless of ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation or anything else. This is how we were genuinely starting to fulfill the promise of equality.

But the cultural revolution that began in the past decade is re-erecting those barriers and creating new elite power structures, elevated not by talent or hard work, but, curiously, by membership of the self-approved class, signaled by the right luxury beliefs and articulated by the right “inclusive” language.

Adrian Wooldridge, who has written a book on the rise of meritocracy, frames this in a recent article in the Spectator. The left, he says, is “creating a new social order based on virtue, rather than ability.”

Bear with me because I am going to extrapolate from these baneful developments to a much larger worry about the geopolitical conditions we confront.

As we survey the competition between global civilizations in the multipolar world we now inhabit, we see that the West is challenged as it hasn’t been in centuries. It’s axiomatic that a rising China and perhaps other powers look like formidable contenders for global leadership—with implications for our own security and prosperity.

But if we are losing that struggle, it isn’t because of the superiority of authoritarian, communist or autocratic systems. We know that liberal capitalism has done more for human prosperity, health and freedom than any other economic or political system.

If we are losing, it is because we are losing our soul, our sense of purpose as a society, our identity as a civilization. We in the West are in the grip of an ideology that disowns our genius, denounces our success, disdains merit, elevates victimhood, embraces societal self-loathing and enforces it all in a web of exclusionary and authoritarian rules, large and small.

🐣 RT @attn .@SecBlinken shared the powerful story of his stepfather’s survival during the Holocaust. On Yom HaShoah, we remember the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. #WeRemember ¤ Made in partnership with the @WorldJewishCong.
💽 https://twitter.com/attn/status/1648023528107823105?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @azardey3 Hey @Jim_Jordan these are numbers in your own state !!!
// Rate of homicides in NYC (5.2) vs in major Ohio cities (15-48): MSNBC screenshot
◕ https://twitter.com/azardey3/status/1648194523082760200?s=20/photo/1

🔄 CFR (2019): Inequality and Tax Rates: A Global Comparison https://tinyurl.com/yw35sx85 The level of taxes as a percent of GDP for the US is among the lowest of First World (OECD) countries ~ even though we are the wealthiest country and income inequality (GINI Index) is among the highest
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1648198626680684545?s=20/photo/1 -2
// 3/12/2019; With economic inequality at an all-time high, some U.S. presidential candidates are proposing dramatic shifts to the U.S. tax code. How have similar plans worked elsewhere in the world?
// Link for GINI chart (BI) https://tinyurl.com/bdetjsmp

WaPo: Fiscal crisis nears as McCarthy takes debt ceiling plan to Wall Street https://tinyurl.com/4w2mtwbv //➔ repeal the Trump tax cuts which mostly helped the wealthy and rich corporations; increase taxes on stock buybacks and on those making >$1M/year
// The House speaker outlined the party’s new proposal at the New York Stock Exchange, more than a decade after a similar GOP-led standoff hammered U.S. markets

✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: Here’s the truth about crime in Manhattan https://tinyurl.com/m5szsjk4 Fact: Most categories of major crime in Manhattan, though not all, are down so far in 2023; Fact: New York City has a lower murder rate than many other US cities

“The list of US cities with higher murder rates than New York City in 2022 includes New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, Denver, Miami, Atlanta, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Washington DC, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Memphis, Nashville, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Oakland, Sacramento, Albuquerque, Portland, Newark, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo.

WaPo Editorial: Emmanuel Macron should have stayed home https://tinyurl.com/yc5cvyp2 “[H]e exposed disunity in Europe over Beijing, he handed Chinese President Xi Jinping a propaganda coup, and, for good measure, he threw Taiwan under the bus”

🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Yikes! Kevin McCarthy just got called out to his face live on CNBC over his debt ceiling hypocrisy. The host noted that McCarthy raised the debt ceiling 3 times under Trump and added $2 trillion to the deficit with his tax cuts for the wealthy.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1648033792656031749?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @avalaina The political process over Vladimir Kara-Murza ended today. He was sentenced to 25 years for the truth about the war crimes of the Russian army. We know that Putin’s regime will fall much sooner. But at this moment I want to express my sincere support to his wife Evgenia
🖼 https://twitter.com/avalaina/status/1648074216326025216?s=20/photo/1
// Kara-Murza family photo

🐣 RT @CENTCOM CENTCOM confirms an ISIS Senior Leader was killed in a helicopter raid in northern Syria this morning.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1648037123646267393?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] CENTCOM Confirms ISIS Senior Leader killed in a Helicopter Raid in Northern Syria

Early this morning, April 17, U.S. Central Command forces killed Abd-al-Hadi Mahmud al-Haji Ali, a senior SIS Syria leader and operational planner responsible for planning terror attacks in the Middle East and Europe. This was the ISIS leader who was killed in a unilateral helicopter raid in northern Syria today that was announced this morning. Abd-al-Hadi Mahmud al-Haji Ali was the primary target of the raid. Two other ISIS operatives were killed in the raid.

This operation was launched after intelligence revealed an ISIS plot to kidnap officials abroad as leverage for ISIS initiatives.

“We know ISIS retains the desire to strike beyond the Middle East, said Col. Joe Buccino, a CENTCOM spokesperson. “We are therefore committed to the enduring defeat of ISIS.”

🐣 RT @mjluxmoore “I blame myself for only one thing,” Kara-Murza said in court. “I have not managed to convince enough of my compatriots and enough politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current regime in the Kremlin poses for Russia and the world.”
⋙ WSJ: Russian Court Sentences Kremlin Critic Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 Years for Treason https://tinyurl.com/2ca6n4ym
// Dissident says charges were a response to his opposition to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

🐣 RT @NOELreports “We shot 24 Ukrainian children by the order of Prigozhin himself.” ¤ A former Wagner PMC fighter told http://Gulagu.net that minor Ukrainians (teenagers) in Bakhmut were shot because of tattoos.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports According to the Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the anti-corruption website http://Gulagu.net, an ex-Wagner PMC fighter testified that Prigozhin personally ordered the execution of prisoners of war. There are more than 20 of such cases. ¤ They will publish it next monday.

⭕ 16 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @KevinMKruse A reminder that Matt Schlapp was literally part of the Brooks Brothers riot in the 2000 election.
◕ 🖼 https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1647772444394962945?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mschlapp Marc Elias helps “legally” steal elections. It’s no longer about being the most popular candidate, but rigging a ballot stuffing operation. ¤ Until we develop a counter to lawfare and election law legal shell games we will only win when our margin is large. ¤ A coup w/o guns.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I think he just admitted to a campaign violation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] “SO THE DEMOCRATS ARE ALLOWED TO CHEAT ON, AND RIGG, A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND THEY WANT TO INDICT REPUBLICANS FOR A
CAMPAIGN VIOLATION. THIS IS CLASSIC!!!”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1647754225395568640?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq I don’t see Dominion doing it without (1) a massive payout and (2) a very public written apology from Fox.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianstelter Breaking via the @wsj: “Fox has made a late push to settle the dispute out of court, people familiar with the situation said Sunday.”
⋙⋙ WSJ: Fox News, Dominion Prepare for Battle in $1.6 Billion Defamation Trial https://tinyurl.com/mrzsjr6f
// Dominion Voting Systems has been seeking $1.6 billion in damages for false election-fraud broadcasts

🐣 RT @McFaul Transfer the Seized Assets of the Russian Central Bank to Ukraine Now! ¤ This transfer is a morally correct and politically prudent decision. [link]

🐣 RT @business [Bloomberg] JUST IN: A Delaware judge delays the start of Dominion’s defamation trial against Fox News, without citing a reason https://trib.al/wpFN9ey

NYT: Fox News Is on Trial, and So Are Falsehoods About 2020 https://tinyurl.com/k2awh3tp “The evidence against Fox includes … text messages and emails showing that producers, hosts and executives belittled the claims being made on air of hacked voting machines and conspiracy”
// A jury in Delaware will be asked to weigh the limits of the First Amendment. Another question in the case is whether the network will pay a financial penalty for disseminating election lies.

Fox News, one of the most powerful and profitable media companies, will defend itself against extensive evidence suggesting it told its audience a story of conspiracy and fraud in the 2020 election it knew wasn’t true.

The jury will be asked to weigh lofty questions about the limits of the First Amendment and to consider imposing a huge financial penalty against Fox. Some of the most influential names in conservative media — Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson — are expected to be called to testify. But there is another fundamental question the case raises: Will there be a price to pay for profiting from the spread of misinformation? …

“Lying to American voters is not actually actionable,” said Andrew Weissmann, the former general counsel of the F.B.I. who was a senior member of the special counsel team under Robert S. Mueller that looked into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

It’s a quirk of American law that most lies — even ones that destabilize the nation, told by people with enormous power and reach — can’t be prosecuted. Charges can be brought only in limited circumstances, such as if a business executive lies to shareholders or an individual lies to the F.B.I. Politicians can be charged if they lie about a campaign contribution, which is the essence of the criminal case against Mr. Trump by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

In the Fox News case, the trial is going forward because the law allows companies like Dominion, and people, to seek damages if they can prove their reputations were harmed by lies. ¤ The legal bar that a company like Dominion must meet to prove defamation is known as actual malice. … that the defendants either knew that they were making a false statement or were reckless in deciding to publish the defamatory statement.

But many legal scholars have said that they believed there was ample evidence to support Dominion’s case, in which they argue they were intentionally harmed by the lies broadcast by Fox … John Culhane, professor of law at Delaware Law School at Widener University, [said] “
… “this is about as strong as a case you’re going to get on defamation.” Mr. Culhane added that a Fox victory would only make it harder to rein in the kind of misinformation that’s rampant in pro-Trump media. … ¤ “I think it would embolden them even further,”

This case has proved to be extraordinary on many levels, not only for its potential to deliver the kind of judgment that has so far eluded prosecutors like Mr. Weissmann, who have spent years pursuing Mr. Trump and his supporters who they believe bent the American democratic system to a breaking point.

Some experts like Mr. Logan believe the case’s significance could grow beyond its relevance to the current disinformation-plagued political climate. They see an opportunity for the Supreme Court to eventually take the case as a vehicle to revisit libel law and the “actual malice” standard. …

The actual malice standard has been vital for individual journalists and media outlets who make mistakes — as long as they are honest mistakes. But some scholars like Mr. Logan — as well as two conservative Supreme Court justices, Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — have argued that “actual malice” should be reconsidered as too high a standard. Justice Thomas specifically cited as a reason “the proliferation of falsehoods.”

“The nature of this privilege goes to the heart of our democracy, particularly in this case,” said Mr. Logan, whose paper arguing that the courts have made it too difficult for victims of libel to win relief was cited in a dissent by Justice Gorsuch in 2021. …

The evidence against Fox includes copious amounts of text messages and emails showing that producers, hosts and executives belittled the claims being made on air of hacked voting machines and conspiracy, details that Dominion has said prove the network defamed it. …

“A free-flowing, robust American discourse depends on First Amendment protections for the press’ news gathering and reporting,” a network spokeswoman said in a written statement. The statement added that Fox viewers expected the kind of commentary that aired on the network after the election “just as they expect hyperbole, speculation and opinion from a newspaper’s op-ed section.” …

Judge Davis has expressed considerable skepticism toward Fox in the courtroom. He issued a sanction against Fox last week when Dominion disclosed that the company had not revealed details about Mr. Murdoch’s involvement in Fox News’s affairs, ruling that Dominion had a right to conduct further depositions at Fox’s expense.

But he does not have the final say. Twelve men and women from Delaware will ultimately decide the case. And defamation suits so rarely prevail, it’s also reasonable to consider the possibility that Fox does win — and what a 2024 election looks like with an emboldened pro-Trump media.

WaPo: A year ago, Musk asked, ‘Is Twitter dying?’ He may have his answer https://tinyurl.com/476fksxn “Twitter is a shadow of its former self, without anything to replace it, one of the former workers said. ‘There’s no true alternative,’ the person said. ‘Twitter was one of a kind’”
// // Twitter has been dramatically transformed under Musk and few — even among some in the billionaire’s corner — say the changes have been for the better

🧵 RT @duty2warn The FBI searched the Biden collection at the Univ. of Delaware—1,875 boxes and 415 gigabytes of electronic records—and found no classified files. ¤ But the FBI never searched Bedminster or Trump Tower when Trump stole our nuclear plans. ¤ Chris Wray needs to go.
📌 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1626250063490973706?s=20
⋙ WaPo: FBI searched University of Delaware for Biden documents https://tinyurl.com/yckmm6ze
// The action follows searches at the president’s homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach

The FBI recently has searched the University of Delaware, which houses thousands of President Biden’s records, as part of an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Agents initially did not find classified information, but the material is still being reviewed, the person said on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The University of Delaware is the fourth location the FBI has searched as part of the Justice Department investigation, which began after one of Biden’s personal lawyers discovered classified documents last November at the Penn Biden Center, an office Biden had used in Washington after leaving the vice presidency.

[…] The collection of documents that Biden donated to his alma mater fills 1,875 boxes in addition to 415 gigabytes of electronic records. It includes committee reports, drafts of legislation and correspondence.

Additional classified documents have been found at Biden’s Wilmington residence, but agents did not find any classified materials after searching Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

The collection of documents that Biden donated to his alma mater fills 1,875 boxes in addition to 415 gigabytes of electronic records. It includes committee reports, drafts of legislation and correspondence. …

Classified documents also have turned up at the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump, though unlike Biden, Trump has been defiant and challenged Justice Department efforts to regain the documents.

The Trump and Biden discoveries have prompted other former officials to search their homes, and late last month, a lawyer for former vice president Mike Pence said a small number of documents had been found at Pence’s Indiana home.

⭕ 15 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @djrothkopf The core distinguishing belief of the contemporary Republican Party is that it’s extreme ideology is more important than the Constitution, the law, our national security and the well-being of the American people. It is the most dangerous movement in our history.

🐣 RT @AnonOpsUnited #Anonymous #OpGOP Epstein’s flight logs #Trump flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jets six more times than was previously known, according to flight logs ¤ By request from many of you ¤ We do not forgive ¤ We do not forget
[DocCloud] https://tinyurl.com/yr82k8cf
📋 https://twitter.com/AnonOpsUnited/status/1647404825091493893?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @AnonOpsUnited #Anonymous #OpGOP Little black book un reedacted and readily available ¤ Hey @prodbytony2 where did you find this? ;)
⋙ 🐣 RT @prodbytony2 Trump was in Epsteins’s black book, wonder why… ¤ Some people are good at keeping secrets, but secrets always come out of the darkness eventually. ¤ Even more than that “The Donald” is circled in the Black Book, seems interesting. ¤ #Anonymous #OpGOP
📋 [Trump:] https://twitter.com/AnonOpsUnited/status/1647404101250973699?s=20/photo/1
📋 ⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kelly2277 [VentureCapital] Here’s a link to the unredacted Epstein black book. https://epsteinsblackbook.com/all-names

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Fox News formally apologized to the judge in the Dominion defamation case, taking responsibility for the “misunderstanding” regarding Rupert Murdoch’s role at the network that led the judge to launch an investigation into potential legal misconduct by Fox
⋙ CNN: Fox News apologizes to judge for ‘misunderstanding’ over Rupert Murdoch’s role that sparked investigation https://tinyurl.com/44s89fu6 “Fox lawyers have repeatedly said he didn’t have an official title at Fox News. But last week, Fox disclosed that he is also an executive officer”

⭕ 14 Apr 2023

📋 “Between 1861 and 1865 c. 200,000 Irishmen fought in the American Civil War: 180,000 in the Union army and 20,000 in the Confederate army.” Tracing the Irish in the American Civil War https://tinyurl.com/25x6rkvd
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1647415508537409538?s=20/photo/1
// caption: “Detail from Absolution under fire by Paul Wood—Union soldiers of the Irish Brigade after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1863. (The Snite Museum of Art)”

WaPo, Philip Bump: How toxic are the politics of abortion for Republicans? https://tinyurl.com/mr37n3su //➔ pretty toxic ~ so toxic Trump is urging the GOP to moderate (per Rolling Stone); so far, Red states aren’t listening. Will MAGA follow Trump? What happens to the Evangelicals?
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1647146657446805506?s=20/photo/1

KyivIndependent: AP: China pledges not to sell arms to any party of Russia’s war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2a2puzwx “Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said … Beijing would regulate exports of goods with dual civilian and military use”

🧵 RT @anno1540 Russian spetsnaz lost 90-95% of fighters in Ukraine, recovery will take up to 10 years: The Washington Post ¤ As a rule, special forces are assigned covert and risky missions. But since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian military leadership has – /1a
📌 https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1646832539150045185?s=20

⋙ deviated from the norm and ordered the elite forces to engage in direct combat. /1b ¤ The natural result was huge losses. “Estimates show that the 22nd Separate Brigade and two other special forces brigades dropped out by 90-95%,” writes The Washington Post.
⋙ WaPo: Russia’s commando units gutted by Ukraine war, U.S. leak shows https://tinyurl.com/mpcy2ds3
// THE DISCORD LEAKS | Russia’s clandestine spetsnaz forces have been put to use alongside the infantry, suffering massive numbers of dead and wounded

⋙ Russian commanders, having destroyed the most trained fighters, have lost the valuable skills that these troops possessed, including intelligence gathering and reconnaissance, from the beginning of the invasion until last autumn, the newspaper writes. /3

⋙ It is noted that spetsnaz soldiers require at least four years of special training, and it may take a whole decade for Moscow to recreate the lost units.#SlavaUkraine 4/4

🐣 RT @TreasChest ❗️Prigozhin called on the Kremlin to end the war against Ukraine. ¤ “Today, the ideal option is to announce the end of the SVO, to inform everyone that the Russian Federation has achieved the results that it planned.” ¤ Beggars, and this counteroffensive has not even begun yet 😈

🐣 RT @POTUS Together, Ireland and the United States will defend the values handed down to us from our ancestors. ¤ And keep the flame of freedom alive – as a beacon to guide our children and grandchildren.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1646928952827469828?s=20/photo/1
// “In this moment, the world needs Ireland and the United States, and our limitless imaginations.” – PRESIDENT BIDEN

🐣 RT @KellyO Here in Ireland, many folks we have met have called this visit “the Joe show” and tonight the president is speaking to one of the largest crowds he has ever addressed.

🧵 RT @greg_ip India’s population may have surpassed China’s this month, an event heralding a major shift in the global order. “We are on the cusp of maybe the most momentous population transition of the last 200 years.” By @ByShanLi and @QiLiyan
📌 ◕ https://twitter.com/greg_ip/status/1646957126898667527?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ WSJ: India’s Population Surpasses China’s, Shifting the World’s ‘Center of Gravity’ https://tinyurl.com/mphhe3s6
// tags: economics demographics population China India Global South; The new global order reflects deep changes in both countries, with economic and geopolitical consequences

⋙ 2/ India’s rising population means it’s likely to keep its economy growing, buy more of the world’s goods and play a bigger role in global affairs, even as it grapples with poverty and a lack of jobs. Meanwhile …

⋙ 3/ …China’s demographic headwinds will make it harder for the country to achieve its economic ambitions, or to supplant the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy, despite its rising wealth and military power.
◕ https://twitter.com/greg_ip/status/1646957479597690882?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 4/ China has had the most people since at least 1750, when it had a population of 225 million, or about 28% of the total according to @OurWorldInData. In 1947, India was partitioned, w/ Pakistan and (now) Bangladesh also becoming independent.

⋙ 5/ Whatever happens, the world’s future population will increasingly tilt towards the global south, and south Asia in particular. The three successor states to pre-independence India will have 2.3B people in 2060, versus China’s 1.2 billion.
◕ https://twitter.com/greg_ip/status/1646960946571628563?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 6/ How did the reversal take place? Early on Communist China restricted contraception and abortion to encourage more births. “With many people, strength is great,” Mao Zedong proclaimed…

⋙ 7/ … then later later began blaming population growth for shortages of jobs and housing. In 1980, Deng Xiaoping launched the one-child policy. Without it, he said, “our economy cannot be developed well, and people’s lives won’t be improved.

⋙ 8/ China’s fertility rate fell below 2.1 replacement rate in the early 1990s. China allowed 2 children in 2016, then 3, then unlimited numbers. But fertility has kept falling, to 1.2

⋙ 9/ India, under Indira Gandhi, also tried compulsory sterlilization, but people revolted; it contributed to her electoral defeat in 1977. Since then, India has encouraged but not enforced smaller families. Its fertility rate is now 2

⋙ 10/ We shouldn’t understate the challenges still facing India; the population is much more rural than China’s, and female participation remains distressingly low. Creating formal sector jobs, especially for women, will be crucial to achieving middle income status.
◕ https://twitter.com/greg_ip/status/1646965892549431326?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 11/ But don’t confuse levels with rates of change. India is poor but it’s the fastest growing country in the G-20 and if it can keep that up, its global clout is bound to grow. Meanwhile, I hear more people whisper: China may already have peaked.

⋙ 12/ Please read the whole story, great reporting & analysis by @ByShanLi& @QiLiyan, it’s well worth your time: WSJ: https://tinyurl.com/mphhe3s6

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss It’s not even that this was the one document doctored by pro-Russian Telegram users, inverting Ukrainian and Russian casualties. (I have the original, which shows Russian losses are greater.) It’s that Carlson’s team knows it and still let him run with this lie.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ColumbiaBugle Tucker Carlson: “The second thing we learned from these slides is that despite direct U.S. involvement, Ukraine is in fact losing the war. Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian. Ukrainian air defenses have been utterly degraded. Ukraine is losing.”
💽 https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1646902196749910022?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 so it will appear via Tucker on Russian tv, and Russians get fed back their own propaganda as true

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Reuters: Ukraine allegedly finding more Chinese components in Russian weapons. ¤ Ukraine has allegedly been finding an increasing number of components originating from China in Russian weapons recovered on the battlefield, Reuters reported on April 14.

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Gerasimov and Secretary of the Security Council Patrushev tried to sabotage the seizure of Ukraine at the beginning of the war – Tagesspiegel with reference to a secret Pentagon document.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZMiST_Ua/status/1646941995758125056?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #1pageassessukrwar #RussianWinterOffensive2023 #OrcLossRate Book closing on Putin, Shoigu & General G’s 2023 winter offensive debacle. They did a great job further wrecking Russian army in time for Ukraine’s spring/summer offensive.
🌎 https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1646953293472571400?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I see that this member of Congress is doing her best to protect sensitive national security information, by supporting felonies and encouraging more people to be heroes by stealing classified documents. ¤ Nothing ends a career in the modern GOP now – except opposing Donald Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepMTG Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. ¤ That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. ¤ And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. ¤ Ask yourself who is the real enemy? ¤ A young low level national guardsmen? ¤ Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?

🐣 RT @FellaNafo The Vikings settled the Kyivian-Rus (Ros-lagen) by Valdemar the Great 988.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RothLindberg Vikings is another topic. Actually Norwegian and Danish Vikings settled in the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine. But Swedish Vikings went further and settled down in what is now Russia. So I guess it’s weird Sweden is not on Russia’s side. Why fight the offspring our ancestors?

🐣 There are 35.5M Americans of Irish descent in the United States, the third largest ancestry group after German (49M) and African-American (41M). Mexican is 4th (32M), then English (27M). Most Irish Americans know of the potato famine, with residual resentment toward the British…
⋙ 🐣 I am half Irish, 1/4 Scots-Irish. I am old enough to have felt anti Irish Catholic prejudice. My Irish ancestors came from County Mayo, as did Biden’s, where the Hunger hit very hard. I’m proud of him for celebrating our Irish ancestry and for visiting our ancestral homeland

⭕ 13 Apr 2023

WIRED, Emily Mullin and Maryn McKenna: The Abortion Pill Legal Standoff Endangers Access to All Drugs https://tinyurl.com/bdejnej3
// A Fifth Circuit ruling that keeps mifepristone available, but curtails access to it, is the newest front in a battle over the FDA’s power to approve medications.
⋙ “Scorching letter” from biotech and pharmaceutical companies https://tinyurl.com/5cks7e52
// tags scathing letter

📋 CREW: Trump made up to $160 million from foreign countries as president https://tinyurl.com/mud37s4r

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski In a new statement, Trump vows to get vengeance on “marxist local DAs” who have persecuted him, conservatives, and christians, and says he will launch civil rights investigations against them for racial discrimination, presumably against white people.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1646562741539176468?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @SawyerHackett Holy shit. This is the guy who Greg Abbott has promised to pardon for murder. ¤ This is ONE PAGE of the 76 just released. Here, Daniel Perry says “I will only shoot the [protestors] in front and push the pedal to the metal.”
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1646683812749885440?s=20/photo/1

KyivPost: Sergey Lavrov and Russian UN Delegation Denied US Visas https://tinyurl.com/yfbmxvt9
// The US has refused visas for the Russian delegation and the Russian Foreign Minister to attend a UN Security Council meeting.

🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu Cue the perjury charges. I wonder if the deposition transcript will be sealed?
⋙ 🐣 RT @KaraScannell Trump attorney Chris Kise on today’s deposition.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KaraScannell/status/1646655930837204994?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] “President Trump spent nearly seven hours today describing in detail his extraordinary business success. The transactions at the center of this case were wildly profitable for the banks and for the trump entities. When the facts of this success, and not politically engineered soundbites, are out in the open, everyone will scoff at the notion any fraud took place. This is an exceptional American success story. Last I checked, capitalism is still legal in America!”

🐣 RT @petestrzok who else was just at Waco? ¤ Video with “Teixeira shouting racist and antisemitic slurs before firing a rifle and said he referenced govt raids at Ruby Ridge, ID and in Waco, TX — events with deep resonance among right-wing, anti-govt extremists.” [link]

WaPo, Eric Wemple: Dominion lawsuit pretrial hearings foreshadow a brutal ride for Fox News https://tinyurl.com/ycbnhczc “Fox executives steered programming not according to the facts but for their audience’s thirst for comforting falsehoods”

💙 🐣 RT @patrickdextervc On Eagle’s Wings, US President Joe Biden’s favourite hymn. Welcoming Joe back to his ancestral home here in County Mayo
💽 https://twitter.com/patrickdextervc/status/1646591277864046595?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom “evidence pointed to the leaker being a disaffected young man with racist views and a preoccupation with guns” ¤ you don’t say
⋙ 🐣 RT @natsechobbyist Combine that with uniform and civilian leadership who think they are too important to spend time rooting out radicalization in the military and we have a giant problem. Good order and discipline isn’t going to solve this.

🐣 RT @gregpmiller US intelligence is both 1) a global behemoth with astonishing penetrations of nearly every adversary and ally and 2) a sprawling apparatus that can’t seem to keep track of how many 20-somethings who grew up on Minecraft have access to its deepest secrets [link]

🐣 RT @lrozen [1:21pm] Alleged leaker arrested by FBI. ¤ AG Garland scheduled to make brief statement at 2:30pm, per NYT

🧵 RT @bellingcat NEW: Bellingcat’s @AricToler worked with the @nytimes to uncover a trail of digital evidence that appears to identify Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, as the leader of an online gaming chat group where US intelligence documents leaked
📌 https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1646546839045394434?s=20/
⋙ NYT: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman https://tinyurl.com/4wnaf7j9
// Federal investigators are searching for the person who shared classified documents that revealed government secrets about the Ukraine war.

The national guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games. …

The New York Times spoke with four members of the Thug Shaker Central chat group, one of whom said he has known the person who leaked for at least three years, had met him in person, and referred to him as the O.G. The friends described him as older than most of the group members, who were in their teens, and the undisputed leader. One of the friends said the O.G. had access to intelligence documents through his job.

While the gaming friends would not identify the group’s leader by name, a trail of digital evidence compiled by The Times leads to Airman Teixeira. ¤ The Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of the Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other records. …

WaPo Editorial: ‘A free China’: Why the words of a jailed dissident should be read far and wide https://tinyurl.com/239tfs6x “A democratic China must be realized in our time, we cannot saddle the next generation with this duty” ~ Xu Zhiyong, just sentenced to 14 years in prison
⋙ ChinaChange, Xu Zhiyong: ‘A democratic China must be realized in our time, we cannot saddle the next generation with this duty’ https://tinyurl.com/4akz2nbx
// 4/9/2023; Xu Zhiyong’s Court Statement

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Person responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast out to impress his friends & who worked on a military base. Number of people in US with top secret clearance is about 1.25 million
⋙ 📋 TheGuardian: Pentagon leaks linked to young gun enthusiast who worked at military base – report https://tinyurl.com/2hym54yt
// Man known online as ‘OG’ is said to have access to large amounts of classified material and to regard intelligence services as repressive

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Not great is an understatement. A partial stay on a procedural issue (timeliness) and 2/3 judges leave in place a stay of important FDA approvals post 2016.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEWS: Three-judge panel *partially* stays the district courts order re: Mifepristone regarding the FDA’s 2000 approval. It denies the stay for the FDA’s post-2016 changes.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1646400564715040768?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas
USDC No. 2:22-CV-223 ¤ UNPUBLISHED ORDER
Before HAYNES,’ ENGELHARDT, and OLDHAM, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: For the reasons given below, IT IS ORDERED that defendants’ motions for a stay pending appeal are GRANTED IN PART. At this preliminary stage, and based on our necessarily abbreviated review, it appears that the statute of limitations bars plaintiffs’ challenges to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. In the district court, however, plaintiffs brought a series of alternative arguments regarding FDA’s actions in 2016 and subsequent years. And the district court emphasized that its order separately applied to prohibit FDA’s actions in and after 2016 in accordance with plaintiffs’ alternative arguments. As to those alternative arguments, plaintiffs’ claims are timely. Defendants have not shown that plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their timely challenges. For that reason, and as more fully explained below, defendants’ motions for a stay pending appeal are DENIED IN PART. Defendants’ alternative motions for an administrative stay are DENIED AS MOOT. Plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss the appeal is DENIED. The appeal isEXPEDITED to the next available Oral Argument Calendar.

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance DOJ will ask SCOTUS for a full stay now, as the 5th Circuit leaves key provisions of Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling that unduly restrict access to abortion drug Mifepristone in place
⋙ NBCNews: Appeals court partially blocks ruling that imperils access to key abortion pill https://tinyurl.com/3mx2rvyx 
// The 5th Circuit panel put a hold on the part of a federal judge’s ruling that would have paused the FDA’s original 2000 approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

But the three-judge panel said a separate part of Kacsmaryk’s decision, which suspends changes the FDA made to the drug’s approved use in 2016, could go into effect. The panel also determined that the agency’s finding in 2021 that mifepristone can be distributed by mail would be paused, as well, as Kacsmaryk ordered.

The court’s decision imperils widespread availability of the drug, as it would require patients to make in-person visits to obtain it.

The 2016 changes, among other things, reduced the number of in-person visits that patients are required to make from three to one and allowed the pills to be prescribed to women at up to 10 weeks’ gestation instead of up to seven weeks. …

The appeals court panel was divided 2-1, with Judges Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, both appointees of President Donald Trump, in the majority. Judge Catharina Haynes, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said she would have temporarily blocked the ruling in full.

The appeals court concluded that the challengers had waited too long to challenge the 2000 approval in court. But, the court found, the claims against the 2016 revisions and later decisions could be pursued because the government and drug maker Danco Laboratories “have not shown that plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their timely challenges.”

The court also found that a hitherto obscure 19th century law called the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of any drug or medicine that can be used for abortion, factors into its analysis of the 2021 decision to allow mifepristone to be distributed by mail.

“To the extent the Comstock Act introduces uncertainty into the ultimate merits of the case, that uncertainty favors the plaintiffs,” the court said. …

If allowed to take effect, the court’s order would thwart FDA’s scientific judgment and severely harm women, particularly those for whom mifepristone is a medical or practical necessity,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in the most recent filing. “This harm would be felt throughout the country, given that mifepristone has lawful uses in every State. The order would undermine healthcare systems and the reliance interests of businesses and medical providers.”

Complicating the situation further, a federal judge in Washington state issued a preliminary injunction in a different case Friday barring the FDA from “altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of mifepristone.” ¤ That ruling applies only to the 17 liberal-leaning states and the District of Columbia that filed a lawsuit in February challenging the FDA’s regulations over the drug. The Justice Department has filed a motion in federal district court in Washington state, asking for clarification of Friday’s ruling.

The dueling decisions in Texas and Washington could mean the Supreme Court, which last summer overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, may soon take up the matter on an accelerated basis.

Kacsmaryk’s ruling, if it is allowed to stand, would not mean access to mifepristone would immediately be cut off nationwide. Instead, anyone involved in manufacturing, distributing or prescribing it would face legal risk, said Greer Donley, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who specializes in reproductive rights. 

The FDA could help alleviate that risk by announcing it would not take enforcement action against anyone involved in distributing the drug, she added. The agency has broad power to do so, with the Supreme Court in a 1985 ruling saying that such decisions generally cannot be challenged in court. …

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT (3:26amET): Court Says Abortion Pill Can Remain Available but Imposes Temporary Restrictions https://tinyurl.com/5597c56s “The Justice Department is likely to appeal the order to the Supreme Court”
// The judges blocked the drug from being sent to patients through the mail and rolled back other steps the government had taken to ease access.

NYT: New Leaked Documents Show Broad Infighting Among Russian Officials https://tinyurl.com/56h4mbpb
// The additional documents also suggest the breach of American intelligence agencies could contain far more material than previously believed.

The additional documents, which did not surface in a 53-page set that came to wide public attention online last week, paint a picture of the Russian government feuding over the count of the dead and wounded in the Ukraine war, with the domestic intelligence agency accusing the military of obscuring the scale of casualties that Russia has suffered.

The new batch, which contains 27 pages, reinforces how deeply American spy agencies have penetrated nearly every aspect of the Russian intelligence apparatus and military command structure. It also shows that the breach of American intelligence agencies could contain far more material than previously understood.

In one document, American intelligence officials say that Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., has “accused” the country’s Defense Ministry “of obfuscating Russian casualties in Ukraine.” The finding highlights “the continuing reluctance of military officials to convey bad news up the chain of command,” they say. …

Taken together, the documents underscore several of the overarching reasons why, many analysts believe, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has failed to secure a military victory in Ukraine after more than 13 months of war.

Among them: infighting and finger-pointing among Russian agencies responsible for different aspects of the war, including the F.S.B. and the Defense Ministry. The leaked entry about the casualty numbers provides little context for the intelligence officials’ finding, but it reports that the F.S.B. is questioning the Defense Ministry’s own casualty count in discussions within the Russian government.

F.S.B. officials, the document says, contend that the ministry’s toll did not include the dead and wounded among the Russian National Guard, the Wagner mercenary force or fighters fielded by Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. The sundry fighting forces that the Kremlin has deployed in Ukraine have sometimes acted at cross purposes, further complicating Russia’s military effort. ¤ The F.S.B. “calculated the actual number of Russians wounded and killed in action was closer to 110,000,” the document says.

The document does not specify the casualty figures that the Defense Ministry is circulating within the government. The last time that the ministry publicly disclosed a death toll was in September, when the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said that 5,937 Russian troops had been killed since the war started.

American officials have previously estimated Russian losses at about 200,000 soldiers. Another leaked document reports the Russians had suffered 189,500 to 223,000 casualties as of February, including up to 43,000 killed in action, compared with 124,500 to 131,000 Ukrainian casualties, with up to 17,500 killed in action.

The new documents also provide fresh details about a very public dispute in February in which Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the business mogul who runs the Wagner force, accused Russian military officials of withholding urgently needed ammunition from his fighters. Mr. Putin attempted to resolve the dispute personally by calling Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Shoigu into a meeting believed to have taken place on Feb. 22, one document reports. …

The new documents were shared in photos, and some are missing pages. Those shown in full include material from the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon’s Joint Staff intelligence directorate. ¤ The material provided to The New York Times was posted on one of the Discord servers where the first set of Pentagon intelligence documents eventually appeared. U.S. officials have said those documents were authentic but cautioned that some had been altered. The documents may also contain outdated or inaccurate information. …

One slide that appears to have been produced by the military’s Joint Staff and dated Feb. 23 concludes that Russia has failed to disrupt the massive flow of Western arms and equipment into Ukraine since the start of the war, and asserts that the Kremlin’s battered military will not be able to change that anytime soon.

“During the next 6 months, Russia’s economic challenges and degraded conventional capabilities very likely will further impede its efforts, creating a mostly permissive environment for continued lethal aid deliveries,” the document said.

⭕ 12 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople [Collected djt tweets 11p-12pCT]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1646371944185593856?s=20

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump The good thing about the A.G. Peekaboo James “persecution” is that I will finally be able to show what a great, profitable, and valuable company I built, actually, some of the greatest real estate assets anywhere in the world. Her effort, in strict coordination and association with the lying, Country killing scum “working” in the White House, and now discredited District Attorney Alvin Bragg, will prove to be FAKE, and even fraudulent. Her only hope is that she “shopped” a judge as bad as her!

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrumpThe Biden Department of Injustice, together with all of the corrupt, TRUMP HATING, puppeteers that surround Joe Biden, and are destroying our Country, are going all out with ELECTION INTERFERENCE through the use of Fake, Partisan, and Corrupt Prosecutors. The people of the United States will not stand for this perversion of our Elections, and Constitution itself. At some point they will say, as our Country is going to Hell, WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!i’m

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Just arrived in Manhattan for a deposition in front of New York State’s RACIST, TRUMP HATING Attorney General, Letitia “Peekaboo” James, in another unjust & ridiculous persecution of The 45th President of the United States. I built a GREAT & prosperous company, employed thousands of people, built magnificent structures all over the World, but particularly in New York, & now have to prove it to this LOWLIFE who campaigned on a ” will get Trump” platform, even before knowing anything about me!

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Concealing damaging info in discovery is good evidence of actual malice in a defamation case-that false statements were made with knowledge of their falsity & that defendant tried to withhold evidence showing that to prevent plaintiffs from proving it.
⋙ NBCRightNow: Fox News sanctioned for withholding evidence in Dominion defamation case https://tinyurl.com/mrx377n6

🐣 RT @atrupar Alex Wagner just broadcast audio of a Trump campaign official acknowledging during a phone call with a Fox News producer in December 2020 that there was no evidence of physical issues with Dominion voting machines
🔊 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1646321015276937216?s=20/photo/1
// likely AG not SecState

WaPo, Ellen Francis: Where did leaked U.S. secrets appear? On a chat app popular with gamers. https://tinyurl.com/stdvrme6

NYT, David Wallace-Wells: Let’s Imagine We Knew Exactly How the Pandemic Started https://tinyurl.com/f8kpvztk
// COVID-19

🧵 RT @EliotHiggins [11hrs before WaPo article broke] This is genuinely the most informative conversation about the actual leaks [Bellincat Aric below], because Aric was the one who dug through all the connections and spoke to a lot of people who were members of the communities where the initial documents were shared.
📌 https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1646140091692195840?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotHiggins The fact is, one of the most feasible scenarios based on what we know is a grown man with access to Top Secret documents shared them with a couple of dozen teenage gamer pals on a private Discord server in an attempt to impress them. But just because it’s dumb doesn’t mean it’s not damaging.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotHiggins Based on what we know, this wasn’t some Russian op, or some brave whistleblower, it was just some gamer trying to impress his pals in private and it ended up all over the internet. The kicker is it sounds like from the people Aric spoke to they weren’t that impressed and didn’t take it seriously.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @bellingcat Bellingcat’s @AricToler spoke to the @lawfarepodcast about how he tracked down leaked US intelligence documents to a little known Discord server named “Thug Shaker Central”. Listen here: 🔊 https://tinyurl.com/2j6nfhjt
⋙ 🐣 RT @bellingcat You can read Aric’s investigation on the same subject here:
⋙⋙ Bellincat: From Discord to 4chan: The Improbable Journey of a US Defence Leak https://tinyurl.com/4he77744
// A recent leak of sensitive US intelligence documents leads to stranger corners of the internet than initially thought.

🧵 RT @michaeldweiss An emerging consensus among U.S. allies and partners that the Pentagon leaks are sprinkled with misinformation or disinformation — South Korea, UK, Ukraine all have comments to that effect. But they don’t say which bits are false.
📌 https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1646276042213007360?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️Reznikov: Intelligence leak contains ‘mix’ of true, false information. ¤ Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov acknowledged on April 12 that the U.S. intelligence leak contains a “mix” of true and false ¤ ⋙ https://tinyurl.com/yk932mt4

🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THOUGHTS ON THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS LEAKS: Russia has a well-documented history of distributing disinformation through stealing documents, doctoring some, and leaving other authentic documents to boost the legitimacy of the falsified documents. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1646273427400175616?s=20

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says https://tinyurl.com/4zx9ha86 (Someone’s in 🔥trouble)
// THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post

NYT: Witnesses Asked About Trump’s Handling of Map With Classified Information https://tinyurl.com/3vf5hats “Prosecutors have now interviewed nearly everyone who could offer insight in connection with the documents, according to one person briefed on the range of witnesses”
// The map is just one element of the Justice Department’s inquiry into former President Donald Trump’s possession of sensitive documents and whether he obstructed justice in seeking to hold onto them.

🐣 RT @Morning_Joe .@JoeNBC: “I don’t think much about a large segment of the Republican Party that allows a man to praise Vladimir Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un…while trashing the men and women of America’s Armed Forces. It’s really twisted.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Morning_Joe: Joe: Trump and MAGA Republicans trash America constantly https://tinyurl.com/5y25wy2b
// Joe Scarborough notes that while there are many reasons to be hopeful about America and the country’s future, MAGA Republicans are trashing the country.

🐣 📊 RT @sahilkapur Lopsided US support for legal medication abortion across gender, age and race/ethnicity, per new @PewResearch poll.
Exceptions: Conservatives oppose it 47-24%, Republicans split 36-35%.
Women under 30: 71% support it.
Non-religious: 74% support it.
◕ https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1646305283843473408?s=20/photo/1
// Illegal 22%, Legal 53%, Not sure 24%
⋙ PewResearch: By more than two-to-one, Americans say medication abortion should be legal in their state https://tinyurl.com/mk93x9dn
// A majority of Americans say medication abortion should be legal, but there is a stark divide by age, religion and party affiliation.

Salon, Chauncey DeVega: The not-so-hidden message behind Donald Trump’s Easter threats of “World War III” https://tinyurl.com/2p92ph49 //➔ This is not a time to seek “common ground” with a stochastic terrorist like Trump: we must not look away or normalize him
// Trump “gives permission to unstable people to carry out their grievances at a murderous level”

🐣 RT @MorawieckiM The Evil Empire has been reborn in the East. Russian barbarians threaten not only Ukraine. They threaten all of Europe and the whole free world. This is no mere incident, no coincidence, no maniac’s impulse. Putin has been building his Evil Empire for 23 years, in preparation for this conflict.
New Europe understands this. It is time that Old Europe understood it too.

🐣 RT @Faytuks France is blocking the European Union’s unanimous decision to finance the supply of ammunition to Ukraine, a high-ranking EU source tells the Polish Press Agency [Pol link]

Substack, Sarah Ashton-Cirillos: Update: The US Government has found no significant cases of waste, fraud, or abuse related to Ukraine aid https://tinyurl.com/4uvpaxf4
// The DoD, State Department, and USAID OIG[s] compiled an extensive report covering 113 Billion dollars in American support to Ukraine since the February, 2022 full scale invasion.
⋙ ≣ Report: [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/yzyvc6cm 44p

🐣 RT @EllenKnickmeyer Ukraine says it doesn’t see the U.S. intel leak gravely damaging future offensives. A key reason: They have long held back on sharing sensitive operational information, doubting Washington’s ability to keep secrets. w. Hanna Aphirova and @BradPaisley
⋙ AP: US, Ukraine say many war secrets safe from intel leaks https://tinyurl.com/y5hbsxd9

🐣 RT @tribelaw Special Counsel Smith might be closing in on tying the Big Lie to the Big Ripoff in One Massive Wire-fraud Conspiracy . . .
⋙⋙ 🐣 in such cases, does the $ have to be returned?
⋙ WaPo: Special counsel focuses on Trump fundraising off false election claims https://tinyurl.com/2p8c449u
// A new batch of subpoenas seeks to compare public claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election versus private texts and emails

The fundraising prong of the investigation is focused on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2o21, and prosecutors are said to be interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money. …

The subpoenas seek more specific types of communications so prosecutors can compare what Trump allies and advisers were telling each other privately about the voter fraud claims to what they were saying publicly in appeals that generated more than $200 million in donations from conservatives, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

That suggests that investigators are pursuing a legal theory similar to the one used to charge former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and others with fraudulent fundraising to build a wall along the southern border, in which Bannon and others were charged with defrauding donors by lying in email pitches. Bannon’s three co-defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted, while Bannon was pardoned by Trump before he faced trial. Bannon now faces similar charges from the Manhattan district attorney and awaits trial. He has pleaded not guilty. …

Crooks&Liars: Ken Dilanian Barely Keeps Straight Face Reporting Trump’s Latest Lawsuit https://tinyurl.com/bdh378zh The suit is for $500 million, no less 😂 (breach of contract, breach of atty/client privilege, unjust enrichment, violating non disclosure agreement, etc etc etc)

🐣 RT @JoyceCarolOates Trump’s tale of crying Manhattan court employees was ‘absolute BS,’ law enforcement source says
⋙ AOL/YahooNews, Michael Isikoff: Trump’s tale of crying Manhattan court employees was ‘absolute BS,’ law enforcement source says https://tinyurl.com/yw3jb6nv
// Former President Trump’s claim to a Fox News anchor that New York court employees were “crying” and apologizing for his arraignment on felony

Former President Trump’s claim to a Fox News anchor that New York court employees were “crying” and apologizing for his arraignment on felony charges is “absolute BS” and doesn’t remotely resemble what took place, a law enforcement source familiar with the details of what transpired that day told Yahoo News. ¤ “Zero,” said the source when asked how much truth there was to Trump’s colorful account. “There were zero people crying. There were zero people saying ‘I’m sorry.’”

Trump offered his version of events in an interview with the Fox News host Tucker Carlson that aired Tuesday night. ¤ “When I went to the courthouse, which is also a prison in a sense, they signed me in, and I’ll tell you, people were crying,” Trump told Carlson. “People that work there, professionally work there, that have no problems putting in murderers, and they see everybody. It’s a tough, tough place, and they were crying. They were actually crying. They said, ‘I’m sorry.’ They said, ‘2024, sir. 2024.’ And tears were pouring down their eyes.”

In fact, the source said, aside from his lawyers and Secret Service agents, Trump interacted only with a handful of district attorney employees at the courthouse and had extremely limited exposure with others during his arraignment last Tuesday in lower Manhattan.

Upon his arrival, Trump was informed of the charges against him and was booked on 34 felony counts for falsification of business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election. The former president, looking glum, said little during the booking, as did Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s deputies, who were with him throughout the process, the source said. …

Carlson’s friendly interview with Trump was especially ironic given its timing. It comes on the eve of a trial slated to begin next Monday in Delaware, in which Carlson, along with his fellow host Sean Hannity and multiple Fox executives, are slated to be witnesses in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for airing debunked claims of 2020 election fraud by Trump and his surrogates. …

AOL/Reuters: Fox shareholder sues Murdoch, other directors over 2020 election coverage https://tinyurl.com/29pz3p6r
// The lawsuit says the network’s directors failed to stop Fox News from reporting falsehoods about the 2020 U.S. presidential election

🐣 RT @clashreport CIA Director William Burns ¤ Russia risks becoming an “economic colony” of China as its isolation from the West deepens after the invasion of Ukraine.

🐣 RT @NOELreports South Korea will give the US half a million 155-mm shells to replace those that the Americans supply to Ukraine from their own warehouses. The law prohibits South Korea from exporting weapons to countries at war, but such a three-way scheme does not fall under the law, and will allow the United States to supply shells to Ukraine much more freely. [link]

⭕ 11 Apr 2023

Politico [EU]: Europe’s eastern half claps back at Macron: We need the US https://tinyurl.com/39kjjhjc
// tags: European strategic autonomy Eastern Europe NATO Taiwan; The French president’s comments to POLITICO about not being drawn into a US-China conflict rattled easterners who favor closer ties with the Americans.

🧵 RT @atrupar follow along for a video thread on Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1645940484378963968?s=20/photo/1

NYT: From Red Carpet to Doghouse: Macron Returns From China to Allied Dismay https://tinyurl.com/bddnxd83 //➔ Embarrassing at least, damaging at worst, Macron toys with alliances at the most the worst time imaginable, as Xi plays him like a fiddle
// Criticism of the French president’s performance in Beijing has been scathing among some allies, who saw him as cozying up to Beijing.

🐣 RT @nexta_tv President #Zelenskyy commented on the video in which the head of a #Ukrainian defender is cut off.
💽 https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1646064830334353408?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @maria_drutska Ukraine gave up 3000 nuclear warheads because we were promised we would be protected. ¤ Now, our soldiers are castrated, beheaded & burned alive. Their screams will haunt us for eternity. We watch our children kidnapped, we watch our houses bombed. ¤ But remember, we musn’t provoke russia.

DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Ex-Fox Producer: There Are Secret Rudy Giuliani Recordings About Dominion https://tinyurl.com/2am9xs8b
// In an amended legal complaint, Abby Grossberg said that Fox News failed to provide Dominion with several audio recordings she made featuring Giuliani and other Trump allies.

≣ District Court SDNY: Bragg v Jordan and Pomerantz: Case No.23-cv-3032 https://tinyurl.com/mkz8bsjf 50p //➔ a tour de force in capturing the craziness of djt and followers: very readable
// 4/11/2023 ⋙ See under Entire Articles: Bragg v Jordan 4-11-2023
// 📋 NYC crime stats are down

⭕ 10 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @levparnas A close source is telling me that Donald Trump is really scared and acting out of control that Pence is going to testify in front of the January 6, Grand Jury. He was screaming at his lawyers and demanding that they find a way to shut Pence up. #January6thIndictmentsarecoming

⭕ 9 Apr 2023 🌸🐰🌅

NYT Mag, Jim Rutenberg (Nov 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.
⇈ ⇊ ⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @HC_Richardson Yes. I am shocked at how little attention this has gotten. See the Senate Report, the Mueller Report, and @jimrutenberg’s terrific piece on this. The deal was for the US to stand aside while Putin took Ukraine, and when Trump lost in 2020, Putin tried to take it fast, militarily.
¤ https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson/status/1645219795854303234?s=20
// ‼️See Comments: contain much info by people who know Mueller,Report
⋙ 🐣 RT @FiringLineShow In his book, former Mueller prosecutor @AWeissmann_ recounts Paul Manafort meeting with a Putin ally over a proposed deal allowing Russia to take control of part of Ukraine with #Trump’s implicit approval. ¤ “It was such a clear indication of what Vladimir Putin was trying to do.”
💽 https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson/status/1645219795854303234?s=20/photo/1

From Weissman’s “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation” (2020) https://tinyurl.com/yrhzud44:

⋙ Included in the draft was a question that outlined a plan for Russia to take control of the eastern portion of Ukraine roughly half the country- along with questions about former president Yanukovych returning from Russia to be the head of that region. When the pollster turned them over to us, he noted that he now could see why they would be of interest. An understatement if there ever was one.

⋙ Their content was startling to me. I had learned a lot about Ukraine since I joined the Special Counsel’s Office. The eastern part of Ukraine is the main economic driver of the country, akin to northern Italy or northern France or, closer to home, Wall Street and Silicon Valley combined. It is a region that is close to Russia, not just geographically but politically, too. Russia had sought for years to control Ukraine, as Putin needed that territory to transmit oil and gas to Europe. But Ukraine needed Russia even more, as it obtained basically all of its energy from that nation. Russia had enjoyed de facto control of Ukraine when Yanukovych was president, funneling him millions of dollars in bribes to curry his favor. But after Yanukovych’s overthrow, Russia no longer had such a willing puppet under its control. Thus, Russia had turned to brute force: its infamous invasion ofCrimea, a region of eastern Ukraine, in 2014-the one that had outraged most Western democracies, but which candidate Trump oddly had regarded as no big deal. The proposal for Russia to take over the eastern half of Ukraine was the Crimea invasion on steroids. Russia would annex half the country, reinstall its favorite figurehead, and thus control the economic heart of the country. Notably, Manafort and Kilimnik’s proposal explained that, for such a move to succeed, it would need the consent of the United States. It called on Trump to give Russia an approving “wink”-the word the proposal used -and, furthermore, to appoint Manafort to negotiate the logistics with Russia on America’s behalf. In a separate email, Kilimnik endorsed Manafort for this role; Manafort would be able to deal with Russia at the “very top level,” Kilimnik explained. Manafort wasn’t aware we’d discovered these emails or the proposal. After the election, when news broke about one Trump adviser after..

⋙ “So,” I went on, “Mr. Manafort, I don’t understand. When I read this, I don’t see Kilimnik anywhere acknowledging that you’d already definitely shut down the idea of working with Yanukovych. He’s talking to you as if you had never rejected that idea, right? And the plan is quite a bit different than what you said: It’s not to have Yanukovych run for president of all of Ukraine; it’s to create a new eastern region of Ukraine that he would head up.” “Well, that is true,” Manafort said. “This plan… this plan was basically the same plan that he told me about in August. I’d told him that it wasn’t the right time, and I wasn’t sure Yanukovych was the right person, either.” “So this plan was a topic at the August 2 meeting?” Omer asked. “Yes,” Manafort said. “This is basically a backdoor way for Russia to take over half of Ukraine,” I said. “Yes,” Manafort said again. “Which is what I told Kilimnik, and why I was so against it when he raised it at the dinner in August. I did not..

⋙ “So your issue was who would lead the region, not the plan itself.” “Right, and I wasn’t sure the time was right.” “But you just insisted to us that you were against Russia,” I went on, “and had previously said you had only been trying to make Ukraine more Western, and less beholden to Russia. So why wouldn’t you be against this plan?” “I was against this plan,” Manafort said. “But if you were so against it—if you didn’t like it because it was pro-Russia—why is Kilimnik still writing to you as if you’re for it?” We kept going back and forth, but Manafort’s story got no more consistent. He had no explanation for why Kilimnik was addressing him as an active partner on a project that Manafort was insisting to us—at least at the times he was not claiming to be against only the timing or leadership of the plan—that he’d never wanted any part of. And there was no document—nothing we had that Manafort had written, or which he could now produce—to indicate he’d been anti-Russia and back up his new story. The facts we’d established, even amid Manafort’s attempts to muddy them, were staggering. On August 2, if not earlier, Russia had clearly revealed to Manafort—and, by extension, to the Trump campaign—what it wanted out of the United States: “a wink,” a nod of approval from a President Donald Trump, as it took over Ukraine’s richest region. It was a tremendous thing for Russia to ask for. It would seem to require significant audacity—or else, leverage—for another nation to even put such a request to a presidential candidate. This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, feel monumentally disconcerting: namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something from Russia in return? Both Manafort and Trump were too transactional to give away something for nothing.

⋙ So when Manafort told the grand jurors that he was against the plan to split Ukraine in two and would not be a part of such a plan, as it would be a “backdoor” way for Russia to take over a swath of Ukraine, we showed him the pollster’s documents. Those documents made clear Manafort was working on the plan even as late as 2018. Manafort’s attempts to get out of that were a classic example of someone who, when he is in trouble, keeps doubling down instead of coming clean. We all had seen that numerous times as investigators. Confronted with the draft polling questions he had worked on with Kilimnik and the pollster, Manafort would claim he was only performing a poll for a particular candidate and it had nothing to do with a plan by Russia to take over part of Ukraine. He claimed the questions about Yanukovych were not because of anything Kilimnik had said to him, but just general testing of ideas. He claimed Kilimnik did not even know the identity of the person he was doing the testing for, even though we then showed Manafort communications with Kilimnik that belied that claim. On and on it went.

From Amazon reviews of Weissman’s “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation”:

Darya Silman’s review: The findings of Team M are even more astonishing in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Paul Manafort, convicted on many cases of bank fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, testified that on August 2, 2016, he had had a meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence asset. The two discussed Russia’s desire to snip off the piece of Eastern Ukraine, placing Viktor Yanukovych as the head of a new entity. Russians wanted a ‘wink’ from the future president, an assurance that the U.S. would not intervene.

LA’s review: … Or Manafort’s plan, with his Russian Military buddy Kilimnik, to assist Manafort’s former client, the ex-Ukraine president hiding out in Moscow, with his takeover of the eastern half of Ukraine, and then have Trump bless the incursion much as Trump did with Crimea. Weissmann wondered what was the Russian quid for that quo? Or how upset Trump was at Legal Counsel Don McGahn for telling the truth in his interviews with Mueller’s staff.

🐣 RT @ @jojjeols “Xi’s immediate goal is to try and draw Europe away from America, and he sees Macron as a useful tool for that purpose.”
⋙ TheSpectator, Ian Williams: Macron has made a fool of himself in China https://tinyurl.com/4uvt28f9

At least there was no six metre-long table in Beijing separating Emmanuel Macron from Xi Jinping. But their meeting was about as fruitless as the French president’s socially distanced chat with Xi’s ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin in Moscow last year, shortly before the Russian leader sent his tanks into Ukraine. …

Xi’s China is now a dark and repressive place. His growing international aggression, economic coercion and support for Putin have provoked dismay from much of the western world, forcing them to reassess relations with Beijing. Though on the evidence of his three days in China, this seems to have largely passed Macron by.

The French president said he wanted to ‘relaunch a strategic and global partnership with China’ and spoke about ‘shared responsibility for peace and international stability’. He rejected a policy of economic decoupling from China, overlooking the fact that this is a long standing policy of Beijing, and not something cooked up in Washington. ‘I do not believe, and do not want to believe in this scenario,’ he said.

Macron was trailed by a 50-strong entourage of business leaders, film makers and musicians. Among the gifts he brought for his Chinese counterpart were a French photographer’s pictures of mid-20th-century China and a blue Sèvres porcelain vase decorated with golden fish.

The main reason for the visit was supposedly to urge Xi to put pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine. ‘I know I can count on you to bring Russia to its senses and bring everyone to the negotiating table,’ he said to the Chinese president during what was billed as a joint press conference (a not very accurate billing since no questions were allowed). …

That said, Xi enjoys being courted as a potential peacemaker, even if that is totally preposterous. Xi’s priority is Xi, and the Ukraine war suits him just fine right now. It ties up his western adversaries, drawing their attention away from the Indo-Pacific, and provides big economic benefits in terms of cheap hydrocarbons from Russia. It also solidifies China’s role as the senior partner with Putin. Xi is effectively bankrolling Putin’s aggression through massively increased trade, which includes dual-use items (which can be used for both civilian and military purposes) such as chips and consumer drones. While he has avoided crossing western red lines by overtly supplying arms and ammunition, he has gone right up against it.

Beijing’s so-called peace place is no such thing. It is a collection of empty and contradictory platitudes and the ceasefire it advocates would reward Russian aggression. Xi and Putin are too similar, sharing a world view based on building a new order safe for autocrats and restoring mythical notions of imperial greatness, underpinned by grievance and victimhood. Perhaps the closest Xi has come to expressing his true feelings were in unguarded remarks in Moscow, as he bid farewell to Putin after their summit last month. ‘Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years and we are driving this change together,’ he said.

Xi’s immediate goal is to try and draw Europe away from America, and he sees Macron as a useful tool for that purpose. ‘China still sees Europe as an independent pole in a multipolar world, and supports its efforts to achieve strategic autonomy,’ he said at their press conference.

Quite what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made of Macron’s performance is harder to tell. … [H]er reception was far cooler. She had a limited itinerary and no invitation to the banquet for Macron. She has taken an increasingly hard line, recently urging Europe to ‘de-risk’ from its over dependency on China, for which Chinese state media have attacked her for being an ‘American puppet’.

She said that Beijing ‘has a big responsibility to use its influence in a friendship that is built on decades with Russia’ and warned against supplying weapons. And she added that Xi had reiterated his willingness to talk to Ukrainian president Zelensky ‘when the time is right’. Unfortunately the time never seems to be right. They have not spoken since the war began, in spite of Zelensky’s desire to do so, and the total absurdity of Xi posing as a mediator while avoiding talking to the victim in the conflict seems lost on credulous European leaders. …

🐣 RT @bctallis
If you think democracy’s fight is not yours.
If you think it’s fine for an autocratic great power to bully it’s neighbour.
Then we have a problem –
And you don’t speak for Europe – You never have – and you will not have a Europe to lead.
⋙ 🧵 RT @shashj Macron: “I note that President Xi Jinping spoke of a European security architecture. But there can be no European security architecture as long as there are invaded countries in Europe or frozen conflicts.” [Fr] https://tinyurl.com/4n36e9kr
📌 https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1645100297730113537?s=20

⋙ Macron: “We show China that we are united and this is the meaning of this joint visit [VDL]. The Chinese are also concerned about their unity and Taiwan, from their point of view, is a component of it. It is important to understand how they reason”

⋙ Macron: “The question for us Europeans is: do we have an interest in accelerating the Taiwan issue? No. The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans should be followers on this issue and adapt to the American pace and to a Chinese overreaction.”

⋙ Macron: “If there is an acceleration of the [US-China] duopoly, we [EU] will not have the time nor the means to finance our strategic autonomy and will become vassals whereas we can be the third pole if we have some years to build it.”

⋙ Macron: “Strategic autonomy means having convergent views with the United States, but whether it is on Ukraine, the relationship with China or sanctions, we have a European strategy. We do not want to enter into a logic of bloc to bloc”

🐣 RT @HerrDr8 [Replying to @JominiW] #1PageAssessUKRWar #OrcWinterOffensive2023 #OrcLossRate Good to have you back @JominiWand toss see your take on the Russian Winter Offensive.
🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1644439764945235991?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 RT @RobertJ09323900 Yay Jomini is back. Look at the state of their reserve units in Kursk, Smolensk and Belorussia, 20 total beat up BTG’s “refitting”. Number of Russian units in combat look impressive but most are understrength, quickly refitted, many/most experienced Non-Coms/Junior Officers gone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JominiW Exactly, Russian battalions are woefully under strength, even with mobilized conscripts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RobertJ09323900 POW conscript tanker reports: received 2 weeks of training, 1 on simulator, 2nd driving on a track, Drivers have<10 hrs, Gunners had 5 live shots. Tanks from reserve received off train near front, 3 of 4 broke down in his platoon, at front piecemeal, his tank hit 1st hour combat. ⋙ 🐣 RT @HerrDr8 A recent what if regarding RUS forces in Ukraine...maybe 160k...but those are maybe at 50% capability vs the start of war (kit losses, replaced with non trained/equiped/led/motivate mobiks). 🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1645105013071519747?s=20/photo/1 🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #1PageAssessUkrWar #RussianWinterOffensive2023 2 weeks now of reduced Russian losses/activity as their failed winter offensive putters out.Scattered reports of UKR forces moving into jump off spring/sum offensive positions. Lots of pearl clutching in Kremlin/RUS mil blog space. 🌎 ◕ 📋 https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1645107362775150594?s=20/photo/1 🐣 RT @azannaphx When do you think that Trumpsters will realize that he is bat$#iT crazy? ⋙ 🐣 RT @RockyMntnMike Speaking on behalf of those trying to destroy our country, Happy Easter to you too! [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RockyMntnMike/status/1645063938055208960?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING THOSE THAT DREAM ENDLESSLY OF DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF DREAMING ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE, THOSE THAT ARE SO INCOMPETENT THEY DON’T REALIZE THAT HAVING A BORDER AND POWERFUL WALL IS A GOOD THING, & HAVING VOTER I.D., ALL PAPER BALLOTS, & SAME DAY VOTING WILL QUICKLY END MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD, & TO ALL OF THOSE WEAK & PATHETIC RINOS, RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS, SOCIALISTS MARXISTS, & COMMUNISTS WHO ARE KILLING OUR NATION, REMEMBER, WE WILL BE BACK!

🐣 RT @tribelaw Exactly right. Judge Kacsmaryk has shown his true colors as a fanatic theocrat without respect for the limits of the judicial role and without fidelity to the oath he swore to uphold the Constitution’s First Amendment clause forbidding an Establishment of Religion.
⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman It is beyond outrageous — the height of judicial arrogance — for a federal judge to repeatedly refer to abortion as “the killing of the unborn human,” as Kacsmaryk does. It takes sides in a deeply religious debate w/ a position that if true would make all abortions homicides.

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag This speaks volumes about today’s Ukraine: President Zelenskyy, the popularly elected Jewish leader of a traditionally Christian nation, has this week initiated a new tradition of hosting an annual Iftar dinner during Ramadan for members of the country’s Muslim community
🖼 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1644818701500268547?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @KylieSpeer Ukraine is fast evolving into the most united, authentically powerful and free nation on earth. It’s so beautiful to watch considering the horrendous circumstances. Imagine what’s to come when the invaders have been fully evicted…

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUA I congratulate Ukrainians, all Christians celebrating Easter today. At frontline, in our cities & villages. All who celebrate Easter in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia. The world that wants to live freely. World that values life, respect & equality of each person.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUA Today, is standing guard of our shared values. ¤ Two days ago I shared Iftar together with Muslims of Ukraine. I will soon congratulate the Jews of Ukraine on the end of Pesach. And in exactly one week, I will congratulate everyone who celebrates Easter this year on April 16.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUA We may have different traditions but one common for all – defense of native land. We celebrate Easter on different days but one will be shared by & the entire free world. The Day of our Victory. The victory of life. All the holiday of Lord’s Resurrection means. HAPPY EASTER!

⭕ 8 Apr 2023

NYT: Leaked Documents Reveal Depth of U.S. Spy Efforts and Russia’s Military Struggles https://tinyurl.com/38kr9umj “The documents portray a battered Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and a military apparatus that is deeply compromised”
// The information, exposed on social media sites, also shows that U.S. intelligence services are eavesdropping on important allies.

WaPo: Texas abortion pill ruling threatens FDA https://tinyurl.com/2de4ffak “‘If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks,’ [Biden] said in a statement”
// ‘This opens the door to the courts’ second-guessing any FDA approval — especially for drugs for controversial areas like gender-affirming care,’ expert says

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa The values we’re all fighting for in 🇺🇦 fit each nation regardless of whether it’s geographically far from our people. Each values security & protection from terror. The more the world knows about 🇷🇺 aggression the faster the aggressor will lose and calmness will return worldwide
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1644799069745807360?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @PeteButtigieg If your political agenda repeatedly puts you in various scenarios that involve overthrowing electoral outcomes, there might be a problem with your political agenda.

NYT: Georgia Looms Next After Trump’s Indictment in New York https://tinyurl.com/9by6c7dr “While nothing is certain, there are numerous signs that [Willis] may go big, with a more kaleidoscopic indictment charging not only Mr. Trump, but perhaps a dozen or more of his allies”
// Former President Donald J. Trump now faces a very different legal challenge in the culmination of a more than two-year Atlanta investigation into election interference.

In Georgia, … there is another criminal investigation of Mr. Trump nearing completion, this one also led by a local prosecutor, Fani T. Willis of Fulton County. While nothing is certain, there are numerous signs that she may go big, with a more kaleidoscopic indictment charging not only Mr. Trump, but perhaps a dozen or more of his allies.

Her investigation has targeted a wide range of conduct centered around efforts to subvert the democratic process and overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss. Nearly 20 people are already known to have been told that they are targets who could face charges, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party.

For Mr. Trump, the possibility of a second and potentially more complex criminal indictment in another state underscores the blizzard of legal challenges he is facing, even as he emerges as the clear front-runner among Republican presidential candidates.

For Ms. Willis, the choice to pursue a narrowly focused indictment or more a sprawling one — a classic prosecutor’s dilemma — carries with it potential risks and benefits on both sides. And American history offers few examples in which the stakes are so high. …

In Georgia, the investigation is focused on myriad efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s narrow loss in Georgia after his 2020 election defeat, including his January 2021 phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” him enough votes to win. …

If Ms. Willis chooses to seek indictments in the Georgia case, she may do so after a new grand jury begins its work in the second week of May, though nothing is set in stone. Typically, presenting such cases to a regular grand jury is a short process that takes a day or two.

The wide scope of the investigation has been evident for months, and Ms. Willis has said that seeking an indictment under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, statute is an option that she is considering. Like the similar federal law, the Georgia RICO statute allows prosecutors to bundle what may seem to be unrelated crimes committed by a host of different people if those crimes are perceived to be in support of a common objective. …

Court records show that the special grand jury sought testimony from witnesses including Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump; Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an ally of the former president; and Trevian Kutti, a former self-described publicist for rapper Kanye West who, according to prosecutors, was involved in a plot to force a Fulton County elections worker to give a false confession of election fraud.

Documents also show that prosecutors are following numerous narrative threads in Georgia involving either Mr. Trump or his allies. These include Mr. Trump’s phone calls to Georgia officials, including the one to Mr. Raffensperger; specious statements about election fraud made by Mr. Giuliani and others at state legislative hearings; the convening of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College at the Georgia State Capitol; Ms. Kutti’s bizarre meeting with the elections worker, Ruby Freeman, two days after Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump falsely accused Ms. Freeman of being a “vote scammer”; and a plot by allies of Mr. Trump involving the copying of sensitive election software in rural Coffee County, Ga. …

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance #UkraineLeaks I’ve Seen ALOT of classified in my time at WAY higher levels. This is a low grade report with some surprising admiration of Russia that looks like it was edited to make Putin happy. As for NATO SOF in Ukraine embassies have them. #NAFO literally has more presence.
⋙ 🧵 RT @ War_cube_ Exclusive / Breaking: ¤ Reports came out a couple of hours ago regarding some leaked documents regarding U.S. battle assessments in #Ukraine. ¤ Here is an image dump of all original documents and there seems to be no edits done to them. They appear to be genuine.
📌 🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1644369098006994945?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @Mylovanov 24% of the USSR forces in WWII were Ukrainians.
⋙ 🧵 RT @MargoGontar If not for Ukrainians, russia wouldn’t been able to talk abt “winning” at all, according to Yana Prymachenko, research scholar at @Princeton . ~7 mln Ukrainians fought in Red Army ranks, ~23% of USSR forces, according to UA historians. On Ukrainian ace pilot Ivan Kozhedub
📌 https://twitter.com/MargoGontar/status/1644285193446998018?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MargoGontar By end of 1941 summer, 3.2 mln soldiers were mobilized from territory of UA to Red Army ranks. Ukrainians made up 50% of so-called South-West Front troops. In 1943-45, 4.5 mln more recruited. From 2nd half of 1943, Ukrainians made up 60-80% of UA fronts units, Prymachenko says
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MargoGontar Ukrainians also helped in the rear. ~ 3.5 mln people , 550 industrial enterprises, 70 universities, 40 theaters, dozens of museums were moved from Ukraine deep into peaceful territory, Prymachenko adds. All worked in deep rear for victory. ¤ source: http://localhistory.org.ua

⭕ 7 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @yarotrof It may be one of the worst intelligence breaches in recent decades. DOD investigates the leak of potentially hundreds of highly classified documents about the war in Ukraine and other matters, from Israel to South Korea. My latest with @nancyayoussef
⋙ 🚫 WSJ: Pentagon Investigates More Social-Media Posts Purporting to Include Secret U.S. Documents https://tinyurl.com/24atfw27
// Documents include details on Ukrainian forces, U.S. arms provided to Ukraine

🐣 RT @ImMeme0 Classified Pentagon documents containing information about U.S. & NATO plans for proxy war in Ukrainian have leaked. Biden administration is reportedly demanding they be scrubbed from the internet. ¤ The documents show that there are allegedly British and U.S. soldiers in Ukraine. ¤ Is there a hidden agenda behind the leak?
◕ https://twitter.com/ImMeme0/status/1644428616988520449?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi1 There is a serious on-going leak of classified US and allied military documents on social media, including on Ukraine – Russia: New Leak of Classified Documents on Social Media Alarms Pentagon – The New York Times
⋙ NYT: New Batch of Classified Documents Appears on Social Media Sites https://tinyurl.com/fwedvbxf It appears some documents have been altered
// Secret documents that appear to detail American national security secrets on Ukraine, the Middle East and China have surfaced online.

A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail American national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites on Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard.

The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.

The latest documents were found on Twitter and other sites on Friday, a day after senior Biden administration officials said they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans, include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defense capabilities. One slide, dated Feb. 23, is labeled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries.

The Justice Department said it had opened an investigation into the leaks and was in communication with the Defense Department but declined to comment further.
Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, said the leak of the classified documents represents “a significant breach in security” that could hinder Ukrainian military planning. “As many of these were pictures of documents, it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, U.S., and NATO efforts,” he said. …

The documents on Ukraine’s military appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans. Pentagon officials acknowledge that they are legitimate Defense Department documents, but the copies appear to have been altered in certain parts from their original format. The modified versions, for example, overstate American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and underestimate estimates of Russian troops killed.

💙 WaPo: Texas judge suspends FDA approval of abortion pill; second judge protects access https://tinyurl.com/2a7ueav5 “The dueling opinions — one from Texas and the other from Washington state — concern access to mifepristone, … used in more than half of all abortions in the US”
// Federal lawsuit by conservative groups followed the Supreme Court’s elimination of the constitutional right to abortion last June
≣ [CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/25f3t8ku
// Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v FDA Case 2:22-cv-00223-Z Document 137

💽 DailyBeast: MSNBC Host Mehdi Hasan Makes Matt Taibbi Squirm Over His ‘Twitter Files’ Errors https://tinyurl.com/5n9bm6r3
// Hasan came prepared with receipts during his tense interview with the heterodox reporter, repeatedly flashing evidence on-screen as Taibbi flailed.

🐣 RT @AlexSkolnick The moral of the #MattTaibbi #Elon instant breakup of bromance is: The ethically bankrupt will eventually turn their toxicity towards each other. The lesson for the rest of us is: Do not be taken in by the #TwitterFiles or other public provocations of Horseshit-Spewing Douchebags
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexSkolnickAnd the #Elon plot thickens: Taibbi just announced he’s leaving Twitter. The problem with blending two such toxic personalities is the risk of the bromance turning toxic 🤷‍♂️
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BigTechAlert 👀 @ElonMusk (Account that mostly reposts old memes) is no longer following @mtaibbi

🐣 RT @ddiamond .@RonWyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that oversees FDA, on today’s abortion pill ruling: ¤ “I believe the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ignore this ruling.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1644491001195634688?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Wyden to President Biden and FDA after Texas Ruling: Ignore Any Ban, Keep Mifepristone on the Market

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden released the following statement after a right- wing judge today ruled to ban mifepristone nationwide:
“There is no way this decision has a basis in law. It is instead rooted in conservatives’ dangerous and undemocratic takeover of our country’s institutions. No matter what happens in seven days, I believe the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ignore this ruling, which is why I’m again calling on President Biden and the FDA to do just that. The FDA, doctors, and pharmacies can and must go about their jobs like nothing has changed and keep mifepristone accessible to women across America. If they don’t, the consequences of banning the most common method of abortion in every single state will be devastating.”

🐣 RT @ryanjreilly “The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision of the District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1644499857594253312?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Statement from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department tonight issued the following statement from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland following the district court decisions in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and Washington et al. v. FDA:

“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision of the District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal. Today’s decision overturns the FDA’s expert judgment, rendered over two decades ago, that mifepristone is safe and effective. The Department will continue to defend the FDA’s decision.

Separately, the Justice Department is reviewing the decision of the District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in Washington et al. v. FDA.

The Department is committed to protecting Americans’ access to legal reproductive care.”

🐣 Transphobia and “pronouns” hysteria are just there to hide the GOP’s true agenda:
🔥 Anti-WOMAN
🔥 Pro-GUN
🔥 RACIST

🐣 RT @RepJeffries A rogue Judge just suspended FDA approval of mifepristone. ¤ The Extreme MAGA Republican assault on abortion care is spreading across America like a malignant tumor. ¤ We must all speak up, show up and stand up until the far-right uprising is peacefully and democratically crushed.

🐣 RT @chrislhayes As I said on the show last week, the ONLY silver lining in this is that the politics of the anti-abortion zealotry are *atrocious* for conservatives and Republicans and the only way out is to make them may the full price for it, politically.

🐣 So a judge anywhere in the country can override the FDA approval of any drug and impose a nationwide ban on its use? This could include vaccines, birth control, ED drugs (hey guys!) and anything else some political interest finds objectionable. ¤ This is ridiculous and cannot stand.

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman Republicans hand-picked this judge to get the outcome they wanted, which is a nationwide assault on a woman’s control over her own body. ¤ While DOJ appeals this ruling, I will continue to work with the Biden Administration to provide wide access to mifepristone for all women.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CBSNews BREAKING: A federal judge has halted FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
⋙⋙ CBSNews: Texas federal judge halts FDA approval of abortion pill mifepristone https://tinyurl.com/5brd4sya

🧵 RT @lawofruby BREAKING: On Good Friday no less, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has just ordered the FDA to stay its Sept. 2000 approval of mifepristone and all subsequent actions broadening access thereto. Believe women.
📌 https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1644466451544145921?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @lawofruby How does tonight’s ruling square with Dobbs, which the majority promised would take abortion out of the courts and return the issue to the people and their elected representatives? It doesn’t. Either states (and their voters) have total control over their own abortion policy….
⋙ 🐣 RT @lawofruby Or they don’t, in which case Congress and federal law matter. And here, despite Kacsmaryk’s tortured undermining of a 23-year-old approval, the FDA’s decision is not only entitled to deference, but it could also be argued to preempt contrary state law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @lawofruby But let’s say you take the Dobbs majority at its word. Aren’t states like New York and California equally entitled to make their own decisions? ¤ 22 state attorneys general thought so–and told Kacsmaryk as much in an amicus brief.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1644488834648817665?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Amici also have a strong interest in safeguarding their decision to protect their residents’ ability to obtain abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022). Although the Supreme Court, reversing
longstanding precedent, concluded that the U.S. Constitution does not protect the right to obtain an abortion, there can be no question that the Court endorsed the States’ authority to promote access to abortion for their residents, explaining that it was “return [ing] the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” Id. at 2243. Annulling the FDA’s approval of mifepristone would, in effect, eviscerate amici’s sovereign decisions to protect the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy as it could prevent countless persons in amici States from obtaining an abortion.

🐣 RT @findkarma [Adam Rifkin] “Medication abortion accounts for 54% of abortions, so this really puts to the lie the notion that it was going to be enough to send this back to the states. It was never enough.” @Dahlialithwick @NicolleDWallace @DeadlineWH #abortionrights #mifepristone
💽 https://twitter.com/ifindkarma/status/1644484279387439104?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @lawofruby [Jennifer Rubin] Indeed, I invoked @steve_vladeck tonight on air in explaining that DOJ would likely do *exactly* this. The rise in applications by conservatives seeking to leapfrog appeals courts has hopefully taught Biden’s DOJ something.
⋙ 🐣 RT @steve_vladeck If I’m DOJ, I go *right* to #SCOTUS. ¤ File a notice of appeal in the Fifth Circuit, then seek a stay, but don’t wait for a ruling before asking SCOTUS for a stay and cert. before judgment—to resolve the conflict between the TX and WA rulings before the TX ruling goes into effect.

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Texas judge suspends FDA approval of abortion pill mifepristone https://tinyurl.com/2a7ueav5 “The lawsuit was brought by the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of antiabortion medical organizations ”
// Federal lawsuit by conservative groups followed the Supreme Court’s elimination of the constitutional right to abortion last June

🐣 RT @PStyle0ne1 The number of missiles in Russia has fallen to the most critical level – Danilov ¤ The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council added that Russia does not have the ability to increase missile resources in the amount that it would like. In addition, he stated:
📍Russia has not abandoned its “task” to eliminate President Vladimir Zelensky, both physically and politically.
📍The de-occupation of Crimea can be both military and diplomatic. It all depends on the behavior of the terrorist country.
📍 Part of the Bakhmut area, it is ours, the other part of the territory – the troops of the occupying forces. Prigozhin’s statement that they captured some center is not true. Bakhmut is fighting there. We keep Bakhmut because this is our land. #Ukraine #Wagner #Russia

PravdaUA: Number of Russian soldiers willing to surrender to Ukraine doubles in March https://tinyurl.com/4rwu8pdh

🐣 RT @Ukrainik #RussiaOnFire Yaroslav Motors factory, Russia’s largest mil engines manufacturer, 700 km from Ukraine’s border. Eyewitnesses reported seeing as many as 10 drones in the sky and hearing explosions. Officially, smoking cigarettes was not announced as the cause of fire.
¤ https://twitter.com/Ukrainik/status/1644360195315757057?s=20/photo/1 -2

🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukraine TVD, 20 FEB-07 APR 23. The past 7 weeks saw a continuation of the Russian Winter Offensive as major pushes continued in Kreminna, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka. Russia made important gains, Ukrainian defenses continue to hold. #UkraineRussiaWar #RussianArmy #UkraineFrontLines
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1644436075526463488?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @anders_aslund This seems so appropriate. ¤ Who would offer Trump asylum? Putin’s authoritarian kleptocracy. ¤ Would Putin do it himself? No, he would delegate it to one of his many convicts. ¤ Will Trump accept the offer? Eventually he might.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Billbrowder Russian arms dealer and Lord of War Viktor Bout is filmed here offering Trump political asylum in Russia.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr The “merchant of death” Viktor Bout says he has sent a message to Donald Trump offering him political asylum in Russia ¤ He warns that Trump’s life is in danger in the US and calls on the ex-president to lead an “uprising against the globalists” from abroad
💽 https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1644372488606961666?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr Here’s a copy of the telegram!
🖼 https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1644373284983562240?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: THREAD: This is significant. The appellate court has REVERSED judge Nichols ruling that 18 USC 1512(c)(2) Obstructing an Official Proceeding doesn’t apply to January 6. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1644354677704904705?s=20
⋙ […] Here’s the ruling. If SCOTUS agrees or refuses to hear, Jack Smith can comfortably charge Donald and his conspirators with 1512c2 without worrying whether the court will toss out his charges or conviction on misinterpretation of the statute. END
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/2s3ndv7d

⭕ 6 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @MarkHamill ·@mehdirhasan provides the perfect tutorial to aspiring journalists! Watch as he seeks accountability while fact-checking his subject in real time. Breathtakingly brilliant & one of the reasons I never miss the @MehdiHasanShow
⋙ 🧵 RT @ mehdirhasan Me: “It’s just error after error, Matt?”
@mtaibbi: “Well, that is an error.”
Watch me confront Matt Taibbi with multiple, unacknowledged, and glaring mistakes in his Twitter Files reporting.
Full @MehdiHasanShow interview later tonight. Preview:
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1644064242419617803?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @AWeissmann_ How do you get a false business filing to be a felony and not a misdemeanor? If it is intended to further or cover up another crime
Issues:
– need the other crime be a felony? NO
– need the state charge and prove the other crime? NO
📌 https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1644006333279027200?s=20

🐣 RT @Apex_WW Classified war documents detailing secret American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military ahead of a planned offensive against Russia were posted this week on social media channels, senior Biden administration officials said. – NYT
🚫 ⋙ NYT: Ukraine War Plans Leak Prompts Pentagon Investigation https://tinyurl.com/mda6mbzc
// Classified documents detailing secret American and NATO plans have appeared on Twitter and Telegram.

NYT: How Russia’s Offensive Ran Aground https://tinyurl.com/mv6ddf8f “Moscow’s inability to gain substantial ground in the Donbas shows how little its offensive has achieved and how much its military has struggled to efficiently capture urban areas throughout the war”
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1644100920173637632?s=20/photo/1
// After months of pouring soldiers into eastern Ukraine, Russia’s progress essentially adds up to this: three small settlements and part of the city of Bakhmut, a high-profile battlefield with limited strategic value.

A breakthrough for Russia appears increasingly unlikely. Regardless of the outcome in the fierce battle of Bakhmut, Moscow’s inability to gain substantial ground in the Donbas shows how little its offensive has achieved and how much its military has struggled to efficiently capture urban areas throughout the war.

After mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops, Russia is no longer severely understaffed, as it was in the fall, when it lost large parts of the northeast in a surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive.

But even with more troops and firepower, Russia has, at best, only managed to inch forward, encountering well-prepared Ukrainian positions, protected by basements and buildings, with defensive lines heavily fortified from nearly a decade of fighting.

🐣 RT @TreasChest The formal owner of PVK “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin “gave it back” and no longer boasts about his “admiration” of Bakhmut.

“It must be said clearly that the enemy is not going anywhere. They have an organized defense inside the city, first along the railway, then in the high-rise area of the western quarter of the city,” Prigozhin was quoted as saying by his press service.

According to Prigozhin, in order for his mercenaries to continue their assault on the Ukrainian city, “reliable flank protection, normally organized command and ammunition” are needed.

“When we solve all these three issues, then we can go anywhere… Someday I will tell you in detail about the problems and their solutions,” he said. http://ZN.UA

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Boris Nadezhdin, who was a close ally of murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, compares Putin to Nicholas I, argues that his regime is coming to an end and says that Russia should stop its war against Ukraine. I worry for Nadezhdin’s safety.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1730 UTC 6 APL/ RU forces have consolidated positions on the W bank of the Bakhmutka River. UKR continues defensive ops to prevent RU form taking full control of the urban area. UKR forces again broke up RU attacks on Bohdanivka and Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1644028807962042386?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/ 1145 UTC 7 APL/ This TACMAP summarizes fire missions and contact reports for the period of the night of 6-7 APL. During that span, Wagner forces were again repulsed along the M-04 HWY. In the urban areas of Bakhmut, heavy fighting reported.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1643940185590337538?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Ukraine should become NATO’s 33rd member, while Sweden will become the 32nd. ¤ Ukrainians are the best at using NATO-style weapons to destroy the russian army. Such expertise is critical for the Alliance.

🐣 RT @AndriyYermak The return of all territories of Ukraine and 10-point Peace Plan of the President @ZelenskyyUa. ¤ This is our agenda. ¤ We will regain our lands and will bring our people back home. And the enemy to be brought to justice.
↥ ↧ ?
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Ukraine expresses openness to negotiating on the status of Crimea ¤ However, Ukraine does not rule out military action to expel Russia from Crimea and insists that talks will only begin once Donbas and other occupied areas of Ukraine are freed

🐣 RT @KatyaYushchenko “Russia illegally usurped the seat of a defunct country – the Soviet Union. The UN Charter is very clear on this – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and not the Russian Federation, is appointed as a permanent member to the UNSC.”
⋙ ApostropheUA: The darkest hour in the United Nations history https://tinyurl.com/4wek8ve6
// Moscow uses its presidency in the UN Security Council for political and legal cover

⭕ 5 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @MarkHertling Last night, I tweeted that I had been assessing & considering the challenges Ukraine’s Army (UA) Commanders were facing in preparing for the “spring offensives. ¤ I said I’d share some thoughts on what I would be thinking if I were among them.This is that 1/

🐣 RT @JChengWSJ China’s EU ambassador Fu Cong to NYT: “I know people are fixated on the presidential call…The fact that President Xi is not speaking to Zelensky does not signify that China is on the side of Russia on the Ukrainian issue.” [NYT:] https://tinyurl.com/jm4pd576

🧵 RT @igorsushko Intrigue in #Russia: Fascist war correspondent Tatarsky was assassinated with a bomb planted in a statue. Daria Trepova is charged with murder because she gifted the statue. In her interrogation, she said was handed the statue & instructed to gift it to the victim. (HINT: FSB)
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1643773560689922048?s=20
// alleged false flag

🐣 RT @MrKovalenko He was the CIA director and the Secretary of State in the Trump Administration.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikePompeo I’ve just left Ukraine. I’ve seen the damage caused by Putin’s invasion. And I’ve been inspired by the bravery of the Ukrainian people. ¤ One thing is clear: helping Ukraine end this war is in America’s core interest. (1/4)

⋙ Supporting Ukraine isn’t about abstract ideals like “global democracy”: it’s about strengthening OUR national and economic security. (2/4)

⋙ If Putin wins, he’ll control critical exports to the U.S. And he’ll be on the brink of a broader war in Europe. We can’t let that happen. (3/4)

⋙ The Ukrainian people have endured indescribable suffering. But they’re resilient. ¤ They’re not asking for American troops—just our support. ¤ We should give it to them.

🐣 RT @yasminalombaert The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, claims that the Republic of Moldova follows an “obviously anti-Russian and anti-Transnistrian” policy. ¤ Thus, Putin’s aid launched new veiled threats. Lavrov warned that Russia “bears responsibility for the Russian citizens of Transnistria”. ¤ “As far as I know, 250,000 Russian citizens live in Transnistria. Of course, we are responsible for them,” Lavrov said. ¤ “We have a mandate agreed at the time by all parties,” Lavrov said. “We believe that this mandate is fully up-to-date and we will be guided by it,” he added

🐣 RT @NOELreports Ukraine will join NATO after defeating the Russian Federation, Jens Stoltenberg said. ¤ “We will do everything so that Ukraine wins, and this will ensure its membership in NATO.”

🐣 RT @Billbrowder Russian energy boss dies in Siberian cell in 40th mystery oligarch death. It just goes on and on. Murder, murder, murder in Putin’s Russia [link]
¤ https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1643735370419388416?s=20

🐣 RT @sentdefender The Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office; Andrii Sybiha stated in an Interview today that Ukraine will be willing to discuss the “Territorial Integrity of the Crimean Peninsula” with Russia if their upcoming Counteroffensive to the Border with Crimea is Successful.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sentdefender However, he further stated that these “Negotiations” would not Exclude the possibility that Crimea could still be Liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Icarus_Rising23 Can’t tell if this is a rope-a-dope to get Russia to divert forces to Kherson for a Luhansk push, or a double rope-a-dope to set up a real push to Crimea.

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Good, now from Obama about standing down as Putin took Crimea and invaded E Ukraine in 2014. Admitting blunders is a critical part of not repeating them and recognizing the flawed assumptions that lead to them. These were all mistakes of appeasement.
⋙ 🐣 RT @OlenaHalushka Budapest memorandum should teach the world a lesson:
– not helping Ukraine to win is the worst case for any future non-proliferation efforts;
– succumbing to russian nuclear blackmail would only speed up proliferation;
– altogether this would welcome, not deter the nuclear war
💽 https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1643502723055206401?s=20/photo/1
// Bill Clinton statement

🐣 RT @KateGoesTech Zelenskyy today: ¤ “LEAVE OR BE DESTROYED”
🖼 https://twitter.com/KateGoesTech/status/1643621332137934852?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Tendar Military analysts around the globe share the same as I do: ¤ The Russian winter offensive has entirely failed. We can see that in all sectors. No matter whether you look at Vuhledar, Kreminna, Kupyansk, Zaporizhzhia and, yes, even Bakhmut the Russian advances were little or not even existent. Russia wasted huge amount of resources and gained almost nothing in return. In the contrary, they are no more than ever under threat to lose more. But that’s the next episode.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1643631488854835208?s=20/photo/1 -4

Based on all Russian attempts I have drawn maps of their intention. The operation, indeed, was aimed to take the entire Donbas, as well as all areas east of the Oskil river. I believe that Russians intended to execute this in 4 phases:

PHASE 1:
Strike and breakthrough Ukrainian lines at Kupyansk, Kreminna, Bakhmut, Avidiivka, Marinka and Vuhledar and encircle the cities of the 1st defense line

PHASE 2:
Break the resistance of those cities and move deeper into Ukrainian space. Starting to encircle the 2nd line of defense, most notably Kramatorsk and Sloviansk

PHASE 3:
Break Ukrainian resistance at 2nd line of defense. Take over of Kramatorsk/Sloviansk, clear out all remaining Ukrainian units east of Oskil river and launch attack on Pokrovsk and Dobropillya

PHASE 4:
Strike and take over of Pokrovsk and Dobropillya. Clear out all remaining pockets and conquer the rest of Donetsk Oblast. End of all offensive operations and fortify this position.

Political Conclusion:
Declare victory and offer cease fire and demand this to be the new border or line of contact. The areas of the Kharkiv Oblast stay under Russian rule, in exchange for Ukraine keeping Kherson and Zaporizhzhia city.

If this Russian operation would have succeeded Russia would have not only gained 13,000 km² of land but also would have neutralized the bulk of the Ukrainian army.

Reality: ¤ A bold plan which never made it even over phase 1. Epic disaster for Russia

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AVDIIVKA AXIS /1510 UTC 5 APL/ UKR forces maintain positions N and W of the urban areas. RU forces were rebuffed at Novokalynove, Stepove and Pervomaiske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1643628932715954180?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAHKMUT CITY /2140 UTC 5 APL/ RU forces have escalated efforts to take full control of the urban areas of Bakhmut. UKR forces broke up RU assaults on Bohdanivka and Ivanivske. The General Staff reports that 15 enemy attacks were thwarted in the Bakhmut area of operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1643726584661041156?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @costareports (thread) This Pence development today is significant and potentially historic. A former vice president is now willing, within certain specified constitutional grounds his lawyers fought to arrange, to testify about potential illegal acts by a president.
📌 https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1643704231860338688?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1643704231860338688.html
⋙ CBSNews: Federal judge rules Pence must testify before grand jury about any illegal acts by Trump https://tinyurl.com/bde7pxbm

⋙ […] Think about what this means. The special counsel could now get a first-hand account of what Trump specifically said to Pence in Oval Office meetings ahead of Jan. 6, as long as Pence and his lawyers do not consider those conversations related to his specific constitutional role.

⋙ Pence has long been reluctant to talk at all, even to confidants, about what Trump has said to him in private. Pence has protected his confidence with Trump for years. But he is also someone who knows a subpoena to testify is what it is: a demand to follow the rule of law.

⋙ Pence’s spokesman’s statement today underscores that he will follow the rule of law. A sign of where he stands, how he’ll handle. So as long as special counsel asks questions that are arguably outside realm of “President of Senate” hat Pence wore as VP, testimony seems possible.

⋙ Here are some looming questions… ¤ On Jan. 4, 2021, John Eastman pressured you to act, to your face, in the Oval. What did he say? What did Trump say? How did they follow up? Did you take it as a directive or a suggestion on how to handle your job as vice president?

⋙ A day later, on Jan. 5, 2021, President Trump called you into the Oval Office to talk, one on one. What exactly did he say to you? What did he say about his desire to stay in power? What did he outline as his hopes for Jan. 6? Did he give you any documents?

⋙ Late on Jan. 5, 2021, you return home to dinner. A group dinner, some supporters there. Friends. Did anyone else call you that night? Or reach out to your advisers? The next morning, Jan. 6, you stay home and don’t go to the White House. Take me through that decision and moment.

⋙ On the morning of Jan. 6, you take a call with Trump. What did you say to him when he berated you for not doing his bidding? Who else did you speak with that morning ahead of issuing your letter and going to the Capitol?

⋙ All that is during his time as VP of the United States, not as “president of Senate.” But will be up to a judge to ultimately decide, should Pence testify as now expected, about just how far the special counsel can go in terms of the scope of questions on Trump’s conduct.

⋙ What will matter is whether special counsel can eventually prove criminal intent on Trump’s part (or Eastman, Giuliani, etc.) to conspire to block a congressional proceeding… sources tell me that’s a key focus in the Jan. 6 probe: How did Trump use his power to block Congress?

⋙ This all comes as the special counsel is also, I’m told, digging very deep into whether Trump in any way tried to obstruct the government from securing classified documents, securing testimony from tons of aides, Mar-a-Lago employees and even Trump’s own lawyer…

⋙ So, yes, yesterday in NYC was historic. A surreal American scene. But the real movement, perhaps, is in Washington. In Jack Smith’s special counsel investigations. Fast-moving probes, witnesses being compelled to come in. And a former VP now set to testify under oath. /end

🐣 RT @jedshug “Tuesday was really an indictment of Barr & Garland. If anyone should have brought this case, it was they. And if DOJ should bring a case, there are stronger, more recent & more serious charges to bring.” ¤ (See @ARozenshtein & me on Jan. 6 incitement.)
⋙ 🐣 I am satisfied that the case brings to public knowledge the shady things Trump did to bury stories that could easily have damaged him in 2016. ¤ What is defensible in a court of law at times falls short of what is obvious if laid out to a thinking public.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Poland and Ukraine sign joint memorandum on reconstruction and munitions production. ¤ Poland and Ukraine have signed a joint memorandum on both the reconstruction of war-damaged areas of Ukraine and the production of 125mm tank rounds, according to TVN24.

NYT, Charlie Savage: Analysis: A Surprise Accusation Bolsters a Risky Case Against Trump https://tinyurl.com/5f48e442
// The unsealed case against Donald J. Trump accuses him of falsifying records in part to lay the groundwork for planned lies to tax authorities.

🐣 RT @SecBlinken Our @NATO unity is as strong as ever, and the Alliance remains resilient against Putin’s attempts to undermine our solidarity. We remain united in our support to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, and to advancing the international rules-based order.

WaPo: Democrats cheer contrast between Biden and Trump indictment https://tinyurl.com/4b2wc4hj “Democrats have begun to see evidence that the big statewide wins in key swing states in 2022 were not isolated incidents”
// The party believes Trump’s legal troubles will ultimately damage him if he becomes the Republican nominee next year

⭕ 4 Apr 2023

⋙ TechnologyReview (Apr), Masha Borak: How Russia killed its tech industry https://tinyurl.com/3fzca4fn
// 4/4/2023; The invasion of Ukraine supercharged the decline of the country’s already struggling tech sector—and undercut its biggest success story, Yandex.

WaPo: ‘Frustrated and upset,’ Trump goes silent, then seethes https://tinyurl.com/5axwj8tc
// The splitscreen highlighted the two worlds Trump is spanning as he makes a third straight bid for the presidency: one in which he is a defiant political hero and another in which he is in increasing legal peril

NYT, Karen Agnifilo and Norman Eisen: We Finally Know the Case Against Trump, and It Is Strong https://tinyurl.com/3a6c5dsh “[T]rump cannot persuasively argue he is being singled out for some unprecedented theory of prosecution. He is being treated as any other New Yorker”

Lawfare: And So It Begins: On the First Charges to Drop Against Former President Donald Trump https://tinyurl.com/5cfs9k9s

🧵 RT @atrupar Trump is about to address his indictment in a speech from Mar-a-Lago. Follow along for a video thread. (And yes, that’s the pillow man Mike Lindell.)
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1643405715724283908?s=20

🐣 RT @SkinnerPm MeanCat does indeed miss his only friend, SweetDog. MeanCat has slept in bed by my feet every night since we lost SweetDog, and he rarely does that. He’s looking around for his best friend and it’s breaking my heart.

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln After his indictment, the GOP had the perfect excuse to distance themselves from Trump, yet they doubled down on their support. They are cynical and without a vision for America. The party of Lincoln is dead – it’s been replaced by the party of Trump.

🐣 RT @ PaulaChertok A good day. An historic day.
⚖️Trump is arrested.
🇫🇮Finland joins NATO.
💪🏼Rule of law, democracy, allies kick ass.
👹Russia’s objectives are further out of reach.
Well done, people. Let’s raise a glass, in unity and solidarity, to this day!
🥂💙💛👊

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ This is not some outlier case compared to GA or Jan. 6. It was the FIRST IN THE PROGRESSION:
1. Stormy hush money
2. Welcoming Russian interference efforts/obstructing exposure
3. Ukraine phone call/quid pro quo
4. Jan. 6
It’s the same crime getting refined each time
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn “They said that Mr. Trump tried to conceal a conspiracy and undermine the 2016 election, to identify and suppress negative information. “
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1643328354626715648?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AVindman Here, Right Matters!
🖼 https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1643347134073257989?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MotherJones Here’s @DavidCornDC with the instant-breakdown of the Trump hush money charges, now that we have them in hand. ¤ Big picture story: “There was a conspiracy to break election law.” ¤ “It wasn’t just Stormy Daniels… it was the whole ‘catch-and-kill’ operation. ¤ WATCH:
💽 https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/1643357923782049792?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Donald Trump, a tawdry case and a nation left wondering how it came to this https://tinyurl.com/mtyt9ztw “For a few moments, a day perhaps, it was a Donald Trump who was no longer larger than life, and a country left to contemplate how it came to this”
// Tuesday was a day of spectacle, a word so often associated with the name Donald Trump. Yet it had a sad, almost pathetic quality to it.

This is where Trump has brought the country. His first campaign broke so many norms of politics, and he survived controversies that would have brought down most politicians. His presidency brought chaos and turmoil, not to mention lies and hate, again a norm-breaking tenure unlike any other in the history of the country. His post-presidency has been an extension of his presidency.

Throughout his years in the political spotlight, Trump never wavered in his claim that he was being investigated unfairly, that he was being wrongly persecuted by his political opponents. He lashed out at all his rivals, made wild accusations about some of them, attacked the FBI and Justice Department officials, and threatened violence — and when he lost the 2020 election to Biden, he falsely claimed that the election had been stolen and has persisted in those accusations to this day. Every tweet was consumed and amplified by friend and foe. …

But at this moment, all the coverage, all the attention, all the commentary, all the videos and photos were in service to putting Trump in the dock, under arrest, arraigned in court, released of his own recognizant and then back to the future. For a few moments, a day perhaps, it was a Donald Trump who was no longer larger than life, and a country left to contemplate how it came to this.

🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder I think for decades, and particularly as president, Donald Trump got used to the idea that, if you were wealthy and powerful enough, you could do whatever you want without repercussions. It is shocking–and crucial to democracy–to see that pattern broken. #NoOneIsAboveTheLaw

🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Today, on NATO’s birthday, the US announced another package of security assistance for Ukraine, which, among other things, increases the #UAarmy’s compatibility with the Alliance. ¤ We are determined to fight and win this war. ¤ Thank you, @POTUS @SecDef and the American people.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1643364827933417475?s=20/photo/1
// Defense budget

🐣 RT @stuartpstevens Until Republican Party leaders and elected officials say they will not support Donald Trump if he is the nominee, there is no hope the party might again function as an American political party and not an autocratic movement.

🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse The beauty of the American justice system is that the law applies equally to everyone – even former presidents – and everyone has the right to a fair proceeding free of intimidation or outside influence.

🐣 So, the outcome of the 2016 election was driven by a couple of guys named “Pecker” and “Wiener”

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump pleads not guilty to charges of falsifying documents to help him win the 2016 election https://tinyurl.com/a5k3dhef “The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct” ~ Indictment

WaPo: Finland joins NATO, doubling alliance’s land border with Russia https://tinyurl.com/bd3s8d5b “To justify his unprovoked attack on Ukraine, Putin cited the possibility of NATO expansion. Now, his war has brought a bigger, stronger NATO to his door.”

🐣 RT @ABCpolitics Here is the full transcript of what transpired in the courtroom during former Pres. Trump’s arraignment hearing, according to records that were released.
≣ ⋙ ABCNews: Read the full transcript from Trump’s arraignment https://tinyurl.com/yxsbfkar
// The former president’s court hearing lasted 57 minutes.

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw #TrumpIndictment This looks like @AWeissmann_ and my idea in NYT Op-ed: ¤ “The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.” ¤ Would insulate from legal challenges (preemption etc.)
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1643338701232037888?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
Indictment:
● 34 counts [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/4brcdb3c 16p
● Statement of Facts [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/yc6wvu3n 13p
🐣 “The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election” https://tinyurl.com/yc6wvu3n 13p

The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.

From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.

🐣 “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” – Amos 5:21-24

⭕ 3 Apr 2023

WaPo: As DeSantis seeks Disney probe, Iger accuses him of ‘anti-business’ stance https://tinyurl.com/2r6wsecu “Disney CEO Bob Iger accused [DeSantis] of engaging in retaliation over the company’s opposition to a law restricting school instruction on sexual orientation”
// The CEO accused Florida’s Republican governor of retaliating against the company over its stance on LGBT issues

🐣 RT @trajaykay The President of 🇺🇦 met with the delegation of the 🇺🇸 House of Representatives from the Republican Party led by the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Intelligence Mike Turner ¤ It was a very constructive conversation. I am grateful to our allies for this. ¤ 🇺🇦🇺🇸🤝
💽 https://twitter.com/trajaykay/status/1643001825812000770?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @trajaykay The President noted during the meeting, bicameral and bipartisan support from the President Biden, & the entire American people played a decisive role in our country’s ability to resist Russia in the war for its freedom and democratic values.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Fox News has been blown to smithereens https://tinyurl.com/yawjh2z2 “The public should now understand that Fox personalities are willing to say things they know are false as part of a business model to keep viewers glued to its propaganda machine”

“Through its extensive proof, Dominion has met its burden of showing there is no genuine issue of material fact as to falsity,” the judge wrote. Since Fox never disputed falsity, Davis concluded: “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” Fox’s motion for summary judgment was rejected, meaning the suit will go to trial. ¤ It cannot be repeated enough: Plaintiffs almost never win on the issue of falsity before the trial even begins. Usually, there is some defense that the facts were plausibly true — or at least that the comments were opinion (therefore, not actionable). Not in this case.

🐣 📊 RT @RpsAgainstTrump BREAKING: A new CNN poll finds majority of Americans approve of Trump’s indictment
Democrats: 94%
Independents: 62%
Republicans: 21%
Do Republicans really want to nominate this guy for president again?

⭕ 2 Apr 2023

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1250 UTC 2 APL/ RU forces continue efforts to storm Bakhmut, with UKR forces reported to have repelled 25 attacks. RU is assessed to be registering slow and but costly progress in the N industrial areas. UKR forces broke up RU assaults at Bohdanivka & Predtechyne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1642508454605598720?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Justice Dept. said to have more evidence of possible Trump obstruction at Mar-a-Lago https://tinyurl.com/2p83cmx7 “Trump ignored requests from multiple advisers to return the documents to the archives [and] asked advisers and lawyers to release false statements”
// Ex-staffer’s emails, texts are guiding investigators, who increasingly suspect Trump went through boxes after subpoena

On Aug. 8, FBI agents conducted a surprise court-ordered search of Mar-a-Lago and found 103 documents marked classified, including 18 marked top secret, according to court papers. The investigation has recovered documents that describe highly sensitive U.S. intelligence efforts aimed at China, one document describing Iran’s missile program, and material covering other sensitive topics, including nuclear secrets.

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN! Today we will discuss an integral (but controversial) figure in Ukrainian history. A leader responsible for creating the FIRST Ukrainian state since the fall of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (or Ruthenia) – Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. 1/20
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1642571889280262149?s=20
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1642571916387950593?s=20

🐣 RT @ @olex_scherba This wonderful specimen of a human being, an ex-con in Ukraine, and a leading war propagandist in russia, was assassinated today in Saint Petersburg. ¤ Bye, Vladlen. You didn’t live a good life. And didn’t die a good death.#StandWithUkraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv “We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone. Everything will be as we like”: this video was recorded by the pro-Kremlin blogger Vladlen Tatarsky from the Kremlin hall.
💽 https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1642573158870925313?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 1 Apr 2023

TheSun [UK]: KNIVES OUT Putin is a dead man walking – here is why I know he’ll be killed to finally end the war in Ukraine, says ex-CIA chief https://tinyurl.com/3r9yr3ea “Putin is bleeding Russia and he cannot do that forever.” James Olson, former CIA chief of counterintelligence

VLADIMIR Putin is a dead man walking – and he could be killed to finally end the war in Ukraine, a former CIA chief has said. ¤ James Olson, the spy agency’s former chief of counterintelligence, said he believes the sharks are now circling for the tyrant back home in Russia.

Olson told The Sun Online that Putin is now in a “no win” situation – with the war either devolving into a grinding statelemate, or ending with Vlad’s death. ¤ He said if Putin stays in power he will never give up the war – and so the way to end it is for Vlad to be killed or ousted.

Olson, who served for over 30 years in the CIA and won medals for his service, explained that things don’t look good for Putin – with either his oligarch pals, his military, or even his people set to turn on him.

Putin has lost more than 170,000 soldiers, according to Ukraine, since the start of the conflict as his war machine continues to grind forward at a slow pace.

Vlad hasn’t made the gains he or his commanders expected and Russia has found itself bogged down a long, brutal war as humiliating defeats pile up. ¤ The tyrant now seemingly has his future tied to his success or failure in Ukraine.

And for Olson, it appears things are not going to end well for Mad Vlad. ¤ The ex-CIA man explained Putin “miscalculated” – overestimating the power of military and the effectiveness of their leadership.

“If Putin stays in power, there will be a long war because he will not give up – but I do not think that Putin is going to stay in power. I believe that he will be removed from power. ¤ “I believe that there is a strong undercurrent of opposition to Putin in the military, the intelligence services, among the oligarchs.”

Putin is known to live in fear of an uprising or internal coup – allegedly being obsessed with the toppling and subsequent killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Olson went on: “Putin is destroying Russia. I believe there are some good Russians, some patriotic Russians who will decide enough is enough. ¤ “I think Putin will be taken out. I would not rule out assasination. ¤ “I think it is actually likely that some patriotic Russians will decide they need to eliminate Putin. ¤ “And that would be the end of the war. Because the Russian people are suffering and they are losing people. Putin is bleeding Russia and he cannot do that forever.”

Olson drew parallels between the number of Russian losses in the last 13 months, comparing it to how many were killed in Afghanistan. ¤ Russia lost 15,000 soldiers in from 1979 to 1989. ¤ And so Putin’s war disaster is seeing an attrition rate some ten times higher than a campaign wildly regarded as a failure. ¤

“But what they are losing in Ukraine is much worse. And I believe there are generals who are disgusted by that tragic loss of lives and they will be a possible source of the uprising against Putin, said Olson. ¤ “And if they do that I see Putin as a dead-man walking. He would not survive that. I think that it is more likely that Putin will be eliminated than a military defeat.

“I am optimistic because I think the people who will be motivated to elliminate Putin will be doing that for the right reasons, that they want to save Russia, that they want Russia return to the community of nations. ¤ “I think they will be motivated to restore democracy to Russia. I think the future is very bright for Russia once Putin is eliminated.”

🧵 RT @ @tomiahonen With Trump arraignment on Tuesday, news of Trump attorney Corcoran testifying to Grand Jury without pleading the 5th, & rumors that Weisselberg flipped in New York: the rats are scurrying to betray each other. It is time to play America’s fastest growing quiz sensation: #Ratbingo
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1642345600967385098?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1642345600967385098.html

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Deranged maniac/Very Stable Genius 1) attacks the strength of America multiple times 2) attacks the FBI & DOJ while they are investigating him 3) calls OTHER people insurrectionists 4) Spells the word rig, “RIGG” while lying about elections for the 1000th time.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1642310611580383233?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support you have given me against this assault on our Nation. ¤ Our once beautiful USA is now a Nation in Decline. Radical Left Thugs & Insurrectionists have taken over our Country, & are rapidly destroying it. They are using the levers of Law Enforcement, and have completely Weaponized the FBI & DOJ to Interfere with, Rigg, and Steal our once SACRED ELECTIONS. We are now living in a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY, but we will Come Back & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

CNN: Fox News producer files explosive lawsuits against the network, alleging she was coerced into providing misleading Dominion testimony https://tinyurl.com/2trp9dpv
// 3/21/2023

🐣 RT @tribelaw “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it is] CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Judge Davis wrote.
⋙ ABCNews: Dominion case against Fox News will go to trial, judge rules, in loss for network https://tinyurl.com/2685vtxr
// The voting company is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion over election claims.

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman The Weaponization Subcommittee is apparently no longer focused on the dozens of FBI whistleblowers who were supposedly going to show a massive conspiracy to attack conservatives. ¤ Why won’t @JudiciaryGOP bring them in for a hearing so the American public can see for themselves?
💽 https://twitter.com/RepDanGoldman/status/1641834229637038086?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mjcaswell Because they are imaginary. Same reason the chair wouldn’t let any democrats question his “witnesses”. Their stories would have fallen down like sandcastles in the rising tide. Sadly, going on Fox News and lying hasn’t prepared them for the real world.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople As Trump prepares for his court appearance on Tuesday, its interesting to note that 50 years ago this month in April 1973, the Watergate coverup imploded, leading to Nixon’s downfall.

🐣 RT @ @radleybalko Hunter Biden would have to serve on the Burisma board for at least 5,000 years to earn the money Middle East governments have given to Kushner’s firm since Trump took office. Kushner of course had an official White House position, and worked on ME policy.
⋙ NYT: Kushner Firm Got Hundreds of Millions From 2 Persian Gulf Nations https://tinyurl.com/2hd5j9vd
// The infusion of money from interests in the two Persian Gulf monarchies reflects the close ties to Middle Eastern countries established by Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

🐣 RT @jimstewartson Bill Barr sprung Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, covered up the Mueller report, covered up Iran-Contra, and answers to Opus Dei, not the Constitution. ¤ He says the Trump indictments are “an abomination.” ¤ “TheStormHasArrived17” agrees. ¤ Same people, doing the same thing. Every time.

🐣 RT @TonyHussein4 If no one is above the law, then Jared Kushner’s $2 billion received from the Saudis – 2,000 times the sum Hunter Biden received from foreign sources – must be investigated. Ginni Thomas should also be investigated for her involvement in Trump’s hub-and-spoke coup conspiracy.

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance If “my guy” was indicted, I’d be disappointed in him for committing a crime. I’d be angry at the betrayal of trust. I’d accept prosecutors would only indict a former president if the evidence was compelling but as with Trump, I’d still believe in innocence until proven guilty.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kibblesmith The “what if it was your guy getting indicted” argument gives away the whole game, like the people who think that because they watch Fox all day I must watch CNN all day, and we’re just on opposite sides of a meaningless sports game with no human consequences.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kibblesmith Like that meme going around that said “We survived Obama you’ll survive Trump” and then a million Americans died of Covid and the death toll skewed Republican, likely due to age and vaccine resistance.

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Why Putin is once again resorting to nuclear threats:
– Winter offensive has failed
– Russian army is demoralized
– Infrastructure bombing campaign has failed
– Western support for Ukraine stronger than ever
– China still reluctant to get involved
⋙ AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson: Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling is a sign of dangerous Russian desperation https://tinyurl.com/mr3y953x “If he finds himself faced with the prospect of decisive military defeat, Putin will almost certainly escalate his nuclear blackmail”

[…] It is not difficult to imagine why Putin is now once again indulging in nuclear saber-rattling. In recent months, military aid to Ukraine has expanded to new levels and crossed multiple Russian red lines in the process. Western countries have agreed to supply Kyiv with state-of-the-art air defense systems, modern battle tanks, and jet fighters. Tellingly, Putin framed his plans for nuclear weapons in Belarus as a response to Britain’s decision to provide Ukraine with anti-tank ammunition that contains depleted uranium.

Meanwhile, Russia’s military fortunes in Ukraine have continued to deteriorate. The six-month campaign to bomb Ukraine into submission by targeting the country’s civilian infrastructure has ended in failure. Along the front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine, a much-hyped Russian offensive has been underway since early 2023 but has failed to make significant progress while suffering disastrous losses. This is leading to the rapid demoralization of Putin’s army in Ukraine, with video appeals regularly posted to social media featuring groups of recently mobilized Russian soldiers complaining of suicidal tactics and high death tolls.

There is also little cause for Russian optimism on the international front, where initial expectations of a weakening in Western support for Ukraine are rapidly evaporating. Indeed, during the early months of 2023, the democratic world’s commitment to Ukraine has looked stronger than ever. In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was given a hero’s welcome during a brief trip to London, Paris, and Brussels. Weeks later, US President Joe Biden arrived in Kyiv to emphasize his resolve to stand with Ukraine.

There was more bad news for Russia in mid-March, when the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges related to the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. While there is no immediate danger of the Russian ruler ending up in court, the indictment is a further humiliation that underlines Putin’s pariah status while weakening his position both at home and abroad.

Even the recent visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Moscow failed to lift the gloom. The summit produced few concrete gains for Putin while confirming his position as junior partner in what is an increasingly unequal bilateral relationship. Interestingly, one of the few security-related outcomes of the visit was a joint statement calling on all nuclear powers to refrain from deploying nuclear weapons beyond their national borders. Putin’s subsequent decision to place nukes in Belarus may well be an indication of his frustration over China’s obvious reluctance to back Russia more forcefully. …

We are likely to see such scare tactics increasingly in the coming months. With the Ukrainian military currently preparing to launch what promises to be their largest offensive of the war, Russia’s position could worsen significantly during spring and summer 2023. If he finds himself faced with the prospect of decisive military defeat, Putin will almost certainly escalate his nuclear blackmail to new levels of danger. At that point, the international community must unite to prevent Russia from dragging the world into catastrophe.

💙 🐣 RT @voteblue8888 Russia is burning out of control on Putin’s watch | The Hill – The Hill, that in 13 months of war RU has lost 3,595 tanks, 7,000 IFVs, 2,638 artillery pieces, 523 multiple rocket launchers, 277 air defense systems, 305 jets, and 291 helicopters.
⋙ TheHill, Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet: Russia is burning out of control on Putin’s watch https://tinyurl.com/4zdvz3s5 “It is not just Ukraine that is burning. All of Russia is beginning to smolder because of Putin’s myopic fixation on inconsequential cities on a map”

Apocryphal or not, there is no image in recorded history more evocative of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s madness in Ukraine than that of Emperor Nero fiddling during the Great Fire of Rome that left 70 percent of the ancient city in ruins in 64 CE. As Putin’s “special military operation” burns down around him, Russian forces in Bakhmut, Andriivka, Kreminna, Vuhledar and other small towns along the eastern front in the Donbas are nearing culmination. It is not just Ukraine that is burning. All of Russia is beginning to smolder because of Putin’s myopic fixation on inconsequential cities on a map. …

The highest cost is in lives. In February, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense estimated Moscow by then had “suffered” more than 200,000 casualties, including as many as 60,000 dead. Given Russia’s declining population of 146 million, that level of loss is generational. It is only getting worse. The ministry last Saturday estimated Russia has racked up as many as 30,000 casualties trying to conquer the 16 square miles comprising Bakhmut. 

The burn rate — be it in men, military equipment, or munitions — in Bakhmut alone is astounding. In nine months, Putin’s forces have advanced only 15 miles “west from Popasna to Bakhmut.” That is a mind-boggling 2,000 Russian casualties per mile. By comparison, it is 440 miles from Bakhmut to Kyiv. Fighting terrain varies, but purely as a hypothetical to demonstrate just how badly Putin is faring in Ukraine, crunching the numbers suggests Putin would incur 880,000 more casualties just to reach Saint-Sophia’s Cathedral in the heart of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s capital city.

Bakhmut is just one of four main ongoing battles in the Donbas. Putin — as is documented daily by Chuck Pfarrer, a former U.S. Navy Seal, on his Indications & Warnings Twitter account — is losing men just as rapidly in each of these battles. Six hundred reportedly were killed in action along the Andriivka axis on March 27 alone. 

As Pfarrer’s battlefield tactical maps record, Putin’s burn rate of Russian equipment is equally high. On March 24, Pfarrer noted that Russian forces were “repelled in attacks at Serebryansk Forestry and Bilohorvika along the Kreminna battle line.” That singular Ukrainian action resulted in strikes on “Russian HQ elements, air defense sites, and Electronic Warfare equipment.”

This, on top of an “epic” mechanized armor battle in late February at the beginning of Putin’s spring offensive in Vuhledar, which resulted in the loss of 100 Russian tanks. As a war-time commander, Putin has learned nothing in the one-year, one-month-old war. The Kremlin is employing the same strategy as they did in Kyiv by repeatedly “advancing columns into ambushes.” 

Taken together, it is not surprising that in 13 months of war, Ukraine estimates Putin has lost 3,595 tanks, nearly 7,000 armored combat vehicles, over 2,638 artillery pieces, 523 multiple rocket launchers, 277 air defense systems, 305 jets, and 291 helicopters. 

And for what? A 15-mile eastward advance in the Donbas. At this crawling rate, it will take Putin’s forces nearly 22 years to reach Kyiv from Bakhmut.

Time and lives are not the only costs to Russia. Putin is also torching nearly every aspect of his country in chase of his ego. Russia has been in a recession since November 2022, with annualized GDP dropping nearly 4 percent. Yet even this is somewhat deceiving; non-oil and gas revenues precipitously declined “by 20 percent in October.” The shortfall this caused in GDP was largely backfilled by heavily discounted oil and gas sales to China and India. 

That temporary windfall, however, is evaporating as the Brent crude oil benchmark price has dropped over time to $80 a barrel. The impact on Russia’s economy has been immediate. By January 2023, Russian oil export revenues had fallen by 40 percent year-over-year. Absent a global crude price recovery, an even bigger hit to Russia’s GDP is coming.

Meanwhile, Western sanctions continue to severely disrupt Russia’s commercial and military industrial-complex supply chains. … [T]he primary cost of maintaining the country’s supply chain is ever greater economic dependence on Beijing. 

Putin is also destroying on a generational basis Russia’s future economic ability to innovate and compete in the post-war global marketplace — not just loss of resources, but brain drain as well. Even if Putin were to miraculously win his war in Ukraine, Russia will have lost economically for decades to come.

Paradoxically, in his desperation to obliterate Ukraine’s national independence, Putin is irrationally selling off his own. As repeatedly evidenced during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow, Beijing is slowly beginning to fully subsume Russia’s independence economically, militarily and diplomatically. 

Xi’s demands and stances during the summit should have been humiliating to Putin, who agreed to replace the Russian ruble with the Chinese yuan in trading with the Global South. Despite symbolic gladhanding, Xi offered nothing of military substance that would appreciably change the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. The net effect  of Xi’s three days in Moscow, as King’s College professor Sam Greene noted: “China’s domination of Russia is complete.”

Putin blindly believes he has signed on to a multipolar world with Xi as a coequal, but in reality, he is only enabling the world to become a contest of two — Beijing and Washington — while Putin sits on the sidelines with about as much influence as Benito Mussolini had in World War II playing second fiddle to Nazi Germany.

Statesman-like Putin, if he ever really existed, has vanished. Gone are many of his grandiose plans for an economically resurgent Russia: Rapidly expanding the economic value of the Northern Sea Route. Dominating the North Pole. Checking, if not reversing, the growth of NATO in Europe. Diversifying Russia’s economy so Moscow no longer depends on being the world’s “gas station.”

Instead, Putin is ditching it all over a delusional, outsized need to win in Ukraine. Is trying to take Bakhmut and defeating Zelensky in an ego grudge match really worth selling out Moscow to Xi? Putin evidently believes that they are, and like a modern-day Nero, he keeps fiddling away in the Donbas as Russia burns out of control on his watch.

🐣 RT @United24media Russia, an authoritarian dictatorship that invaded Ukraine (and many others before), takes charge of UN Security Council that was created to preserve peace & security. No, it’s not a bad joke. It’s the reality of the situation we’re in. ¤ It’s like giving a burglar a bank to run.
💽 https://twitter.com/United24media/status/1642082445573906435?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @generalsvr_en #Russia’s total losses: 238,304 ¤ Saturday, April 1, 2023, in the morning report to the President of Russia Vladimir #Putin, the irretrievable military operational loss of manpower of the #RussianArmy is 174,129 people. Data are as of 6 am Moscow time today.1/3
📌 https://twitter.com/generalsvr_en/status/1642117679459840000?s=20

⋙ This figure excludes the data on the losses of #Russian PMCs that also participate in hostilities on the territory of #Ukraine. As of Friday, March 31, they lost 56,873 dead. 2/3

⋙ The next update on the losses of PMC fighters should be received on Friday, April 7 and will be updated once a week. Losses of the #Russian National Guard since the beginning of hostilities amount to 7,302 killed and missing. 3/3

⋙ [Pinned Tweet:] generalsvr_en [May 19, 2022] ALL #PUTIN’s SECRETS IN ONE PLACE! The materials we publish are prepared by retired & active intelligence agents from several countries who are/were involved, supervised or controlled the operations and who had/have access to reliable info about the events outlined 1/2
⋙ Everything that we publish is true. Soon or later, the info we give gets confirmed by independent journalists and government officials. The aim is to shed light on the darker side of recent events & to draw public attention to the methods used by governments to solve problems 2/2

⋙ 🐣 RT @10_4_Copy_That So if I understand this correctly, the Ruzzkies are admitting they have “lost” 174,129 Ruzzian troops KIA and a total of 238,304 KIA,WIA,MIA not including 56,873 KIA PMC troops. The number for the Lunhansk and Donetsk fighters unknown. Interesting. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
⋙ 🐣 RT @whoismiy “General SVR” telegram channel claim

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent German defense minister: NATO countries to send total of 160 tanks to Ukraine. ¤ NATO countries plan to send two battalions of German Leopard-2 battle tanks and four battalions of Leopard-1 tanks to Ukraine, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told Die Welt on April 1.

🐣 RT @BillKristol Republicans don’t claim Trump is innocent under the law.They claim he’s above the law.

🐣 RT @BillPascrell Summary of team trump
Trump: Indicted
Campaign chair: Felon
Deputy campaign chair: Felon
Personal lawyer: Felon
Chief strategist: Felon
Natl Sec Advisor: Felon
Foreign policy advisor: Felon
Campaign fixer: Felon
Company CFO: Felon

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer THE BATTLE THAT SAVED UKRAINE: Col John Spenser @SpencerGuard is a world renowned expert on urban warfare, and a frequent guest on @MriyaReport. He’s returned from Ukraine, where he gave this lecture on the APL ’22 battle of Kyiv. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/5eWGH_7mrg8
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpencerGuard What happened at the 2022 Battle of Kyiv? The most decisive battle of the modern era. Check out my lecture on the battle I gave in Ukraine last week. I can’t thank @KyivIndependent enough for hosting the event and recording such a high quality video.
// “How the second most powerful military – on paper – was defeated in the most decisive battle of the modern era”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1315 UTC 1 APL/ The 0600 report : ‘Bakhmut axis: the enemy does not stop storming the city of Bakhmut, trying to take it under complete control”. UKR Lines of Communication & Supply are functioning, but RU is registering gains in heavy and costly urban fighting.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1642152498721968129?s=20/photo/1

KyivPost, Steve Brown: Will Hubris and Sycophancy Lead to Russia’s Ultimate Defeat? https://tinyurl.com/dzzdxn2y “Putin chose to ignore the advice given to him by the head of the [SVR] immediately before the 2022 invasion to postpone the so-called ‘special military operation’”
// A leading UK think tank reports that Putin ignored advice to hold off his invasion until the summer of 2022, a decision that could ultimately lead to Russia’s defeat
⋙ Cited report: https://tinyurl.com/564rbrvu

A 39-page report by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), entitled “Preliminary Lessons from Russia’s Unconventional Operations During the Russo-Ukrainian War”, sheds light on the important role that Russian intelligence services played in the build-up to, during and since the February 2022 full-scale invasion.

The report is intended to inform western governments just how Russia uses extensive covert operations to disrupt a target country in advance of its military operations and that Putin still relies heavily on his intelligence agencies to achieve his objectives to subdue and dominate populations in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

And yet, Putin chose to ignore the advice given to him by the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, immediately before the 2022 invasion to postpone the so-called “special military operation” until the summer of 2022.

Naryshkin’s advice was probably based on both his intelligence assessment, that more needed to be done to prepare his own intelligence assets, recruit additional Ukrainian sympathizers and concerns about how weather conditions in the early part of the year would impact on Russian forces.

As we now know, of course, Naryshkin’s request was denied and the attack went ahead on Feb. 24. His advice was, in hindsight, spot on and it is a good job, from Ukraine’s perspective, that Putin swept it aside.

Naryshkin seems to have been one of very few of Putin’s advisors to have gone against other advice the despot was receiving from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and others. It was undoubtedly Putin’s own own excessive pride and self-confidence combined with the voices in his ear telling him what he wanted to hear, which served to reinforce his own assessment victory in Ukraine would be a simple formality.

The RUSI assessment was reinforced as early as March 2022 as commentators asserted that Putin’s advisors were afraid to tell him the truth. ¤ A particularly pertinent article in “The Atlantic” magazine by Brian Klaas hit the nail on the head. He opined that Putin had fallen into what he calls the “dictator trap.” https://tinyurl.com/4csau9x6

“The strategies they [dictators] use to stay in power [will] trigger their eventual downfall.” They are not “long-term planners, many make catastrophic short-term errors,

“They hear only from sycophants, and get bad advice … they don’t see threats coming until it’s too late. And unlike elected leaders … dictators who miscalculate [often] leave office in a casket, a possibility that makes them even more likely to double down” on bad decisions.

As a side note, the ignoring of his advice by Putin may explain Naryshkin’s apparent reluctance to endorse Putin’s request to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk during the now infamous televised “Speak clearly!” meeting on Feb. 22 last year, which we now know was a precursor to the invasion. …

Naryshkin’s [recently insistent] loyalty suggests strongly that we have to thank the combination of Putin’s own hubris, his extreme self-belief, and those sycophantic advisors who told him what he wants to hear, which directly led to him “jumping the gun” with his invasion and the resulting disaster his invading force has suffered to date.

🐣 RT @ tomiahonen After you’ve read that Thread about Kompromat, you should read this. There exists or at least existed an ‘extortion file’ that Trump had collected against everybody, including most Republicans in Congress. THIS explains their bewildering loyalty to this serial con artist. Enjoy..
¤ https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1642129752612904960?s=20
⋙ 🧵 RT @tomiahonen [Aug 16, 2022] Trump Mar-A-Lago Extortion Files Thread 1/
Lost in the noise of the parlor game of #RatBingo – who is the Mar-A-Lago informant, and serious national security threats of Trump espionage, is a huge bombshell story:
FBI seized Trump’s extortion files too. This Thread looks at that
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1559595941866471424?s=20
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @tomiahonen Yesterday I revisited two older Threads that are somewhat related. They have gotten a strong reaction again. If you missed it, this is about Kompromat. It explains why so many Republicans are ‘loyal’ to Trump, and even more bizarrely why they support PUTIN. This explains it
¤ https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1642129304791154689?s=20
⋙ 🧵 RT @tomiahonen [Jul 22, 2021] Kompromat Thread 1/
Trump has clearly been beholden to Czar Vladimir the Smug. We saw the shocking behavior in Helsinki of Putin and his sex slave
Why is Trump behaving like this? ¤ And why are so many OTHER Republicans loving Putin ¤ It is called ‘Kompromat’, a Russian word..
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1418215040063180806?s=20

🐣 RT @TheDeadDistrict This river saved Kyiv. #Ukraine 1/
💽 https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1642126097541111810?s=20/photo/1
💽 https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1642126594364809217?s=20/photo/1
// flooding of the Irpin River in the first days of the war

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Yep. I referenced the Federal Election Commission General Counsel’s findings yesterday. ¤ Here’s a link to a document describing the GC’s recommendations: https://fec.gov/files/legal/murs/7313/7313_28.pdf
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn [ On Fox: ] Jessica [@JessicaTarlov]: I’ve heard that this isn’t a crime. It is a crime. Trump was an unindicted coconspirator. He was not prosecuted because he was president. I looked at the FEC’s report on this. The general counsel said it explicitly that this was an illegal campaign contribution
⋙🐣 The letter says the commission “did not have votes.” I realize the FEC is pretty much a toothless body, but does this matter, or does Cohen’s conviction and Trump’s being named in that action, override the FEC’s inability to act?

🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 01 April 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence’s use of language: http://ow.ly/1x2C50NxMHl
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1642054869447049216?s=20/photo/1

● On 11 January 2023, Russian Chief of the General Staff (CGS) General Valery Gerasimov took personal command of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.
● Gerasimov’s tenure has been characterised by an effort to launch a general winter offensive with the aim of extending Russian control over the whole of the Donbas region. Eighty days on, it is increasingly apparent that this project has failed.
 ● On several axes across the Donbas front, Russian forces have made only marginal gains at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties, largely squandering its temporary advantage in personnel gained from the autumn’s ‘partial mobilisation’.
 ● After ten years as CGS, there is a realistic possibility that Gerasimov is pushing the limits of how far Russia’s political leadership will tolerate failure.

⭕ 31 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @AJCGlobal
🚩”Puppet master”
🚩”Soros’ globalist cabal”
These terms — used in an email from the Trump campaign — are antisemitic tropes.
Especially now, in our superheated political environment, the use of such tropes is dangerous.
AJC’s #TranslateHate explains.👇
https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/Soros
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @jacobkornbluh Here Trump’s email calls Soros a “puppet master”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AJCGlobal/status/1641903770568216576?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Friend, ¤ With George Soros’ bought-and-paid-for Manhattan D.A. having answered his puppet master’s call to INDICT President Trump for committing NO CRIME, these truly are dark times for our country. But what the radical Left, the Deep State, the Open-Borders Lobby, and Soros’ globalist cabal always underestimate is YOU… The more than 74 MILLION Trump voters who make up our Silent Majority.

⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @SaadiHaeri Given Trump’s huge popularity in Israel & his services rendered to Israel when he was President and the fact that he was bankrolled by Sheldon Adelson on an Israel First ticket, is this a change or something that is ignored because it doesn’t really matter?

🐣 RT @ PaulaChertok [Replying to @mtgreenee) Play “spot the fascist propaganda” from MTG, who seems a bit nervous about more indictments.
🤥fear-mongering lies (“civil war”)
🤡gaslighting lies (“Trump did not break the law”)
🤭projection (“weaponizing govt”)
🥴smears (“deranged” DA)
😵‍💫anti-Semitism (*2* Soros tropes🥂)[TextLink:] /photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @mtgreenee
Democrats want civil war. They want to push us into reacting so they can use their weaponized
government to lock us all up.
They know Trump did not break the law. They know more than anyone because they’ve been trying for years to find a way to put him in jail and they can’t.
But now they have a complete fool that is deranged enough to trybecause he is backed by Soros.
And Soros wants war to destabilize America and gain full control.

🐣 RT @emptywheel This letter from Bragg to Jordan is really a work of art. Others have noted the strong pushback. Note, too, the suggestion that Jordan et al were “collaborating” in threats of violence with the unlawful attempt to interfere.
[DocCloudLink:] https://tinyurl.com/264v5t5a
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1641824257503010816?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Finally, as you are no doubt aware, former President ‘Trump has directed harsh invective against District Attorney Bragg and threatened on social media that his arrest or indictment in New York may unleash “death & destruction.” As Committee Chairmen, you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury. Instead, you and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges and made unfounded allegations that the Office’s investigation, conducted via an independent grand jury of average citizens serving New York State, is politically motivated. See, eg, Annie Grayer et al., Inside the backchannel communications keeping Donald Trump in the loop on Republican investigations, CNN.com (March 28, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/mr3n675p “House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik … and ‘Trump spoke several times last week alone, where she walked him through the GOP’s plans for an aggressive response to Bragg.”). We urge you to refrain from these inflammatory accusations, withdraw your demand for information, and let the criminal justice process proceed without unlawful political interference.

🐣 RT @CalltoActivism JUST IN: A judge just ruled to ALLOW Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News to go to trial before a jury. ¤ The ruling is a direct blow to Fox News, who tried to stop the trial from moving forward. ¤ The case will now go to trial in mid-April. ¤Fox News is now directly facing the possibility of bankruptcy and they deserve it.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople As he awaits his arraignment on Tuesday, Former President CAPS LOCK spews out two dangerously unhinged mini-rants. One is another call for violence “HOW MUCH MORE ARE AMERICAN PATRIOTS EXPECTED TO TAKE???” & the other attacks both Bragg AND Bragg’s wife.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1641923962623107072?s=20/photo/1

@realDonald Trump
THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS HAVE LIED, CHEATED, AND STOLEN IN THEIR MANIACAL OBSESSION TO “GET TRUMP,” BUT NOW THEY’VE GONE TOO FAR, INDICTING A TOTALLY INNOCENT MAN IN AN ACT OF OBSTRUCTION AND BLATANT ELECTION INTERFERENCE. HOW MUCH MORE ARE AMERICAN < PATTWeet EXPECTED TO TAKE???..AND ALL OF THIS WHILE OUR COUNTRY IS GOING TO HELL! @realDonald Trump NEW CRIME STATISTICS ARE OUT IN MANHATTAN, THE PLACE REIGNED OVER BY RADICAL LEFT, SOROS BACKED, DISTRICT ATTORNEY-ALVIN BRAGG. THE NUMBERS ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER...BUT, AT LEAST HE CAN TELL HIS TRUMP HATING WIFE AND FRIENDS THAT HE IS GOING AFTER THE VERY SUCCESSFUL 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. MAGA!

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote It’s a racket. And Weisselberg’s new, “trumpier” lawyer used to run the racket bureau at the Manhattan DA’s office. I’m not entirely convinced the second crime charged will be campaign finance.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @kylegriffin1 NBC News confirms: Two sources familiar with the Manhattan grand jury’s work say prosecutors also questioned some witnesses about the 2016 hush money payment involving ex-playboy playmate Karen McDougal. @MSNBC

🐣 RT @vonderleyen What happened in Bucha one year ago was not an isolated episode.
Those executions in cold blood were part of a bigger plan.
The Kremlin’s plan to eliminate Ukrainians.
Their national identity.
Their sense of being.
War criminals will be held accountable.
💽 https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1641748513946992642?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer. BAKHMUT CITY /1210 UTC 31 MAR/ RU continues efforts to size the urban area of Bakhmut. In the last 24 hrs, UKR reports breaking up >22 attacks on the city. At present, UKR Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) are secure, but RU is registering gains in costly urban fighting.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1641773052882042883?s=20/photo/1

🧵 📊 RT @accountable_us NEW POLL: 58% of Americans believe former President Donald Trump has committed a crime—including a majority of Independents (53%) and a quarter of Republicans (27%). via @NavigatorSurvey
📌 ◕ https://twitter.com/accountable_us/status/1641798458016145410?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ RWPUSA It’s legal to have sex with a porn star.
It’s probably legal to pay her $130K to keep her mouth shut.
But if you do that while running for president, that’s a campaign expense and must be reported.
If you falsify business records to avoid reporting it you commit a felony.

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Until there’s a GOP leader who doesn’t sound like this, I’ll keep arguing that the GOP is an unreformable toxic waste dump. The American system of government requires parties that believe in the rule of law, and this party, clearly, does not believe in anything like it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kaitlancollins Pence tells @wolfblitzer that he thinks Trump’s indictment is an “outrage” that is nothing more than a “political prosecution” and another example of a “two-tiered” justice system.

🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 NEW: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg just sent a letter to House Republicans & doesn’t hold back. He writes, “What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State.” Bragg is taking off the gloves & it’s incredible.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 He also adds, “As Committee Chairmen, you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury.” More below 👇
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Victorshi2020/status/1641787055893094407?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @QasimRashid
DA Bragg’s Manhattan Crime Rates:
Murder: 4
Rape: 13.2
Robbery: 228.3
Assault: 378.4
Burglary: 197.8
Theft: 1,404.6
Car Theft: 88.5
Speaker McCarthy’s Bakersfield Crime Rates:
Murder: 11.3
Rape: 27.3
Robbery: 155.6
Assault: 322.7
Burglary: 807.2
Theft: 2,229.4
Car Theft: 986.2
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerMcCarthy Here we go again – an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.

🐣 RT @abughazalehkat If you don’t watch Fox News, here’s what you missed from last night’s meltdown over Trump’s indictment:
💽 https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1641768193428520960?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Attacking his new Judge. He is absolutely insane.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1641801339935285249?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump The Judge “assigned” to my Witch Hunt Case, a “Case” that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME. His name is Juan Manuel Marchan, was hand picked by Bragg & the Prosecutors, & is the same person who “railroaded” my 75 year old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, to take a “plea” deal (Plead GUILTY, even if you are not, 90 DAYS, fight us in Court, 10 years (life!) in jail. He strong armed Allen, which a judge is not allowed to do, & treated my companies, which didn’t “plead,” VICIOUSLY APPEALING!

🧵 RT @NormEisen At last! “No one is above the law” has finally been vindicated & historically so ¤ Now that we know Trump is facing charges from Alvin Bragg, what to make of them? They are strong! ¤ A thread👇
📌 https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1641603120961671169?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1641603120961671169.html

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok #Bucha🇺🇦, liberated one year ago, suffered 33 days of occupation, 1,400+ deaths, including 37 children, 175+ found in mass graves and torture chambers. 9,000 Russian war crimes. “We will never forgive. We will punish every perpetrator,’’ Zelensky says.

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ One consequence of the Manhattan criminal case: the teflon is off. It no longer is unthinkable and unheard of to hold any person, regardless of prior station in life, to account for their crimes. ¤ For those who thought this day would never come, the teflon is off Teflon Donald.

⭕ 30 Mar 2023

🧵 RT @MarkHertling Last night, I tweeted that I had been assessing & considering the challenges Ukraine’s Army (UA) Commanders were facing in preparing for the “spring offensives. ¤ I said I’d share some thoughts on what I would be thinking if I were among them.This is that 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1641470497270509568?s=20
⋙ 🐣 The US (inadvisably, but whatever) went into Iraq, not with full NATO support, but with a “coalition of the willing.” Is there a reason why countries like Poland and the Baltics couldn’t provide troops by such a formula? This could avoid a direct confrontation btwn Ru & the US

🐣 RT @BillKristol OK, I’m sick of all the pretend indignation by Republicans terrified of Trump and/or Trump supporters. ¤ I dare them all: Say you believe Trump is innocent.

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ GLOBAL CONTEXT: “Investigations into former leaders are hardly rare around the world. In at least 76 countries, leaders who left office since 2000 have been jailed or prosecuted — including in democracies like France, Israel and South Korea.” https://tinyurl.com/3bwrsnme
🌎 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1641588284189966336?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Comey It’s been a good day.

🐣 RT @ DeadlineWH “I think that we will see at least one if not more felony charges against the former president… for those people like myself who have been waiting a long time for the first step in terms of legal accountability, this is that first step” @AWeissmann_ w @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1641583760939405312?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent “The Ukrainians are doing a very effective area defense that is proven to be very costly to the Russians. For about the last 20, 21 days, the Russians have not made any progress whatsoever in and around Bakhmut,” said top U.S. General Mark Milley.
⋙ KyivIndependent: Ukraine war latest: Bakhmut is ‘slaughter-fest for Russians,’ says top US general https://tinyurl.com/bd9mny7r

🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @SpeakerMcCarthy: You don’t know the charges. You don’t know the evidence presented to the grand jury. You don’t know about other evidence the DA may have. ¤ What you are doing is attempted political interference in an ongoing local criminal prosecution and you need to stop.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerMcCarthy Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election. ¤ As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump. ¤ The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.

🐣 RT @emptywheel Things @peterbakernyt couldn’t fit into his almost 2,000 word “analysis” about how indicting Trump would be unprecedented.
1) The underlying cover-up was FOR THE PURPOSE of cheating to win.
⋙ 🐣 I fail to grasp why media and Dems are tippy-toeing around this

NYT, Peter Baker: A President Faces Prosecution, and a Democracy Is Tested https://tinyurl.com/mrm2ebmr
// For more than two centuries, American presidents were effectively shielded from indictment. But the case against former President Donald J. Trump breaks that taboo and sets a new precedent.

🐣 RT @justinbaragona Lindsey Graham: “They are trying to drain him dry. He’s spent more money on lawyers than most people spent on campaigns. They’re trying to bleed him dry. Donald J. Trump dot com. Go tonight. Give the president some money to fight this bullshit! This is going to destroy America!”
💽 https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1641620245273034756?s=20/photo/1

💽 Gradient: Tucker: ‘It’s Probably Not the Best Time to Give up Your AR-15’ https://tinyurl.com/4jjf98yt
// ‘I think most people know that’

TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: What Donald Trump’s Indictment Reveals https://tinyurl.com/bp5jeu4w “Every defendant, including Donald Trump, deserves the presumption of innocence. But when it comes to our civic and political innocence, Americans long ago lost whatever is left of ours”
// Win or lose, the charges are an American tragedy.

[…] Trump, like the Republican opportunists who cling to him like remoras under a shark, doesn’t care about shame—he cares about getting away with it. Indeed, rather than leaving the public arena, Trump has reveled in it all, rolling around in the garbage of his own life and grunting happily about how the rules don’t apply to the real elites like him. Forget about Richard Nixon, who publicly resigned; Trump isn’t even Spiro Agnew, a man who seethed with rage at the felony corruption charges against him but had the sense not to brag about them. (Agnew insisted insisted on his innocence for two months and then took a plea of “no contest” to a single tax-evasion charge, after which he mostly vanished from public view.)

No such luck this time. Win or lose in court, Trump is determined to bring us all into a summer-heat dumpster with him for as long as he can. And that leads to the last and most shocking thing about today’s news: Late this afternoon, New York local media reported that security was tightening up in certain areas of the city. That’s how we knew something was coming: The former president had already told us that he fully intended to trigger violence if the institutions of the law tried to touch him.

Tomorrow, all NYPD officers have reportedly been ordered to be in full uniform and ready to deploy. And again, somehow, we’ve just accepted this as the new normal. We no longer even blink when New York, a city scarred by multiple terror attacks against its innocent citizens, has to go on alert just to charge Trump with a crime. That one fact, more than any other, tells you how far down the long slide into vice and venality—and violence—Trump has dragged this country.

Every defendant, including Donald Trump, deserves the presumption of innocence. But when it comes to our civic and political innocence, Americans long ago lost whatever is left of ours. all NYPD officers have reportedly been ordered to be in full uniform and ready to deploy. And again, somehow, we’ve just accepted this as the new normal. We no longer even blink when New York, a city scarred by multiple terror attacks against its innocent citizens, has to go on alert just to charge Trump with a crime. That one fact, more than any other, tells you how far down the long slide into vice and venality—and violence—Trump has dragged this country. ¤ Every defendant, including Donald Trump, deserves the presumption of innocence. But when it comes to our civic and political innocence, Americans long ago lost whatever is left of ours.

🐣 RT @HumanistReport If they can indict Trump over illegal use of campaign funds for hush money payments to a porn star he fucked…
They can indict you over illegal use of campaign funds for hush money payments to a porn star you fucked too. So if you did this shit you should be super worried now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @VivekGRamaswamy If they can do it to Trump, they can do it to you.
💽 https://twitter.com/HumanistReport/status/1641673446903132160?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Remember, the GOP establishment had the option of abandoning Trump after the “Access Hollywood” video emerged. It elected to stand by him and declare he was fit to be president.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL Had the same thought today. There’s a richness that the underlying fact pattern occurred in 2016 when everyone in the GOP chose to insulate and celebrate him. Whether they were dupes, conspirators, or simply without compass, the GOP infrastructure is part of today’s indictment.

🐣 RT @MaryLTrump It’s official: Donald Trump is the:
1st man in the Oval Office to be impeached twice
1st man in the Oval Office to incite an insurrection
1st to lose the popular vote TWICE
and now . . . the first to be INDICTED.
But the media is missing the biggest reason this is so important: For the victims of Donald, this is finally some measure of justice.
It’s been a long time coming, but after everything Donald has put this country through, WE HAVE PREVAILED.
I’ll see you on my substack later (see below👇) with my take on how this impacts our country and me personally, but for now, let’s take a minute to celebrate–we’ve all earned it.
Drink Responsibly 😎
🖼 https://twitter.com/MaryLTrump/status/1641573525478580226?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @EconomicPolicy What’s a key ongoing source of inflation? Corporate profits—which have contributed to more than a third of price growth since the second quarter of 2020. ¤ This is unusual. In normal times corporate profits contribute about 13% to prices. https://tinyurl.com/bvxhtsm9
◕ https://twitter.com/EconomicPolicy/status/1641501127588864006?s=20/photo/1

TheAtlantic, David Frum: Where Do You Stand? https://tinyurl.com/5hdkwhx2
// Trump’s indictment presents Republicans, and all Americans, with a clear choice.

🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade As Gov. DeSantis certainly knows, Trump is already negotiating a self-surrender to avoid arrest, so there is no need to extradite him. Just getting free credit with the base by trashing the rule of law. Politics by disinformation.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Understanding this is idiotic performative posturing by DeSantis, I’ll still point out that DeSantis’s threat “not to assist in an extradition request” from NY shows more contempt for the rule of law in the U.S. than Trump himself does, as he seems to intend to turn himself in.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1641589394984300544?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol …kind of entering John C. Calhoun “concurrent majorities” territory, no?

🐣 RT @ManhattanDA
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ManhattanDA/status/1641579988360019968?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] STATEMENT ATTRIBUTABLE TO A SPOKESPERSON:
“This evening we contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal. Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected.”

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ All of this “rogue prosecution” nonsense overlooks this: Trump was a resident of New York for most of his life, and enjoyed the benefits and privileges thereof. He also did business there. In doing so, he agreed to subject himself to its laws 1/
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ This not as if some state with which he has zero connection has ginned up charges, or even charges based on conduct after he basically left the state. These are crimes he committed in NY when he lived there, earned money there, before he ever took office

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote DID YOU KNOW: Weisselberg’s new lawyer Seth Rosenberg is a racketeering expert and even ran the Manhattan DA’s rackets bureau?

🐣 RT @TristanSnell BREAKING from CNN: 34 counts in Trump indictment. ¤ This is WAY more than expected. If this is correct, it could mean that the indictment covers FAR more than the Stormy Daniels hush money — like Karen McDougal hush money or other hush money/catch-and-kill cases.

🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL DeSantis: “Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda.” ¤ The GOP rot is permanent. It doesn’t expire with Trump.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Yessss. Been waiting for his deranged Truth Social post reacting to the indictment. ¤ Its so unhinged that he spells the word indicted wrong, “INDICATED”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1641571892829245440?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America, and the leading Republican Candidate, by far, for the 2024 Nomination for President. THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD
NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople *FULL STATEMENT ON HIS INDICTMENT FROM CITRUS CALIGULA*
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1641568513260392448?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] “This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement. You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump, but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.

“Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.

“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand- picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!

“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

🐣 RT @LiftForever67 “The sealed charges contain felonies & I suspect there are more charges than we ever expected. The charges are so strong to take on a former President, & that’s a big deal.” — Joyce Vance #Stormy #TrumpIndictment

🐣 RT @nytimes He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed. ¤ Now that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump, here’s what will happen when he is arrested.
⋙ NYT: This is what will happen when Trump is arrested in the coming days. https://tinyurl.com/3n3huay5

🐣 RT @washingtonpost Breaking news: Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury, becoming the first ex-president charged with a crime. The former president was being investigated in connection with hush-money payments to an adult entertainment performer in 2016.
⋙ WaPo: Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime https://tinyurl.com/3c7zjdu5

🐣 RT @BombTastic4747 This aged well 😂 [From yesterday]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BombTastic4747/status/1641555891278303235?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump I HAVE GAINED SUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY, & PERHAPS EVEN THE GRAND JURY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE. THE EVIDENCE IS SO OVERWHELMING IN MY FAVOR, & SO RIDICULOUSLY BAD FOR THE HIGHLY PARTISAN & HATEFUL DISTRICT ATTORNEY, THAT THE GRAND JURY IS SAYING, HOLD ON, WE ARE NOT A RUBBER STAMP, WHICH MOST GRAND JURIES ARE BRANDED AS BEING, WE ARE NOT GOING TO VOTE AGAINST A PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE OR AGAINST LARGE NUMBERS OF LEGAL SCHOLARS ALL SAYING THERE IS NO CASE HERE. DROP THIS SICK WITCH HUNT, NOW!

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: The Manhattan DA has also been investigating the Karen McDougal catch and kill scheme. This bolsters my speculation that he’s investigating a pattern of behavior or conspiracy between Trump, Cohen, Davidson, and Pecker.
⋙ WSJ: Trump Grand Jury Digs Into Hush Money Paid to Second Woman https://tinyurl.com/kntpjc7s
// Manhattan prosecutors have pressed witnesses on money paid to former Playboy model Karen McDougal

Manhattan prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star also have been examining a $150,000 payment to a former Playboy model who alleged that she had an affair with the former president, according to people familiar with the matter, raising the prospect that Mr. Trump could face charges connected to the silencing of both women.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been presenting a grand jury with evidence of Mr. Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels since January. In those proceedings, the people said, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors also have questioned grand-jury witnesses extensively about an earlier deal involving Karen McDougal, Playboy Magazine’s Playmate of the Year in 1998, who has said she began a 10-month relationship with Mr. Trump in 2006.

The extent of prosecutors’ interest in Ms. McDougal hasn’t been previously reported. Prosecutors could use any McDougal evidence either to bring charges directly related to the McDougal payment or to establish an alleged pattern of conduct by Mr. Trump, the people said. Participants in the deals with both women allege that Mr. Trump played a central role.

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Grand Jury Votes to Indict Donald Trump in New York https://tinyurl.com/ms9jcsrn “The felony indictment, filed under seal by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will likely be announced in the coming days”
// Mr. Trump will be the first former president to face criminal charges. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case is focused on a hush-money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.

NYT: Finland Clears Last Hurdle to Join NATO, Reshaping Balance of Power https://tinyurl.com/2cf2hdhp ‘Finland, w its 830 mile border w Russia, offers NATO a much stronger position to deter aggression, offering access to a strong military, as well as airspace, ports and sea lanes’
// Finland’s accession to NATO is a diplomatic and strategic setback for Russia

🐣 RT @Acyn Wallace: There has been a story developing as we’ve been on the air. News has broken over the last 45 minutes out of New York City, three law enforcement sources telling NBC news that additional security measures are once again put in place..

🐣 RT @carlbildt It’s a massive and very revealing leak from the efforts to use cyber to disrupt and destroy civilian and information structures and systems in Western countries. Cyber defense is at least as important as all other forms of defense
⋙ WaPo: Secret trove offers rare look into Russian cyberwar ambitions https://tinyurl.com/hd8e7nb5
// More than 5,000 pages of documents from a Moscow-based contractor offer unusual glimpses into planning and training for security services, including the notorious hacking group Sandworm

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Bakhmut is first mentioned in 1571 & was once heavily fortified – today Ukrainians describe it as a fortress. Russian atrocities in #Ukraine mirror those of Nazi Germany. During WW2: German troops took 3,000 Jews from Bakhmut & sealed them up in a mine shaft suffocating them all.
🌎 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1641466552749891584?s=20/photo/1
// old map of Bakhmut

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1245 UTC 30 MAR/ RU troops continue to improve tactical positions in heavy urban fighting. UKR artillery conducted counter-battery activity; RU losses include 12 artillery systems. While UKR maintains LOCS, RU is registering gains in urban fighting.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1641421853385277443?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone #Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says Russia’s presidency of UN Security Council from April 1 is a “bad joke.” “ usurped its seat; it’s waging a colonial war; its leader is a war criminal wanted by the ICC for kidnapping children.” #BadRussianJoke

NYT: Disney’s Feud With DeSantis Adds Another Wrinkle https://tinyurl.com/4trez55j DeSantis packed the new Disney tax district’s board with conservatives and cronies, but as a parting play, the old board quietly stripped the new one of its powers and handed them to Disney
// The Florida governor’s new Disney World oversight board belatedly realized that the company had quietly sidestepped its control.

WaPo: Disney quietly dodged DeSantis’s oversight board, appointees realize https://tinyurl.com/5ftwfb9e “[I]n a bureaucratic coup, Disney and the previous board signed an agreement on Feb. 8 … that transferred much of the board’s power to Disney”

NYT: Ukrainians Directing Soldiers From a Hidden Hub See Bakhmut Going Their Way https://tinyurl.com/32yzpujp “If the Ukrainians hold their recent gains, the battles of the last month at Bakhmut could prove a turning point in Ukraine’s defense against Russia”
// Ukrainian commanders say they have exhausted Russia’s relentless assaults on the eastern city, though soldiers say the cost in lives has been steep.

WSJ: Russian Security Service Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter https://tinyurl.com/3d36txeu “… for what it described as espionage”
// Evan Gershkovich reports on Russia as part of the Journal’s Moscow bureau

⭕ 29 Mar 2023

WaPo Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie https://tinyurl.com/y3hsd8k9 Russian disinformation and “biolabs”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1415 UTC 29 MAR/ UKR air defenses downed a Russian Su-24 strike fighter near Bakhmut. Wagner /RU continued attacks along the M-03 HWY axis, and were again defeated at Orikhovo-Vasylivka and Bohdanivka. Russian VDV / units were rebuffed at Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1641079128102248453?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @IlvesToomas After the travesty of the Budapest Memorandum why would Ukrainians accept anything short of NATO?
⋙🧵 RT @andrewmichta About to fly back from #Berlin after our conference commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. As much of the conversation focused on the postwar reconstruction of #Ukraine, let me share a few thoughts. First, the top priority should be helping #Ukraine win. 1/7
📌 https://twitter.com/andrewmichta/status/1641000774099521536?s=20

⋙ If #Ukraine’s security is not addressed the rest of the conversation is academic, for no private equity will invest in a country constantly under threat of another attack. Hence, instead of talking about #Ukraine joining the #EU we should focus on bringing it into @NATO. 2/7

⋙ I find conversations about some sort of Western guarantee to #Ukraine short of NATO membership to be vacuous. Consider why #Finland and #Sweden have asked to join @NATO. They know very well that nothing short of the Article V guarantee is enough today to make them secure. 3/7

⋙ Also consider the trajectory postcommunist #Europe has travelled: it was @NATO membership followed by #EU membership. Again, not that different from the experience of Western Europe after WWII where US security guarantee created conditions for economic recovery & ECSC/EC/EU. 4/7

⋙ Let’s also remember that with each passing day of this war, #Ukraine is being destroyed ever more, including its human capital, its economy & its critical infrastructure. Ukrainians have been incredibly brave but every nation has a breaking point. So let’s focus on the war. 5/7

⋙ Let’s prioritize giving #Ukraine the weapons, munitions and support it needs to achieve the strategic victory on the battlefield it urgently needs. Then we can begin to talk seriously about the end state and assess the country’s needs when it comes to postwar reconstruction. 6/7

⋙ #Ukraine needs to break out from the current pattern of war of attrition that Russia is trying to impose on it around #Bakhmut. UKR needs to fight on its own terms. For that it needs long-range fires, MBTs and airplanes. Let’s make sure it gets those now. #ArmUkraineNow. 7/End

⭕ 28 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @Yowza. A must-listen conversation between @judgeluttig—a lion of judicial conservatism—with @SykesCharlie about how Americans are in a “catatonic moral stupor” as the rule of law is poised to fall to the rule of politics. Stunning
⋙ TheBulwark: Judge Michael Luttig: A Betrayal of America https://tinyurl.com/yc2r7jac
// 3/28/2023; automated transcription that I edited; errors may renain

Judge Luttig: Charlie, as you know, I got a call from Richard Cullen again on the morning of January fifth. Very early in Mountain Standard Time. And Richard said, judge, we have to do something immediately. … And so once he told me we must do this, and he assured me that that that this was okay because I was skeptical. I went downstairs to my office and figured out how to tweet and tweeted what many commentators and news reports have have called to tweet her around the world.

Charlie Sikes: A seven tweet thread that that clearly was at least heard in the vice president’s office. … What would it have meant for the country, for the constitution, for the rule of law? If in fact, Mike Pence would have stood up and refused to count those electoral votes.

Judge Luttig: And this is what I said to congress and now to to many others that America would have been plunged into what would be tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis. Each one of those words I could [diagram], but the bottom line is that it would have been a constitutional crisis in in America unlike any that we have ever seen, or I believe could ever see because of the paralysis of our government that would have resulted and we, you know, we don’t have time to go into all that. But essentially, Charlie, the constitution and therefore, our government doesn’t contemplate anything like happened on January sixth. And therefore, the constitution doesn’t accommodate it. And therefore, our government, the three institutions of our government would not have known what to do with each of them thinking that they might have responsibility, but knowing that the other two branches also had responsibility.

Charlie Sikes: So that’s as a paralyzing constitutional crisis that we avoided on January six two thousand twenty one. So let’s fast forward to today. How do you evaluate the risk? Have we escaped this risk? Do you evaluate the danger looking ahead? ¤ I mean, have we shored up these constitutional principles? Give me your sense of of the danger and the peril that that these principles face right now in late March of two thousand twenty three.

Judge Luttig: We’ve made unsteady progress haltingly in the two plus years since January sixth. The primary progress we’ve made was in reforming the electoral count act, which is the statutory law that the former president and his allies exploited in their effort to overturn that election. There is another feature of the plan known as the independent state legislature theory of interpretation of the electors clause and the election’s clause, which I characterized at the time as the centerpiece of the plan to overturn the election. And we’ve not moved at all on that important centerpiece. …

… And then most importantly, Charlie, is that you know, the former president, his allies, and and and and now the entire Republican party, you know, have circled the wagons around the former president in January sixth and denied that the former president lost that election denied the January sixth and its consequences, all toward the end of that being the Republican platform in twenty twenty four. And all the while, the former president and and the Republicans, frankly, you know, have cause[d] the corrosion, if you will, of our democracy and the rule of law.

Charlie Sikes: … [L]ate last year, when the former president tweeted out that we should terminate elements of the constitution to restore him to power. One would have thought that that statement alone would be disqualifying for any judicial conservative or for the the party of conservative constitutionalism of the Republican Party. Just give me your thoughts on all of that that here you have the former president, very openly saying we should terminate the constitution in order to overturn this election. And yet, the Republican Party’s still looks at him and says, yeah, if he gets the nominee, we’ll we’ll support him again for return to the Oval Office. ¤ What has happened? To conservatives and Republicans that they’re willing to tolerate that kind of thing.

Judge Luttig: In another day, those words spoken by a president or a former president for that matter would be [treason-like], not treason. Treason is a defined term in the constitution. It’s treason-[like] because that statement as well as January six, you know, the events inspired by the former president were a betrayal of America and a betrayal of Americans. [T]he former president and his allies, betrayed the sacred trust that had been [confer?] upon them by the American people. As to the Republicans [writ] large, Charlie, I don’t any longer indulge or even acknowledge the whispers behind the back that they disagree that the former president lost the election and they disagree with with the former president that that January sixth was needed and appropriate.

In my view, Charlie, at this point, and and, frankly, long before now, to not decide to [de]nounce January sixth and the former president’s actions on that day is to decide [t]hat you agree with the former president and with all that occurred on January sixth. [I] don’t have time to, you know, to anymore to to worry about that. That’s that’s my view of the republicans.

Charlie Sikes: And I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but my sense is that you’re not calling for Trump’s indictment, but you now believe that he will be indicted and you’ve been laying out the factors that you consider that Merrick Garland should be considering. So what should we do about this? And what does it say if the legal system does not hold Donald Trump accountable for his attempts to overturn the election and for his role in January sixth?

Judge Luttig: … The the investigation being conducted now by the Department of Justice in the person of of Jack Smith for the former president’s conduct on January six. Second, the investigation of of the taking and retention of classified documents to more law though, followed closely by the investigation in Georgia by Fannie Willis of the former president’s effort to interfere with the election in Georgia. In twenty twenty. And last and most recently, this expected indictment in Manhattan related to the Stormy Daniels case.

But I would say today, Charlie, that I would have hoped that the first of any prosecutions of of the former president would not have been either the Stormy Daniels matter in Manhattan or, frankly, the classified documents from Mar a Lago and that instead, if there are to be prosecutions of the former president, the first would would be by the Department of Justice and Jack Smith, for January sixth. Yeah. I’ll go even one step further and say that if it happens to be the case, that the Stormy Daniels prosecution and the classified documents investigation are are the only two prosecutions of the former president coming out of all of his antics and that he’s not prosecuted for January sixth. I will believe that that’s a great [dis]service to democracy and to the rule of law in America. …

Judge Luttig: I do believe that the Department of Justice will indict and prosecute the former president for January sixth as to what the [indictments] for what offenses, the best I can do is point you to the offenses that were identified by the January sixth committee when it recommended prosecutions coming out of January sixth, and two of those were among the ones you’ve referenced, which is defrauding the the United States. The others would be obstruction of an official proceeding being the joint session of congress to to count the electoral votes to determine the presidency, then the January sixth committee recommended a false statement prosecutions in connection with the [false electors] plan. And then last, arguably, most consequentialally, the committee urged that the Department of Justice consider prosecution for incitement of an insurrection against the authority of the United States. I’ve not looked at the actual recommendations by the January sixth committee. I would just note for your listeners today that that that offense would exist even if the president did not actually incite the insurrection himself. Although there are facts that would support such a charge, but even if the president merely aided and assisted such an insurrection. So those would be the federal charges coming out of January sixth as I understand it.

Charlie Sikes: … [L]ast week you gave a speech at the University of Georgia Law School, which I have a copy of and have been reading and I’m really struck by the language that you use. You start by noting that we’re just three years shy of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, but your words, the institutions of our democracy and law are under vicious, unsustainable, and unendurable attack from within and you you don’t mince any word, you say that we’re in a perilous crossroads, you point out that Abraham Lincoln speaking in eighteen thirty eight, [the or the?] [Constitition] the rule of law become the political religion of the nation. So, you know, reading your your comments, this is a deeper problem than just Donald Trump, just a few things that we are at a moment where, I mean, you feel that we’re at a tipping point. ¤ What do you mean when you describe it as unsuspid sustainable and unendurable attacks?

Judge Luttig: That that you just read was essentially if not literally what I said to the Congress of the United States. I meant exactly what I said. This is when I speak publicly, I try to speak as if I were still a sitting federal judge. So that’s just factually what we have in America today and where we are in America today, namely that our institutions of democracy and law have been under vicious attack for years now that is from within, not from without the United States.

And these vicious attacks are unsustainable and unendurable. They’ve already taken their toll on American democracy an American law in their impact and consequence of their impact on the institutions of democracy and law. We are at a perilous crossroads. That’s what I said to Congress, and the illusion to congress, and in this speech that you you have now, the illusion was to the civil war. And I I gave a great deal of thought to that before I testified. ¤ I knew what I was saying, of course. And I knew the way in which it would be appreciated and understood. You know, I didn’t say to congress that we were on the verge of a civil war, though many many people at the time believed we were and still believe believe we are now, Charlie.

Charlie Sikes: Do you believe that we are now? Do you think that’s possible? And what would it be like?

Judge Luttig: I would say this. I’ve earlier said that that the former president now presumptive nominee of the Republican Party in twenty twenty four, and his Republican Party and allies are poised to attempt to overturn the twenty twenty four election if if he were to lose that election. If he were to do that, then I believe that we would be on the verge of a civil war. … …

Charlie Sikes: Do you see America right now as being where America was at when Abraham Lincoln spoke in eighteen thirty eight? ¤ Are you on optimist? Are you a pessimist? How do you feel about what’s about to happen over the next decade or decade and a half?

Judge Luttig: I’ve been my entire life in any eternal optimist. But as to what we’re talking about today, at this moment, today, Charlie, I’m not optimistic because of all that we’ve been talking about. I propose the solution to the to the problem to congress, the problem that you just identified that we, you know, we only want to disagree. That is the problem. And I propose the solution and that solution was that a political solution from my years observing and participating in in the political world in Washington, D.C.

I propose that a critical mass of each of the two parties comprised of those members who who have the the moral authority and the patriotic obligation to step forward and say that America’s in peril. And that we must come together to avoid the inevitable war I’m not going to call it civil war, but the inevitable war. And, you know, based on my considerable experience in Washington DC, I do know that that’s the answer. Now, I testified to that six, eight months ago now, and not a single Republican leader.

Charlie Sikes: Not one.

Judge Luttig: Has heeded my call to step forward not one single Republican elected official. I said to Congress, it’s not the the the Democrats’ role at this moment. Because it’s the Republicans who instigated this war on democracy and the rule of law on January sixth. So my point is the Republicans have to step forward. It’s –

Charlie Sikes: gotta come from within them. Yeah. That’s the crucial point. Yeah. It’s gotta –

Judge Luttig: Absolutely. And [not] one of them has. And now, Charlie, it’s obvious to to the country that the Republican Party and Republicans, you know, as a political organization and party, they’ve cast their lot with Donald Trump. And cast their lot with all that he did on January sixth. You know, I don’t do politics, but but I’m not stupid.

That’s incomprehensible to me. And what that is is is nothing more or less than political cowardice. And so as far as I’m concerned, at this point, they get what they deserve. And if they lose every election from now on, that’s fine by me. That’s what they deserve.

WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Donald Trump is promising the apocalypse https://tinyurl.com/3f3c8e69 “[W]hen he ran in 2016, Trump promised to be the miracle worker who ‘alone can fix it.’ This time around, he asks voters to think of him as ‘your retribution’”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AVDIIVKA AXIS /2000 UTC 28 MAR/ RU troops employed CS/tear gas to support attacks on Lastochkyne. These assaults made gains west of Avdiivka. RU losses for the period include 7 IFVs, 6 tanks and 17 artillery units, indicating strong counter-battery fire by UKR artillery.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1640803731867422722?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1920 UTC 28 MAR/ Heavy urban fighting continues. UKR conducted 9 aviation strike missions including a Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) sortie. Russian losses for the period include 7 Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), 6 tanks and 17 artillery systems.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1640794640034025479?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📊 RT @atrupar doesn’t bode well for him!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1640706163070074888?s=20/photo/1
// Marist poll (3/20-3/23) “Do you want Donald Trump to be re-elected?) 38% yes, 61% no

⭕ 27 Mar 2023

📊 WaPo: Why do Americans own AR-15s? https://tinyurl.com/yckzwxhf 1 in 20 gun owners own one (16M Americans). They are 74% White, 81% male, 56% 40-65yo Most are from states Trump won; 47% are from the South; 56% have incomes >$100K. Self-defense most cited
// The Washington Post and Ipsos asked nearly 400 AR-15 owners why they own the rifle

🐣 RT @ @NoLieWithBTC Here is Trump and his supporters yesterday in Waco with their hands over their hearts while a pro-January 6 insurrection anthem — NOT the US national anthem — plays. ¤ The screen is playing footage of MAGA insurrectionists attacking the Capitol. ¤ They are EMBRACING violence.
🖼 https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1640028507672653826?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @highbrow_nobrow Chris Miller on Fox News: I “absolutely” told the Jan 6 committee under oath that Donald Trump made an order to deploy the National Guard ahead of Jan 6
Miller Under Oath: “I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature.”
💽 https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1640459770632241152?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RadoFreeTom “Trump has left no doubt that he is a violent authoritarian who intends to reject any election that does not restore him to power… This should be said, every day, in every medium,” @RadioFreeTom writes in The Atlantic Daily.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Trump Sings a Song of Sedition https://tinyurl.com/y934t2ct
// The January 6 jail anthem was a shocking addition to his repertoire. But our national attention span is so short that we’ve already moved on.

🐣 RT @petestrzok Outraged how Trump purged govt employees during his first administration? ¤ You have no idea what’s coming. ¤ But wait there’s more – this article doesn’t consider Trump stripping security clearances from thousands of “enemies,” an executive right DOJ argues is nonjusticiable.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1640370653759954944?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Through an executive order, it would give the president the ability to fire tens of thousands of career bureaucrats within the federal government and replace them with loyalists. Trump issued such an executive order late in his presidency, but it was rescinded by President Biden shortly after he took office. DeSantis has also endorsed the idea of utilizing Schedule F. With almost complete control over the bureaucracy, either of these men could become very effective authoritarians.

🐣 RT @ jaynordlinger “Republicans have abandoned the language of morality in response to the political imperatives associated with navigating a movement of which Trump is the head.” To consider, by @NoahCRothman.
⋙ NatRev, Noah Rothman: Trump 2024 Makes Rhetorical Embrace of Political Violence Explicit https://tinyurl.com/3ut27vd5
// The former president no longer bothers to even pretend that he disavows the thuggish behavior he encourages.

🐣 RT @Acyn Trump: I had a rally with tens of thousands of people. The press admitted there were at least 25k-30k. That means you can double it at least. It was like a love fest
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1640521132649447424?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 No more than 5000

🐣 RT @KeithOlbermann “CBS reports Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to construct THIS charge against Trump: Conspiracy To Obstruct A Congressional Proceeding. ¤ “Penalty under 18 US Code 1512 is up to 20 years. And the possible Document Charges continue. ¤ MONDAY COUNTDOWN: https://tinyurl.com/2p8kv37y

NYT: U.N. Official Heads to Ukrainian Nuclear Plant as Safety Fears Grow https://tinyurl.com/bde6weda
// The official met with President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the Zaporizhzhia plant, amid worries that a Ukrainian offensive could raise the already-high risk of disaster.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Wow. Former head of the National Enquirer. That means there almost for sure are going to be conspiracy charges well beyond the Stormy payment, which the MSM continues to ignore because they adopted Donald’s bullshit “Stormy Stormy Stormy!” nonsense he feeds to the masses.
⋙ 🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: From @GarrettHaake: An individual has just LEFT the DA’s office that looks a lot like DAVID PECKER. He had already testified before the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury has another hour left. There’s still time for more developments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1640441746667749376?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The Times is reporting that it IS David Pecker that appeared today.
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: Former National Enquirer Publisher Testifies Again in Trump Inquiry https://tinyurl.com/mryaef4n
// The grand jury investigating a hush-money case against the former president met again on Monday, but the timing of any potential indictment remained unclear.

The focus of Mr. Pecker’s testimony was unclear, but it is not unusual for a witness to be called before a grand jury a second time, and he could have provided valuable information for prosecutors. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, he agreed to keep an eye out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.

For a brief time in October 2016, Ms. Daniels appeared to have just that kind of story. Her agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump to The National Enquirer, which would then promise to never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

Mr. Pecker didn’t bite. Instead, he and the tabloid’s editor, Dylan Howard, decided that Mr. Cohen would have to deal with Ms. Daniels’s team directly. ¤ And when Mr. Cohen was slow to pay, Mr. Howard pressed him to get the deal done, to prevent Ms. Daniels from revealing their discussions about suppressing her story. “We have to coordinate something,” Mr. Howard texted Mr. Cohen in late October 2016, “or it could look awfully bad for everyone.” ¤ Two days later, Mr. Cohen transferred the $130,000 to an account held by Ms. Daniels’s attorney.

🐣 RT @AntiToxicPeople Wow. Former head of the National Enquirer. That means there almost for sure are going to be conspiracy charges well beyond the Stormy payment, which the MSM continues to ignore because they adopted Donald’s bullshit “Stormy Stormy Stormy!” nonsense he feeds to the masses.
⋙ 🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: From @GarrettHaake: An individual has just LEFT the DA’s office that looks a lot like DAVID PECKER. He had already testified before the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury has another hour left. There’s still time for more developments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1640441746667749376?s=20

⭕ 26 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @costareports Sources directly familiar with witnesses and questions asked tell me it’s clear Special Counsel is now “tightening” the Jan. 6 probe around Trump and his inner circle, with focus on infamous 12-18-20 Oval mtg. and efforts to push nat-sec, DOJ officials…
⋙ 💽 CBSNews: Special counsel “tightening” investigation into Trump as he holds rally in Texas https://tinyurl.com/2p8snuua
// Former President Donald Trump held his first official campaign rally of the 2024 campaign in Waco, Texas, on Saturday night. Meanwhile, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation is “tightening.” Robert Costa has the latest.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ANDIIVKA AXIS /0000 UTC 26 MAR/ Assaults on the urban area of Avdiivka were repelled, as was a major Russian effort to the west of the city. UKR defenders drove back RU units at Lastochkyne Toneke, Sieverne, Pervomaiske and Natailove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1639777029464678400?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1820 UTC 26 MAR/ This report is based on the 1800 [Kyiv] reports of the UKR Gen’l Staff. RU attacks on Ivanivske broken up. UKR says RU losses include 11 main battle tanks, 15 infantry fighting vehicles and upwards of 700 Russian troops Killed in Action (KIA).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1640053873489629184?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Donald Trump used his campaign rally to praise war criminal dictators Putin and Xi Jinping as “top of his game…smart, very smart people”. He also “predicted” that Russia will conquer all of Ukraine.’ ¤ We’ll never vote for Trump or anyone who refuses to rule out supporting this traitor. #TrumpRally #NeverTrump

🐣 RT @Raymond_LLM Unstoppable, just like their tanks and their battleships. The best thing they have is the air defense which can’t stop anything. ¤ Turns Out Russia Is Overselling Its ‘Unstoppable’ Hypersonic Missile.
⋙ MSN/PopMechanics: Turns Out Russia Is Overselling Its ‘Unstoppable’ Hypersonic Missile https://tinyurl.com/3c792vv4 “[T]he technology still hasn’t found a way to manage the immense amount of heat produced by a system traveling in excess of Mach 5”

🐣 [Me re: nukes] Both China and the US have addressed this with Russia (it’s included in China’s 12-point peace plan)
It’s saber-rattling and a sign of desperation
For us, it’s a simple choice: can we allow a world in which countries with nukes can invade their neighbors with impunity?
// tags: nuclear weapons nuclear war ww3 world war 3
// “a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought” ~ joint statement Reagan/Gorbachev

🐣 RT @tkesho3 Clarity of vision, resilience, resolve to fight for whats right – envy for so many around the globe #StandWithUkraine
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @MattiMaasikas Record high support for NATO in Ukraine – 82%.
91% approve of the activities of President Zelenskyy
97% believe in victory in the war with Russia
74% believe Ukraine will retain all territories within its internationally recognized borders as of 1991. [link] https://tinyurl.com/bcb6sb7d

⭕ 25 Mar 2023

NYT: Trump Puts His Legal Peril at Center of First Big Rally for 2024 https://tinyurl.com/ecsz47cw ‘Mr. Trump notably did not attack the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg … He also refrained from echoing his ominous post that “potential death and destruction” might result if he were charged’
// Facing a potential indictment, the former president devoted much of his speech in Waco, Texas, to criticizing the justice system, though his attacks were less personal and caustic than in recent days.

Former President Donald J. Trump spent much of his first major political rally of the 2024 campaign portraying his expected indictment by a New York grand jury as a result of what he claimed was a Democratic conspiracy to persecute him, arguing wildly that the United States was turning into a “banana republic.”

As a crowd in Waco, Texas, waved red-and-white signs with the words “Witch Hunt” behind him, Mr. Trump devoted long stretches of his speech to his own legal jeopardy rather than his vision for a second term, casting himself as a victim of “weaponization” of the justice system.

“The abuses of power that we’re currently witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt and depraved chapters in all of American history,” he said.

The speech underscored how Mr. Trump tends to frame the nation’s broader political stakes heavily around whatever issues personally affect him the most. Last year, he sought to make his lies about fraud in his 2020 election defeat the most pressing issue of the midterms. On Saturday, he called the “weaponization of our justice system” the “central issue of our time.” …

From the stage, Mr. Trump notably did not attack the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, in the kind of caustic terms that he had used on social media in recent days. This past week, he had called Mr. Bragg, who is Black, an “animal” and accused him of racism for pursuing a case based on hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. ¤ Mr. Trump also refrained from echoing his ominous post that “potential death and destruction” might result if he were charged.

He did attack one of Mr. Bragg’s senior counsels by name, noting that he came to the office from the Justice Department and describing the move, without evidence, as part of a national conspiracy. “They couldn’t get it done in Washington, so they said, ‘Let’s use local offices,’” Mr. Trump said. …

Mr. Trump reserved some fire for his leading rival in the polls for the 2024 Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not announced a campaign yet. “He’s dropping like a rock,” Mr. Trump said, pointing to his increased edge over Mr. DeSantis in recent surveys.

He also argued that the greatest threat to the United States was not China or Russia but top American politicians, among them President Biden, Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who Mr. Trump said were “poisoning” the nation. …

The rally featured one new twist: the playing of “Justice for All,” a song featuring the J6 Prison Choir, which is made up of men who were imprisoned for their part in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. ¤ The song, which topped some iTunes download charts, is part of a broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to reframe the riot and the effort to overturn the election as patriotic. The track features the men singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” while Mr. Trump recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

🧵 RT @atrupar Just catching up on the Trump rally in Waco and lol
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1639829292581367808?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @kajakallas On 25 March 1949 my family was among the 20 000 Estonians deported to Siberia by the Soviets. ¤ Russia uses the same terror tactics in Ukraine. We must end this cycle of aggression. Ukraine must win. Russia must be held accountable for all crimes committed.
📌 https://twitter.com/kajakallas/status/1639688110530342913?s=20

🐣 RT @PaulNiland Trump thinks Putin is going to take all of Ukraine, and then he calls that war criminal “smart” too. In an earlier video I watched he said he’d impose a solution to the war in 24 hours because from the White House he’d be able to control $ aid. As in, cut it off and reward Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AccountableGOP Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: “He wanted to get a piece. Now it looks like he’ll end up probably getting the whole thing.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1639783968496144384?s=20/photo/1
// Trump rally in Waco TX

NYT: Donald Trump, and the Sordid Tradition of Suppressing October Surprises https://tinyurl.com/26cw5ttw ‘The scandal that has ensnared Donald Trump, the payoff to Stormy Daniels, is in a rare class: an attempt not to bring to light an election-altering event, but to suppress one’
// The payoff to Stormy Daniels that has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump can trace its lineage to political skulduggery in 1968 and 1980.

🐣 RT @DavidCayJ Bravo to Barnes & Noble @BNBuzz, which in Florida stores highlights books that the sanctimonious and freedom-hating Governor Ron DeSantis and his crew seek to ban in public schools. h/t Lisa Green Dewberry @Green1966
🖼 https://twitter.com/DavidCayJ/status/1639672931574861825?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @jentaub Hooboy— I’m watching this so you don’t have to
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1639763771399761920?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1639763771399761920.html

Hooboy—
I’m watching this so you don’t have to
Globalists and Marxists. Fake news media.
“2024 is the final battle. Their reign will be over and America will be a free nation one again.”
He praises MAGA and refers to the movement also as America First
He claims Biden is using government against his political opponent. “Banana Republic is what we’ve become.”
“You will be vindicated and proud” when I win in 2024.
Calls his opponents criminals. Mentions Schiff and Hillary
Whining says his life has been “dissected and They even got the United States Supreme Court to give them my tax returns, and that was never supposed to happen.”
And then he said so much for loyalty as he appointed several of them
He says “lawyers go before a grand jury is all over this place” and they are treated like criminals.
He claims that an election weapon is criminally investigated.
Donald said the “case gets adjudicated in the press and people say it’s bullshit”
He claims the DOJ controls state and local prosecutors
Now he’s insulting Stormy. “That wouldn’t be the one. There isn’t a one. We have a great First Lady.”
Here’s the deep irony. Merrick Garland, who has done everything he can not to come near, Donald Trump, who ignored the Mueller report is now still being blamed and Donald is claiming that Garland sent a top official to the Manhattan DAs office to go after him.
Lots of lies now. Plus saying hello to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Said she should run for Senate and said they made up charges against him.
Now Donald is going after Michael Cohen. He conveniently ignores the fact that Michael was his lawyer and was convicted in part for the crime related to paying off Stormy for him.
Calls two prosecutors from DAs office “absolute human scum.”
Now he’s complaining about the book by Pomerantz.
“This is really prosecutorial misconduct” by maniac Democrats.
He said he thinks this is worse than ballot stuffing.
He’s lying again
Donald is calling the criminal cases against him election cheating.
Here we go. He’s blaming Hillary Clinton
This man is a monster and NO ONE in the Republican Party can beat him. So listen up conservatives, the ONLY way to beat him is to vote for Democrats
Lots of sniffing. Greatest hits “no quid pro quo” says phone call with Ukrainian president was a perfect call.
Now he’s showing poll numbers.
“I rebuilt our entire military and gave you the largest tax cuts…and regulation cut”
“When they go after me, they go after you.” He claims he is only being prosecuted because he’s doing well in the polls.
Now he says that the people standing behind him can only see “his powerful shoulders”
He earlier described Ron DeSantis begging for a support and then cut him down
He claims he is being attacked by everybody because there are a lot of people who don’t want our country to be great again.
Crowd is enthusiastically cheering. We love Trump. We love Trump.
He said “if we do it in 2024 it’s bigger.”
He says DOJ and FBI are terrorists.
Chants of “lock her up” after he says Hillary Clinton was spying on his campaign
Oh, how can he be talking about “low regulation” after these bank failures?
Now he’s attacking Don Lemon and said CNN should hire Matt Gaetz instead.
He is trying to boast about his relationship with China, but says he doesn’t like to brag because then there was Covid
He said “these sick people“ like “crazy Nancy Pelosi“ are more dangerous than China.
He is just talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and it’s boring and he is angry and egotistical and a disgusting coward
“No one laughed at our country when I ran it.”
He saying he wishes he had more powerful attorneys general.
He’s trying to equate the people who are “after“ him to people who open “throw open the borders” to illegal aliens.
“They are mutilating your children”
“Justice will only be done when we throw this repulsive political class out of Washington”
Here we go again. Now he saying that Ronny Jackson gave him the cognitive test. “Is there a test I can take to prove how smart I am”. He said he took it at Walter Reed and aced it.
“Other people are very stupid”
“Because of taxes and other things — they’re not doing a very good job —we moved to Florida”
Now he’s reminiscing about winning Texas twice. Now he seems like he has forgotten that he already introduced Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
He’s name checking all of his high profile supporters in the audience
Big applause for Mr. pillow
Now he’s complaining that the FBI took Mr. Pillow’s phones.
He doesn’t remember the “head of Canada’s” name.
It’s been over an hour and it’s really getting boring
Now he’s running through all the things he claimed he accomplished as president. A lot of them are exaggerations or out right lies.
He says we are laying out a bold vision for what he will do when he takes office as a 47th President of the United States.
Crowd is thrilled
Talking about the border. He claims that two years ago the border was completely secure. He said he build hundreds of miles of wall. He said it would have taken only three more weeks to finish it.
Now we back to his greatest hits. Walls and wheels being better than computers and so on.
He can’t even hear the irony. Donald Trump is saying other leaders are sending their criminals to America. My god this man needs to look in the mirror.
He is using the murder of two girls in Long Island to make political points.
He is promising a giant domestic deportation effort. And he is pushing the remain in Mexico policy again.
Not a lot of due process in his plan to round up, anyone accused of being in a gang and deporting them to the country of origin.
“I get along well with Putin” and he said it never would’ve happened with him, implying he would’ve let Putin get some kind of “peace” (perhaps he means forcing Ukraine to relinquish territory,) and now he will get everything Trump says
He says he can get “a settlement”within… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Donald Trump claims it is the Biden banking crisis, ignoring the fact that he was the one who deregulated the banks.
Trump also claims he is the only candidate who can prevent World War III
Now he claims that we’re going to be a bigger oil based energy superpower than Saudi Arabia when he becomes president.
More on China and blocking imports and holding them accountable for the virus.
Wants to stop schools from teaching, any racial, sexual or political content and have principles be elected by parents.
He wants to declare that God created two genders, male and female
Lots of cheers for keeping “men“ out of women’s sports.
he says he is supporting freedom of speech
he wants a constitutional amendment to put term limits on members of Congress.
wants only same-day voting with paper ballots
It sounds like this speech is reading off the Teleprompter at this point is coming to an end. At least one can hope
he’s going to tear down homeless camps get rid of ugly buildings and only wants buildings that are classic style of western civilization
“Our MAGA movement . .is taking on vicious forces. . . Remember. This nation does not belong to them. It belongs to you.”
Praising the people of Texas. I think this is about to end.
Said Texans help build this country to what it was.
“We are going to bring it back. It’s not there now
The dramatic walk off music is playing and he’s talking about how America is a nation in decline. He’s hitting again on the Banks crisis.
Said the green new deal will lead to our destruction.
Music is playing and he’s claiming that oil is it at all time high, because we ended oil exploration, ignoring the fact that real prices are extremely low at the pump right now. Should have given Biden credit for that.
The music is swelling and he is saying a bunch of stuff that’s not true
We have Hunter Biden’s laptop for the third time.
And more false claims about the DOJ not investigating election fraud
Claims Joe Biden doesn’t know what he’s talking about
Music keeps swelling, and he keeps reading the lines that begin with “we are a nation that . .
I’m hoping this ends soon because I am pacing in the living room and I’m really done with it
Yet again, that old authoritarian play, claiming the nation is falling apart, and only I can fix it
somehow, he is complaining about people looting. Not sure how this fits
This music is really terrible. Though it would be good for a Saturday night live skit.
He loves hearing himself talk so much that it seems like he is slowing down, so he does not have to get to the end of the speech
Here’s the deal. I’m done at 8:30 whether he is or not.
“Together we will obliterate the deep state. We will banish the war mongers . . RINOS. . . Democrats. .We will liberate America from these villains and tyrants”. We will never give in. He seems to be quoting Winston Churchill a bit. How dare he
oh good. He’s done.
This blew up. For more commentary on Orange Collar Crime and other corruption, you can find me here: @JenTaub

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom This is an incredible amount of Trump whining; I think that this video should be played far and wide. Even the people who love him will wince a tad, and the applause is distinctly muted. (Of course, they’ve been out there all day waiting for him.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @joevc70 This is his Achilles heel. He can’t help but riff on how he’s been “wronged”. It’s a different message from the past and will hurt him going forward as people pay more attention.

🐣 RT @mmpadellan LMFAO, what a boring, low-energy whiner. Can’t believe people still going to these things. ¤ Pathetic.
💽 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1639820949376704513?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📊 RT @OpinionToday More Americans oppose than favor seven out of eight signature policies put forward by Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida. (@andrewromano Yahoo News) Details: https://tinyurl.com/28c9shz7
◕ https://twitter.com/OpinionToday/status/1639740970727276544?s=20/photo/1
// support: banning trans females from playing on girls/women’s teams 52/31%

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Another direct threat against Bragg & other prosecutors closing in on him. ¤ “We must stop them cold!” ¤. The man is completely unhinged.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1639807312192995329?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The new weapon being used by the Democrats to cheat on Elections is criminally investigating a candidate, bad publicity and all, by the DOJ and their local henchmen at A.G. & D.A. OFFICES. They make lives miserable, destroy their families and friends, regardless of their innocence, which makes little difference to these Radical Left Maniacs. It is worse than ballot stuffing and media manipulation. We must stop them cold!

🐣 RT @Jano14Toga Billionaire #Deripaska announced that Russia would turn into a country of baboons ¤ In his telegram channel, billionaire Oleg Deripaska compared Russia to an “East African baboon country” that “barely makes ends meet.”
// He stated that in #Russia for 12 years there has been neither significant economic growth nor an increase in the income of the main groups of the population. “We live on oil and gas rents,” writes Deripaska. ¤ With the fact that gas is record-low and there is no #NordStream, the #Chinese buy it at cost. Oil, on the other hand, must now be sold below the cost of production. #Russland

💙 🧵 RT @atrupar Ted Nugent kicks off the Trump rally in Waco by calling Zelenskyy a “homosexual weirdo” to cheers
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1639706546492899329?s=20

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Completely. Utterly. Deranged.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1639707604393005056?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The Manhattan D.A. Witch Hunt against me is DEAD, no evidence at all, & it has been conclusively proven that I did nothing wrong! The evidence against their “Star’ witness, however, is overwhelming. An already disbarred lawyer & convicted Felon, the only question left is will the D.A.s Office sue him for lying & fraud. They should! The SDNY already found him guilty on charges unrelated to “TRUMP,” & wrote a scathing report. He is responsible for time taken away from the D.A. on VIOLENT CRIME!

🐣 RT @uarealitynow Commander-in-chief Valerii #Zaluzhnyi: ¤ “Thanks to the titanic efforts of the Defense Forces, the situation has been stabilized in #Bakhmut”.
🖼 https://twitter.com/uarealitynow/status/1639559075116597248?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MichaelCohen212 This is Bob Costello in a nutshell; the loser who questions my credibility! “Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President,” Costello told his law partner.
⋙ DailyBeast: Inside the Failed Plan by MAGA World Lawyers to Keep Michael Cohen on the ‘Right Page’ With Trump https://tinyurl.com/mw4nnhbd
// The Daily Beast obtained hundreds of emails and internal documents showing how Cohen went from a Trump confidant to the lead witness against him for paying off a porn star.

🐣 RT @EdKrassen BREAKING: As it turns out, per The DailyBeast and NY Times, Robert Costello’s 330 emails that he said the Manhattan DA never showed to the Grand Jury, are not actually exculpatory or beneficial to Trump. Instead they help prove that Costello and Giuliani were trying to get Michael Cohen to keep quiet and not give Trump up. They show that Costello and Rudy Giuliani were desperately trying to keep communication open with Cohen as Cohen was being investigated for the Hush money payments. ¤ Costello even came up with a plan he called Cohen’s”escape hatch” to get Cohen a pardon from Trump, and Cohen got angry when Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News and admitted that Trump had reimbursed the money to Cohen. ¤ In one email from Costello to his law partners he ominously said, “Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President.” ¤ Another GOP bombshell explodes in their faces. More on this on @thedailybeast and @nytimes.

🧵 RT @JillWineBanks 1/This is a week that could be the end of the beginning of accountability for Trump. Atty/client privilege was once again ruled inapplicable bec of crime/fraud exception resulting in atty Evan Corcoran testifying at Jack Smith’s grand jury about classified documents.
📌 https://twitter.com/JillWineBanks/status/1639540319409643520?s=20

2/Corcoran’s testimony may be key to proving Trump obstructed the investigation. Plus, we learned another atty, Tim Parlatore, testified in Dec. Meanwhile, T said he’d be indicted in NY (but wasn’t) and called on his cult to protest, which is what caused Jan6.

3/He didn’t ask for peaceful protest. Then T threatened death & destruction if he were indicted, & today he is holding a rally in Waco TX, home of the militia movement, which seems like a call to arms & violence to me, much like what led to #Jan6. Watch out because there’s more.

4/Trump’s troubles also include Judge Beryl Howell’s ruling that his chief of staff Mark Meadows & many other top aides must testify before the federal grand jury investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Meadows is a key witness.

5/Others ordered to testify are former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, former top Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, former national security advisor Robert O’Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, former social media director Dan Scavino,

6/and former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee. But there’s more — showing his realization that GA may be ready to indict, Trump’s attys filed to dismiss the case that hadn’t yet been filed there on clise to frivolous grounds.

7/GA has a strong case & there’s no credible defense. Ditto the 2 pending federal cases (classified documents +obstruction and Jan6). And the E Jean Carroll is set for April. That’s a lot for Trump to worry about, but I’m worrying about

8/Good luck to all of us today.

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🤤So even Prigozhin now rejects Putin’s absurd propaganda. He says Russia isn’t fighting a NATO threat in Ukraine & questioned “denazification,” unsure about the “Ukrainian Nazi” thing. He still wants war but w/ narrower goals, not Putin’s maximalist war. [ISW:] https://tinyurl.com/2p99xbcp
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1639514207732527104?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims. Prigozhin stated that Russia is fighting “exclusively with Ukrainians” who are equipped with NATO-provided equipment and some “russophobic” mercenaries who voluntarily support Ukraine – but not NATO itself. [3] Prigozhin also noted that Russian officials most likely knew that NATO would offer Ukraine military aid, because “it is ridiculous to think that when [Russia] decided to conduct this special military operation it did not account for NATO’s help to Ukraine.”

Prigozhin noted that he is unsure about the “denazification” objectives in Ukraine, because he does not know if there are “Nazis” in Ukraine. Prigozhin also noted that Russia will “demilitarize” Ukraine only when all of the Ukrainian military is destroyed, claiming that this effort is ongoing, but that it is unclear if it will be successful. Prigozhin stated that Russia can avoid an exhausting protracted war by deciding now which borders it wants to capture. Prigozhin also called on the Russian military and media to stop underestimating Ukrainian forces and engaging in internal conflicts.

Prigozhin effectively rejected the Kremlin’s pre-war and post-war claims that Russia needed to defend itself against a NATO threat in Ukraine and undermined the necessity and probability of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated maximalist objectives.

🐣 RT @sentdefender Ukrainian President Zelensky stated in an Interview yesterday that the Ukrainian Military is not currently prepared for any Large-Scale Offensive due to Equipment and Ammunition Shortages; however he expects that this will soon be rectified by Aid Deliveries.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️UK Defense Ministry: Russia’s assault on Bakhmut ‘has largely stalled’ ¤ Russia’s downshift in Bakhmut results from extreme attrition of the Russian forces and tensions between the Russian Defense Ministry and the paramilitary Wagner Group, the U.K. Defense Ministry said.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1639534458029178880?s=20/photo/1

● Russia’s assault on the Donbas town of Bakhmut has largely stalled. This is likely primarily a result of extreme attrition of the Russian force. Ukraine has also suffered heavy casualties during its defence.

● The Russian situation has also likely been made worse by tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defence and Wagner Group, both of whom contribute troops in the sector.

● Russia has likely shifted its operational focus towards Avdiivka, south of Bakhmut, and to the Kremina-Svatove sector in the north, areas where Russia likely only aspires to stabilise its front line. This suggests an overall return to a more defensive operational design after inconclusive results from its attempts to conduct a general offensive since January 2023.

⭕ 24 Mar 2023

💙 🧵 RT @tomiahonen Crooked Lawyer Thread ¤ I am troubled by a pattern. And am stunned this does not get more attention. In the Trumpomob there is a web of crooked attorneys. That is a kind of ‘turbocharging’ of the criming conducted around Trump. This is not NEW. Goes back DECADES ¤ Let’s Thread
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1639295606815440897?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/jxcd5a6a

🐣 RT @ FPWellman Holy shit…it’s called being in jail.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Marge continues to complain about treatment of J6 inmates: “Over the past week, the J6 defendants have had to spend their time scrubbing, cleaning, and painting the walls in the area they have to stay in.”

NYT: A Trump Rally, a Right-Wing Cause and the Enduring Legacy of Waco https://tinyurl.com/4p46p29f “Whether or not the historical resonance of his Waco rally was intentional, Mr. Gingrich said, ‘It would certainly fit as a symbol of federal overreach … ‘”
// Thirty years ago, a fiery federal raid on a doomsday sect turned the city into a symbol of government overreach. Donald Trump will speak there on Saturday, and some supporters — and critics — say it’s no accident.

In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Texas, the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as the sect’s doomed charismatic leader David Koresh did three decades ago.

But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Mr. Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald J. Trump. ¤ “Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Mr. Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”

Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco. ¤ The date falls in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the weekslong standoff involving federal agents and followers of Mr. Koresh that left 82 Branch Davidians and four agents dead at Mount Carmel, the group’s compound east of the city. …

“Waco was an overreach of the government, and today the New York district attorney is practicing an overreach of the government again,” said Sharon Anderson, a retiree from Etowah, Tenn., who is traveling to Waco for Saturday’s event, her 33rd Trump rally.

Mr. Pace said he believed it was “a statement — that he was sieged by the F.B.I. at Mar-a-Lago and that they were accusing him of different things that aren’t really true, just like David Koresh was accused by the F.B.I. when they sieged him.” ¤ “I’m going to the rally, for sure,” he added.

The attention to Mr. Trump’s choice of locale highlights the long political afterlife of the Waco standoff. A polarizing episode in its own time, the deadly raid was invoked in the 1990s by right-wing extremists including Timothy McVeigh, often to the dismay of the surviving Branch Davidians. It has remained a cause for contemporary far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. …

Alex Jones, the conspiracy-theorist broadcaster who helped draw crowds of Trump loyalists to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, rose to prominence promoting wild claims about the Waco standoff. The longtime Trump associate and former campaign adviser Roger Stone dedicated his 2015 book, “The Clintons’ War on Women,” to the Branch Davidians who died at Mount Carmel. ¤ “Waco is a touchstone for the far right,” said Stuart Wright, a professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and an authority on the standoff.

He said Mr. Trump’s decision to begin his campaign there, if intentional in its nod to the siege, would echo Ronald Reagan’s August 1980 speech affirming his support of “states’ rights” at a county fair near Philadelphia, Miss., a town known for the murder of three civil rights activists 16 years earlier. ¤ “There’s some deep symbolism,” Mr. Wright said. …

As state and federal investigations have drawn closer to him in recent months, he has often portrayed himself in embattled or even apocalyptic terms. When F.B.I. agents searched his Mar-a-Lago resort in August looking for classified documents, he issued a statement declaring himself “currently under siege.”

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Coalition conference this month, he described the 2024 presidential election as “the final battle” and vowed “retribution.” As word circulated this month of a possible indictment from a New York grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s role in payments made to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign, he posted a message to supporters in all-caps to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” ¤ Early Friday, still awaiting the grand jury’s action, Mr. Trump posted that the “potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country.”

Newt Gingrich, a prominent critic of the federal government’s handling of the standoff during his time as House speaker, noted a major theme of Mr. Trump’s campaign: “the degree to which the federal government is corrupt and incompetent.” ¤ Whether or not the historical resonance of his Waco rally was intentional, Mr. Gingrich said, “It would certainly fit as a symbol of federal overreach and a symbol of a Justice Department run amok.” …

On Feb. 28, 1993, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms mounted a raid to serve a search and arrest warrant at the compound belonging to the Branch Davidians, a splinter sect of Seventh-day Adventists then under the leadership of Mr. Koresh. Federal investigators suspected Mr. Koresh of possessing illegal weapons. A gunfight erupted, four A.T.F. agents and six Branch Davidians were killed, and a 51-day standoff began. ¤ It ended on April 19, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke off negotiations with Mr. Koresh and advanced with tanks. Mr. Koresh and 75 of his followers, many of them children, were killed as a fire consumed the compound. …

An independent inquiry completed in 2000, led by the former Republican senator John Danforth, faulted federal agencies for their lack of transparency regarding the standoff, while also seeking to dispel many of the most lurid conspiracy theories.

But by then, the Branch Davidians had already been embraced as martyrs by the far-right extremists of the era, including many members of a rapidly expanding “patriot” or militia movement and Mr. [Timothy] McVeigh, who visited Waco during the siege of Mount Carmel and bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the burning of the compound. …

Invocations of Waco persisted into the next generation of militias and other extremists that emerged in response to Barack Obama’s presidency and supported Mr. Trump’s. In 2009, the founder of the Three Percenters movement warned of “No More Free Wacos” in an open letter to then-attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. The Oath Keepers issued a statement warning that the Bundy family could be “Waco’d” in their standoff with the federal government in 2014. …

Mr. Danforth, a Republican, lamented the changes in his party in the Trump years that had brought the conspiracy theories that his report had aimed to dispel into the political mainstream. “It’s the prevailing view of Republicans today that no matter what the facts show, the system is broken, our election system doesn’t work, we shouldn’t have confidence in elections, there’s no finality, it’s all a steal,” he said. ¤ Asked whether his Waco report would be widely accepted today, he said, “No. It’s just a very different time.”

🐣 RT @Azovsouth 🔥👊🏻🔥 ZSU Commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi commented about the situation in #Bakhmut ¤ “Thanks to the titanic efforts of the Defense Forces, the situation has been stabilized”. ¤ Bakhmut is Ukraine🇺🇦 Victory is coming👊🏻👊🏻

🐣 RT @AnarchoTerran Putin must be whimpering
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexandruC4 BREAKING: Xi Jinping invited the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in May for the “first China-Central Asia Summit” – AFP
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexandruC4 Update: All 4 leaders confirmed their participation in Beijing

🐣 RT @ tribelaw The Jan 6 prosecutions just came a whole lot closer today with the rejection of these bogus executive privilege claims. Special Counsel Smith will win all the predictable appeals, and that’ll be the end of the road. Indictments in DC to follow swiftly, once these cats must meow.
⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman Smith has had to wait on resolving the Meadows exec priv claim brought by Trump. Now that court has rejected it, it’s a major advance in case. He can threaten Meadows w/ prosecution; he (or Garland/Monaco) can decide to offer him immunity. Meadows is the #1 key witness re Jan 6.

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln “A number of the Florida governor’s donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggest he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump.” https://nbcnews.to/3TLZl5J&#8221;

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Deranged person is incapable of shutting his mouth, ever. Amazing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Trump: Cohen was lying badly, but he’s known for that.. He was a lawyer who represented other people. And uh, you know, supposed to have certain allegiance to a client. We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. Nothing at all wrong, Not even a little bit wrong
💽 https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1639413618612781056?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DumasAustine201 This is from a friend I have been trying to reach near #Kyiv. After over two months, she wrote me this kind of a message! I feel sad 💔 in my heart reading this knowing that #Russia is causing so much pain to #Ukrainians #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineInvasion #UkrainianArmy
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DumasAustine201/status/1639360750475960335?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Hello, I am sorry for no reply, it was just hard time, and we had huge problems with electricity and the Internet connection was absent quite often. It’s much better now, we have all the necessary facilities. But we have funerals in my country every day, you know, they are killing us one by one. That’s difficult to accept, but we have to go through it and fight. There is no other option. When they occupy the territory, they kill much more people, and, to tell you the truth, I thought about it, I am not afraid of death, of being killed, maybe, I am afraid of tortures only. But, anyway, we are alive people, and I do think that we are strong, we are not the first generation who faces this violence from moscow.

So we also have some happy moments. We enjoy our lives as far as it is possible. And we hope for the better. I’m not in Kyiv, but I live not so far from Kyiv. And I hope our capital city will never fall, will never be occupied. Thank you a lot for sharing the info our country, I really appreciate that. Hope you are fine. Just be happy!

🐣 RT @ wartranslated Aleksandr Khodakovsky (Russian Vostok battalion) claims that Ukrainians increased shelling by tens of times, he explains it with the availability of ammunition. He also describes the Ukrainian tactic of using several drones in drone attacks where some act as decoys while others drop munitions, which is more difficult to counter.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1639355471315324928?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] The enemy is becoming more active, the number of rounds fired per day has increased tens of times. It is pointless to ask the question: what is the reason for this? The answer is obvious – this is due to the war. They have something to strike with, so they do. We too are not subject to any hormonal cycles in combat modulations, the intensity of our military operation depends only on the available capabilities. Same with them: they preserved ammo and fired less; they began firing more often – this means that there is an option to not preserve.

In addition, UAV attacks have intensified. The technique of dropping small explosive devices of industrial or handmade production, which has become widespread for both sides, has recently reached a more advanced level. Now they are attacking in groups of several drones, where some act as a decoy for our counter- drone guns, while others try to break through and strike. Not to say that this leads to increased losses, but it adds to the hassle. These are not the notorious “swarms” in which the drones are connected by a neural network – each drone is controlled by a separate operator, but their ability to operate with a group of operators directly from the contact line is due, first of all, to our low firepower. They become impudent.

🧵 RT @NOELreports SitRep – 24/03/23 – Its starting to change ¤ An overview of the daily events in the war between Russia and Ukraine. The situation around Bakhmut is changing. There is a wish from the general staff to be as quiet as possible, so we accept that. 1/X
📌 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1639399023558684672?s=20

🐣 RT @AccountableGOP Marjorie Taylor Greene outside of the DC jail: “It was not an insurrection…We have to work as hard as possible to defund the two-tiered injustice system.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1639362018145624099?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 📋 🐣 RT @JoanneIntrator 140 Capitol Police officers were injured on January 6, 2021. Repairs to the Capitol and enhanced security cost $750 million.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Yes @RepMTG it was a violent insurrection … no matter how many times you lie.
💽 https://twitter.com/Joan_of_Snarc/status/1639367071053266944?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The level of completely delusional lunacy and malignant narcissism here is off the charts. Wowza.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1639351373870542849?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Does Joe Biden understand that the reason NATO exists, loaded up with CASH, is because President Donald J. Trump insisted that “delinquent” Nations, of which there were many, carry their own weight and pay their fair share. If not, I insisted, we WILL NOT PROTECT THEM FROM THE “EVIL EMPIRE.” THE MONEY CAME POURING IN AFTER DECADES OF NONPAYMENT & ABUSE. I HAVEN’T HEARD JOE SAY, “THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP FOR THE GREAT JOB YOU DID.” Perhaps I’m just not listening!

⋙ 🐣 he still doesn’t understand that money doesn’t “pour in” to NATO. The 2% of GDP goal is the amount countries pay toward THEIR OWN defense. Countries have been increasing their defense budgets, but in response to recent Russian aggression
⋙ 🐣 RT @MichaelVadok Trump’s hostility to NATO was an international disgrace that emboldened Putin. And he wants us to THANK him!
⋙ 🐣 RT @kallijo68 He seriously can’t stand when he is not the center of attention and no one is praising him. He is probably stewing because he saw what a warm welcome and the standing ovation President Biden got in Canada.

RCP: President Biden Addresses Canadian Parliament: “There’s No Better Partner Than Canada” https://tinyurl.com/5ehhj8eu “[W]e are American nations, deeply invested in ensuring that the Western Hemisphere is peaceful, prosperous, democratic, and secure”

🐣 RT @PStyle0ne1 “If Russia is afraid of depleted uranium projectiles, they can withdraw their tanks from Ukraine, this is my recommendation to them” – John Kirby. #USA #Ukraine

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: ABC NEWS: Judge Beryl Howell ordered MEADOWS, SCAVINO, O’BRIEN, RATCLIFFE, CUCCINELLI, MCENTEE, NICK LUNA, & STEPHEN MILLER to testify in Jack Smith’s 1/6 probe.
⋙ ABCNews: Meadows, other top Trump aides ordered to testify in Jan. 6 probe as judge rejects claims of executive privilege https://tinyurl.com/yany4cwz
// Trump’s attorneys had challenged the subpoenas by asserting executive privilege.

Trump is likely to appeal the ruling, according to sources briefed on the matter. ¤ “The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege,” a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. “There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle.”

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Donald Trump is now saying his indictment could lead to “death and destruction.” ¤ Only days after calling for protests to “take our nation back.” ¤ After January 6, we know exactly what he means, and the consequences. ¤ What more will it take for Republicans to stand up to him?

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Post #1 of the day from the unhinged lunatic. Many more shall follow.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1639258257016643586?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 NBC News: The federal judge set to hear E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Trump will use an anonymous jury — noting Trump’s history of “attack[ing] courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters.”

📋 EuroNews: ‘At very beginning of very hard work’: Brussels and Warsaw team up to track deported Ukrainian kids https://tinyurl.com/3jb47dd5 “Some 16,200 Ukrainian children are believed to have been deported with only 300 returned so far, according o the Commission.”

🐣 RT @ @mfa_russia 💬 FM #Lavrov: The focus of the global economy continues to shift from the Euro-Atlantic region to Eurasia, and politics is following suit. Even the European Union can no longer claim political, economic or value leadership across Eurasia.
⋙ 🐣 Not “Eur”asia, but rather just Asia, as “European” Russia will lose its Western ties and becomes a vassal state of China. There will be NATO countries and there will be Asia.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @Kasparov63 [Mar 22] Emperor Xi Jinping paid a royal visit to Pu Tin, regional governor of the northern Chinese province of Ruxia.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1638570114026029057?s=20

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost At 1:10 a.m, Trump posted another unhinged rant attacking Bragg, this time saying there will be “death & destruction” if he’s indicted. He then calls Bragg a “degenerate psychopath” (amazing projection) & misspells the word truly. ¤ Very Stable Genius being “Modern Presidential”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1639147135081025537?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & Who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!

⭕ 23 Mar 2023

💙🧵 RT @Affenpocker Once upon a time ¤ In an enchanted forest, there lived small creatures in harmony with nature there were no vatniks and they bonked each other only with their soft little paws #NAFOfellas #OriginOfNAFO
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/Affenpocker/status/1638806634230104064?s=20/photo/1
// tags: origin of NAFO origins NAFO fairy tale

🐣 RT @davenewworld_2 Far-right extremist Riley June Williams, 24, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for storming the Capitol on January 6th and directing a mob toward Nancy Pelosi’s office.
🖼 https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1639036577853702149?s=20/photo/1

NatRev, Jim Geraghty: The DeSantis Make-Up Call https://tinyurl.com/2p8vhesd “[W]hen you’re asking for the job of commander in chief, at least in the old days, you were expected to have a coherent and well-defined foreign policy that you could articulate in a clear and direct manner”

🐣 RT @hugobachega The Wagner group, now deprived of key supplies of men and munitions, has failed to capture Bakhmut after a months-long bloody campaign, and Western experts say the offensive could be stalling in the face of the Ukrainian resistance.
⋙ Bloomberg: Putin’s Mercenary Prigozhin Shifts Focus After Ukraine Setbacks https://tinyurl.com/w77zus5
// Yevgeny Prigozhin, the powerful founder of mercenary group Wagner, is preparing to scale back his private army’s operations in Ukraine.
● Wagner founder seen shifting attention to Africa operations
● Prigozhin also hints at political ambitions inside Russia

🐣 RT @mhmck It is incomprehensible how Russia is at war with Western civilization yet the only Western nation in combat with the aggressor is Ukraine.

🐣 RT @HillaryClinton One party is trying to make Americans’ lives better. ¤ The other party is trying to distract Americans from the fact that they’re not even trying.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CAPAction It’s the difference between fighting for universal pre-k and fighting to ban books in classrooms.
◕ https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1638893843385909248?s=20/photo/1
// chart: what people want: 87% child care, 82% med leave, 73%preschool

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Interestingly, this is exactly the kind of post I would put on social media were I a target in a criminal investigation and I wanted to be denied bail.
🖼 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1638963593596239872?s=20/photo/1
// Trump with baseball bat / DA Alvin Bragg

🐣 RT @SethAbramson I have no way of knowing if the stunning audio below describes real events or not, but it certainly does seem to me that Lev (who I have written a great deal about) is carefully and earnestly detailing what he was *told* by Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s attorney. ¤ And if so, HFS.
¤ https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1639080670612934658?s=20

⋙⋙ 🚫🧵 RT @SlickRockWeb Well this was a rather STUNNING relevation by Lev Parnas tonight … that Hunter Biden was drugged in kazakhstan in 2019 by the Russian FSB with the cooperation of the CEO of Burisma and his harddrive was copied and possibly manipulated by Russian Intel to be used later as Kompromat. #bidenlaptop
📌 https://twitter.com/SlickRockWeb/status/1638406382532558849?s=20

⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson I’ll say this much: the ex-head of Burisma working with the FSB tracks; the FSB using the known addiction of Hunter Biden to try to get kompromat tracks; Giuliani and Trump knowingly working with Russian intelligence to try to destroy a Democratic presidential candidate tracks.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson I’ll also say that you can hear in the voice of the deranged Tracey Beanz shock/anger that she was not getting from Lev Parnas what she expected to get—because she has bought all Trump’s lies. What she got certainly explains why Republicans in Congress didn’t want Lev to testify.
// Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy stuff

WaPo, Josh Rogin: Why Xi and Putin pretend they run democracies https://tinyurl.com/5n6eayzj “Putin and Xi are trying to hollow out the very notions of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in the international system”

DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Private Chat Leaks Show Moscow Officials in State of Panic Over Putin Arrest Warrant https://tinyurl.com/zkjh8z7d “‘On the one hand, it makes you rally around him. On the other hand, it’s as if we really are in complete global isolation’”

🐣 RT @allinwithchris .@gtconway3d on Trump holding his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas: “He is absolutely trying to gin up the extremists.”
💽 https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1639063711284596736?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KeithOlbermann Trump has today issued repeated stochastic terrorist calls for his cult to “remove” the “animal” Alvin Bragg – and use a baseball bat. @DHSgov and @TheJusticeDept need to arrest him, today. No perp walk, no bail. ¤ He’s trying to get this man killed. Period. Enough.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1639014916114841600?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Again, post this far and wide. Make sure that every adult in the United States sees this. Make sure that voters know it, and that Trump’s voters can’t deny it, and that elected Republicans can’t pretend they didn’t see it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mmpadellan HOLY SHIT, I knew trump was unhinged, but he posted a picture of him with a baseball bat next to the picture of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg???? ¤ This is straight up threat of violence. ¤ Innocent, law-abiding folks don’t do that. ¤ ARREST HIM ALREADY.
🖼 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1639025861927006217?s=20/photo/1

NYT: Trump Inquiries Present a Stress Test for Justice in a Polarized Nation https://tinyurl.com/bddafv5d “House Republicans have already made their investigation of the Justice Department a focus of their oversight and political messaging efforts”
// Attorney General Merrick Garland and other prosecutors have sought to demonstrate that politics should not infect the justice system. Those efforts face a steep challenge as the Trump investigations move ahead.

[…] Even in the absence so far of any charges against Mr. Trump, political polarization runs so deep, and mistrust of federal law enforcement is so ingrained on the right, that efforts by Mr. Garland and others to offer assurances that justice is being dispensed without regard to politics are often drowned out by powerful counterforces. Among the strongest of those forces are allies of Mr. Trump who have sought to undercut the legitimacy of the Justice Department in general and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in particular.

The Justice Department “has been a remarkable backstop,” said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “But the department is being given a role that it was never really designed to have — defending American democracy.”

In some ways, the confluence of Trump-focused inquiries is putting the criminal justice system through a public stress test unlike any in American history.

Multiple Trump investigations are marching toward decision points — and potential indictments — starting with the inquiry by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, into hush-money payments to a porn actress.

In Georgia, a local prosecutor is moving toward a decision about charges related to efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in that state.

The Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith scored an important legal victory this week that could provide critical evidence in the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and the possible obstruction of justice. Mr. Smith is also overseeing the parallel investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election and his role in instigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

For months, Justice Department officials have been bracing for an all-out attack from the Republican-controlled House, which has launched investigations into what it calls the “weaponization” of the department against the right. …

That apprehension is especially acute inside the F.B.I., which bore the brunt of recrimination following its long probe of the Trump campaign connections to Russia, and in the aftermath of the documents search of the former president’s Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, in August. The F.B.I. remains a popular target for Republicans in Congress.

“It is much easier to break something and undermine it than repair it,” said Peter Strzok, a former senior F.B.I. agent. Mr. Strzok was involved in the investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia and was the target of repeated attacks by Mr. Trump and his supporters on the right. ¤ The goal of many Trump allies in attacking the bureau, he said, was to “chill” F.B.I. investigators, which would ultimately weaken the Justice Department’s case against Mr. Trump.

Trump supporters have long cast Mr. Strzok as a villain and a central actor in a “deep-state” plot to damage the former president. The former F.B.I. agent has never been accused of a crime by the government, and the department’s inspector general found no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” officials’ decision to open the Russia investigation. …

“All of these steps are about planting the seeds for a potential impeachment of Garland in 2024 during the campaign, which would be their ultimate demonstration that the investigation, and indictment of Trump, were all about partisanship,” said Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore law professor, who served as a legal counsel in the House and Senate. …

In a tense meeting before the search [of Mar-a-Lago], Justice Department officials made it clear to F.B.I. agents that they did not care about the optics of the search and did not trust Mr. Trump’s lawyer, according to a former federal law enforcement official familiar with the episode. Agents have been careful to make sure every step is documented, mindful that any mistakes could be exploited for political purposes, the former official said.

NYT: Prosecutor in Trump Hush-Money Case Fires Back at House Republicans https://tinyurl.com/2aprypm9 “‘The letter’s requests are an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty,’ the district attorney’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, said”
// The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said the committee chairmen’s attempts to intervene in the investigation were “unlawful.”

[…] Representative Glenn Ivey, a Democrat from Maryland and former prosecutor, said that he had been “astonished” to see the letter to Mr. Bragg, “essentially calling on him to violate grand jury secrecy laws in New York.” The letter was sent by Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio of the Judiciary Committee, James R. Comer of Kentucky of the Oversight and Accountability Committee and Bryan Steil of Wisconsin of the Administration Committee. ¤ “My call was for those three to withdraw the letter immediately, hopefully recognizing the mistake that they had made, but that’s too much to ask I suppose,” Mr. Ivey said.

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, an ally of the district attorney, said that Mr. Jordan was “out of control” and was “trying to put his thumb on the scale for his friend Donald Trump.” Mr. Nadler expressed appreciation for Mr. Bragg’s response.

The events that led to the chairmen’s letter began with the Saturday post from Mr. Trump, which, along with saying he would be arrested Tuesday, called on his supporters to protest in charged language reminiscent of his social media posts in the weeks before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Republicans quickly responded. The speaker of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy, called for investigations into whether federal funds were being used for “politically motivated prosecutions,” a thinly veiled threat to Mr. Bragg. The former president’s closest competitor in the 2024 Republican primary, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, said Mr. Bragg was “weaponizing” his office.

In her letter, Ms. Dubeck, the district attorney’s general counsel, wrote that the committee chairmen’s letter was seemingly prompted by two events: Mr. Trump’s post and one of his lawyers having urged Congress to intervene, according to a New York Times report. “Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry,” she said. …

Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University’s law school and an expert in legal ethics, said that most of the material the congressmen were seeking was protected by either attorney client-privilege or another form of legal protection known as the attorney work product doctrine and called the demand an extraordinary overreach. ¤ “In their breadth, the letters represent an unprecedented demand for information about traditionally secret government activity, the enforcement of criminal law,” he said.

Mr. Trump, for his own part, used racist language to describe the district attorney on Thursday, referring to Mr. Bragg, who is Black, as an “animal” in a post on his social media platform. Later in the day, he posted a link that included two juxtaposed images — one of him wielding a bat and the other of Mr. Bragg with a hand raised — suggestive of a physical attack on the district attorney. …

WaPo: Biden moves to undo Trump’s political play on the Space Command https://tinyurl.com/3rdp6c6w “President Biden is right to listen to the generals on this one and keep the locus of space operations where it is” ~ in Colorado Springs
// The 11th-hour decision to locate headquarters in Alabama could have weakened the U.S. at a critical time

The White House appears ready to reverse a Trump administration plan to relocate the U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala., because it fears the transfer would disrupt operations at a time when space is increasingly important to the military.

The Space Command siting decision has been a political football for the past four years. Trump made the decision on Jan. 11, 2021, five days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He had said earlier that he wouldn’t decide until he knew the 2020 election results, “to see how it turns out.” Colorado voted against him, while Alabama gave him strong support and its representatives backed his false claim he had won.

Senior military officials argued from the start for remaining in Colorado Springs, where the Space Command and its predecessors have been based for decades, and the Biden administration seems finally to be nearing the same conclusion. “We share the concerns of some military leaders about potential disruption of space operations at a critical moment for our national security,” a White House official said this week.

🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 I look forward to history recording AG James, DA Willis and DA Bragg as the trifecta of Trump accountability.
🖼 https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1638961235831169024?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Zelensky at a meeting of the European Council named five main reasons for the prolongation of the war:
1. Significant delay in deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine.
2. Ukraine needs more modern aircraft than MiGs.
3. The delay of the EU with the adoption of new sanctions packages against the Russian Federation.
4. We need a summit on the “peace formula” put forward by Ukraine.
5. Decisions on Ukrainian European integration must not be delayed.
¤ https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1638995069851127808?s=20

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: #Wagner Group financier Yevgeny #Prigozhin has softened his rhetoric towards the #Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out of fear of completely losing his mercenary force in #Bakhmut. […]
Latest on #Ukraine w/ @criticalthreats: http://isw.pub/UkrWar032323
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1639096124022874112?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar #Prigozhin also denied the #Kremlin’s claims that #Russia is fighting #NATO in #Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims. http://isw.pub/UkrWar032323
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1639103504932274181?s=20/photo/1

⋙ 2/ #Prigozhin stated that #Russia is fighting “exclusively with #Ukrainians” who are equipped with #NATO-provided equipment and some “russophobic” mercenaries who voluntarily support #Ukraine – but not NATO itself.

⋙ 3/ #Prigozhin also noted that #Russian officials most likely knew that #NATO would offer #Ukraine military aid, because “it is ridiculous to think that when [#Russia] decided to conduct this special military operation it did not account for NATO’s help to Ukraine.”

⋙ 4/ #Prigozhin added that he is unsure about the “denazification” objectives in #Ukraine, because he does not know if there are “Nazis” in Ukraine.

⋙ 5/ #Prigozhin effectively rejected the #Kremlin’s pre-war and post-war claims that #Russia needed to defend itself against a NATO threat in #Ukraine and undermined the necessity and probability of Russian President Vladimir #Putin’s stated maximalist objectives for this invasion.

💙 🐣 RT @Igor_from_Kyiv_ This is our home. These are our people. We have nowhere to go and retreat. We protect what has no price – freedom, kindness and people’s lives. Russian fascists and invaders will never defeat a free people. 🇺🇦⚔️
💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1639110931270574082?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Tomthescribe This is not the look or words of a man confident of taking Bakhmut any time soon…
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Prigozhin claims that he knows about the Ukrainian plan to deal 3 blows and liberate the territory to the 1991 borders. He states that Ukraine concentrated 200,000 of reserves in the Donbas, with 80k of them being near Bakhmut. Plans include invading the Belgorod region to be used in exchange, then cutting “L/DPR” into two, and finally, liberating Crimea.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1638939229156769792?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @nntaleb “Pacifists” should first ask Putin to stop attacking.” ¤ Meloni does not cluster to aggregated opinions that she, on the “right” is supposed to have. ¤ She knows how to lose her temper facing bullshitters. ¤ She gets reaaaaallly angry at 1:38
⋙ 🐣 RT @pravda_eng [UA] 🇮🇹 Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni delivered an emotional speech in support of Ukraine and explained to local politicians why calls for “peace” at the expense of territorial concessions are unacceptable
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/pravda_eng/status/1638982217949913088?s=20/photo/1

🔄 💙 TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Cases Against Trump: A Guide https://tinyurl.com/2t2uh363
// The timelines, the issues at stake, and the threat they pose to the former president

● Manhattan: Hush Money
● Department of Justice: Mar-a-Lago Documents
● Fulton County: Election Subversion
● Department of Justice: January 6

WaPo: Explaining the Ties Between Alvin Bragg and George Soros https://tinyurl.com/2pwmceta “Soros, who has backed Democratic candidates and causes as well as democracy and human rights around the world, has for years been a boogeyman to the right”
// Donald Trump’s allies have accused the district attorney bringing a case against him as having been “bought” by Mr. Soros, the philanthropist. That is misleading, though the men do have a financial connection.

🐣 RT @ @ZelenskyyUa We have a result which we have been working on. An Agreement was signed on the Establishment of the Field Office of the @IntlCrimCourt in 🇺🇦. ¤ This step will allow international justice to be even more active in investigating the crimes of the Russian military on Ukrainian soil.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1639008415707021312?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports “Ukraine is preparing a powerful counteroffensive that will shock the whole world,” said Dan Rice, adviser to the Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi. Rice is an American combat veteran who last spring was appointed special adviser to the Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
🖼 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1638991197782921248?s=20/photo/1
// with “Russian warship” painting

🐣 RT @petestrzok Wasting away in Decompensationville
Searching for his lost packet of ketchup
Some people claim that there’s a Donald to blame
But I know, it’s the deep state’s fault
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1638987029269585920?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump • Isn’t it terrible that D.A. Bragg refuses to do the right thing and “call it a day?” He would rather indict an innocent man and create years of hatred, chaos, and turmoil, than give him his well deserved “freedom.” The whole Country sees what is going on, and they’re not going to take it anymore. They’ve had enough! There was no Error made, No Misdemeanor, No Crime and, above all, NO CASE. They spied on my campaign, Rigged the Election, falsely Impeached, cheated and lied. They are HUMAN SCUM!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /2020 UTC 23 MAR/ RU forces continue to press round-the-clock attacks on urban areas. UKR reports that Russian losses are mounting in men, materiel and vehicles.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1638998242976321569?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @GlasnostGoneMordor fuck up. Due to Putin’s disastrous invasion of #Ukraine, Russia’s military stocks are so low, it can’t deliver weapons/ammo bought by foreign countries. #Indian Air Force report had planned a “major delivery” this year, that will not take place. https://tinyurl.com/29k78u3e
⋙ 🐣 who would want that junk? tanks are so poorly designed the turret (with gunner) sits on top of the ammo store; Ukrainians have a game comparing how far the turrets fly; Western tanks have ammo store so it blows away from the tank body, sparing crew

🐣 RT @UA_patriot_news 👀 The General Staff stated that the information was published erroneously, the invaders are still in #NovaKakhovka. The General Staff also noted that we will definitely liberate this settlement.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @sumlenny The Ukrainian Army has liberated Nova Kakhovka – a strategically important town on the south bank of the Dnipro river, across Kherson + slightly to the north. With the control over Nova Kakhovka, Ukraine regains control over the its Dnipro dam, and controls every Dnipro dam now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sumlenny Before the Russians left Nova Kakhovka, they have raided houses of the locals and looted every piece of consumer electronics they could found, as well pieces of cloth, jewellery etc., media report. Russian army is a pathetic gang of rapists and looters.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sumlenny CORRECTION: Ukrainian Army says only that the Russians have LEFT Nova Kakhovka, not that the Ukrainian units have ENTERED it. My fault. But as the Kherson case demonstrated: after the Russians go (being pushed away), Ukrainians enter within 1-2 days (first clearing landmines etc)

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR All units of the russian army left from occupied Novaya Kakhovka, Kherson region, the General Staff of Ukraine says. ¤ What a news! #SlavaUkraini
🌎 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1638950488547663886?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @gtconway3dg [not @gtconway3rd] holy hell
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gtconway3dg/status/1638889367329447936?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump WHY WON’T BRAGG DROP THIS CASE? EVERYBODY SAYS THERE IS NO CRIME HERE. I DID NOTHING WRONG! IT WAS ALL MADE UP BY A CONVICTED NUT JOB WITH ZERO CREDIBILITY, WHO HAS BEEN DISPUTED BY HIGHLY RESPECTED PROFESSIONALS AT EVERY TURN. BRAGG REFUSES TO STOP DESPITE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY. HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL WHO JUST DOESN’T CARE ABOUT RIGHT OR WRONG NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HURT. THIS IS NO LEGAL SYSTEM, THIS IS THE GESTAPO, THIS IS RUSSIA AND CHINA, BUT WORSE. DISGRACEFUL!

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Oh my god. Running out of words to describe how crazed he is
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1638929826471088130?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonald Trump District Attorney Bragg is a danger to our Country, and should be removed immediately, along with Radical Lunatic Bombthrower Jack Smith, who is harassing and intimidating innocent people at levels not seen before, “Get Trump” Letitia James, the worst Attorney General in the United States, and Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis, who is trying to make PERFECT phone calls into a plot to destroy America, but reigns over the most violent Crime Scene in America, and does nothing about it!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/ 1200 UTC 23 MAR/ Wagner continued piecemeal attacks along the North [M-03] axis, where stubborn UKR defense broke up attacks at Bohdanivka. RU forces are reported to have sustained heavy losses in positional fighting in the northern and riverfront areas of Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1638871617408204800?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ground Forces of Ukraine about #Bakhmut: ¤ PMC “Wagner” is losing considerable strength and is running out of steam. ¤ Very soon we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did before near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balaklia and Kupyansk.

🐣 RT @ EuromaidanPR Ukrainian officials and Crimean partisans are urging all ruzzians, collaborators and their family members to leave Crimea now because all escape routes will soon be cut off and all remaining enemies will face death or arrest.

⭕ 22 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @ JohnFugelsang OK Donald Trump attacking somebody for Covid deaths is like Donald Trump attacking somebody for adultery.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/1638725943979294721?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Now that Ron DeSanctimonious is finally admitting he’s in the Race by beginning to fight back, and now that his Polls have crashed so he has no other choice, let me explain the facts. He is, for a Republican, an average Governor, he got 1.2 million less Votes in Florida than me, he fought for massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare, and wanted Social Security minimum age to be raised to 70-years-old, or more. He is a disciple of Paul Ryan, and did whatever Ryan told him to do. Florida has been successful for many years, long before I put Ron there-It’s amazing what Ocean and Sunshine will do! Surprise, Ron was a big Lockdown Governor on the China Virus, sealing all beaches and everything else for an extended period of time, was Third Worst in the Nation for COVID-19 Deaths (losing 86,294 People), Third Worst for Total Number of Cases, at 7,516,906. Other Republican Governors did MUCH BETTER than Ron and, because I allowed them this “freedom,” never closed their States. Remember, I left that decision up to the Governors! For COVID Death Rates Per State, Ron, as Governor of Florida, did worse than New York. In Education, Florida ranks among the worst in the Country and on crime statistics, Florida ranked Third Worst in Murder, Third Worst in Rape, and Third Worst in Aggravated Assault. For 2022, Jacksonville was ranked as one of the Top 25 Major Crime Cities in the Country, with Tampa and Orlando not doing much better. On Education, Florida ranks #39 in Health & Safety in the Country, #50 in Affordability, and #30 in Education & Childcare, HARDLY GREATNESS THERE! The fact is, Ron is an average Governor, but the best by far in the Country in one category,Public Relations where he easily ranks Number One. But it is just a Mirage — just look at facts and figures they don’t lie — And we don’t want Ron as our President!

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Unlike Putin who skulks around in the dark well behind the frontline in embarrassingly staged events, today #Ukraine’s president Zelensky is in the Donetsk region where heavy fighting is taking place. He visited the frontline positions in the Bakhmut area
🖼 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1638510720496148481?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ PresidentUA: President visited frontline positions in the Donetsk region and awarded the defenders of Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/msxee55c

🧵 RT @S_R_Anders I don’t feel like people are grasping how strange it is for the D.C. Circuit to have moved at lightning speed on this. ¤ Or what I think it might mean: that DOJ thinks there is still classified information in the wild and Corcoran can lead them to it.
📌 https://twitter.com/S_R_Anders/status/1638674805175074816?s=20
⋙ NYT: Appeals Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Hand Over Records in Documents Inquiry https://tinyurl.com/4uewmk2w
// The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.

WaPo: Ukraine, pumped up by Western weapons, is held back by slow deliveries https://tinyurl.com/4tanr8ky Officials: “[T]he West’s strategy has come at a cost to Ukraine, but … it also reflected the political realities of mustering a broad, international coalition”

🐣 RT @McFaul After the collapse of the USSR, a democratic Russia had the chance to be a major, respected European power. Putin however has pushed Russia a different way, turning Russia (yet again) into a vassal of an Asian autocratic power. Such a wasted opportunity. Oh well.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Actual footage of Rob DeSantis changing his position on Vladimir Putin. ¤ One day it’s a mere territorial spat. The next day he’s a war criminal. ¤ What does this tell you? ¤ He’s poll-driven, scared, and Lady McSantis is flensing him for his pathetic opening act.
💽 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1638718328075358208?s=20/photo/1
// flipping dolphin

🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Emperor Xi Jinping paid a royal visit to Pu Tin, regional governor of the northern Chinese province of Ruxia.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1638570114026029057?s=20

⋙ That’s what it looked like, because that is what is happening. Xi was beaming and Putin looked the servant that he is. This was the greatest humiliation Russia has ever seen.

⋙ This isn’t an alliance, it’s boss and lackey. Xi isn’t talking about fighting NATO or the US. He’ll take Russia first. Putin is trying to buy extra hours in power by selling Russia to China.

⋙ Putin’s insane war on Ukraine is worsening the Russian demographic crisis, depopulating the country. China isn’t doing well and needs space, resources, and victories. Putin’s nationalist supporters see what’s happening.

⋙ China has issued maps that list swaths of Russian border territory with Chinese names and configurations. Putin would give that up to do what, take Bakhmut temporarily? Why not? He doesn’t care about Russia or Russians at all.

⋙ This will be the choice Russia faces when defeated and ejected from Ukraine. To crawl back to Europe with concessions, accountability, and reparations or to become a gas station province of the Chinese dictatorship.

⋙ The US should not make the same mistakes with Xi that it made with Putin. Xi and his gang are self-interested and couldn’t care less about Putin or this supposed friendship. They respect strength and will advance if faced by weakness in Ukraine and elsewhere.

🐣 RT @AlexandruC4 Kirby: Depleted Uranium Is “Commonplace Munition,” If Russia Is Worried About Their Tanks, Move Them Out Of Ukraine

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1945 UTC 22 MAR/ President Zelensky visits frontline positions in Bakhmut. Wagner attacks on Bohdanivka and Hyrhorivka repelled. UKR breaks up Russian VDV assaults on Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1638626877995622426?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Many points in China’s plan are based on UN principles & should be universally adopted. ¤ Point #1 is Respect for the Sovereignty of other nations. Russia has FAILED on this point. ¤ The Chinese plan takes issue with alliances like NATO and with sanctions. These are non-starters. [re: https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1638547352536457219?s=20 ]

⭕ 21 Mar 2023

CNN: Fox News producer files explosive lawsuits against the network, alleging she was coerced into providing misleading Dominion testimony https://tinyurl.com/2trp9dpv

🐣 RT @McFaul So Putin got the photo-up with Xi. That was very important to him. But what else did he get out of Xi visit? Your thoughts?

⋙ 🐣 RT @vtchakarova Putin got from Xi visit the insurance that China will provide the main lifeline for Moscow to survive the Western sanctions and the key defence-technological cooperation for Moscow to sustain the war of attrition. Putin bet on China when he decided to make a move on Ukraine and his assessment turned to be correct. Now, Russia’s victory (even frozen conflict) over Ukraine is China’s best case scenario to confront the US with two fronts in the upcoming systemic conflict between Washington and Beijing. We’re already living in Cold War 2.0 between the West and the #DragonBear; and the moment when China decides to deliver military aid to Russia, this war will officially turn into a proxy war. This will also be the moment when Russia officially will lose its global power status, which is why Moscow is trying to refrain from potential China’s military aid at an industrial scale as of now. #geopolitics

WaPo: U.S. could sanction Chinese firms if Beijing sends arms to Russia https://tinyurl.com/mr3hrry6 “The United States would likely respond to a stepped-up Chinese military aid effort by punishing the specific Chinese companies and financial institutions involved”
// As Xi meets Putin, American officials have options for targeted financial moves in response to any military support

CNN: White House official emphasizes US support for Ukraine in Bakhmut and anticipated spring offensive https://tinyurl.com/43jsypbd “[W]e’re going do is stay focused on making sure that President [Volodymyr] Zelensky has what he needs, wherever he chooses to fight” ~ Kirby

🧵 RT @HeliosRunner 5/ Now as i talked about Ru army in first place, let’s talk about #Wagner in #Bakhmut (of course with all the arty support of Ru army but, diff approach there) ¤ So there is actually some very good news we have received 2 hours ago & needed some times to check all of it.. let’s go
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/HeliosRunner/status/1638267364750794752?s=20/photo/1
// rest of thread

🐣 RT @svdate The coup-attempting former president appears to be calming down. Only about half the words in his latest screed are in all caps.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/svdate/status/1638317093710864386?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Reports, and almost everybody, says, even after in-depth legal study and review, that there was NO CRIME, NO AFFAIR, NO BOOKKEEPING ERROR OR MISDEMEANOR, NO “NOTHING,” OTHER THAN NOW PROVEN LIES BY MICHAEL COHEN, A CONVICTED FELON AND PERJURER, AND THE STRONG LIKELIHOOD OF AN EXTORTION PLOT AGAINST ME. So, after getting CRUSHED yesterday by Cohen’s highly respected attorney, with the case against me FULLY DISPROVEN, why is the D.A. searching for yet another “witness?” TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME!

🐣 RT @ MeidasTouch 🚨MASSIVE BREAKING: Special counsel Jack Smith presented compelling evidence to a federal court that shows Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents. The judge said there could be indications of criminal violations.
ABCNews: Special counsel claims Trump deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents https://tinyurl.com/54b99bv4 U.S. Judge Beryl Howell wrote that “Jack Smith’s office had made a “prima facie showing that [Trump] had committed criminal violations”
// The judge said there could be indications of criminal violations, per sources
// Prosecutors have preliminary evidence that Donald Trump misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials

WaPo: U.S. will speed transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, Pentagon says https://tinyurl.com/4kz76326 //➔ great to see this response to a strong bipartisan appeal
// The disclosure came as senators urged the Pentagon to review its assumptions about what it needs to counter Russia

NYT, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann: Make No Mistake, the Investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels Scheme Is Serious https://tinyurl.com/mrxrfycu Michael Cohen did prison time for carrying out Trump’s orders; should Trump get off scot-free?

🐣 RT @BillKristol “Rupert Murdoch succeeded where Vladimir Putin failed. He turned Americans against each other, promoting anger, hatred and lies. Murdoch knew Trump’s claim the election was stolen was a lie but Fox News persuaded millions of Americans that it was true.”
⋙ SydneyMorningHerald: Murdoch succeeded where Putin failed. Time for a Fox hunt https://tinyurl.com/dwehy29v
// We believe a royal commission into media concentration is now needed to defend our democracy. For the Coalition parties, this is a crucial moment.

🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien A very interesting UkrainIan army update on Bakhmut tonight . Says openly that Russian offensive action in the area seems to be running out of steam because of the large losses they are suffering. Only a little while ago some were saying Ukraine should pull out.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1638266705548922893?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Bakhmut axis: the enemy continues its offensive operations, but is losing its offensive potential. The adversary keeps trying to capture the city, suffering major casualties, losing significant amount of weapons and military equipment. Ukrainian defenders are repelling numerous round-the-clock attacks of the occupiers in the vicinities of settlements of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Hryhorivka, and in the northern part of Bakhmut. Vasyukivka, Min’kivka, Bakhmut, Ivanivske, Stupochky, Predtechyne, Chasiv Yar, Kurdyumivka, Ozarianivka, and Pivnichne (Donetsk oblast), among others, came under enemy fire.

WaPo, David Ignatius: Here’s the real lesson from the showy Xi-Putin meeting https://tinyurl.com/yvnw4cdm “The paradox of the Ukraine war is that Putin’s bid for greater power in Europe has made him weaker. This diminished Russia will fall increasingly under China’s sway”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AVDIIVKA AXIS /1500 UTC 21 MAR/ RU forces unsuccessfully tried to advance in the vicinities of Berdchi, Avdiivka, Severna, Pervomaiske & Novomykhailivka. RU continues widespread shelling in the Avdiivka Area of Operations (AO).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1638162509809999872?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY: UKR reports heavy fighting in northern urban area. The 1800 (Kyiv) briefing of the UKR Gen’l Staff noted heavy RU losses and ‘diminished combat potential’ of RU units. UKR Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) into Bakhmut remain secure.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1638296408301207554?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ SpokespersonCHN Did the US really mean it when it said “call for a ceasefire” on Ukraine is going to be “unacceptable”?! Obviously the US is the most reluctant one to see a ceasefire in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 Russia needs to abide by: ¤ Point #1 of CHINA’S proposed Peace Plan: “Respecting the sovereignty of all countries” ¤ … by removing all of its troops from inside Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. ¤ That will make a ceasefire possible.

🐣 RT @general_ben I thought the Leader of the CCP wanted to play the role of peacemaker? Replacing Russian drones used to kill innocent Ukrainian civilians with Chinese drones…in support of the indicted war criminal, Vladimir Putin, won’t win a Nobel Prize for President Xi.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Telegraph 🇨🇳 China has sold more than $12 million in drones and drone parts to Russia since the invasion began, the New York Times has reported, citing official Russian customs data from a third-party data provider ¤ Read more here: https://tinyurl.com/bde6jr23

🐣 I’m on the side of people not paying a porn star hush money to cover up an affair in order to swing an election and then booking the payment as a “business expense.” If the person delivering the payment spends time in prison, seems the person paying should do the same.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1430 UTC 21 MAR/ RU shelling accompanied failed attacks at Hyrhorivka, Bohdanivka & Ivanivske. A Russian VDV assault on Predtechyne was broken up by UKR forces and artillery. Wagner attacks along the North [M-03] axis thwarted.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1638154734598078464?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Trump’s latest video is just an exhaustive breakdown of all of his crimes
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1638049610395705345?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 20 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost JUST IN: DJT is a fucking desperate lunatic.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637833938923327488?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @ @realDonald Trump Just Out: District Attorney Alvin Bragg received in EXCESS OF ONE MILLION DOLLARS from Radical Left Enemy of “TRUMP,” George Soros. Bragg is also very close to the Clinton Campaign. Republicans and Conservatives are more UNITED than they have been in many years. Even Democrats don’t like what’s going on with the Manhattan D.A. This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time!

💙 🐣 RT @AccountableGOP Donald Trump’s new attack ad against New York AG Alvin Bragg
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1637905682765692937?s=20/photo/1
// this is really sick
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Antidote4BS Weird that the data tell a different story than Fox and the Republican party are telling. It’s almost as if they’re, I dunno, intentionally deceiving Americans. https://tinyurl.com/396f432p
◕ https://twitter.com/Antidote4BS/status/1637910341530136576?s=20/photo/1
// New York crime statistics
⋙ 🐣 RT @joyhein8 He is playing a risky game here. That is 100% threatening and intimidating a prosecutor and it’s a crime.

🐣 RT @ RadioFreeTom Between the “Reagan tried to stop the hostage release” story and the Iraq retrospectives, I’m starting to see how easy it is to dupe a nation that can’t remember anything that happened more than a week ago. Take that any way you like.

🐣 RT @Laurieluvsmolly BREAKING-In 3rd Oath Keepers trial for J6, 4/6 are found GUILTY of all charges, including Connie Meggs from Florida who’s husband Kelly Meggs was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Enjoy fed prison w/o each other. Proud Boys are next. #MAGACult #NeverForgetJanuary6th
🖼 https://twitter.com/Laurieluvsmolly/status/1637877604500865024?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Molly Roberts: The right wing’s ‘woke’ obsession could come back to haunt it https://tinyurl.com/ye28h2h2

🐣 RT @StateDept .@SecBlinken on ending Russia’s unjust war on Ukraine: If China is committed to supporting an end to the war based on the principles of the @UN Charter as called for in Point One of its plan, it can engage with @ZelenskyyUa and Ukraine on this basis.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin, in his typical manner, compares the battle of Bakhmut with the battle of Stalingrad, i.e. hopes by the Russians to “somehow” win over the city, meanwhile the defenders are preparing reserves for a powerful push. Girkin believes the Russian command is intending to surpass the Germans in recklessness.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1637903563136401412?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] What is the “battle for Bakhmut”? – In essence (although the scale is much smaller) it is the “battle of Stalingrad in reverse.” In the battle for Stalingrad, our command managed to impose on the Germans a long and hopeless battle of attrition, while preparing reserves for a decisive strategic offensive. Moreover, the German intelligence knew about this, but for a number of reasons (the main one is the contempt for the enemy on the part of Hitler and the Wehrmacht high command) – the OKW did not respond to this preparation properly, confident that “we will fight back anyway.” They didn’t fight back. Now we just have to wait to see whether our amazing (in all respects superior in their amazingness to the strategists of the 3rd Reich) politicians and military leaders will repeat the mistakes made by the Wehrmacht at the end of 1942. So far, I personally believe that (taking into account the smaller scale of the battle, which cannot be said about the possible geo-political consequences), our command intends to surpass their German counterparts.

⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Funny enough, we’ve been hearing doom reports from Girkin for a year now. ¤ But I recently rewatched a few episodes from his livestreams about a year ago, and he was right about a lot of things. While the battle of the Donbas was only beginning, he was already predicting it may take a very long time to conclude, if it ever will. He predicted confidently mobilisation without a declaration of war. This was all before “successful regroupings” and other “gestures of goodwill”.

WaPo: DeSantis criticizes N.Y. prosecutor while invoking Trump’s alleged ‘porn star hush money payments’ https://tinyurl.com/4apd8wsx

💙 🐣 RT @wartranslated Here’s the longer bit of Girkin’s live stream today where he asks Putin to shut up, with more context. Girkin refers to Putin’s words about the lack of hypersonic missiles being the reason why Russia couldn’t invade Ukraine in 2014. And instead of properly taking command of the army, Putin is flying helicopter simulators.
🌎 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1637950468952391681?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KALIBR KNOCKOUT: A series of explosions have occurred at Dzhankoya in occupied Crimea. It ‘s reported that Ukrainian UAVs targeted a shipment of RU Kalibr cruise missiles– used by the Black Sea fleet to bombard Ukraine.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1637930325514031104?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Trump’s ability to summon large crowds and rile them up is his superpower: if he fails now, it could signal (finally) the air starting to leak out of his balloon 🙏

🐣 RT @maggieNYT Trump’s push for protesters is not getting a lot of takers from some of his high-profile supporters
⋙ NYT: Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P. https://tinyurl.com/46r65thb “[S]ome fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago”
// After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have publicly lobbied against it.

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost SAD! Weak!
⋙ 🐣 RT @oneunderscore__ I’m at the pro-Trump protest put on by the NY Young Republicans Club. Not a joke, there are more reporters here than Trump supporters. ¤ This was supposed to be the big one.
¤ https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637938437214044160?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/1430 UTC 20 MAR/ Gains by RU along the North [M-03] axis, with an uptick in urban fighting & contact near Ivanivske increases pressure on UKR forces. At present, UKR commanders must assess the security of Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) into the city.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1637823089152065539?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Oh my god.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637876725618208768?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonald Trump Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are “underage” (or possibly a man!). I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!

🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava Russia and China are “undermining the international order based on the rules that the US and many of our allies and partners have built since the end of WWII. They would like to rewrite the rules of the game around the world.” -Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.

🧵 RT @JoyceWhiteVance 1/ In addition to possible criminal charges in Manhattan, Trump has a lot of other problems. In federal court, a special counsel is investigating his role in election interference, insurrection & obstruction of Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote on 1-6.
📌 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1637767434378571778?s=20

⋙ 2/The special counsel is also investigating concealment of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago & Trump’s role in the false certification the items had been returned. A fed’l judge has ordered a lawyer to testify, using the crime fraud exception to the attorney client privilege.
⋙⋙ 🧵 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1637044295889833984?s=20

⋙ 3/ In Georgia, Trump is under investigation for election fraud. There is new reporting the Fulton County DA is seriously considering a RICO charge. [CNN link] https://tinyurl.com/2aexkm3k

⋙ 4/ Some of the investigations could expand. Charges in NY are expected to involve false business records created to conceal Trump’s payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels but there are possible charges involving manipulating property values for tax, loan & insurance advantages.

⋙ 5/ Special Counsel Jack Smith seems to be investigating the 1-6 cmte’s “Big Ripoff,” investigating the Save America PAC Trump used to raise millions of dollars by pushing fake claims of election fraud. Smith’s investigation is getting bigger as he follows where the evidence leads.

⋙ 6/That’s just the criminal side of Trump’s problems. He faces multiple serious civil matters including an April trial in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case & an upcoming NY AG matter that may put him out of business in New York.

⋙ 7/ If you want to stay on top of everything, including indictments if they happen, sign up for my newsletter, Civil Discourse. It’s free & we’ll be watching as Trump’s chickens come home to roost.

⭕ 19 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @MaquisVive “As of Nov 2022, Trump has been credibly accused of committing at least 56 criminal offenses since he launched his campaign for president in 2015.” ¤ Either you support the law or not. And you DON’T! ¤ President Trump’s staggering record of uncharged crimes
⋙ CREW: President Trump’s staggering record of uncharged crimes https://tinyurl.com/5cpxn3c9
// 9/22/2022

🐣 RT @JacobRubashkin Trump just sent out a fundraising email saying that if he would only “sell his soul to the globalist power brokers who’ve made a fortune off of destroying our country” then George Soros would call off the prosecution. ¤ All that’s missing are the ((())).
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1637548085134913536?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Jacob Rubashkin, ¤ There’s an easy way out of this mess.
I could renounce our America First agenda.
I could say that I’m ending my 2024 presidential campaign.
I could sell my soul to the globalist power brokers who’ve made a fortune off of destroying our country.
And within minutes, George Soros would call up his prosecutor and tell him to “leave Trump alone.”

🐣 RT @harrylitman A couple points about prospective testimony tomorrow from Robert Costello. 1) Team Trump has requested, as is their right under NY law; 2) whether he testifies is up to Grand Jury; 3) he’s the guy who emailed Cohen “sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”

🐣 RT @DefenseHQ [UK] In Bakhmut, there has been increasingly harsh criticism from Wagner directed at the government it fights for. ¤ Of the huge Russian casualties in this small sector, the vast majority are Wagner fighters. ¤ #WeStandWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1637524194316410881?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The EIGHTH demented rant of the day.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637654572234862593?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other Nations of a less than friendly nature, are busy “CARVING UP THE WORLD” as our once great United States of America sits back and watches. We are a Failing Nation, with Open Borders, Fake Elections, and a horrible Inflation Riddled Economy. We no longer set the standard, the standard sets us. Our so-called “Leader” does NOTHING except Eat, Sleep, and S..t! Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?”

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Oh my. Now 7 completely insane rants today. Also threatening Bragg—he clearly wants his cult members to attack him. ¤ Very Stable Genius indeed.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637646838093447168?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump CAN YOU IMAGINE THE GREAT NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, CORRECTLY REFERRED TO AS “NEW YORK CITY’S FINEST,” WHO, FOR THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME IN HISTORY, ENDORSED A PRESIDENT, ME, & HONORED ME AS “MAN OF THE YEAR,” HAVING TO DEFEND & PROTECT THE “DEFUNDERS” & “COP HATERS” OF THE RADICAL LEFT THAT WANT TO PUT THEIR GREATEST CHAMPION & FRIEND IN PRISON FOR A CRIME THAT DOESN’T EXIST..ALL THE WHILE THE SOROS BACKED D.A. ALLOWS MURDERERS & OTHER VIOLENT CRIMINALS TO FREELY ROAM THE SIDEWAKS OF N.Y.?

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump IT IS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF MANHATTAN WHO IS BREAKING THE LAW BY USING THE FAKE AND FULLY DISCREDITED TESTIMONY (EVEN BY THE SDNY!) OF A CONVICTED LIAR, FELON AND JAILBIRD, MICHAEL COHEN, TO INCREDIBLY PERSECUTE, PROSECUTE, AND INDICT A FORMER PRESIDENT, AND NOW LEADING (BY FAR!) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, FOR A CRIME THAT DOESN’T EXIST. ALVIN BRAGG SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE CRIME OF “INTERFERENCE IN A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Donald trump just called on the @NYPDnews to refuse to protect the people of New York from his potentially violent supporters.

WaPo: Biden warns Israeli leader on judicial changes https://tinyurl.com/yc2kwu7z Biden issued “a veiled warning to Netanyahu about his incendiary plan to overhaul the country’s judicial system”
// President tells Netanyahu democratic values “must remain a hallmark” of U.S.-Israel ties

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Whatever he has been taking before in pill form is now being used intravenously.
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Get a strait jacket. 😬
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637615848528678913?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump REMEMBER, THE SAME ANIMALS AND THUGS THAT WOULD DO THIS TO PERHAPS 200 MILLION PEOPLE, BUT ACTUALLY ALL AMERICANS, ARE THE COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS, RINOS, AND LOSERS THAT ARE PURPOSEFULLY DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY!

🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava “It’s all a lie! It’s for show!” -someone can be heard shouting at the 19th second of the video of Putin’s conversation with the residents of Mariupol.
💽 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1637574480619765761?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RepSwalwell It was Donald Trump who broadcasted to the world the FBI raided his home to retrieve top secret documents. And it’s Donald Trump who has broadcasted to the world that he’ll soon be arrested. His goal is acts of violence in his name. And we must be prepared to protect against it.

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Does Trump ever stop to think he’s admitting he was happy to employ Michael Cohen, the “convicted felon, jailbird & serial fake storyteller & liar” as long as he stuck loyally by his side & operated on his behalf?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1637588595300085762?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump JUST REPORTED THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT WITNESS TO GO BEFORE THE NEW YORK CITY GRAND JURY, A HIGHLY RESPECTED LAWYER WHO ONCE REPRESENTED CONVICTED FELON, JAILBIRD, AND SERIAL FAKE STORY TELLER AND LIAR, MICHAEL COHEN, WILL BE DOING SO TOMORROW AFTERNOON. THE INFORMATION HE WILL PRESENT WILL SUPPOSEDLY BE CONCLUSIVE AND IRREFUTABLE! WITCH HUNT!!!

🐣 RT @ AVDIIVKA AXIS/1515 UTC 19 MAR/ UKR smashed Russian offensive operations against Kamianka, Avdiivka, Vodiane, Pervomaiske. RU losses were considerable. Enemy casualties numbered in the hundreds, with the loss of numerous vehicles and equipment, including 15 tanks and 9 BMPs.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1637470822901096453?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1600 UTC 19 MAR/ Positional fighting continues in urban area. RU forces have advanced NE from the Korsunskogo Street salient and are now in contact near the city center. UKR repelled RU attacks at Dubovo-Vasylivka, Hyrhorivka & Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1637483722181169154?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1545 UTC 19 MAR/ Heavy urban combat continues in Bakhmut. The 0600 (Kyiv) briefing of the UKR Gen’l Staff reports that RU forces staged attacks on UKR positions in the N sector of the city. UKR repelled RU attacks at Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Hyrhorivka & Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1637479039915925506?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost After 24 hours of silence, we get a new totally deranged rant from Orange Mussolini. Now its all Biden’s fault.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1637497294064074752?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Biden wants to pretend he has nothing to do with the Manhattan D.A.’s Assault on Democracy when, in fact, he has “stuffed” the D.A.’s Office with Department of Injustice people, including one top DOJ operative from D.C. who is actually running the “Horseface” Witch Hunt. Bragg is a (Soros) Racist in Reverse, who is taking his orders from D.C. I beat them TWICE, doing much better the second time, and despite their DISINFORMATION campaign, they don’t want to run against “TRUMP” on my Great Record!

UAWire: Kyiv: Russian offensive on Bakhmut is failing https://tinyurl.com/2yt4cfa8

[E]xperts of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) argue that the statements of the Russian media that the Russian Armed Forces control most of Bakhmut are not true.

Russian bloggers claim that the sweep operation is currently underway in the territory of the AZOM metal processing plant. However, American military analysts have not found any evidence of this.

“ISW does not find visual evidence and Prigozhin’s words that the “Wagnerians” are allegedly already 600-700 meters away from the Bakhmut administrative center and on the West Bank of the Bakhmutka River. It is also not true that Russia allegedly occupied 70% of the city’s territory. According to ISW estimates, as of March 8, the Russian Federation occupied 50% of Bakhmut and since then the Russian forces have not advanced significantly, “American experts emphasized.

🧵 RT @P_Kallioniemi In today’s #vatniksoup I’ll be talking about genocide, children and national trauma. Throughout the 20th century, both in the Soviet Union and in Russia children have been suffering because of bad politics and structural negligence & now the kidnapped children face the same.1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1637472561675096065?s=20/photo/1

💙🐣📋 RT @djrothkopf Since 1968, five GOPers have been elected president. Of those five, four were elected under suspicious circumstances, only three won the popular vote, two were impeached (a total of three times), one should’ve been (Reagan for Iran-Contra) & one launched a massive illegal war.
⋙ 🐣 and since 1992, only once (2004) did the GOP win the popular vote

🐣 RT @HarZizn Andriy #Yermak, head of #Zelenskyi’s Office. Defense forces continue to contain the enemy in the East, their (the enemy’s) plans to occupy #Bakhmut are now failing. #War_in_Ukraine
¤ https://twitter.com/HarZizn/status/1637448587222343680?s=20

🐣 RT @Azovsouth 🔥🔥 The russians have already failed the operation to capture #Bakhmut ¤ Yes, there are very active battles there, they still continue to carry out dozens of attacks on inertia, but they are suffering huge losses. Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesman of the Eastern Group of 🇺🇦Force
¤ https://twitter.com/Azovsouth/status/1637455516656869376?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Ukrainian forces have conducted successful localised counterattacks in recent days south of Bakhmut around the T0504 road pushing Russian forces back and taking back captured positions. ¤ Heaviest fighting continues as Russian forces attempt to recapture the initiative in the area

🐣 RT @NewsHour Conservative activist Leonard Leo received the largest political donation of all time and now we’re learning how he is using the $1.6 billion.
⋙ PBS: What a conservative activist hopes to achieve with a billion-dollar donation https://tinyurl.com/55vbj26u
// Last August, conservative activist Leonard Leo received the largest political donation of all time, $1.6 billion. Before that, Leo was known for his role in reshaping the Supreme Court. Now, we are learning more about how he is using this massive pot of cash. Lisa Desjardins discussed the latest with Andrea Bernstein of ProPublica.

Andrea Bernstein, ProPublica: So, what is so fascinating about Leonard Leo is, he’s someone who sort of works behind the scenes, but was very much responsible, played a pivotal role in installing the 6-3 supermajority in the U.S. Supreme Court, the court that, of course, recently overturned Roe v. Wade, and made many other consequential decisions. ¤ And Leonard Leo was critical in creating the network that enabled that to happen. Now what he is looking to do is expand that outward, so it’s not just talking about law, but talking about law and politics and culture and media and bringing conservative values to all of those areas, and creating a pipeline of individuals who can go and work in organizations, in government advancing conservative causes.

WaPo: How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course https://tinyurl.com/2n48f5fr “Musk’s erratic leadership style … forc[ed] them to work at a breakneck pace to develop the technology and to push it out to the public before it was ready”
// Tesla’s campaign to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle has suffered amid mounting safety concerns — and the boss’s Twitter distraction

🐣 RT @NOELreports “I expect that the ICC will quickly approach Interpol and the contracting states and ask them for enforcement. Germany would then be obliged to arrest Putin and hand him over to the ICC if he entered Germany,” Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann said.

🐣 RT @EwangAlain Ukraine is using bakhmut to inflict heavy losses on the russians the ukrainians could still withdraw from bakhmut which is not even strategical but they have their plan which is to occupy Russians while they launch a counter offensive elsewhere

PravdaUA: Prigozhin creates pretexts to justify Wagner Group’s inability to encircle Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/4davtee8
// Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC, is trying to create pretexts to explain why his mercenaries cannot complete the encirclement

⭕ 18 Mar 2023

WaPo: The Jan. 6 investigation is the biggest in U.S. history. It’s only half done https://tinyurl.com/2p9cevpu
// Nearly 1,000 people have been charged to date, and a federal courthouse strains to handle what may be years more of trials

[Randall] Eliason, [a former federal prosecutor] said that while the riot cases may be about halfway over, there are indications some of the other branches of the investigation — like the false electors scheme or efforts to use Justice Department officials to undo the election results — appear to be further along, because the witnesses now being subpoenaed include some of the most thorny legal matters and the people closest to former president Donald Trump. Those are generally indicators that an investigation is nearing the end of the fact-gathering phase, he said. ¤ “There are a lot of court fights over privilege, and those take time, and you can’t just plow past them and not try to get critical evidence,” Eliason said. …

[P]rosecutors expect that the total number of people charged with crimes related to Jan. 6 may be somewhere between 1,600 and 2,100 people, according to people familiar with the letter. The letter was first reported by Bloomberg News.

That calculation does not include what, if any, charges result from the federal special counsel investigation into activities surrounding Trump allies’ efforts to use fake electors or other subterfuge to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.

As of Wednesday, judges had sentenced 408 Jan. 6 defendants, but only 88 of those were for felonies, mostly for one of two charges: obstruction of an official proceeding or assault on law enforcement. …

The five Jan. 6 defendants who have been convicted at trial of assaulting police have received an average sentence of more than four and a half years in prison. ¤ Defendants convicted at trial of obstructing an official proceeding have earned an average sentence nearly 19 months higher than those who pleaded guilty to the same charge. …

FBI officials have previously notified Congress that “approximately 2,000 individuals are believed to have been involved with the siege” of the U.S. Capitol, though it was unclear at the time from that statement whether that number of people would face criminal charges. …

🐣 RT @EricssonUlric Russia was believed to be a superpower until early 2022.
2021: second army in the world.
2022: second army in Ukraine.
2023: second army in Bakhmut.

🐣 RT @SqueeBib If one thing is clear is that ukraine had caused Russia massive loses and international ridicule at Bakhmut

🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava This is the culmination of the “big” offensive on Bakhmut. The Russian enemy has exhausted its combat resources, both in terms of manpower and heavy weapons. All possible remnants of additional units are already being thrown in – desperate last-ditch attempts to take the fortress
⋙ 🐣 RT @BastyBoy975 There is lots of evidence to suggest Russia is beginning to run low on resources and morale. Bakhmut is taking its toll.

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russia never went through the procedure of joining the UN, and yet it is about to chair its Security Council, even as it fights a war of aggression and commits atrocities. This should be stopped.
⋙ TIME: The Danger of Russia Becoming President of the U.N. https://tinyurl.com/bdu23t2e
// The U.N. is about to allow the fox to guard the chicken coop. Russia must be stopped

TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Trump Did It Again https://tinyurl.com/5dkbr6ct “Trump’s message today to the American people has already come through loud and clear: I am too dangerous to arrest”
// If arrested, he’s called on “protesters” to come to his defense.

… This morning, Donald Trump threatened to summon a mob—for the second time in two years—to his defense. The former president of the United States and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024, facing a possible indictment in New York, claimed to know the exact day on which he would be arrested and then called on his supporters to “protest.” Trump and his cult know what a call for “protest” means: The last time he rallied his faithful supporters this way, they stormed the U.S. Capitol, which resulted in death and destruction and many, many prison sentences.

… Trump’s message today to the American people has already come through loud and clear: I am too dangerous to arrest.

… Trump himself today upped the ante by saying, in effect, that it doesn’t matter what’s in the indictment. Instead, he is warning all of us, point-blank, that he will violate the law if he wants to, and if you don’t like it, you can take it up with the mob that he can summon at will. This is pure authoritarianism, the flex of a would-be American caudillo who is betting that our fear of his goons is greater than our commitment to the rule of law. Once someone like Trump issues that kind of challenge, it doesn’t matter if the indictment is for murder, campaign-finance violations, or mopery with intent to gawk: The issue is whether our legal institutions can be bullied into paralysis.

… Trump, once again, is stress testing our institutions, and if he can scare off a state indictment by threatening a riot, he’ll do it again. After all, he thinks he got away with it on January 6, 2021—and so far, he has. …

Well, not exactly silence. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose entire career is bound up in a handful of extremist votes in his own caucus, has Trump’s back. “Here we go again,” he tweeted after Trump’s call to action. “An outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.” This is the same Kevin McCarthy who once, for a fraction of a second, held Trump responsible for nearly getting him killed. But the amalgam of ambition, fear, and opportunism that holds McCarthy’s skeleton together is, apparently, a powerful epoxy.

I am not so sure that this panicked, all-caps call from Trump will be to his benefit. It’s possible that Trump, finally, is approaching his Joe McCarthy moment, although many of his critics (including me) have seen such moments come and go. Nevertheless, one riot might be explained away. Two riots, with the promise of more to come, might be intolerable. ¤ But if this is what the Republicans want, so be it. If an indictment secures Trump the nomination, it will likely also cost him the election. … What happens next with his case is up to the legal system, but whether this lawless and deranged authoritarian returns to Washington is up to all of us.

🐣 RT @eorden Alvin Bragg: “Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment.”
⋙ Politico: Manhattan DA Bragg privately warns of intimidation after Trump calls for protest https://tinyurl.com/5n7btde2
// Bragg’s office appears poised to bring criminal charges against Trump in connection with a hush-money payment made to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels.

🐣 RT @ highbrow_nobrow Nixon conspired with a foreign power in order to win the 1968 presidential election. @politico
⋙ Politico, John Farrell: It took decades to unravel Nixon’s sabotage of Vietnam peace talks. Now, the full story can be told. https://tinyurl.com/2p9e8u9e
⋙⋙ 🐣 When’s the last time a GOP president won power without cheating? Iran/Contra was swept under the rug. 2004 was marred by dirty trick placing of anti-gay referenda on ballots (by a gay operative, no less): the party plays dirty: it has since Ike ¤ & don’t get me started on pop vote
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok …that time Republicans won an election by sabotaging a US President working to bring American hostages home from Iran. ¤ Now you know why Republicans didn’t fuss about Russia helping Trump. The GOP’s been lying & cheating so long, they’ve normalized screwing Americans to win.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt More than four decades later, a secret revealed: How a prominent Texas politician says he unwittingly joined a mission to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s 1980 campaign by urging the Iranians to hold 52 American hostages until after the election..
⋙⋙ NYT: A Four-Decade Secret: The Untold Story of Sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s Re-election https://tinyurl.com/4pfs9aem
// Nearly 43 years later, a prominent Texas politician said he unwittingly took part in a Middle East tour with a clandestine agenda.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @OK_Dumbass It’s almost like Republicans have a long & illustrious history of incredibly dirty tricks that were meant to interfere with free & fair elections right here in the United States of America.
🖼 https://twitter.com/OK_Dumbass/status/1637190077418811397?s=20/photo/1
// Brooks Brothers riot

🐣 RT @Jetson77 Okay. This is today. He doesn’t know that @SpeakerMcCarthy has zero power over Alvin Bragg or Fani Willis or Jack Smith. ¤ Hey Kevin, likely time you get out in front of whatever twice impeached, one-term, criminal, traitor-wretch is threatening you with.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Jetson77/status/1637190331686076416?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump IF KEVIN MCCARTHY DOESN’T END THESE INVESTIGATIONS IMMEDIATELY, I WILL DIRECT MY SUPPORTERS IN CONGRESS TO VOTE TO END HIS SPEAKERSHIP AND I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LEAK SOME “INTERESTING VIDEOS” I TOOK OF HIM AT MAR-A-LAGO! END THE WITCH HUNT NOW!

🐣 RT @RachelBitecofer How many people show up to defend the criminal in chief?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1637136209939136514?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump IT’S TIME!!! WE ARE A NATION IN STEEP DECLINE, BEING LED INTO WORLD WAR III BY A CROOKED POLITICIAN WHO DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HE’S ALIVE, BUT WHO IS SURROUNDED BY EVIL & SINISTER PEOPLE WHO, BASED ON THEIR ACTIONS ON DEFUNDING THE POLICE, DESTROYING OUR MILITARY, OPEN BORDERS, NO VOTER I.D., INFLATION, RAISING TAXES, & MUCH MORE, CAN ONLY HATE OUR NOW FAILING USA. WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!

🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Successful crime unpunished leads to escalation. 1/5
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1637128962596896768?s=20

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua After the decision of the International Criminal Court to arrest putin, the Kremlin is looking for a successor to the President of the russian federation, — said Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua Yusov noted that on March 17, russian propagandists did not air their shows discussing The Hague, because discussing it would be a “strange and too loud” for the population of the russian federation.
[ I doubt this ]

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Retweet if you don’t expect to be arrested this week for concealing and falsely documenting a $130K hush-money payment to a porn star you claim you didn’t have sex with.

🧵 RT @ anders_aslund The ICC indictment of Putin is likely to have far-reaching consequences.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1637085934603624450?s=20

1. 123 countries have a priori committed themselves to arrest him – sovereign immunity will not shield him.
2. Putin cannot be invited to any international forum, including the G20 & UN.
3. No decent political leader can have any contact with him. The leaders of Austria, France, Germany & Hungary can no longer even talk to Putin.
4. Scholz & Macron can no longer play mediators between Russia & Ukraine.
5. Orban can no longer thrive on giveaways from Putin.
6. Those who continue seeing Putin will fall into disrepute & lose international standing: ¤ Xi Jingping & Erdogan!
7. Russia can not be a serious international negotiator until Putin is gone.
8. Either Russian leaders may finally hesitate to engage in Putin’s crimes against humanity. Personal sanctions did not suffice with them, but the indictment against Putin shows that he is a deadender
⋙ Sam Greene: “Put bluntly, Putin has no face left to save.”
⋙⋙ CEPA, Sam Greene: Putin Becomes a Global Outlaw https://tinyurl.com/bp9ruxe5
Needless to say, paranoid Putin who almost only travels by armored train now (like Stalin and Kim Il-Sung) will stop traveling abroad altogether out of fear of being arrested.

🐣 RT @MSNBC Andrew Weissman explains why Trump’s rhetoric in his latest Truth Social post could be legally problematic. ¤ “It’s notable that he did not say you should protest ‘peacefully’. It was sort of conspicuous that he left that word out.”
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1637100464079552512?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @front_ukrainian Russia is losing up to 1500 people a day during the current offensive, mostly in the town of Bakhmu[t] – The Guardian ¤ “Russia is losing 1200,1300 and even 1500 soldiers a day during the current offensive,mainly in Bakhmut the publication reported, citing a senior NATO official.

🐣 👉 to avoid amplifying tfg, I won’t be tweeting or RTing on that topic …

🧵 RT @U24_gov_ua U24 ambassador @TimothyDSnyder opposes russian propaganda on a regular basis. He recently spoke at a meeting of the @UN Security Council, convened by moscow to discuss “russophobia,” and explained how russia uses this term to justify its genocide against the Ukrainian people
// “The term russophobia” has been exploited during this war as a form of imperial propaganda. It has served this last year as a justification for russian war crimes in Ukraine.”
📌 https://twitter.com/U24_gov_ua/status/1637096429859553282?s=20

🐣 RT @SpeakerMcCarthy Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump. ¤ I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.

⬇️ I’m not retweeting any of these incendiary Trump tweets to not contribute to hysteria ⬇️
🐣 RT @petestrzok This from the man who declared “I am your retribution.” ¤ “Be there. Will be wild!” 2.0
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1637063597187538944?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE…
🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Page 2: NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok So if indicted, law enforcement is worried about violence from the followers of the guy telling his followers two weeks ago, ¤ “This is the final battle, they know it…Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country”? ¤ This is the stuff of failed states.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 New on @MSNBC: Local, state, and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that Donald Trump could be indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations. @NBCNews

WaPo, Chris Sununu: Some of my GOP colleagues have lost their moral compass on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4y9vdu3u “‘America First’ does not mean ‘America Only.’ It means putting our interests first — and that’s what opposing Russia in Ukraine does.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1020 UTC 18 MAR/ Positional combat continues in the urban areas of Bakhmut. S of the city, UKR repelled RU attacks at Ivanivske & Klischiivka; the latter engagement confirms UKR progress east of the canal network. Air defense downs a Russian Su-25 strike aircraft.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1637033985875361792?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Feher_Junior Zaluzhnyi insisted on #Bakhmut’s protection. The greatest General ever, if he wants victory, he gets it. In this moment all roads lead to Bakhmut. The Rashists will be demilitarized #SlavaUkraïni
💽 https://twitter.com/Feher_Junior/status/1636845889426710532?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports Bakhmut situation today. In the southern part, fighting continues around the Mig-17 monument. To the northeast, Russian forces failed to cross the river and retreated. Russian troops have approached the area near the O0506 at Khromove, heaviest fighting going on in that area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1637012856737595393?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 17 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @highbrow_nobrow ⚖️ Members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, are attempting to manufacture legal justifications for cementing permanent minority rule in the United States.
⋙ Politico: The Federalist Society Isn’t Quite Sure About Democracy Anymore https://tinyurl.com/2rvc3xbt
// After recent Supreme Court wins, the society’s youth arm debates the next stage for the conservative legal movement.

🐣 RT @MikeSington “This is a huge development.” Final preparations being made to arrest Donald Trump next week. Trump will “be fingerprinted and processed like every other defendant”. The Secret Service will make the decision whether to handcuff the former president or not. (Video: Fox News)
💽 https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1636849571707092994?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @TonyHussein4 Hunter Biden, as a private citizen, has every right to pursue his own business endeavors. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were part of the Trump administration when they made $640 million. After leaving the White House, Kushner received $2 billion from Saudi Crown Prince MBS.

NYT: Judge Rules Trump Lawyer Must Testify in Documents Inquiry https://tinyurl.com/3d9ytkpv Lawyer Corcoran had another lawyer draft a statement saying Trump has no more documents; a later search turned up many, including ones marked “classified”
// The ruling found that the government had met the threshold for the crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to get around attorney-client privilege if they believe a crime has been committed.

🐣 RT @apmassaro3 “Historically, Ukraine was unfairly underappreciated and I regret it took bloodshed and a devastating war for the world to realize how cool we are. We were always cool, but it just took you too much time to realize that.” – Kuleba https://pic.twitter.com/7gN6vabyfo

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY TACMAP /2240 UTC 17 MAR/ Urban fighting continues. The line of contact in the north sector of the city conforms with the rail right-of-way. In the south, RU forces are attempting to close the gap between the H-32 and T-05-13 HWYs. #BakhmutMap
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1636860067096952833?s=20/photo/1

MSNBC Maddowblog, Steve Benen: Trump sees American foes, not Russia, as ‘the greatest threat’ https://tinyurl.com/2bt4vkpm “As visions go, this is more a weird and paranoid rant than the basis for a major party presidential platform”
// Donald Trump sees the U.S. as a “third-world dictatorship” filled with nefarious villains who are far scarier than Russia. How many Republicans agree?

As Donald Trump’s latest presidential campaign moves forward, he’s taking a step that he didn’t bother with in 2016 or 2020: The Republican keeps releasing brief videos in which he addresses a specific controversy or policy issue. The New York Times reported a couple of months ago, “The videos, in which the former president speaks directly to the camera, are aimed at reassuring supporters that he’s focused on topics other than his 2020 defeat, an issue that flopped with midterm voters.”

As we discussed last month, these clips aren’t real policy proposals. It’s not as if the former president sat down with a bunch of wonks, explored the granular minutiae of governing solutions, and formulated a set of white papers which he’s unveiling episodically in video form. ¤ On the contrary, these videos have all the sophistication of bumper stickers written in crayon.

His newest installment, for example, features the Republican speaking for roughly three-and-a-half minutes about his geopolitical vision — which is ridiculous, but which is very much worth paying attention to.

Trump begins the video by claiming, “We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden,” which isn’t even close to being true. (Tensions were far higher, for example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.) Moments later, he characterized Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “proxy battle” that needs to end “immediately.”

Closer to home, the former president believes there’s a “globalist neo-con establishment” that is “perpetually dragging us into endless wars,” “pretending” to fight for democracy, and turning the United States into a “third-world dictatorship.” Trump’s solution? “The State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the Deep Staters,” he added.

Evidently, once the United States’ military, intelligence agencies, and diplomatic corps have been remodeled to fit Trump’s wishes, he intends to “reevaluate” our NATO alliance, its purpose, and its mission. This would, of course, be entirely in line with the Kremlin’s dream scenario, though that’s apparently not a consideration the former president is worried about. From the video’s official transcript:

“[T]he greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, U.S.A.-hating people that represent us. It’s the abolition of our national borders. It’s the failure to police our own cities. It’s the destruction of the rule of law from within. It’s the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates, like nobody can believe is happening. It’s the Marxists who would have us become a Godless nation worshipping at the altar of race, and gender, and environment. And it’s the globalist class that has made us totally dependent on China and other foreign countries that basically hate us.”

After downplaying the threat Russia poses, Trump drives the point home once more, concluding that American “globalists” are “doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed,” as these Americans chase “monsters and phantoms overseas.”

As visions go, this is more a weird and paranoid rant than the basis for a major party presidential platform. In fact, if one were to read the transcript, strip it from context, and not realize that it came from Trump’s political operation, a typical person might think it was an unhinged tirade from some random person with a YouTube channel that has four followers.

Or possibly a social media message from someone who seems a little too eager to promote pro-Kremlin propaganda. ¤ After all, most mainstream Americans have no reason to believe the United States is a “third-world dictatorship” filled with nefarious, villainous officials who are far scarier than Russia and China. And yet, Trump not only believes this, he released a video bragging about it.

As a practical matter, it’s likely that Vladimir Putin will celebrate the clip and prepare new efforts to help return the former American president to the White House in order to advance the kind of agenda Moscow desperately wants to see. But as a political matter, I’d also love to know just how many congressional Republicans — and other GOP presidential aspirants — agree with the message Trump trumpeted in this video.

🚫🐣 RT @vinm300 17 March: Kuleba is in demand
Blinken is on the line
Then Qin Gang wants a word
Ukraine holds all the cards – full counter offensive
Xi knows the score on sovereignty
(Gradual disengagement, demilitarised zone, timeline-which is key. All likely discussed – Putin is pulling out)

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Of course the criminals say the law doesn’t apply to them. But the ICC arrest warrants are a BFD. No more dreams of Davos or travel to Dubai. Putin—AND his war criminal co-conspirators (only one named so far)—have doomed themselves by their own catastrophic aggression in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv Maria Zakharova commented on the issuance of an arrest warrant for Putin by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. ¤ “The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no significance for our country, including from the legal point of view. ¤ Russia is not a participant of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it. Russia is not cooperating with this body, and possible arrest ‘prescriptions’ coming from the International Court of Justice will be legally null and void for us.”

ICC: Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova https://tinyurl.com/y78fnwe9 “… allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) … ”

Today, 17 March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or “the Court”) issued warrants of arrest for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.

Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).

Ms Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, born on 25 October 1984, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms Lvova-Belova bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute).

Pre-Trial Chamber II considered, based on the Prosecution’s applications of 22 February 2023, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.

The Chamber considered that the warrants are secret in order to protect victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation. Nevertheless, mindful that the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that the public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes, the Chamber considered that it is in the interests of justice to authorise the Registry to publicly disclose the existence of the warrants, the name of the suspects, the crimes for which the warrants are issued, and the modes of liability as established by the Chamber.

The abovementioned warrants of arrests were issued pursuant to the applications submitted by the Prosecution on 22 February 2023.

🐣 RT @dansabbagh Russia is sustaining “1200, 1300 even 1500” casualties a day in its current offensive, mostly in Bakhmut. Killed to wounded ratio is one to three – senior Nato official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

🐣 RT @ReportWar1 🇺🇦🇧🇾The Ukrainian command is removing the 47th Brigade and part of the National Guard from the Belarusian borders. The soldiers who provoked the Belarusian border guards will be sent to Bakhmut, Kupyansk and Vuhledar. -by UkraineRuNews ¤ #UkraineRussianWar #Russia #Ukraine #Belarus

😅 RT @ heartagram83 “The Wanker group… excuse me. The Wagner group is wanking in Bakhmut for 9 months but can’t finish the job” 🤣🤣
⋙ 🐣 RT @saintjavelin Oh no! Putin’s video diary was LEAKED! 😳
💽 https://twitter.com/heartagram83/status/1636746367325605888?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @BHL From #Kharkiv to #Bakhmut and #Kherson, I traveled all over #Ukraine frontline. And I don’t believe, for 1 minute, the little chatter I feel rising about the exhaustion of the #Ukrainian defenders and the debates about #Zelensky’s strategy. We are the ones who are tired. Not them

WaPo Editorial: Ron DeSantis’s pandering on Ukraine is dangerously wrong https://tinyurl.com/mvsv6tsj “Mr. DeSantis betrays the hollowness of his rhetoric about fighting for ‘freedom’ by turning his back on the most inspiring freedom fighters in the world today”

🐣 RT @BillKristol Just saw Ron DeSantis’s book, “The Courage To Be Free,” at Hudson News. ¤ You know who’s providing THE example of the courage to be free in today’s world? The people of Ukraine. ¤ Whom DeSantis doesn’t support.

WaPo: Hunter Biden sues laptop repair shop owner, citing invasion of privacy https://tinyurl.com/3u27452s
// The lawsuit, a counter-move against John Paul Mac Isaac, escalates the legal battle surrounding the president’s son at a sensitive moment.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKMUT AXIS/1320 UTC 17 MAR/RU maintains important lodgments in the SW urban area of Bakhmut. UKR troops hold defense positions along the rail right-of-way, the H-32 HWY and Korsunskogo Street southern urban area.  //Urban TACMAP to follow.// #BakhmutMap
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1636717902136057856?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 16 Mar 2023

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: The G.O.P. and the Ghosts of Iraq https://tinyurl.com/y4x58pcn “[I]t’s fair to say that the invasion of Iraq led not so much to a flourishing democracy in that country as it did to a struggling one here at home”
// Ukraine shows that Republicans have moved a long way from the Party of George W. Bush

[…] Much as the Vietnam War did for a previous generation, the failures in Iraq shattered American confidence, shaped future debates over the use of military force, made the concept of democracy promotion itself suspect, distracted from rising threats posed by the revisionist great powers Russia and China, and splintered the previously unquestioned Republican commitment to a robustly internationalist American foreign policy.

Those rifts have been on full display this week, as leading lights of the party that brought us the Iraq War have publicly feuded over the enormous sums of American military assistance provided to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. Trump, with his oft-stated public admiration for Vladimir Putin, is a longtime skeptic, and, on Monday, the other main contender for the Republican nomination in 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, publicly joined him. In a remarkable statement dismissing the war as little more than a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis seemed to signal how much he thinks Republican sentiment has shifted since the Bush era. You don’t have to support the disastrous invasion of Iraq to acknowledge that Russia’s barbaric war of aggression against its neighbor Ukraine is wrong, and yet that is where both Trump and DeSantis have now landed. DeSantis’s comments to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson—who night after night preaches to his TV audience against foreign entanglements, including in Ukraine—drew strong pushback from the remaining Republican hawks in the old Bush mold. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it his “first big mistake.” Lindsey Graham called it a “Neville Chamberlain approach” of appeasement. Nikki Haley pointedly observed that DeSantis was just “copying” Trump with his new position.

DeSantis, back in the pre-Trump era of 2015, publicly bashed Obama for not providing enough arms to Ukraine. His flip-flop is so telling. There may still be Bush-style internationalists left in Washington, but it says everything about the trajectory of the Party’s foreign-policy thinking that both of its 2024 front-runners think that’s not where the primary voters they seek stand. Between them, Trump and DeSantis have support from nearly eighty per cent of the Republican electorate, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll.

… In private … Bush has never wavered from his insistence that the Iraq War was the right call. During a February 23rd private reception hosted by the Business Roundtable, held in honor of the publication of “Hand-Off,” a new book edited by the Bush national-security adviser Stephen Hadley containing the declassified transition memos sent by his national-security team to the incoming Obama Administration, Bush made off-the-record remarks defending his decision to invade Iraq. The former President told the crowd that it was the right decision at the time and he has no regrets, one attendee, a veteran of the Bush Administration, told me. He added, “Bush is completely unrepentant. It’s pretty stunning.” Feaver, who also attended, acknowledged Bush’s unchanged views. “I have never heard President Bush say anything different on Iraq than he said in his memoirs,” in which, Feaver recalled, “he made the case for why he made the decisions he made and why he thought they were still the right decision.”

Many officials other than Bush himself, of course, have admitted the invasion was a mistake, “a grave and costly error,” as the former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote in The Atlantic this week. I believe there is a straight line that leads from that debacle to the political mess we are in today. Twenty years ago this week, I recall sitting in a beachside restaurant at a hotel in Kuwait, waiting for the invasion to begin and wondering if my friend, a journalist who had been through the political battles of the Vietnam era, was right when he warned several young American soldiers sitting near us that another Vietnam-like “quagmire” might be in store.

He turned out to be prescient. But neither of us imagined the consequences here in the United States, where two decades later it’s fair to say that the invasion of Iraq led not so much to a flourishing democracy in that country as it did to a struggling one here at home.

WaPo Editorial: Ron DeSantis’s pandering on Ukraine is dangerously wrong https://tinyurl.com/mvsv6tsj “Mr. DeSantis betrays the hollowness of his rhetoric about fighting for ‘freedom’ by turning his back on the most inspiring freedom fighters in the world today”

🐣 RT @TWMCLtd On a similar point, last night #Ukraine confirmed that it had demoted a Commander who talked about horrific losses. ¤ “Kupol” said of 500 men, 100 died and the rest were wounded. ¤ The Army said his numbers were exaggerated and he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media.

ResoluteSquare, Rick Wilson: Those Are The Screams of Millions of GOP Normie Hearts Breaking https://tinyurl.com/wm7sw2ha
// Since 2015 the persistent magical thinking inside the Republican establishment of Washington operatives, elite donors, and legacy conservative media has failed them repeatedly. DeSantis just did it to them again.

How many times will it take before the gentry conservatives learn their lesson? No one is coming to save them. ¤ Since 2015 the persistent magical thinking inside the Republican establishment of Washington operatives, elite donors, and legacy conservative media has failed them repeatedly. Since the moment Trump slithered down the faux-gold escalator, they’ve consistently managed to set themselves up for disappointment and heartbreak in their awkwardly arranged marriage with the MAGA base.

This week’s lesson came from an unlikely source; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the rockstar dreamboat Fox favorite of the Please God Let Trump Die Soon faction of the Republican Party, blew it.

When Fox host Tucker Carlson asked for his position on Ukraine, DeSantis didn’t just lose his status as a savior of the pre-Trump foreign policy and national security GOP. He went all in with the overtly pro-Vladimir Putin Carlson faction of the MAGA base, adopting the position, framing, and rhetoric of the wee Russian warmonger.

For DeSantis, Ukraine is a mere “territorial dispute” between Ukraine and Russia, not a brutal war of aggression launched entirely on orders from the Kremlin. He played down the massive consequences to Europe, NATO, and the world of Putin’s murderous rampage by saying Ukraine was not in America’s vital national interests. He falsely portrayed America’s aid to Ukraine, making it seem unaccountable and unlimited.

Although DeSantis is known for obsessing over the smallest detail of a Disney movie’s content, obscure books in school libraries, or tweets from his critics, he somehow managed to find Russia’s war crimes, targeting of civilians, and overall brutality not worthy of comment.

From Truman to Obama, American Presidents stood against the Russian threat to peace and security in Europe and the world. DeSantis had an easy option and failed. DeSantis could have evoked Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to claim his place in the long line of GOP stalwarts facing Russian aggression, showing he was more than a Trump clone.

He instead betrayed that long arc of Presidential leadership, currying favor with Putin and Tucker Carlson, today’s Lord Haw Haw. ¤ The shock and pain in Big Conservatism’s social media feeds and writings were glaringly evident. ¤ They had pinned so many hopes on the Governor of Florida. Their lovingly crafted paeans to DeSantis were as frequent as they were gushing, often bordering on restraining-order-I-won’t-be-ignored fanboying. They painted DeSantis as a singular political and legal genius, a rock-solid conservative, and, most importantly, their exit strategy from the hellscape of Trumplandia.

Never mind his manic culture warrior act, his wild government overreach, his embrace of bully-boy authoritarian capitalism, and his snippy, constipated affect. Anyone paying the slightest attention could see the red flags, but D.C. writers and consultants didn’t want to imagine their dream date for 2024 was imperfect.

The heartbreak among the dying faction of the old GOP is on painful display. How could he? He’s supposed to be the smart one. The good one. He’d unite the tribe and bring the populists and conservatives back into accord and harmony. He was going to be the one to end the Trump nightmare.

Even in Florida, a state DeSantis rules with an iron fist, a juvenile temper, and an instinct for instant revenge at the smallest slight, Senator Marco Rubio took aim squarely at DeSantis, saying, “Obviously, he doesn’t deal with foreign policy every day as governor.” Lindsay Graham, John Cornyn, and others expressed their shock and disappointment.

It begs a simple question; do they not know today’s MAGA GOP? ¤ From the moment Trump began his long, parasitic consumption of the Republican Party, conservatives have rationalized, justified, and day-drank away the realities of the moment. Conservatism as an ideology in America is a dead religion where the dying priests hope that someday they’ll return to the people’s hearts.

The grunting populism that replaced it caters to the worst instincts of mankind and rewards transgression, rage, revenge, and the raw exercise of power. National security conservatism in which America stood as a leader in the international order, maintained strong alliances, and engaged in leadership beyond the vulgar transactionalism of Trump’s America-as-a-protection-racket is now actively despised by the MAGA horde. The MAGA base sees Putin as their kind of leader, the tough guy owning the libs by invading a nation whose leader refused to help Trump win in 2020.

It took a near-fatal dose of hopium on the part of the major donors and operatives to stake their hopes on a governor of modest political and interpersonal skills like DeSantis. Their frenzied imagining of DeSantis winning over MAGA, soundly defeating Trump, somehow papering over his radical culture war in Florida, and returning the GOP to business as usual was as lurid as they were absurd.

DeSantis was never going to save the elite GOP from the unwashed masses who run the party now. Set aside the hollow signifiers of his elite Ivy education and stare into the populist void and it’s easy to see; DeSantis isn’t just a captive of the MAGA base; he’s one of its leaders. The National Review set thought DeSantis was fooling the rubes to win the primary when he was fooling them all along to win over the establishment.

Given his prior support for Ukraine while serving in Congress, it’s abundantly clear that DeSantis has adopted the most important ethos of the GOP today; obey the mob, keep Tucker on your side, and when in doubt, side with Putin. ¤ And that’s a party with no room for the conservatives of yesterday.

🐣 RT @ SpiroAgnewGhost Nearly two hours after he posted this on his Truth Social garbage site, it has less than 5000 likes. Even his cult members are getting tired of his endless malignant narcissism and rants.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ SpiroAgnewGhost This is not a parody.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1636518612847726594?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Statement from the Trump Campaign on the Manhattan DA’s Witch-Hunt

*President Donald J. Trump is completely innocent, he did nothing wrong, and even the biggest, most Radical Left Democrats are making that clear. From Russia, Russia, Russia, to the Mueller Hoax, to Impeachment Hoaxes I and 2, and even the Unlawful Mar-a-Lago Raid, Democrats have investigated and attacked President Trump since before he was elected – and they’ve failed every time. Now Democrats are at it again, pushing the “Nuclear Button” and attacking a President because of a disgraced extortionist. This is happening because President Trump is leading in the polls by a large margin against both Democrats and Republicans, and there’s never been anything so blatant in American political history. If the Democrats can do this to President Trump, they can do it to you.

‘The latest Witch-Hunt is being brought on by George Soros-backed Radical Left Democrat prosecutor Alvin Bragg. Bragg has made political donations to fellow Radical Democrats like Raphael Warnock, and now Bragg is making a political donation of a different kind to Joe Biden. Everyone knows it’s a sham. In fact, the Department of Justice stocked the DA’s office with top people from DC to help “Get Trump” at a local level.

“Americans will not tolerate Radical Left Democrats turning our justice system into an injustice system to influence a presidential election, which is all they want to do. Our Country is not going to let this happen. This will backfire massively for the Democrat Party, and end in disgrace for our Nation.” – Steve Cheung, spokesperson

‼️ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump says Russia is not a threat, our greatest threat is our American representatives, we need to reevaluate the purpose of NATO, and most of the people in the State Dept, DOD and Intel Services need to be fired so he can put the right people in.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1636446515471196167?s=20/photo/1
💽 https://twitter.com/CBKNEWS121/status/1636448055216971791?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @stuartpstevens .@TuckerCarlson, we met when you were rejected by CIA, writing for Talk Magazine. Desperate to be taken seriously. You were fired by CNN, then MSNBC. Bitter failues who feel rejected are classic targets for hostile foreign power recruitment. Easy to see why you were targeted

NYT, David French: Reagan Wouldn’t Recognize the G.O.P. Discord Over Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yckmf9th “Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump … who’ve built their political brands around fighting their domestic political enemies now wilt in the face of inferior Russian arms”

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost What. A. Fucking. Lunatic.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1636438917200367616?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump There MUST be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist neo-con establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars, pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad, while they turn us into a third-world country and a third-world dictatorship right here at home! #AGENDA47

AJConstitution: EXCLUSIVE: Behind the scenes of Trump grand jury; jurors hear 3rd leaked Trump call https://tinyurl.com/3fut8tws

🐣 RT @ Heroiam_Slava ❗️❗️❗️ This is how ruscist planes Su-27 shot down a US reconnaissance UAV MQ-9 Reaper.
🖼 💽 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1636313137174462465?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1745 UTC 16 MAR/ CRITICAL/ RU forces have made an important advance in the SW urban area. The line of contact now conforms to Korsunskogo Street. The development jeopardizes the S quadrant of the Bakhmut urban area. ¤ NOTE: New street projection of city.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1636424096320765953?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @front_ukrainian The Armed Forces of Ukraine use more than 90000 155-mm ammunition per month,— WSJ ¤ Before the war, the US could produce approximately 13000 shells per month. This year, this monthly figure jumped to 20000 shells and the US plans to increase production to 50,000 next year.

🐣 RT @KaivanShroff Fox News has spent the week lying about SVB donating over $70 million to Black Lives Matter. ¤ SVB donated $0 to Black Lives Matter. ¤ More racist propaganda.

NBC: Grand jury heard phone call of Trump pressuring Georgia speaker to overturn Biden’s victory https://tinyurl.com/57b553mv “Trump asked Ralston who would stop him from holding a special session. According to Kohrs, Ralston responded, ‘A federal judge, that’s who’”
// The special grand jury’s foreperson told NBC News that Trump tried to pressure the then-speaker into calling a special legislative session to overturn the results in the battleground state.

The Fulton County special grand jury heard a phone call between former President Donald Trump and Georgia House Speaker David Ralston as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, the jury’s foreperson, Emily Kohrs, told NBC News on Wednesday.

During the December call, Trump attempted to pressure the then-speaker into calling a special legislative session to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state, Kohrs said. ¤ The call recording, which was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, lasted about 10 minutes, Kohrs said. She recalled that Trump asked Ralston who would stop him from holding a special session. According to Kohrs, Ralston responded, “A federal judge, that’s who.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1410 UTC 16 MAR/CRITICAL/ Russian forces have registered important gains in the urban areas of Bakhmut. Critically, RU troops are in contact along the rail right-of-way, the H-32 HWY and the Korsunskogo / Ushinskogo Street cut-off in the southern urban area. … It is assessed that UKR will soon have to determine if a retrograde maneuver from the Bakhmut urban area is in order. A Bakhmut City map will be released later this evening (UTC).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1636366921544368129?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ TreasChest 😔A year ago, on March 16, the occupiers launched an airstrike on the Drama Theater in Mariupol ¤ At that time, more than a thousand residents of the city were in the premises. As a result of the impact, many people died, including children. ¤ In front of the theater was an inscription – “CHILDREN”. It was an attempt to show that peaceful residents of Mariupol were in the building. But this did not stop the bloodthirsty invaders…
It hurts💔 ¤ 📹: Mariupol City Council ¤ Channel 24
💽 https://twitter.com/TreasChest/status/1636127494377025537?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 15 Mar 2023

The Bulwark, Will Saletan: The Ukraine Untruths of Disingenuous DeSantis https://tinyurl.com/2t7tmbj9 “A Democratic president is standing up to Putin. And he’s facing a Republican who would rather attack Mickey Mouse”
// His recent remarks about the war have been cynical and deceptive.

🐣 RT @jrothkopf DeSantis’ comment that the future of Ukraine was not a vital national interest of the US was reckless and proves he’s unfit to be president. But it’s worse. It undermines US & Western goals, helps Russia & will likely cost thousands of lives.
⋙ DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: DeSantis’ Ukraine Comments Show He’s Playing for the Pro-Putin Wing of the GOP https://tinyurl.com/48v8ye2w
// The Florida governor told Tucker Carlson that defending Ukraine was not in the U.S.’ national interest. This is Trump-level toadyism.

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Imagine trying to be a lawyer of this deranged lunatic.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1636213755347636224?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump I did NOTHING wrong in the “Horseface” case. I see she showed up in New York today trying to drum up some publicity for herself. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since I took a picture with her on a golf course, in full golf gear including a hat, close to 18 years ago. She knows nothing about me other than her conman lawyer, Avanatti, and convicted liar and felon, jailbird Michael Cohen, may have schemed up. Never had an affair with her, just another false acquisition by a SleazeBag. Witch Hunt!

🧵 RT @AleksandrX13 WHY do russian conscripts allow themselves to be lϵd to the slaυցhtϵr in the hundreds of thοusands? ¤ Why do their parents/wives/girl friends allow this? ¤ WHY DON’T THEY REBEL? ¤ Here are the answers. Thread 😎 ¤ 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/AleksandrX13/status/1636157695114739713?s=20/photo/1
// Russian education indoctrination propaganda

YahooNews/LATimes Editorial: DeSantis’ Ukraine comment is reckless. It’s an invasion, not a ‘territorial dispute’ https://tinyurl.com/29tee76k His arrogance and laziness on foreign policy are matched only by his arrogance and laziness on domestic policy: “Big hat, no cattle”

🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “Russia invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine…no threat whatsoever to Russia…this is and remains a Russian frontal assault on the rules based international order that has been in place for 80 years” – General Milley today #RussiaUkraineWar
💽 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1636159852807618560?s=20/photo/1
// Milley, Austin speak at Rammstein Group meeting today
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “Putin can end this war and he can end it today and he needs to do so. Free people are not easily conquered and the Ukrainian people are free and they will never give up in their fight to stay free.”

🐣 RT @TheTweetOfJohn Sen. Lindsey Graham told an Atlanta-area grand jury last year that following the 2020 election, “if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots, that Trump would’ve believed it.” https://tinyurl.com/3mpnxy5p

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Trump NY defense: I was extorted. That is an admission he paid $ (which he had been denying) and the $ was not for legal fees (the cover story). Because the NY criminal case reportedly focuses on the crime of making false business records — his “defense” is an confession.

🐣 RT @ruthbenghiat Why should the PM of Estonia even have to waste her time considering what the Florida Fascist thinks? He’s gunning to be the face of American autocracy and aligning himself with Putin because that is how he can get ahead.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amanpour Ron DeSantis says getting “further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine & Russia” isn’t in US “vital national interests,” but @kajakallas disagrees: “Would-be aggressors in the world are watching very carefully… If aggression pays off, then there are no limits.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ruthbenghiat/status/1636116001212313601?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ randymot4 Republicans have fallen in large numbers for Russian disinformation and propaganda. The material focuses on our biases and many people jump right in. This is affecting the party far more than I thought possible. I am ashamed of so many “patriots” fooled by this.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/randymot4/status/1635933116995887104?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] It has cost the USA less than 5% of their annual Defense Budget to destroy 50% of the Combat Capability of the 2nd most powerful military on earth. …and not a single American serviceman has so much as broken a fingernail!
A BLOODY EXCELLENT RETURN ON INVESTMENT BY ANY MEASURE!

🐣 RT @SpencerGuard If you’re dumb enough to say/believe US support for Ukraine is not a vital national interest. If you are so ignorant to foreign policy, geopolitics, or the global international order that allows the US to thrive, then you are not deserving of public office, let alone Presidency.
⋙ 🐣 he’s trying to “own the libs,” which itself proves the GOP ~ or at least the MAGA base ~ is utterly unserious and unworthy of national office; most of the serious Republicans left because of Trump: in his cravenness and raw ambition, DeSantis may be worse; he sickens me

🐣 RT @tribelaw “The real story behind the collapse of SVB has much more to do with the political and economic environment of the previous decade than it does with wokeness, a word that signifies nothing other than conservative disdain for anything that seems liberal.”

TheGuardian: Federal investigators examined Trump Media for possible money laundering, sources say https://tinyurl.com/2zk6d5st The money, okayed by Don Jr, “centers on a part-owner of Paxum Bank … who appears to be a relation of Putin ally Aleksandr Smirnov”
// Exclusive: New York prosecutors expanded criminal inquiry of company last year and examined acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties

🐣 RT @RFERL Zelenskiy said in his evening video address on March 14 that Ukraine’s top military command unanimously favors defending the sector of eastern Ukraine that includes the besieged city of Bakhmut and inflicting maximum losses on the enemy.
⋙ RFE/RL: Ukraine Says Determined To Defend Bakhmut As Russia Keeps Up Pressure On The City https://tinyurl.com/32evnm4f

🐣 RT @NOELreports ”Heavy fighting awaits Ukraine in the spring and summer. The United States will help solve the problem of lack of ammunition in the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” says Pentagon Speaker Pat Ryder.

🐣 .@mccaffreyr3 @McFaul @AVindman @stavridisj @StateDept @SecDef @ABlinken
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Officer Leityokha from the 93rd brigade rings the alarm and talks about a ‘catastrophic shortage of shells’ in Bakhmut. He continues: ‘We know 75% of the firing positions, but can’t hit them. The command also forbids using specific weapons because its “unaffordable”.’

⭕ 14 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. NICOLLE WALLACE. 14 March 23. Gov DeSantis statement that freedom of Ukraine not a U.S. vital national security interest has done immeasurable harm to NATO and the US. A gift to Putin and his criminal invasion of Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1635865157548277760?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📊 RT @ McCormackJohn New Gallup poll:
62% of Republicans say Russia-Ukraine conflict is a critical threat to U.S. vital interests
29% say important but not critical
9% say not important threat at all
https://tinyurl.com/2x4sujdk

TheAtlantic, David Frum: Is Ron DeSantis Flaming Out Already? https://tinyurl.com/27kespxm “DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine was everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his admirers could have wished for from a presumptive candidate for president.”
// The Florida governor has a plan to win the Fox News primary—and lose everything else.

DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine was everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his admirers could have wished for from a presumptive candidate for president. The governor began by listing America’s “vital interests” in a way that explicitly excluded NATO and the defense of Europe. He accepted the present Russian line that Putin’s occupation of Ukraine is a mere “territorial dispute.” He endorsed “peace” as the objective without regard to the terms of that peace, another pro-Russian talking point. He conceded the Russian argument that American aid to Ukraine amounts to direct involvement in the conflict. He endorsed and propagated the fantasy—routinely advanced by pro-Putin guests on Fox talk shows—that the Biden administration is somehow plotting “regime change” in Moscow. He denounced as futile the economic embargo against Russia—and baselessly insinuated that Ukraine is squandering U.S. financial assistance. He ended by flirting with the idea of U.S. military operations against Mexico, an idea that originated on the extreme right but has migrated toward the Republican mainstream. …

Desantis is a machine engineered to win the Republican presidential nomination. The hardware is a lightly updated version of donor-pleasing mechanics from the Paul Ryan era. The software is newer. DeSantis operates on the latest culture-war code: against vaccinations, against the diversity industry, against gay-themed books in school libraries. The packaging is even more up-to-the-minute. Older models—Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush—made some effort to appeal to moderates and independents. None of that from DeSantis. He refuses to even speak to media platforms not owned by Rupert Murdoch. His message to the rest of America is more of the finger-pointing disdain he showed last year for high-school students who wore masks when he visited a college. …

Florida Republicans will soon pass—and DeSantis pledged he would sign—a law banning abortion after six weeks. That bill is opposed by 57 percent of those surveyed even inside Florida. Another poll found that 75 percent of Floridians oppose the ban. It also showed that 77 percent oppose permitless concealed carry, which DeSantis supports, and that 61 percent disapprove of his call to ban the teaching of critical race theory as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on college campuses. As the political strategist Simon Rosenberg noted: “Imagine how these play outside FL.”

But even this understates the DeSantis design flaw. ¤ More dangerous than the unpopular positions DeSantis holds are the popular positions he does not hold. What is DeSantis’s view on health care? He doesn’t seem to have one. President Joe Biden has delivered cheap insulin to U.S. users. Good idea or not? Silence from DeSantis. There’s no DeSantis jobs policy; he hardly speaks about inflation. Homelessness? The environment? Nothing. Even on crime, DeSantis must avoid specifics, because specifics might remind his audience that Florida’s homicide numbers are worse than New York’s or California’s.

DeSantis just doesn’t seem to care much about what most voters care about. And voters in turn do not care much about what DeSantis cares most about. …

[…] His approach to winning the nomination will put the general election beyond his grasp. He must hope that some external catastrophe will defeat his Democratic opponent for him—a recession, maybe—because DeSantis is choosing a path that cannot get him to his goal.

NYT, Jamelle Bouie: The Boys Who Cried ‘Woke!’ https://tinyurl.com/bdzx93ph “[T]here is no evidence that any diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. It is nonsense”

WaPo: U.S. fires back at claim that Tucker Carlson footage was withheld https://tinyurl.com/3t8xzwtz Carlson showed several minutes of 41,000 HOURS of surveillance video in air to imply that the January 6 pro-Trump demonstrators at the Capitol had been peaceful
// Prosecutors say video of Jacob Chansley and other defendants was fully provided to defense in 2021

WaPo: The 72-hour scramble to save the United States from a banking crisis https://tinyurl.com/2uvb8nju It could have been Great Recession 2.0. But it wasn’t.

🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “Putin is motivated by a “fever dream of decline.” The depopulation of Russia, he said, “feeds Putin’s apocalyptic sense of his own grand responsibilities.” Another fine piece from @MaxBoot
⋙ 📋 WaPo, Max Boot: Russia’s population crisis is making Putin more dangerous https://tinyurl.com/4e68eutr
// Vladimir Putin may be seeking military solutions to his country’s demographic decline.

Russia’s population loss is expected to continue — down to 135 million people by 2050 and 126 million by 2100. Currently the world’s ninth-most populous country, it is projected to fall to number 22 by century’s end. Demographics is, to some extent, destiny. Russia’s days as a great power are numbered.

Putin is acutely conscious of the problem and talks about it all the time. In September 2021, he lamented that Russia now would have a population of 500 million were it not for the loss of the Russian empire after the 1917 revolution and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, which he has called “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

🐣 RT @sentdefender U.S. Defense Officials do not believe that the Russian Su-27 running into the MQ-9 Reaper over the Black Sea was meant to happen or any way Intentional; Air Force Officers after seeing the Video from the Drone stated that, “ The Russian Pilots appeared to be Amateurs.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1635772537194856450?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ukraine_map A US 🇺🇸 MQ-9 Reaper Drone was hit by a Russian Fighter Jet over the Black Sea today, says the US Military ¤ The Su-27 acted recklessly by dumping fuel on the Drone, then hitting its propellor, causing it to crash ¤ This appears to be a purposeful attack by Russia on the US Military

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /2120 UTC 14 MAR/ RU forces have advanced across the T-05-13 HWY in the northern and southern urban areas of Bakhmut. UKR forces mounted a counterattack at Dubovo-Vasylivka; a RU thrust at Ivanivske was also broken up.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1635752631187521541?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 13 Mar 2023

📊 Gallup Poll: Americans’ Favorable Rating of Russia Sinks to New Low of 9% https://tinyurl.com/2x4sujdk from high of 65% in 2002
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1636296359438426113?s=20/photo/1

SciAm: There’s a Psychological ‘Vaccine’ against Misinformation https://tinyurl.com/5n7kvypm
// A social psychologist found that showing people how manipulative techniques work can create resilience against misinformation

🚫 WaPo: Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses, pessimism grow https://tinyurl.com/ys98fxeb
// sole identified source call sign Kupol; since demoted (3/16/2023)

WaPo: Trump claims violence he inspired on Jan. 6 was Pence’s fault https://tinyurl.com/54h7vuht T
// The former president suggested the riot could have been avoided if his vice president had cooperated in overturning the results

HuffPo: Trump Blames Mike Pence For Jan. 6 Violence For Not Going Along With His Coup Attempt https://tinyurl.com/bf43tsdr
// Trump was responding to his former vice president’s remarks, who said Saturday that Trump’s words and actions had endangered the lives of his family.

Donald Trump, whose coup attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, put his vice president’s life at risk as a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, on Monday blamed Mike Pence for the violence that day because he didn’t go along with the scheme.s “Had he sent the votes back to the legislators, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6,” the former president told reporters on a flight to an Iowa campaign stop. “So in many ways, you can blame him for Jan. 6.” …

Trump’s new comments, reported by CBS Political Director Fin Gomez, who was among the reporters on Trump’s plane, came in response to Pence’s remarks on Saturday, when he said Trump’s words and deeds had nearly gotten his family killed.

🐣 RT @oneunderscore__ I’m telling you, they’re actually running with the “woke banks” thing. They’re already using scary placeholder acronyms ESG and DEI, which to them mean “diversity.” ¤ It serves to obfuscate the reality: there was a panicky bank run, frontrun by some of the GOP’s biggest donors.
// DEI: Diversity, equity, and inclusion; ESG: Environmental, social, and corporate governance

🐣 RT @atrupar Biden: “During the Obama administration, we put in place tough requirements on banks like SVB and Signature Bank, including the Dodd-Frank law to make sure that the crisis we saw in 2008 would not happen again. Unfortunately, the last admin rolled back some of these requirements”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1635269021095297024?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/ 2245 UTC 13 MAR/ N of Soledar, UKR forces repelled attacks at Vasiukivka. On the M-03 HWY axis, RU assaults were broken up at Minkivka, Orikhovo-Vasylivka and Hyrhorivka & Berkhivka. The 0600 Gen’l Staff brief provided no follow up regarding UKR contact at Krasna Hora.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1635407957218451457?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1145 UTC 13 MAR/ RU/Wagner troops have renewed offensive actions. N of Soledar, UKR forces repelled attacks at Vasiukivka. On the M-03 HWY axis, RU assaults were broken up at Minkivka, Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Hyrhorivka and Berkhivka. The 0600 UK Gen’l Staff brief provided no follow up reportage regarding yesterday’s UKR contact at Krasna Hora. Combat continues in the urban area of Bakhmut. RU is assessed to have achieved scattered lodgments along the west bank of the Bakhmutka River. In the past 24 hours UKR conducted 6 aviation strike missions and one Suppression of Enemy Air Defense sortie.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1635243882538766337?s=20/photo/1

KyivIndependent: Commander: Russia’s Wagner forces trying to break into central Bakhmut, but suffering ‘significant losses’ https://tinyurl.com/ph3z8wst

The battlefield situation around Donetsk Oblast’s Bakhmut remains “difficult” as the assault units of the Russian state-backed mercenary group Wagner continue trying to break through the Ukrainian defense and advance to the central areas of the city, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, said on March 13.

“In fierce battles, our defenders inflict significant losses on the enemy. All enemy attempts to capture the city are repelled by artillery, tanks, and other firepower,” Syrskyi said, as quoted by the Ukrainian defense ministry’s media center.

He added that Ukraine’s Armed Forces continued the defense of the “fortress,” as the Ukrainian authorities often call the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, which has been Russia’s main target for over seven months.

Russia’s assault on Bakhmut relies heavily on Wagner Group forces, which have taken control of most of the eastern part of Bakhmut, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry’s daily intelligence update published on March 11. ¤ Wagner troops, however, are facing a new challenge with the Bakhmutka River that divides the city in two and now marks the front line.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN on March 7 that Russian forces would have an “open road” to seize other critical settlements in eastern Ukraine if they capture Bakhmut, defending Kyiv’s decision to continue the city’s defense despite Ukrainian troops also suffering heavy losses.

🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Austin: “If the Ukrainians decide to reposition in some of the terrain that’s west of Bakhmut, I would not view that as an operational or a strategic setback…It’s more of a symbolic value than it is a strategic and operational value.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1635177613944823810?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Strelkov steps in to stop me dooming over Bakhmut: “[The Ukrainians] already firmly hold half of Bakhmut, but even surrendering the remaining territory to [Wagner] will not change the final situation – during the winter…[Russia] failed to achieve any [strategic] success.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1635167772983570433?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] In Bakhmut, the advancement of Wagner units and PMCs is insignificant. Regarding the widely announced “counteroffensive” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the city – I’m almost sure that this is a “misinformation” – otherwise the military leaders would not have voiced it to the whole world. As part of the generally successful (for the enemy) completion of the “battle of attrition and gain of time”, deliberately carried out during the winter campaign by the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, no counteroffensives are needed. They already firmly hold half of Bakhmut, but even surrendering the remaining territory to the exhausted “orchestra” will not change the final situation – during the winter campaign, the RF Armed Forces failed to achieve any success went beyond purely tactical ones.

🐣 RT @ukraine_osint Ukrainian ground forces Colonel general Oleksandr Syrskyi: “The situation around Bakhmut remains difficult”. #WagnerPMC mercenaries are attacking from several directions trying to break through the defences of our troops and advance to the central districts of the town.

🐣 RT @AFP #BREAKING Ukraine says ‘fierce fighting’ raging for centre of Bakhmut

🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine
13 March 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence: http://ow.ly/kZLe50Ng7te 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1635161301247840256?s=20/photo/1

● In recent weeks, Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has likely lost access to recruiting in Russian prisons due to his ongoing disputes with the Russian MoD leadership. Prigozhin is highly likely pivoting recruitment efforts towards free Russian citizens.

● Since the start of March 2023, Wagner has set up outreach teams based in sports centres in at least 40 locations across Russia. In recent days, masked Wagner recruiters also gave career talks in Moscow high schools, distributing questionnaires entitled application of a young warrior’ to collect the contact details of interested pupils.

● About half of the prisoners Wagner has already deployed in Ukraine have likely become casualties and the new initiatives are unlikely to make up for the loss of the convict recruit pipeline. If the ban endures, Prigozhin will likely be forced to reduce the scale or intensity of Wagner operations in Ukraine

⭕ 12 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @BillKristol On the politics of the banking announcement: The Administration should go on the offensive. Don’t begin by explaining why it’s not really a bailout. Say: We acted decisively to protect all Americans’ savings, while our critics wanted to do nothing and endanger those savings.

🐣 RT @EricColumbus As Fox debated how to handle Trump’s election lies, Tucker’s then-producer described their audience as “dumb” “cousin-fucking” “terrorists.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1634928387142864896?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ WaPo: Ex-Trump aide at Fox wrestled with election lies, network’s interests https://tinyurl.com/22pykzw7
// Documents show Fox Vice President Raj Shah privately derided the White House’s narrative of a stolen election. But he also pushed back on efforts to dispute the claims.

🐣 RT @lnachman32 Only 1.2% of Taiwanese want unification with the PRC. Public opinion polls across the spectrum all show similarly low numbers. The idea of a “Chinese Commonwealth” is neither resurfacing, nor are any political or civil society leaders taking it seriously.
◕ https://twitter.com/lnachman32/status/1634937934381187073?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Whoa! Here it is. The moment in 2018 when Donald Trump removed the Dodd-Frank regulations that would have prevented the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Don’t let anyone forget this.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1634777100350783489?s=20/photo/1
// on 5/24/2018

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1515 UTC 12 MAR/ UKR forces are reported to be engaged at Berkhivka and Krasna Hora, indicating that RU units have been driven back in the vicinity of the T-05-14 and M-04 junction.  Urban combat continues in the city of Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1634938724655173639?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer EDITORIAL CORRECTION: RU units have been driven back in the vicinity of the T-05-14 and M-03 junction. A typographical error in the Key Developments report erroneously indicated the T-04 HWY.

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa I conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine upon Oleksandr Matsiyevsky. A Ukrainian warrior. A man who will be known and remembered forever. For his bravery, for his confidence in Ukraine and for his “Glory to Ukraine!”. Glory to the Hero! Glory to the Heroes! Glory to Ukraine!

WaPo: Biden makes moves foreshadowing campaign to come, angering some liberals https://tinyurl.com/2p998wf3 “He is positioning himself for the general election by taking positions that appeal to swing voters who may have concerns about crime and the border”
// The president is highlighting popular Democratic stances on social programs while also riling progressives on crime and immigration

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en How sadly they sigh and roll their eyes! Everything is obvious even with sound off. ¤ Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov says with suffering – we lost everything, we’ll lose Transnistria and won’t be able to take Odesa.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1634835914731163651?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Pence says ‘history will hold Donald Trump accountable’ for Jan. 6th https://tinyurl.com/mrjrahtu //➔ I have an idea! what if the Legal System holds him accountable first?
// ‘Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace,’ the former vice president said at Washington’s annual Gridiron Dinner

In a speech Saturday night, former vice president Mike Pence delivered what amounted to his strongest rebuke of Donald Trump, criticizing the former president for his role in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol as well as attempts to rewrite the history of that day.

“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day. And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

The former vice president was speaking at the Gridiron dinner, a white-tie event thrown by journalists in Washington, D.C. that this year featured speeches by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in addition to Pence. The annual event tends to be a lighthearted affair, with skits and parody songs performed by members of the Washington press corps. …

“The American people have a right to know what took place at the Capitol on January 6th,” he said. “But make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way.”

🐣 RT @SarahAshtonLV A video tour of a mobile hospital prototype intended for use by the ZSU. ¤ An engineering marvel with a titanium exterior and full self contained. ¤ 80 KM/H. ¤ Mine proof. ¤ Chemical attack proof. ¤ Ukraine has already won.
💽 https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1634813568016064512?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel Yesterday, there were 90 russian attacks on different Ukrainian regions. It’s not the biggest number. Sometimes our army counts 170 shelling! But imagine living in the country at least quarter of each is being shelled every day for 90-170 times? #RussiaIsATerroristState
⋙ 🐣 RT @gpward72 1090 russians liquidated, 2nd highest daily number since daily numbers began to be published
⋙ 🐣 RT @flat300 During WWII London suffered horrific levels of bombing in a much smaller area than the size of Ukraine but remained resolute. Stay strong … “some 25,000 bombs were dropped on the Port of London alone.” https://www.britannica.com/event/the-Blitz

⭕ 11 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer UKRAINIAN PATRIOTS: Russia’s Kinzhal hyper-sonic missiles are difficult to intercept- but the aircraft that launch them can be interdicted by Patriot missiles. Air defense systems are vital for protecting UKR cities. Patriot will be a major upgrade.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1634597716822040581?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DefenseHQ The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing. ¤ The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 11 March 2023. Find out more about Defence Intelligence’s use of language: http://ow.ly/QNCo50Ng5TC
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦

● As Russia continues to suffer extremely heavy casualties, the impact varies dramatically across Russia’s regions. In proportion to the size of their population, the richest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg have been left relatively unscathed. This is especially true for the families of the country’s elite.

● On 21 February 2023, Russian senior officials were photographed making up the front two rows of the audience of President Putin’s state of the nation speech. None of these are known to have children serving in the military.

● In many of the Eastern regions, deaths are likely running, as a percentage of population, at a rate of 30-40 times higher than in Moscow. In many places, ethnic minorities fake the biggest hit; in Astrakhan some 75% of casualties come from the minority Kazakh and Tartar populations. As the Russian MoD seeks to address its continued deficit of combat personnel, insulating the better-off and more influential elements of Russian society will highly likely remain a major consideration.

🐣 RT @svdate To recap the state of the GOP presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis is filling auditoriums in Iowa while the coup-attempting former president is sitting in his country club in Palm Beach whining about it.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/svdate/status/1634225946961035265?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Why on earth (farmer’s love earth!) would the wonderful people of the GREAT State of lowa vote for Ron DeSanctimonious when he voted and fought to KILL Ethanol (and will definitely do so if given the chance), voted 4 times, as a disciple of Paul Ryan, to decimate Social Security and MediCare, and bring the minimum age on Social Security to at least 70 years old (he wanted higher!). He will be in lowa on Friday to beg for mercy. I supported Ethanol, FIRED NAFTA, & made USMCA & China Trade Deals!

🐣 RT @Bill43111 Trump is flailing. The Tucker Tapes were as big a bust as the Twitter Files. Trump’s army attacked our Capitol and he watched and cheered them on for over 3 hours and didn’t lift a finger to stop it.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Bill43111/status/1634363618123980801?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonald Trump Congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest “scoops” as a reporter in U.S. history. The New Surveillance Footage of the January 6th Events sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened. The Unselect Committee was a giant SCAM, and has now unequivocally been stamped as CRIMINAL FABRICATORS OF THIS MOST IMPORTANT DAY. Pelosi & McConnell failed on security. The Police story is sad and difficult to watch. “Trump” and most others are totally innocent, LET THEM GO FREE, NOW!

🐣 David Jolly just made an important point on @msnbc: Ron DeSantis’s “anti-woke” campaign “is, at its core, racist and homophobic” and it‘s important to call it out for that. He’s absolutely right!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1550 UTC 11 MAR/ Wagner PMC claimed to have captured the village of Dubovo-Vasylivka; UKR reports that its units are still in contact at that place. Combat ongoing in Bakhmut. UKR engaged the enemy at Paraskoviivka, indicating a penetration of RU lines.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1634577511131512834?s=20/photo/1

🚫 EspresoTV: Bakhmut should have been surrendered three weeks ago – General Kryvonos https://tinyurl.com/2p9ss38v
// Serhiy Kryvonos, General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, First Deputy Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (2016-2019), former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, believes that Ukrainian military should have abandoned Bakhmut and retreated to prepared lines outside the city.

“From my point of view, Bakhmut should have been surrendered three weeks ago, because we are also losing our strength. Fighting is already taking place on the outskirts of the city. Will there be any benefit in sending the Special Operations Forces there now? I understand that the situation is similar to what happened in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. We are starting to hammer nails with a microscope. It is better to save the Special Operations Forces for future offensive operations, and it will be much more useful,” noted the Ukrainian Armed Forces General.

Serhiy Kryvonos noted that in this situation we need to draw the right conclusions and improve the training of our infantry. ¤ “Bakhmut should have been abandoned and we should have withdrawn to the prepared lines outside the city. Given the terrain that I know well from the previous years of the war, it was possible to set up an excellent defense line there and keep the enemy at bay to prevent their further offensive outside Bakhmut,” said Kryvonos.

🚫🐣 Just based on things I’ve picked from following this war closely, about Zelensky: He ‘doesn’t like to let people down.’ And, he’s “stubborn,” according to his wife. Good or bad, I can’t help but see these reflected in his aversion to restreating from Bakhmut

NYT: Front Line Shifts in Russia and Ukraine’s Battle for Bakhmut, Analysts Say https://tinyurl.com/7jun3fjx “Despite the Ukrainian military’s assertion that it was holding on in Bakhmut, it was becoming increasingly clear that its grip on the city was tenuous”
// Britain’s defense intelligence agency said that Russian forces had taken control of most of Bakhmut’s east, but advances farther west might be challenging.

YahooNews/Telegraph: Ukraine-Russia war latest: Bakhmut centre now a ‘killing zone’ https://tinyurl.com/bdez95pd “Ukraine’s general staff say Russia is trying to reach the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” ~ give it control of the entire Donbas region

‼️🐣 RT @APonomarenko I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it’s doing in Bakhmut.
¤ https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1634472741326802944?s=20
// [Comments]

🐣 RT @EetuSeppnen1 These has been stories about Wagners now holding and waiting for RF forces to continue in Bakhmut. We will see if they sacrifice them now.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/EetuSeppnen1/status/1634476843595079680?s=20/photo/1
// DefenceU [UK]

● Over the last four days, Wagner Group forces have taken control of most of eastern part of the Donbas town of Bakhmut. In the town centre, the Bakhmutka River now marks the frontline.

● Ukrainian forces hold the west of the town and have demolished key bridges over the river, which runs through north-south through a strip of open ground 200m-800m wide, between built up areas. With Ukrainian units able to fire from fortified buildings to the west, this area has become a killing zone, likely making it highly challenging for Wagner forces attempting to continue their frontal assault westwards.

● However, the Ukrainian force and their supply lines to the west remain vulnerable to the continued Russian attempts to outflank the defenders from the north and south.

⭕ 10 Mar 2023

Pew: Texas Abortion Ruling Nears, But Blue States Aren’t Waiting to Protect Pill Access https://tinyurl.com/44u5ckw3 The Biden admin likely would appeal any decision against the FDA and it could use its enforcement discretion to allow manufacturers to keep producing the drug

🐣 RT @SenatorRomney In the face of unprovoked Russian aggression, the courage and passion of the Ukrainian people, under the leadership of President @ZelenskyyUa, has far surpassed anyone’s expectation. Their response has been nothing short of praiseworthy, and we will continue to support them.

Politico [EU]: Zelenskyy has no choice but to ask his fighters to hold Bakhmut — for now https://tinyurl.com/4xyhjwv7 The Ukrainians “claim Russia’s losing seven soldiers for each Ukrainian life lost — though NATO military officials put the ratio closer to 5-to-1“
// US generals say the Ukrainian president is right not to disengage from the meat-grinder of a battle.

🐣 RT @rohanpanchigar Wagner group to open recruiting centers across 42 Russian cities. ¤ Evgeny Prigozhin said that after the capture of Bakhmut, PMC Wagner will change and become some kind of “army with an ideology.”

🐣 RT @nytimes Individuals with ties to Russia are “aiming to foment a manufactured insurrection” against Moldova by staging protests against the former Soviet republic’s government, the Biden administration said on Friday.
⋙ NYT: A White House official says pro-Russia individuals are seeking to spark an insurrection in Moldova https://tinyurl.com/34dvyw3t

🐣 RT @BadBradRSR Being a racist POS like Trump is… It has to be driving him insane with three cases against him being conducted by African Americans & two being women, which he even respects less!
🖼 https://twitter.com/BadBradRSR/status/1634406990754594817?s=20/photo/1 -3

🧵 RT @BeschlossDC Congrats to all Americans on the just-released design of the new Air Force One, which fully honors the history of the plane since 1962:
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1634319193964249088?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📊 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Survey: Number of Ukrainian speakers increased to 71% amid full-scale war. ¤ The number of Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian in everyday life increased from 64% in 2021 to 71% in 2022, according to a survey conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation.

🧵 RT @shashj Podcast with Michael Kofman reflecting on his recent trip to Bakhmut. Ukraine rationing artillery ammo tightly. Russia using air power more, testing whether has Ukraine has enough stocks of radar-guided air defence missiles.
📌 https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1634219699591323648?s=20

WSJ: Ukraine Commits More Resources to Bakhmut Defense as Russia Advances https://tinyurl.com/ynccrner “Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskiy, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said Thursday that holding Bakhmut was buying Ukraine time to prepare reserves and prepare for offensive operations”
// Battle for city has taken on added significance as fighting escalates ahead of spring offensives

🐣 RT @AndyKroll 🚨 I’ve got a juicy story to tell you about Leonard Leo. ¤ Last time we checked in with Leo, we revealed details about a $1.6 BILLION gift he’d received. ¤ That huge donation begged the question: ¤ What will Leo do next? ¤ Answer: “Crush liberal dominance.” ¤ How? ¤ It’s 🧵 time
📌 https://twitter.com/AndyKroll/status/1633865549301071873?s=20

🐣 RT @reshetz Zaluzhny, commander in chief or the Ukrainian armed forces, kneeling to a soldier’s [ Da Vinci’s ] family on his funeral today
🖼 https://twitter.com/reshetz/status/1634316740833210368?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Dana Milbank: Kevin McCarthy joins the insurrection https://tinyurl.com/yckndtdn Kevin McCarthy’s know-nothingness; Jim Jordan’s shouting match weaponization committee; Republicans’ wars on books and trans kids; and the reason why the Founders separated Church and State

🐣 RT @JamesPorrazzo “We will take Bakhmut… then we will do a reboot. Wagner Group will transform from a PMC – the best army in the world, I emphasize, capable of defending the state – into an army with an ideology, and this ideology is a fight for justice!”- Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner Group
💽 https://twitter.com/JamesPorrazzo/status/1634295650694184961?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @igornovikov A field outside Bakhmut six months apart. That’s it. That’s the tweet
🖼 https://twitter.com/igornovikov/status/1634133691512365056?s=20/photo/1

NYT: Satellite images show widespread destruction after heavy fighting in Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/4v49pt7k “Some of the most severe damage is seen in neighborhoods on the eastern side of the city, which Russia this week said it controlled”
// New satellite pictures of the eastern Ukrainian city, where a brutal battle has been raging for months, showed bridges over a strategically important river had been destroyed.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1550 UTC 10 MAR/ After a sustained and costly series of attacks, Wagner PMC forces report attaining a lodgment in the village of Dubovo-Vasylivka. RU attacks on Orikhovo-Vasylivka were repelled. UKR units are reported to have advanced south-west of Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1634220575039135745?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @jacopo_iacoboni [tr] Perhaps Evgheny Prigozhin is beginning to clearly sense that the High Command of Russia is effectively dismantling his Wagner Group. n
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/jacopo_iacoboni/status/1634099384316047361?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] “Yes, the fighters and commanders who fight in the Wagner PMC are the most combat ready, but this does not mean that in other military units the commanders are dumber and the fighters are less brave. This is due to the fact that in PMC “Wagner” they do not kill the initiative of the commander, do not humiliate the bravery of the fighter. And in this case, they are able to crush the enemy and carry out the most outstanding victories. This is the difference between PMC “Wagner” and other military units. We treat every fighter and every commander as an individual, as a person who is of great value to the team. Of course, if such a structure ceases to exist, it is not just bad, it is a collapse, it is a catastrophe, it is a direct path to total shameful defeat. About the interview. Today I am thinking over the interview scheme and thinking over with whom (probably with several journalists or opinion leaders) it is necessary to talk in order to jointly understand the pile of existing problems, the series of mistakes and how they need to be corrected. And we have to fix them.

🐣 RT @Hannuska2109 Still massive numbers. Any wonder Rosgvardiya have been sent in to deal with russian discontent among the ranks, 870, another plane. 155th Marine Brigade has now been decimated & rebuilt 7 times since start of the SMO. Mutiny is coming & the end is nigh
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Hannuska2109/status/1634083644779159553?s=20/photo/1
// Russian losses 3/10

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Who among us hasn’t secretly paid over $100K through an intermediary in the waning days of a campaign for the presidency to silence a pornographic actress we never had sex with? Let those who have never done this cast the first stone.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1634081031576776704?s=20/photo/1 -4
// checks to Michael Cohen

⭕ 9 Mar 2023

🧵 RT @ ukr_arthistory Today is the birthday of Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), a great artist and poet, a symbol of the struggle for independence and against russian imperialism. You probably heard about him at least once. Big thread about his life and art. ¤ ‘Kateryna’ (1842)
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/ukr_arthistory/status/1633778024565833730?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @JuddLegum 1. Let’s take a detailed look at @TuckerCarlson’s private text messages, revealed as part of Dominion’s lawsuit, and compare them to what he was telling millions of people on Fox News every night ¤ It’s not news. ¤ It’s not even opinion. ¤ It’s a con.
📌 https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1633829483965984769?s=20

DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Meet the ‘Ghost’ Woman Fox Relied on for Voter Fraud Claims https://tinyurl.com/5n7e88f9 “[I]n Bourne’s telling, the CIA controls the Washington Post, the FBI runs the New York Times, and the State Department runs Politico and CNN”
// “Cactus artist” Marlene Bourne claims she might be a ghost and Antonin Scalia was hunted for sport. Her ideas got airtime on Fox News.

🧵 RT @ Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is complaining that the Russian Ministry of Defence is ghosting him – it’s not picking up his phone calls and his representatives’ passes have been deactivated, to stop him nagging them for ammunition. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1633942899179270144?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1633942899179270144.html

2/ In response to a question from a Russian news outlet about whether Wagner’s ammunition shortages have been resolved, he has posted an audio reply on his official Telegram channel. Translation:

3/ “No, it didn’t get any better with ammunition. Basically, nothing has changed at all. But there are indeed changes.

4/ In order for me to stop asking for ammunition, all special telephones were turned off for me in all offices, in all departments, etc. Another important thing they have done is blocked all passes to all the agencies that have to make decisions.

5/ I will not name them, so as not to discredit them in any way. So now I can only ask through the media. In fact, that’s probably what I’ll be doing. But it’s not all bad. There are positive aspects, of course.

6/ Kudos to the industrialists, Denis Valentinovich Manturov and Igor Nosenko and all those who work with them and rivet these shells. Profuse thanks very much from everyone.” /end

🐣 RT @ anyonewantchips Michael Cohen was sentenced to 3 years in prison, fined $50K & disbarred for paying Stormy Daniels $130K in hush money as directed by & for the benefit of Trump. It’s long past time Trump face the music.

NYT, David French: What Tucker Carlson Really Thinks https://tinyurl.com/44wf9jmt “Trump’s opponents have a new and surprising ally …. His name is Tucker Carlson. Ask him. He’ll tell you. You just need to ask when the camera is off”

[…] Collectively, the text messages, emails and other documents exposed by the [Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation lawsuit] represent one of the great “I told you so” moments in recent American history. From the beginning of the Trump era, conservative Trump critics (notably including my friends and former Fox News contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes) have been telling anyone who will listen that Republican politicians and personalities say one thing about Trump in public and another thing about him in private. In private, they’re scathing. In public, they’re sycophants.

Now we know exactly how true that is, and the person who is revealing that truth more than anyone else also happens to be arguably Fox’s most notorious and dishonest demagogue, Tucker Carlson. Previous document dumps have demonstrated that Carlson, in addition to several other Fox hosts and key senior leaders, knew that the various election-fraud conspiracy theories weren’t just baseless, they were — in the words of Rupert Murdoch — “really crazy stuff.”

But the latest documents go farther. They show that Carlson is capable of telling the truth about more than just the election conspiracy. In private, Carlson will say what the Fox News audience truly doesn’t want to hear — not just that Donald Trump lost, but that he was also a bad president. He was bad for the country. On Jan. 4, 2021, Carlson texted this about Trump’s single term: “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”

Thank you, Tucker. As Trump runs again, this is the most important truth of all. ¤ To understand why this truth is so important, you have to understand the Trump voter’s case for another term. Yes, there are those who support him because “he fights.” They thrill to the angry and combative rhetoric in his weekend speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I am your warrior,” he said. “I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” …

… Politically, Trump has hurt the G.O.P. He handed back control of every elected branch of the federal government to the Democratic Party in four short years. He was fiscally irresponsible. The budget deficit grew every year of his presidency. He passed only one truly meaningful piece of legislation in four years, a tax bill that was far more Paul Ryan’s than Donald Trump’s. He undermined America’s vital military alliances.

His corruption, his eagerness to put millions of dollars of taxpayer money into his resorts and properties and his willingness to let his family accept vast sums from foreign entities is profoundly troubling. We’ll likely be discovering further examples of his outright graft for years, if not decades. There’s considerable evidence that suggests he committed felonies in office.

And yet, that is still a somewhat superficial diagnosis. If you dig deeper, you’ll see that, for all the flaws just enumerated, the Trump years were most disastrous for the social and civic health of the United States of America. The increases in suffering and despair have been profound. Donald Trump’s presidency battered the American spirit. …

… Trump divided America. Partisan polarization hit its modern peak under Trump, and sheer partisan animosity increased as well. American mental health declined. The rate of depression increased even before Covid — it rose from 2015to 2019 — and the pandemic made the trend even worse.

This increase in negative statistics was accompanied by a decline in positive statistics. The marriage rate, for example, which had stabilized during the Obama years, plunged during the Trump years. The American birthrate continued its long decline.

American presidents are not so powerful that they can control all these social factors. Many of the negative trends (drug overdose deaths among the most notable) long predated Trump, but they continued under Trump. Presidents can’t control cultures, but they can help heal or they can further harm, and Trump committed grave harms. …

I’m most struck by the decline in the marriage rate and the increase in the abortion rate. Marriage and birth represent tangible expressions of optimism. Creating a family, welcoming new life into the world — it’s difficult to more concretely express one’s hope for the future. Yet chaos undermines hope, and Trump’s one term was chaotic. It was bitter. And it culminated in an attempted coup.

After almost eight long years writing about Donald Trump, I’m not nearly so naïve as to believe that any single new development will alienate his base. I understand that the right-wing media ecosystem is so protective of both Trump and Fox that millions of listeners and viewers won’t see even a single document from the Dominion case.

Arguments still matter, however — person by person and household by household. The argument that Trump was “bad but good” will be heard in many American homes. Those who held their noses to vote for him twice before will be tempted to do so once again. He is still the front-runner for the Republican nomination. But Trump’s opponents have a new and surprising ally, a person who agrees that the 45th president didn’t just lose the 2020 election, he was also a “disaster” in the White House. His name is Tucker Carlson. Ask him. He’ll tell you. You just need to ask when the camera is off.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote NEW: CONFIRMED: Jack Smith is going after trump for obstruction of Justice in the documents case. 18 USC 1519. 20 year max sentence. That’s what the Corcoran Crime Fraud exception hearing today was about.
⋙ TheGuardian: Prosecutors seek to question Trump lawyer before grand jury in classified papers case https://tinyurl.com/2sb9fjdd “[T]he prosecutors have argued to the federal court that Trump may have used his attorney in furtherance of a crime or fraud”
// Investigators are looking at invoking an exception that can bypass attorney-client privilege if legal advice is used for furthering crime

🐣 RT @Podolyak_M RF is trying to attack Moldova. Methods are obvious.
Stage 1: announcing Ukraine’s “invasion” of Transnistria.
Stage 2: attempt to organize a coup in Chișinău.
Now stage 3: falsely accusing Ukraine of preparing a “terrorist attack” in Transnistria.
Predictable lies in everything.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1633845017013002242?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @HowardA_AtLaw In honor of Donny’s panic, let’s sing Desperado (thread)!

♪ Desperate Donald
Why don’t you come to your senses?
You’re out of defenses, DA’s closing in
You’re a moron, we know you’re guilty of treason.
We all know the reason: you’re guilty as sin /1

♪ I know you say you’re fine, boy.
You’re a genius and you’re stable.
But we all know you’re anything but bright.
Spending all your hours
Watching FOX&Friends on cable.
I doubt you ever learned to read or write /2

CEPA, Julia Davis: Gloom Envelops Putin’s TV Propagandists https://tinyurl.com/yc3e787t ‘The idea that Russia’s victory is far from inevitable and that Russian defeat is a possibility has finally entered the once-impenetrable studios of state media’

DefenseDept: Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Holds a Joint Press Conference With Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant https://tinyurl.com/mvvv8f27
// topics: Iran nuclear program, new conservative Israeli govt (protests against changes to judiciary), Palestine, Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 my reading: both Israel and US declare they ‘will not allow’ Iran to have a nuclear weapon; Iran has enriched uranium to 84%; 90% is the line that can’t be crossed ¤ are there other factors involved? constructing an actual weapon; or is enrichment % all needed to trigger response?

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️Israel will launch military operation against Iran soon ¤ US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Israel, after meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, said that the United States would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and confirmed that Israel’s military […] operation against Iran would begin in the very near future.
// say what?

TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The Ugly Elitism of the American Right https://tinyurl.com/36n93pe4 Truth, be told.
// No one hates ordinary people like the Republicans and their media enablers do.

It’s time to talk about elitism. ¤ Last month, I wrote that the revelations about Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit showed that Fox personalities, for all their populist bloviation, are actually titanic elitists. This is not the elitism of those who think they are smarter or more capable than others—I’ll get to that in a moment—but a new and gruesome elitism of the American right, a kind of hatred and disgust on the part of right-wing media and political leaders for the people they claim to love and defend. Greed and cynicism and moral poverty can explain only so much of what we’ve learned about Fox; what the Dominion filings show is a staggering, dehumanizing version of elitism among people who have made a living by presenting themselves as the only truth-tellers who can be trusted by ordinary Americans.

I am, to say the least, no stranger to the charge of elitism. When I wrote a book in 2018 titled The Death of Expertise, a study of how people have become so narcissistic and so addled by cable and the internet that they believe themselves to be smarter than doctors and diplomats, I was regularly tagged as an “elitist.” And the truth is: I am an elitist, insofar as I believe that some people are better at things than others. ¤ But even beyond talent and ability, I do in fact firmly believe that some opinions, political views, personal actions, and life choices are better than others. As I wrote in my book at the time:

“Americans now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense. It is a flat assertion of actual equality that is always illogical, sometimes funny, and often dangerous.”

If that makes me an elitist, so be it. ¤ In this, elitism is the opposite of populism, whose adherents believe that virtue and competence reside in the common wisdom of a nebulous coalition called “the people.” This pernicious and romantic myth is often a danger to liberal democracies and constitutional orders that are founded, first and foremost, on the inherent rights of individuals rather than whatever raw majorities think is right at any given time.

The American right, however, now uses elitist to mean “people who think they’re better than me because they live and work and play differently than I do.” They rage that people—myself included—look down upon them. And again, truth be told, I do look down on Trump voters, not because I am an elitist but because I am an American citizen and I believe that they, as my fellow citizens, have made political choices that have inflicted the greatest harm on our system of government since the Civil War. I refuse to treat their views as just part of the normal left-right axis of American politics. … … I believe that today’s Trump supporters are people who are making a conscious, knowing, and morally flawed choice to continue supporting a sociopath and a party chock-full of seditionists. …

Unlike people such as Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, I have never told anyone—including you, readers of The Atlantic—anything I don’t believe. What we’re seeing at Fox, however, is lying on a grand scale, done with a snide loathing for the audience and a cool indifference to the damage being done to the nation. …

Fox’s stars did all of this while privately communicating with one another and rolling their eyes with contempt, admitting without a shred of shame that they were lying through their teeth. From Rupert Murdoch on down, top Fox personalities have admitted that they fed the rubes all of this red, rotting meat to keep them out of the way of the Fox limos headed to Long Island and Connecticut.

You can see this same kind of contemptuous elitism in Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Elise Stefanik. They couldn’t care less about the voters—those hoopleheads back home who have to be placated with idiotic speeches against trans people and “critical race theory.” These politicians were bred to be leaders, you see, and having to gouge some votes out of the hayseeds back home requires a bit of performance art now and then, a small price to pay so that the sons and daughters of Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Stanford, can live in the imperial capital and rule as is their due and their right.

Some years ago, I was at a meeting of one of the committees of the National Academy of Sciences. The conferees asked me how scientists—there were Nobel Laureates in the room—could defend the cause of knowledge. Stand your ground, I told them. Never hesitate to tell people they’re wrong. One panel member shook his head: “Tom, people don’t like to be condescended to.” I said, “I agree, but what they hate even more is to be patronized.” ¤ I believed it then, but we’re now testing that hypothesis on a national scale. I hope I wasn’t wrong.

🐣 RT @usingeo U.S. Embassy Statement on the Ruling Party’s Decision to Withdraw Draft Laws on “Foreign Influence”
⋙ USEmbassyGeorgia: U.S. Embassy Statement on the Ruling Party’s Decision to Withdraw Draft Laws on “Foreign Influence” https://tinyurl.com/2p9c82a5

“The Georgian people have, once again, spoken clearly that the only choice for Georgia is a secure and prosperous European future. We welcome Georgian Dream’s decision to withdraw both draft laws on “foreign influence.” We urge the ruling party to officially retract these bills and not pursue further this type of legislation, which is incompatible with Georgian and European values and the protection of fundamental freedoms. We encourage Georgia’s political leaders to work together in earnest on the reforms urgently needed to obtain the EU candidate status that Georgia’s citizens overwhelmingly desire.”

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost And..here it is…Trump’s deranged, endless rant just put out on Un-Truth Social. Its just as deranged and epically unhinged as I hoped:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1634014619001065472?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] I did absolutely nothing wrong, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels, nor would I have wanted to have an affair with Stormy Daniels.

This is a political witch-Hunt, trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party while at the same time also leading all Democrats in the polls, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Congress and numerous Democrat District Attorneys, Attorneys General, and the Department of Injustice itself, which has unprecedentedly placed top DOJ prosecutors into the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in order to “get Trump*, have found,that I did nothing wrong. Now, they fall back on the old, and rebuked case which has been rejected by every prosecutor’s office that has looked at this Stormy “Horseface” Daniels matter, where I relied on counsel in order to resolve this Extortion of me, which took place a long time ago. Since then, I have won lawsuits for hundreds of thousands of dollars against Stormy Daniels, and every prosecutors’ office which has looked at it, which are numerous, including the FEC, have turned this fake case down. This is not a state case, it is a federal case, and they have all passed on it.

Even the previous Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance, did not bring charges because I am guilty of nothing except for the fact that I am beating all Republicans and Democrats badly in the Presidential race. It is Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the no- collusion Mueller hoax, and other targeted, false attacks against me all over again. It is a weaponization of our judicial system, and I am shocked that this Soros backed radical left prosecutor, who has allowed violent crime to reach new heights in New York without any retribution, would consider bringing such a charge against the undisputed front runner of one of the two major political parties in our Nation.

Additionally, the statute of limitations has long since ended and, in fact, Radical Left media, one and a half years ago, did a “countdown” on the statute of limitations, which was allowed to expire. The countdown ended and until now nobody had any idea that it was allowed to continue in this one lowball office. It is appalling that the Democrats would play this card and only means that they are certain that they cannot win at the voter booth, so they have to go to a tool that has never been used in such a way in our country, weaponized law enforcement.

I, and hundreds of millions of the American People who are backing me, because they want to see our nation be great again, are the victims of this corrupt, depraved, and weaponized justice system where Hunter Biden and his father can commit horrendous crimes, all accurately documented on his laptop, and nothing happens, but with me, after looking at 11 million pages worth of documents, they go after a hoax that every other prosecutor’s office which reviewed it, and even the U.S. Congress, has long ago dropped. I will not be deterred, I will always continue to be your voice, and I will keep fighting for our great Country.

🐣 RT @ SpiroAgnewGhost Trump is the most dangerous man in America, and @TuckerCarlson is a soulless, sick man for enabling this madman further.
[Link:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1633137699518554112?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB. THANK YOU TO TUCKER CARLSON AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN McCARTHY FOR WHAT YOU BOTH HAVE DONE. NEW VIDEO FOOTAGE IS IRREFUTABLE!!!

🐣 RT @AVindman Trump says he would have let Russia ‘take over’ parts of Ukraine. ¤ Does this finally kill the joke that the Russia war wouldn’t happen with Trump 2.0 ¤ Trump thought he could gift Ukraine to Putin! ¤ Trump 2.0 & MAGA are a nightmare scenario for the world.
⋙ DailyBeast (3/7): https://tinyurl.com/3kyz7yyj

NYT: Trump Lawyer Admits to Falsehoods in 2020 Fraud Claims https://tinyurl.com/2p8a8fu3
// Jenna Ellis acknowledged that she knowingly misrepresented the facts about election fraud in a disciplinary procedure by Colorado state bar officials.

According to the sworn statement on Wednesday, some of Ms. Ellis’s lies about election fraud were made during appearances on Fox News, several of whose top hosts and executives were recently shown to have disparaged Mr. Trump’s fraud claims in private even though they supported them in public. The revelations about these discrepancies have emerged in a series of court filings by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-machine company that filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for promoting a conspiracy theory about its role in the election results.

Ms. Ellis, part of the so-called elite strike force of lawyers that took to the air and traveled across the country in support of Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, is also embroiled in the Justice Department’s investigation of the former president’s sprawling efforts to reverse his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. As part of the investigation — which was taken over in November by a special counsel, Jack Smith — dozens of grand jury subpoenas have been issued, many of which have requested information about Ms. Ellis.

In a message posted on Twitter Thursday morning, Ms. Ellis sought to split hairs concerning her agreement with officials in Colorado, saying that she never admitted to lying about election fraud, which she asserted “requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement.”

But in her stipulation with bar officials, she agreed that censure was merited when lawyers “knowingly engage” in any “conduct that involves dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.” ¤ “It appears that Ms. Ellis is continuing in her pattern of knowing misrepresentations and falsehoods,” Michael Teter, the managing director of the 65 Project, said on Thursday. “If she continues down this path, it will not be long before she is subject to further disciplinary action.”

🐣 RT @pravda_eng President’s Office on “terrorist act” in Transnistria: Kremlin creates fakes to attack Moldova
⋙ PravdaUA: President’s Office on “terrorist act” in Transnistria: Kremlin creates fakes to attack Moldova https://tinyurl.com/2te4t7xh
// Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the Head of the President’s Office, has said that Ukraine has no motives or intentions to commit a “terrorist attack” in Transnistria, and that the accusations of the occupiers are part of Russia’s plan to attack Moldova.

🐣 Trump says the 2020 election would have been affected if the (error-ridden) NYPost Hunter Biden laptop story hadn’t been shadow-banned for a few hours on Twitter ¤ I think it’s more likely that the 2016 election would have changed if the Stormy Daniels story hadn’t been ”hushed”

NYT: Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely https://tinyurl.com/mt9xbkuh //➔ For paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep the story from the American people prior to the 2016 election
// The former president was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wishes to testify, a strong indication that an indictment could soon follow.

🐣 RT @FellaNafo 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.”

🐣 Public Health, as opposed to Epidemiology, is focused on promoting public policy to PROTECT the health of the public. It is at its heart interventionist, and an entirely legitimate role is to PROTECT the public from medical disinformation #weaponization
⋙ 🐣 Whether or not to accept that there is a role for experts in Public Health is, I suppose debatable, if you assume government should have no role in protecting the lives of its citizens. But ”to promote the general Welfare” is right there in the Constitution’s Preamble.

🐣 .@danielsgoldman is stellar! Biden was acting in accordance with US policy and the policy of our allies and the IMF in demanding firing the inspector general in Ukraine for NOT investigating corruption, including of companies like Burisma #weaponization

🧵 RT @atrupar I’ll be live-tweeting this morning’s portion of the House “weaponization” hearing featuring testimony from Matt Taibbi
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1633846941040668674?s=20/photo/1

🧵 💽 RT @albafella1 Zelensky: « I want to thank everyone who has been holding Ukrainian flags in the squares & streets of Georgia these days. I want to express gratitude for our national anthem that was played in Tbilisi. This is respect for Ukraine & I want to express my sincere respect for Georgia
📌 https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1633586470089900033?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @albafella1 There is no Ukrainian who would not wish success to our friendly #Georgia. Democratic success. European success. ¤ We want to be in the European Union and we will be there. We want Georgia to be in the European Union, and I am sure it will be there.
⋙ 🐣 RT @albafella1 We want Moldova to be in the European Union, and I am sure it will be there. All free nations of Europe deserve this. ¤ Glory to all those who are now fighting for Ukraine! Glory to all those who are fighting for their brothers-in-arms! Glory to Ukraine! » — Zelensky

🐣 RT @ @ukraine_world The importance of keeping Bakhmut is only growing – Commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces Syrskyi. ¤ “Each day allows us to gain time to prepare for future counteroffensive. Meanwhile, the enemy loses the most combat-ready part of their army – the Wagner assault units.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1140 UTC 9 MAR/ RU renewed futile attacks on the villages of Orikhovo-Vasylivka & Dubovo-Vasylivka. RU troops consolidated forces on the east bank of the river. UKR has engaged RU soldiers who crossed the Bakhmutka by a damaged footbridge S of the H-32 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1633794295827243010?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @maxseddon After two nights of major protests, Georgia’s ruling party has dropped its attempt to ram through a Russia-style “foreign agent” law that threatened to derail its EU and NATO hopes. by Salome Pkhaladze in Tbilisi and me
⋙ FT: Georgia withdraws Russia-inspired bill after violent protests https://tinyurl.com/5ty95ama
// US and Brussels say ‘foreign agent’ bill incompatible with country’s efforts to join EU and Nato

🐣 RT @euronewsnext All major social media platforms will have to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act expected to come into full effect in 2024 — including Elon Musk’s Twitter.
⋙ EuroNews: Twitter told to hire more human content moderators instead of AI https://tinyurl.com/mrynvemx “The largest social media platforms will have until September 1, 2023, to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act or face a penalty of up to 6 per cent of their yearly revenue”
// The European Commission is worried about Twitter’s goal to use volunteers and artificial intelligence to police content.

Like other critics, Melissa Ingle believes human moderators are essential to intercepting disinformation and hateful content. ¤ “You really need the data scientists because there’s 30 million tweets every hour or 500 million a day. You need humans because as good as I would love to say our algorithms are, there’s still a lot that gets through,” she explained.

Since the mass layoffs, many analysts have noticed a spike in hate speech and disinformation on the platform. ¤ “One of the biggest sources of misinformation were state governments trying to push through political propaganda. So we’re seeing more of that as well as all the hate speech,” she said.

“Number two: we’re seeing an increase in site outages. We’ve seen the site go down. So I’m very concerned with these rises in hate speech and these website problems”.

Other concerns have been raised that Twitter does not have enough volunteer moderators such as Wikipedia and has a poor record when it comes to policing content that’s not in English. 

“The lack of human moderators, insufficient training in human rights, and also their content moderation systems that are being predominantly trained for English language or more Western speaking audience in contrast to minority languages or languages of the global South. That’s the prevalent issue that Twitter and other platforms face,” said Elishka Pirkova, a policy analyst at digital rights group Access Now. 

What’s next? The largest social media platforms will have until September 1, 2023, to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act or face a penalty of up to 6 per cent of their yearly revenue.

🧵 RT @MavkaSlavka Ukraine has a large collection of monuments and memorials. From the inception of Kyiv to the Holodomor and the Chornobyl nuclear tragedy, here is a selection of some of most noteworthy.
📌 https://twitter.com/MavkaSlavka/status/1633759144988803072?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ danielrhamilton A quick information point for journalists that keep referring to #Georgia as an “ex-Soviet state”: sure, it was forced to be part of the Soviet Union for 70 years but, prior to that, was an independent democracy with minority rights & freedom of speech. Russia has never had that.

🐣 RT @Helenkhosh The protest is not just about the bill, but about the Russian nature of the Georgian Dream. There is no trust towards them or their word, and track record serves as the empirical proof. There is no legal mechanism to withdraw the draft. Protests resume at 7 PM. #Georgia 1/2.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Helenkhosh There is no full and clear picture on the demands or the nature of further protest yet, but the public is genuinely done with the Georgian Dream. Patience seems to have exploded big time. Only way to calm #Georgia is regime change, with unlikely odds of fair elections ever. 2/2.

🐣 RT @TheDeadDistrict And not everyone was there, I could not attend, because the road to my village was closed because of the snow on the pass. I’m sure that much more people will come for rally if they don’t withdrawal the Putin’s law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Helenkhosh This is quite possibly the largest demonstration in the history of #Georgia. And the people coming are angry. Thousands are still marching towards the main crowd. #NoToRussianLaw. No to the government that serves Russia.

🐣 RT @KShoshiashvili #Tbilisi Now: People stand strong and together. The Constitution of Georgia is embodied in the Georgian people. Our national objective is Euro-Atlantic integration and we stand ready to defend it. Our message is clear: Georgia is Europe. Georgia will never be Russia.

🐣 RT @ESK001 Georgia doesn’t sleep. Tbilisi protest against the Russian law. 08/03/23. ¤ I edited this video for you to hear, see and feel the struggle of Georgian people for freedom, dignity and the European choice Georgian people and their allies stand for.
💽 https://twitter.com/ESK001/status/1633613408061857793?s=20/photo/1

🐣 “We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars: It is better to be here [in Europe] ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to
respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments
with an expansionist intent.” ~ Ronald Reagan

🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight, leading to loss of lives and damaging civilian infrastructure. No military objective, just Russian barbarism. The day will come when Putin and his associates are held accountable by a Special Tribunal.

🐣 RT @Osinttechnical Russian forces appear to be heavily invested in degrading Ukrainian power generation capabilities, expending valuable Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to do so.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Kyiv authorities saying Russia used a hypersonic Kinzhal missle to strike a Kyiv power station. ¤ Assuring about 15% of the city doesnt have electricity for 12 hours must be important as they are considered to only have about 57 of these rare missles.

🐣 RT @NikaMelkozerova 81 missiles. Including 6 hypersonic Kalibr missiles. It is like $600 million on our sleeping heads. For what?? Just to make those ordinary Russians, who are screaming on social media of anger at the fact that we still have electricity and didn’t die of cold?

🐣 RT @ JimmySecUK Large missile strike on Ukraine carried out by Russia overnight consisting of:
– 28 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles
– 20 Kalibr cruise missiles
– 6 X-22 cruise missiles
– 6 Kh-47 “Kinzhal” cruise missiles
– 8 other guided air missiles
– 13 S-300 missiles
According to the UkAF.

🐣 RT @TWMCLtd #Ukraine’s nuclear energy regulator has issued an urgent warning about Europe’s largest nuclear plant. ¤ Energoatom says the #Zaporizhzhia plant in #Enerhodar has been completely de-energised after Russian shelling. ¤ Here’s the translation of their post: ¤ #RussiaIsATerroristState
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TWMCLtd/status/1633741180440653825?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] 🐣 RT @Energyatome !! Zaporizhzhya NPP completely de-energized due to racist shelling Today, March 9, 2023, at 03:53 a.m., as a result of racist missile attacks, the last communication line of the occupied Zaporizhia NPP with the Ukrainian power system was disconnected. Currently, the station is de-energized and has gone into blackout mode for the sixth time during the occupation, the 5th and 6th power units are put into a cold state, 18 diesel generators have been switched on to power the ZNPP’s own needs. Fuel for their work remains for 10 days. The countdown has begun. If it is impossible to renew the external power supply of the station during this time, an accident with radiation consequences for the whole world may occur.

[Text2:] In addition, all domestic nuclear power plants located on the territory controlled by Ukraine have unloaded their capacity due to the threat of missile attacks.

As of 06:30 a.m., all power units provide a total of 4.700 MW to the power system. Due to the occupation of the plant and the interference of Rosatom representatives in its work, the possibilities of the Ukrainian side to maintain the ZNPP in a safe mode are significantly limited.

Currently, the actions of the entire international community are urgently needed to remove racist terrorist groups from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, transfer it to the full control of a competent legitimate operator – Ukrainian Energoatom – and restore the conditions for maintaining the nuclear, radiation and physical safety of the nuclear facility.

🐣 RT @ Flash_news_ua ⚡️ For the first time, the russians shelled Ukraine with such different types of rockets. They fired six the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, reports the Speaker of the Air Force Command Yurii Inat. ¤ “[The russians] used, in particular, MiG-31K aircraft. I don’t remember this happening before”.

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi reacted to the russian missile attack on Ukraine: “It’s been a difficult night. A massive rocket attack across the country. Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipro, Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia regions.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1633741919485415426?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 8 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @brianstelter It’s an incredibly strange time to work at Fox News. People are gossiping about the Dominion filings and wondering which heads will roll. And “our bosses are acting like nothing is happening.” Here’s what I learned from half a dozen sources inside Fox
⋙ Vanity Fair, Brian Stelter: “We’re All Embarrassed”: Inside Fox News as Dominion Revelations Rattle the Network https://tinyurl.com/48ps3ezs
// Fox producers are getting libel law training, and staffers are (cautiously) gossiping about filings exposing the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson. “We’re very careful when we’re miked up,” one on-air personality tells Vanity Fair. “And we’re not texting.”

🐣 RT @WorldWarNow_ “It is very difficult to kill 12-20 thousand Ukrainian soldiers by tomorrow morning….Ukrainians die en masse for Bakhmut & surrender only as a last resort. Stop calling them cowards. They are the same as we are & the same blood flows in them.” ¤ -Yevgeny Prigozhin, CEO of Wagner

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost More completely unhinged and demented every hour. This is strait jacket level
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1633581883656396800?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump City, State, and Federal (DOJ) Prosecutors throughout the Country are practicing good ol’ ELECTION INTERFERENCE, at a level that our Country has never seen before. They want to take out the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. The bigger the lead I take, the more CRAZY they become. AT THE SAME TIME, THEY DO NOTHING ABOUT THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY!

‼️🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY/ 2300 UTC 8 MAR/ RU forces have consolidated forces on the E bank of the Bakhmutka. RU infantry effected a crossing of the river via a ruined footbridge in the vicinity of School No. 5. UKR troops are reported in urban combat west of the school. Fighting continues.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1633600912231919643?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @SKmartinTO Attack from the east was intercepted in the early hours, the stabilization defensive perimeter is underway, the PMC threw the last 17000 homeless into the attack, according to the movement of the advanced lines, it will be a matter of 72 hours #GoHomeIVAN
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulJawin The artillery of the 14th brigade Chervona Kalina, together with the AFU, destroyed the advancing Wagner group in the Bakhmut direction.
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1633504175303667712?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln “We also agree with what Fox News’s own attorneys and executives have now repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law: that Tucker Carlson is not credible.” – White House spokesperson. ¤ The MAGA base, with their collective memory being that of a goldfish, may not put 2 and 2 together as they continue to take as gospel everything @tuckercarlson says about the January 6th tapes.
⋙ Politico: White House goes after Tucker Carlson by name over Jan. 6 coverage https://tinyurl.com/ru9earf
// In a rare rebuke of the Fox News ratings leader, the White House said Carlson is “not credible.”

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Your daily reminder: “Russian-speaking area” does NOT mean pro-Russia. Ukraine is a bilingual country. Many Ukrainians also speak Russian. That’s a relic of colonial history, not political identity. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are Ukrainian no matter what language they use.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “I could’ve made a deal to take over something, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could’ve worked a deal.” – Donald Trump. ¤ The perfect idea to inspire dictators all over the world to invade other countries and have never-ending wars.
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1633595180761886722?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Trump tells Hannity on his radio show that he would have been willing to let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine while he was president (a comment edited out when later played on Fox News). @justinbaragona
⋙ DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Fox News Edits Out Trump Saying He Might’ve Let Russia ‘Take Over’ Parts of Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3kyz7yyj
// While Trump told Hannity on the radio he could’ve prevented war by negotiating a deal with Russia, that portion was curiously edited out when aired on Fox News.

🧵 RT @KlasfeldReports Dominion’s just-released reply brief in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit seeking summary judgment starts with a single-word sentence: ¤ “Finally.”
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1633592925815709698?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] INTRODUCTION
Finally. Fox has conceded what it knew all along. The charges Fox broadcast against Dominion are false. Fox does not spend a word of its brief arguing the truth of any accused statement. Fox has produced no evidence none, zero supporting those lies. This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organization to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion “stolen election” story. Now, having failed to put in any evidence to the contrary (because no such evidence exists), Fox has conceded the ALT of the Dominion allegations it broadcast.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports “That concession is no small thing. Thirty percent or more of Americans still believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.” ¤ Dominion says their employees still get threats and harassment.
[Text:] That concession is no small thing. Thirty percent or more of Americans still believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The heart of that lie remains the false conspiracy theory that Fox legitimized and mainstreamed starting on November & that Dominion stole the election, using secret algorithms in its software originally designed for a Venezuelan dictator. Because of these lies, Dominion now may be “one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.” Ex. 139, Richer 73:9-14. Dominion employees still endure threats and harassment. So it matters that Fox in private ridiculed and never believed the lie. And it matters that Fox has now in this litigation conceded these allegations were false.

🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports Fox’s reply: “Dominion litters its opposition brief with cherry-picked statements from people who have nothing to do with the specific statements it challenges as defamatory,” which “might make for interesting headlines” but doesn’t create a “triable issue of fact.”
[Text:] PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
Much like it did in its opening summary judgment motion, Dominion litters its opposition brief with cherry-picked statements from people who have nothing to do with the specific statements it challenges as defamatory. While that might make for interesting headlines, it does not create a triable issue of fact. In reality, Dominion has not even identified any defamatory statement of fact as opposed to newsworthy allegations or opinions attributable to Fox News, let alone identified any such statement published with actual malice. At the very least, its kitchen-sink complaint is wildly overbroad, and it has not even identified sufficient evidence of economic damages, let alone met the very high bar for punitive damages.

🐣 RT @Tendar Prigozhin in eastern Bakhmut and you know what isn’t there? Right, the Russian flag. ¤ It is so revealing to see that those mercenaries are fighting for their oligarch, not for Russia or the Russian army. It is a socio-political mix of an oligarchy, warlordism and feudalism.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1633563495953301507?s=20/photo/1

TheBulwark, Jonathan Last: Fox Is Worse Than You Thought https://tinyurl.com/2mwwfyaj
// Their business is being the Republican party’s Pravda. Plus: How the GOP hopefuls are being backed into a corner by January 6th.

WaPo: Four takeaways from the new Dominion-Fox lawsuit documents https://tinyurl.com/3u54ztrx
// Fox was a hotbed of backbiting, and its vaunted news division wasn’t as neutral as it claimed to be

Tuesday brought yet more documents in Dominion Voting Systems’ high-stakes lawsuit against Fox News over Fox’s handling of claims that Dominion’s voting machines helped rig the 2020 election.

The documents come after Dominion recently detailed how Fox executives and hosts privately derided the stolen-election claims even as the network chose to air them anyway — often credulously — in the name of appealing to its Trump-supporting viewers.

We’ve learned details from depositions in the case — including that of Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who acknowledged that his hosts endorsed stolen-election claims and expressed regret for that — and additional details from exhibits attached to the filings.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin states that both Prigozhin and Shoigu and anything but good commanders after failing to take Bakhmut, and that the advertised Russian winter offensive failed without bringing any meaningful results. https://t.me/strelkovii/4157
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1633410034951438339?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] By March 8, Prigozhin and Shoigu happily inform the population of the Russian Federation that they managed to take half of Artemivsk (both non-Russian noviops, of course, do not dare to pronounce the original name of the city, Bakhmut).

Without denying at all the courage and heroism of the Wagner fighters and commanders (as well as the adjacent units of the RF Armed Forces), I will only note that the results of more than 2 months of brutal meat grinder in the form of taking half of the city blocks of a small city testify to anything, but not to the military talents of both of these characters. And, unfortunately, I express confidence that after the final capture of the city, the offensive will “come to naught” in front of the next fortified areas of the enemy, erected during the time Bakhmut and Soledar were assaulted.

I have to state that the winter offensive of the RF Armed Forces was limited to frontal strikes against heavily fortified positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, in general, ended in failure (which is in no way compensated by the insignificant tactical successes of our troops and the heavy losses of the enemy).

NYT: House G.O.P. Prepares to Slash Federal Programs in Coming Budget Showdown https://tinyurl.com/35232de5 “Woke” appears to mean anything that benefits the poor, as well as “America First” cuts to foreign aid and counter-intelligence
// With Social Security and Medicare off the table, conservatives are focusing on a wide range of smaller programs as a clash with President Biden and Democrats looms.

NYT: Biden Is Set to Detail at Least $2 Trillion in Measures to Reduce Deficits https://tinyurl.com/3w3thu8k Biden’s plan includes ‘a new tax on households worth more than $100M that would apply to earned income and the unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets’
// The president’s proposals, included in the budget he will release on Thursday, are expected to heavily feature tax increases on corporations and high earners

🧵 RT @ @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN! Today is international Women’s day – a very important day that deserves our respect and attention. In honour of this day, today’s thread is focused on one of the most famous Ukrainian women in history – St. Olha of Kyiv! 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1633350884192133122?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 7 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @calxandr The main front in the war against Russian fascist aggression is in heroic Ukraine. But the fight for democracy in Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan & elsewhere also gives the Kremlin nightmares they richly deserve.

🐣 RT @SenSchumer Tucker Carlson is siding with the enemies of democracy. Here’s what I just said on the Senate floor:
💽 https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1633131186540118016?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “There is no part of Ukraine about which one can say that it can be abandoned. There is no Ukrainian trench in which the resilience and heroism of our warriors would be disregarded.” The defence of #Bakhmut continues.
⋙ PresUkraine: The occupier is killing for the very fact that we are Ukrainians, for the mere word about Ukraine – address by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy https://tinyurl.com/3wx5h9bz

ABCNews: Rupert Murdoch said Trump, Giuliani were ‘both increasingly mad’ in wake of 2020 election, new documents show https://tinyurl.com/2s3hwxjx
// The documents are part of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News.

Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch privately bashed then-President Donald Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, following the 2020 election, according to court records made public on Tuesday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Murdoch wrote that Trump and Giuliani were “both increasingly mad” — using the British expression for “crazy” — in an email whose contents were read during a deposition taken as part of the lawsuit.

The voting machine company has filed court documents containing private communications from Fox News personnel appearing to cast doubt on claims that Dominion’s voting machines had somehow rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor.

Tuesday’s newly unveiled records included additional correspondence between Fox network executives and on-air hosts regarding Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. ¤ “The real danger is what he might do as president,” Murdoch wrote of Trump, according to a transcript of the deposition. “Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls!”

Murdoch also acknowledged in a Jan. 21, 2021, email to a Fox News executive that “maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” referring to Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, two primetime hosts who echoed Trump’s claims of election fraud. The email was sent in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?” Murdoch wrote.

The thousands of pages of new documents provide additional evidence that network leaders privately acknowledged that Joe Biden had won the election despite what Fox News’ on-air personalities told their viewers.

In response to the documents, Fox News officials said that Dominion was misleading the public by not providing the full context behind some of the quotes. In one example, Fox host Sean Hannity’s statement about election fraud that he “did not believe it for one second,” which was included in an early Dominion filing, was only a partial quote and did not include that he said that he “waited for the proof.”

“Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught red-handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” Fox News officials said in a statement. “We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”

Other documents released Tuesday show one of Fox’s biggest stars, Tucker Carlson, privately saying that he hated Trump “passionately.” ¤ “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson privately wrote on Jan. 4, 2021, according to the documents. “I truly can’t wait.” ¤ “I hate him passionately,” he said.

Separately, in a group chat between Carlson, Hannity and Laura Ingraham, the Fox News hosts vented privately about the network, its declining ratings, and their fellow employees in mid-November, the records show. ¤ “We are all officially working for an organization that hates us,” Ingraham wrote on Nov. 16, 2020, according to the documents. “My anger at the news channel is pronounced,” she said later. ¤ “I’m disgusted at this point,” Hannity said later in the conversation, per the records.

The new material also documents backlash to Fox News’ decision to call Arizona for Biden before other networks had done so. After Fox News made the call, Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, urged executives to “back off AZ” and retract the call. ¤ “The sooner we pull it — even if it gives us major egg … the better we are. In my opinion,” Baier wrote on Nov. 5.

Murdoch also said during his deposition as part of the lawsuit that he “never” believed the theory that the voting company was involved in an effort to “delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump.” ¤ “I never believed it,” he said during his deposition on Jan. 19, 2023, according to a more complete transcript that was released as part of the newer documents.

But elsewhere in the deposition, Murdoch acknowledged Trump’s importance, saying “nobody wants Trump as an enemy. ¤ When asked why, Murdoch said “because he had a great following, big.” ¤ “Seventy-five million people voted for him,” Murdoch said.

🐣 RT @JStein_WaPo McCarthy’s chief of staff has told colleagues his office is now in a nearly impossible bind, having vowed to advance a budget that eradicates the deficit in a decade without touching Medicare & Social Security or increasing taxes
⋙ WaPo: The Kevin McCarthy aide tasked with defusing the GOP’s debt limit bomb https://tinyurl.com/8jax6xcp “The following months will put Meyer’s aptitude managing lawmakers to the test. The Minnesotan is a constant but understated presence in the Capitol”
// Dan Meyer, the speaker’s chief of staff, has seen tense budget standoffs before. But the Republican Party has changed since then.

🐣 RT @wartranslated As if we are now getting used to almost daily videos from Russian mobilised soldiers, this one is different. The commander of this platoon is not appealing to Putin, but directly stating he is refusing to obey orders. These men were transferred to “DPR” for “meat assaults” and lost a major part of their personnel due to a “complete lack of training and reconnaissance”.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1633212458662764556?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer DELIVERED TO UKRAINE: The JADM-ER has arrived in Ukraine. The Australian-US designed kit can be fitted to 500 lb. bombs. The JADAM-ER’s integrated inertial guidance/GPS receivers will permit UKR aircraft to deliver precision strikes at ranges better than 40 mi (64.7 Km).
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1633293233382981634?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MartyLenz_KOA The January 6 Whitewash Will Backfire @RadioFreeTom @TheAtlantic on Carlson, McCarthy and the J6 tapes. ¤ The only other plausible possibility: ¤ Tuck is auditioning for Newsmax or OANN.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The January 6 Whitewash Will Backfire https://tinyurl.com/zx79ahh4
// Tucker Carlson and the GOP are trying to erase a dark day. Their public-relations gamble is already failing.

[…] To recap the events of the past few weeks: McCarthy apparently decided that Carlson was the person who could remove the stain of January 6 from the Republican Party. Remember, once Trump was elected in 2016, the GOP was a national majority, holding the House, the Senate, the White House, most governor’s mansions, and most state legislatures across the country. Trump destroyed much of that, and his decision to run again meant that January 6 could not somehow be memory-holed. So the speaker gave the ever-perplexed Carlson access to thousands of hours of video from the attack.

The objective here was clear from the start. If the GOP is going to make a run at national power again, it must find a way to deny the reality of January 6 and neutralize the cloud of seditious stink that still clings to every Republican because of Trump and the insurrectionists. Who better than Carlson to sneer his way through a dismissal of one of the worst days in the history of the United States?

Unfortunately, the attempt to gaslight millions of people isn’t going very well. Carlson, as my colleague David Graham points out, is engaging in a “long-standing Donald Trump approach of demanding that his supporters believe him rather than their lying eyes.” But there are likely limits to that gambit even for Carlson, who is presenting as bombshells things we already knew. It is not a revelation, for example, that the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, walked along with Capitol cops who were trying to keep the fur-hatted weirdo calm even while he was howling in the Senate chamber. Carlson’s attempt to deny the danger of that moment is not only silly but also a gobsmackingly incompetent attempt to use footage depicting a rioter whose bizarre behavior was already well-known to the public.

It’s one thing to assume that the Fox audience isn’t very bright and will believe almost anything—I will gladly stipulate to that—but it’s another to ask them to leap across a chasm of credulity. Sedition-friendly Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, tried to capitalize on Carlson’s after-school-video special by immediately calling for a new trial for Chansley. But even Fox viewers probably know that Chansley wasn’t convicted in a trial: He loquaciously pleaded guilty and got a stiff sentence of 41 months in prison.

… You might have expected someone like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah to zing Carlson, and he did, saying the Fox host had gone “off the rails” and describing him as a radio “shock jock.” But conservative Senators Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Mike Rounds of South Dakota both criticized Carlson. (Even Senate Minority Leader and ongoing profile in courage Mitch McConnell carefully opined that Fox “made a mistake” in depicting January 6 in a way that was “completely at variance” with how the head of the Capitol Police “correctly” described the day.) Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Carlson’s presentation was “inexcusable” and, for good measure, “bullshit.”

Trump, of course, thanked both Carlson and McCarthy. Because, really, if the point was to reassure the American public about whether the GOP is still in the grip of violent seditionists, what better way to do it than to clumsily cherry-pick some video and then elicit an all-caps tirade from the leader of the Republican Party?

LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB. THANK YOU TO TUCKER CARLSON AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN McCARTHY FOR WHAT YOU BOTH HAVE DONE. NEW VIDEO FOOTAGE IS IRREFUTABLE!!!

Well then. As Sonny Bunch from The Bulwark wryly observed this morning: “Going to be kind of funny to watch GOP candidates dance around acknowledging that the presidential frontrunner and the party’s semi-official media organ are more or less pro-storming-the-Capitol at this point.”

As counterintuitive as it might be, perhaps the best thing for American democracy would be for Carlson to keep bumbling his way through more January 6 footage and to keep images of the insurrection in front of millions of viewers for as long as possible. If that’s how McCarthy and Carlson intend to restore the image of the GOP as a normal political party, who are any of us to argue with such public-relations geniuses?

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BURN RATE: Putin has lost more than 3423 tanks in his ‘Special Military Operation’. To replace them, Moscow is refurbishing T-62 tanks. Though some will have upgraded optics, most will lack modern reactive armor. These 60-year-old antiques will be easy meat for UKR’s Leopards.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1632770280795021314?s=20/photo/1
// UK Defense Intelligence Summary 3/6/2023

WaPo: Capitol Police chief blasts Tucker Carlson over ‘misleading’ Jan. 6 footage https://tinyurl.com/4erjb5vj Includes statement by Brian Sicknick’s family, video of McConnell stating support for Capitol Police letter
// Carlson showed segments, including ‘QAnon shaman’ Jacob Chansley, which didn’t show violence on the day rioters stormed the Capitol

CNN: Exclusive: Zelensky warns of ‘open road’ through Ukraine’s east if Russia captures Bakhmut, as he resists calls to retreat https://tinyurl.com/4najj2cz

Russian troops will have “open road” to capture key cities in eastern Ukraine if they seize control of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in an interview with CNN, as he defended his decision to keep Ukrainian forces in the besieged city.

“This is tactical for us,” Zelensky said, insisting that Kyiv’s military brass is united in prolonging its defense of the city after weeks of Russian attacks left it on the cusp of falling to Moscow’s troops. ¤ “We understand that after Bakhmut they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview from Kyiv. “That’s why our guys are standing there.”

He said that if Russia is able to “put their little flag” on top of Bakhmut, it would help “mobilize their society in order to create this idea they’re such a powerful army.” ¤ Though Bakhmut does not hold significant strategic value in itself, its road connections to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – two densely populated, industrial urban hubs to the northwest – mean those cities be next in Russia’s crosshairs if they are able to take control. …

NATO intelligence meanwhile estimates that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russian forces have lost at least five, a military official with the alliance told CNN on Monday. The official cautioned the 5-to-1 ratio was an informed estimate based on intelligence.

Wagner troops have been descending on the city since capturing the town of Soledar in January. Should they gain control of Bakhmut, it would mark a rare case of a town changing hands in what has become a sluggish and slow-moving war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

An adviser within the Ukrainian Presidency, Mykhailo Podolyak, told CNN on Monday that in defending Bakhmut, Ukraine had two main goals: buying time to replenish its forces and inflicting heavy losses on Russian armies. ¤ “It achieved its goals by 1,000%,” he said. “Even if the military leadership at some point decides to retreat to more favorable positions, the case of defending Bakhmut will be a great strategic success for the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a foundation for future victory.”

Ukraine is meanwhile racing to integrate Western weapons systems and dozens of tanks into its operations, after Zelensky successfully persuaded the US, the UK, Germany and a bloc of other European nations to step up its military aid. ¤ It comes ahead of an anticipated Russian spring offensive that may encompass territory in central and northern Ukraine which Russia was unsuccessful in capturing in its initial invasion last year.

🐣 RT @mhmck The General Staff reports units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine repelled attacks by the Russian fascist invaders in the areas of Ivanivs’ke, Klishchiyivka and Bakhmut. ¤ That Ukrainian defenders hold positions near Klishchiyivka is good news. The enemy isn’t surrounding Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1633159127982637056?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @therecount Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says Tucker Carlson’s whitewashing of the Capitol insurrection was a “mistake.” ¤ “My concern is how it was a depicted … Clearly, the chief of the Capitol Police … correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6th.”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1633191586254274563?s=20/photo/1

CNN: US Capitol Police chief rips into Tucker Carlson over ‘offensive’ use of January 6 footage https://tinyurl.com/yc5fu5hu “Several congressional Republicans, most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have expressed concern with Carlson’s portrayal of the attack”

Several congressional Republicans, most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have expressed concern with Carlson’s portrayal of the attack. ¤ “With regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the Chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6,” McConnell told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday.

According to the Justice Department, 140 officers were assaulted at the Capitol that day, including 60 Metropolitan Police officers and 80 USCP officers.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1400 UTC 7 MAR/ On 6 MAR, a major Russian offensive was crushed by UKR at the village of Dubovo-Vasylivka. UKR ground forces, artillery & missile forces defeated thirty-seven (37) RU attacks in heavy fighting. Wagner troop & materiel losses are assessed as heavy.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1633105588862197761?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CULMINATION? RU’s failed attack at Dubovo-Vasylivka marks one of the most severe Russian defeats in the long campaign to take the city of Bakhmut. UKR reinforcements are now assessed to be deployed in strong defensive lines in the city and surrounding areas.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @SKmartinTO Omega Special Unit of the National Guard of Ukraine is on the front line of contact, decimating demoralized armed criminals from the PMC in the Battles on Bakhmut Fortress. #BakhmutFortressHOLD
💽 https://twitter.com/SKmartinTO/status/1633114304076476418?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @kyledcheney JUST IN: DOJ says it has crossed 1,000 Jan. 6 defendants, with more than half pleading guilty and another 53 found guilty in trials.
⋙ DOJ: 26 Months Since the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol https://tinyurl.com/m7bhn7cd

Arrests made: More than 999 defendants have been arrested in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia. (This includes those charged in both District and Superior Court).

Criminal charges:
● Approximately 326 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 106 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.

● Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted Jan. 6 at the Capitol, including about 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department.

● Approximately 11 individuals have been arrested on a series of charges that relate to assaulting a member of the media, or destroying their equipment, on Jan. 6.

● Approximately 919 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds. Of those, 101 defendants have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.

● Approximately 61 defendants have been charged with destruction of government property, and approximately 46 defendants have been charged with theft of government property.

● More than 306 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.

Approximately 55 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, either: (a) conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding, (b) conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement during a civil disorder, (c) conspiracy to injure an officer, or (d) some combination of the three.

Pleas:
● Approximately 518 individuals have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, many of whom faced or will face incarceration at sentencing.

Trials:
● 53 individuals have been found guilty at contested trials, including 3 who were found guilty in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Another 16 individuals have been convicted following an agreed-upon set of facts. 19 of these 72 defendants were found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, a felony, including one who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Sentencings:
● Approximately 420 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6. Approximately 220 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. Approximately 100 defendants have been sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 15 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration.

🐣 RT @SenRonJohnson Truth is beginning to be revealed. ¤ Thank you @SpeakerMcCarthy,
@TuckerCarlson & company for showing America the rest of the Jan. 6 story. ¤ When will judges begin applying justice equally? ¤ Doesn’t look like “thousands of armed insurrectionists” to me. https://tinyurl.com/3un7anvp
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/1632924556116541441?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ 🐣 Please make these materials available to all news outlets, to allow for the widest possible context and analysis. ¤ That said, keep in mind that the “trophy” videos made by participants and bodycam videos of police officers provide additional points of view of what took place

🐣 Richard Haass declares Biden’s “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” policy as Biden allowing Ukraine to set US national security policy. @Morning_Joe can do better and needs to host alternative views that don’t favor the US bullying its partners. @JoeNBC

⭕ 6 Mar 2023

NatRev, Charles Cooke: Donald Trump’s Recipe for Electoral Failure https://tinyurl.com/5n8fs648 “[W]hy, on each of the last three times [Trump] has attempted to compete in American elections, he has proven himself to be such a bewildering loser”
// The former president portrays any attempt to appeal to voters beyond his core base as a sign of weakness

Despite his preferred approach to politics having been responsible for grievous Republican losses in the last three national elections, Donald Trump is once again seeking to cast himself as the savior of the American Right. During his chaotic speech at CPAC on Saturday, Trump boasted to the crowd that, until he came along, “the Republican Party was ruled by freaks, neocons, open-border zealots, and fools,” before reassuring attendees that, under his continued leadership, the GOP is not at risk of “going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.”

This was not an offhand comment. Increasingly, Trump likes to point to Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, and even Ronald Reagan as examples of what has historically been wrong with the GOP — as well as a warning of what the party will become again if any of the other candidates for the Republican nomination prevail in 2024. In recent months, Trump has begun to fuse these critiques with his attacks on Ron DeSantis, having complained variously that DeSantis is being pushed by “Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Paul Ryan,” that Fox News’s coverage of DeSantis “reminds me of 2016 when they were pushing ‘JEB!’,” and that DeSantis is suspect because “he used to be a Reagan Republican.”

WaPo: Russia advances in Bakhmut by sending waves of mercenaries to certain death https://tinyurl.com/52u3x7ue “Wagner leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin has tried to use the Bakhmut battle to bolster his position in Russia and to attack Russia’s military leadership”

🐣 RT @ olgatokariuk Russians cowardly and dishonorably executed this unarmed Ukrainian POW. His last words were ‘Glory to Ukraine’. He was shot repeatedly after saying it. If Russians did it with a goal of intimidating Ukrainians, they achieved the opposite effect: he will be forever seen as a hero
🖼 https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1632815330790719488?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The deranged rantings of a madman, 2:26 a.m.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1632651954001432576?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump How does Rupert Murdoch say there was no election fraud when 2000 Mules shows, on government tape, that there were millions of “stuffed ballots,” & Elon Musk released the FBl/Twitter Files, where pollsters say that the silencing of information made a 17% difference in the Vote. Then there was, of course, FBI/Facebook, another big election integrity fraud costing millions of Votes-& this doesn’t even count all of the many other ways they cheated, or the fact that they avoided State Legislatures?

⭕ 5 Mar 2023

NBCNews: Biden bucks liberals and tells Democrats to get tough on crime https://tinyurl.com/435wmyzk //➔ this is why Dems need Biden: he knows how to “read the room” ~~ when “the room” has do with winning elections
// It shows how powerful the issue has become, says James Carville, who helped Bill Clinton counter soft-on-crime attacks during the 1990s crime wave.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT CITY /1510 UTC 5 MAR/ Simplified TACMAP of lines of contact in Bakhmut urban area. Based on 0600 (Local) briefing of UKR Gen’l Staff. #Bakhmut #BakhmutHolds #BakhmutDefenders
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1632395700557463552?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated I mean, he’s [Girkin is] an internationally convicted war criminal, so… Besides, he was the one who entered Sloviansk in 2014, and the war started with him. As we say here in Essex, The Only Way is Hague.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin claims the video with Prigozhin that surfaced yesterday was actually made at the peak of the shell conflict two weeks ago. Despite that, Girkin suggests Prigozhin must be immediately removed from Wagner’s leadership due to his psychopathy, self-promotion and criminal links. ¤ Girkin does not believe removing Wagner will lead to the same consequences as what Prigozhin claims. https://t.me/strelkovii/4130
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1632328568398139395?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] 1/2 Briefly, regarding Prigozhin’s statements on social media that “without Wagner, the front would collapse”: – the statements were made at the height of the “shell conflict” with the MoD about two weeks ago; – statements are an example of shameless “criminal” self-promotion; – despite Wagner’s capabilities to “break with its forehead” (“washing in blood” at the same time) through the enemy’s positions at the strategic dead-end section of the front through the reckless expenditure of human resources, and the inability of the active formations of the RF Ministry of Defense to demonstrate something similar in other places (perhaps due to reluctance), Wagner has a very minor effect on the overall strategic situation on the front. Both due to the incorrect and wasteful use of its forces, and due to considerations of the scale of the war, in which a fierce battle (not yet finished) for a small town in the Donbas is neither general nor decisive, is of an operational-tactical nature and leads only to mutual huge loss of combatants. At the same time, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is completely transparent in “exchanging territory and human resources for gaining time.” Just as it did in the situation with Popasna, Lisichansk, Severodonetsk in the summer of last year; – in the event of the disbandment or removal of “Wagner’ from the front, the situation for the RF Armed Forces will undoubtedly become worse, but – against the general background – insignificantly.

2/2 And, yes, a little more about Wagner. In my opinion, “Wagner”, after the completion of the assault on Bakhmut, cannot be withdrawn from the front, nor (all the more so) disbanded. The formation must be withdrawn to the rear for replenishment and reorganisation, in order to subsequently be used in a more promising strategic direction to break through the front.

But to withdraw Prigozhin himself from the front and COMPLETELY remove him from the leadership of Wagner is urgently necessary. Since his political ambitions (multiplied by psychopathy, the organisation of demonstrative war crimes, a tendency to shameless and in many respects false self-promotion and the spread of rotten “criminal concepts” to the armed forces) only harm both Wagner and the common cause of victory over Ukraine However, all of the above (except for “war crimes”) also applies to the non-plywood Marshal Shoigu. In short, it is necessary to kick out both and it is better to kick them both at once, since “two boots are a pair.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1215 UTC 5 MAR/ RU renewed unsuccessful attacks across the M-04 HWY. UKR carried out 18 aviation strike missions, targeting RU troop concentrations, air defense sites and a bridge. Missile/ artillery units hit RU troops, EW stations and air defense complexes.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1632356690896072705?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TWMCLtd #Russia’s cattle fodder being made to fight not only with outdated tactics, but also 150-year-old weapons (kind of). ¤ Here’s the daily update from the #UK ¤ #RussiansGoHome
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TWMCLtd/status/1632274009810255873?s=20/photo/1

● In late February 2023, Russian mobilised reservists described being ordered to assault a Ukrainian concrete strong point armed with only ‘firearms and shovels’. The ‘shovels’ are
likely entrenching tools being employed for hand-to-hand combat.

● The lethality of the standard-issue MPL-50 entrenching tool is particularly mythologised in Russia. Little changed since it was designed in 1869, its continued use as a weapon
highlights the brutal and low-tech fighting which has come to characterise much of the war. One of the reservists described being ‘neither physically nor psychologically’ prepared for
the action.

● Recent evidence suggests an increase in close combat in Ukraine. This is probably a result of the Russian command continuing to insist on offensive action largely consisting of
dismounted infantry, with less support from artillery fire because Russia is short of munitions.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKMUT AXIS /0010 UTC 5 MAR/ Street-fighting continues within Bakhmut: the situation remains fluid and serious. UKR forces repelled RU attacks N and S of the city and counter-attacks SW of Ivanivske have driven RU units back to Klischiivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1632169880194625539?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 4 Mar 2023

NYT, Peter Baker: Inside the Panic at Fox News After the 2020 Election https://tinyurl.com/5ykxxpr9
// “If we hadn’t called Arizona,” said Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive, according to a recording reviewed by The New York Times, “our ratings would have been bigger.”

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski This is a montage of 55 clips over 6 minutes of the “highlights” from CPAC 2023. ¤ THE 2023 REPUBLICAN PARTY
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1632450572396658688?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡ISW: Russian forces unlikely to encircle Bakhmut soon. ¤ Russian advances “do not suggest Russian forces will be able to encircle Bakhmut soon, must less that they will be able to take the city by frontal assaults,” the Institute for the Study of War said. ¤ 🎞️ John Moore/Getty

🐣 RT @wartranslated Prigozhin today is once again seen explaining how invaluable Wagner is for Russia, and how retreating from Bakhmut will lead to the collapse of the whole Russian front. ¤ Also appears to be hinting at the fact that his mercenaries might find it rather unpleasant if they suspect that Russian authorities set them up by not providing ammo and reinforcements. ¤ Besides. Why is he talking about retreating from Bakhmut at all, if just yesterday he was claiming to have “nearly surrounded” it?
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1632148708748935168?s=20/photo/1
[See Comments]

🐣 RT @christogrozev Russian telegram channels connect this with Rozdulgin’s health emergency. Rozdulgin is allegedly one of Putin’s largest asset proxies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JanR210 A strange flight to/from #Russia. ¤ Apparently a #VIP medical issue. ¤ It was a medical emergency airplane Bombardier Challenger 604. ¤ Flight path: Frankfurt-Moscow-Nurnberg ¤ All concerned European states agreed for overflight. ¤ cc @STRATPOINTS_EU
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ICIJorg Four bankers have been charged for allegedly failing to figure out the true owner behind Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin’s Swiss bank accounts. A longtime friend of Putin, Roldugin’s web of offshore companies was first revealed in the #PanamaPapers https://bit.ly/3SJYBgX

PravdaUA: 171 cases of sexual violence by Russian military recorded – Zelenska https://tinyurl.com/5n78ur73
// The prosecutor’s office is investigating 171 cases of sexual violence against Ukrainians by the Russian military, with 39 men among the victims.

🐣 RT @McFaul The country invaded for no reason is the one that “needs to find peace not war.” Incredible. ¤ This blame-the-victim argument is disgusting. ¤ Imagine saying this about victims of other crimes? Or civilians killed in other wars? Or those killed by other terrorists?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Big CPAC applause for this from Marjorie Taylor Greene: “No money to Ukraine, and that country needs to find peace not war. And while I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelenskyy you better leave your hands off our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there”
💽 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1632202244035858432?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 the chair of every House Committee directly involved with Ukraine is firmly pro-Ukraine, some blaming Biden for not acting more decisively; all have been on recent CODELs. ¤ MTG is an outrage machine, part of the 🤡caucus ~ ignore her

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I think there’s a huge difference between a child tax credit (which I think it is necessary as long as it’s means-tested) and paying people to be Hero Mothers of the State
⋙ 🐣 it’s so grey-sounding to talk about the child tax credit (the pandemic era expansion of which Dems failed to get extended); evidence Trump continues to be good at branding

🐣 The report below is FAKE! Here is the DefenseHQ report from 3/4/2023:
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1631917276126380033?s=20 ¤
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @yasminalombaert (Unverified) British military experts believe that the Russian dictator Putin will try to exchange the occupied parts of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions for the Crimea, with the subsequent withdrawal of the Russian Armed Forces troops from these territories.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1632036393655435264?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] [Unverified] Withdrawal of troops from Zaporozhye and Kherson regions in exchange for Crimea: Putin is trying to bargain to end the war as soon aspossible – British intelligence The latest report says that Putin went to extreme measures to end the war as soon as possible, as the Russian economy, hard hit by sanctions, simply needs to lift the sanctions. Donbass, he hopes to seize by military means. Putin’s main goal is to save his face in front of the Russian population and not lose power.

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski I have tried very hard for a long time not to have a visceral contempt for people who believe this should be president. Especially since some of them are my family: [Trump at CPAC:] “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1632226509405450240?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @atrupar Trump is about to speak at CPAC 2023 in DC. My video thread starts here.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1632143206392516609?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the livestream with Oleksiy Arestovych, former Ukraine’s Presidential Head of Office advisor, Day 374, March 4th. Kindly brought to you by Anastasiya: @Anastasiya1451A Read thread or visit: https://tinyurl.com/ys3km95b
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1632167506449166336?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1632167506449166336.html

⚡️Russian resistance in Bryansk & FSB’s lie: Feygin had an interview with the Russian volunteer who fights on the side of Ukraine and who crossed into the Bryansk region, declaring that they will fight the Kremlin’s criminal regime that is destroying the Russian people’s… ¤ …prospects.

FSB has tried to spread disinformation about Russian resistance fighters to portray them as “terrorists”, claiming that they wounded two people, then correcting their story and saying that it was just one man, a school bus driver.

The “bus driver” story is designed for the American audience. While a yellow school bus is emblematic in the US, it isn’t actually used in Russia to collect and transport school students.

Arestovych thinks that the war started by the Russian regime will spread to Russia. ¤ More Russian partisans may start active resistance against the Kremlin’s regime and may use more drones in Russian territory.

Many people are discontent with the Kremlin’s regime and people wronged by them, including Russians, Tatars, Chechens, Dagestani, etc. The Kremlin knows about the potential for separatist movements and riots in Russia and, therefore, Putin and Medvedev are complaining about… ¤ …separatism and division of Russia among Muscovites, Siberians, etc.

⚡️Bakhmut
Russia keeps trying to encircle Bakhmut from the North and South, with the situation remaining very difficult with Ukrainian troops defending against more numerous Russian forces. ¤ Russian sources also report losing ground south of Bakhmut to the Ukrainian troops.

While Russian propaganda inflates the significance of Bakhmut and there is political & media importance to Bakhmut, all decisions regarding the defence or retreat from Bakhmut are made by the Ukrainian General Staff and military commands.

Even if Ukraine decides to leave Bakhmut, the Ukrainian troops will retreat to the next defensive line and will retake the town as it has liberated Lyman and Kherson before.

⚡️Mariinka & Avdiivka
Russians attempted to advance in Mariinka, with the town being completely destroyed by Russian artillery.

⚡️Vuhledar & Orehiv
Tactical battlers near Vuhledar. Minor battles near Orehiv. After already losing 150 tanks and APCs, Russians seem to be planning another attack on Vuhledar.

⚡️Kreminna
Russians are attempting to advance near Kreminna, with mixed results, no major gains, and high Russian human cost.

⚡️Kherson
Artillery duels continue in Kherson.

⚡️Crimea
Explosions were reported near several Russian military air bases in Crimea, potentially from drone attacks.

⚡️Zaporizhzhja
The Russian missile strike on a residential building in Zaporizhzhja left 11 dead, including one child, and more were wounded. ¤ Russia is murdering Ukrainian civilians, families in their homes, and children sleeping in their beds. Isn’t that the definition of terrorism? ¤ This strikingly contrasts with Ukraine which is just defending itself and attacks Russian military units, not civilians or Russian cities.

⚡️Mobilization & fate of Russian soldiers
More videos from the Russian mobilized and their families are surfacing – mobilized and their wives complain about being sent to the frontline without training, equipment, ammunition, and artillery support.

While Ukrainians are volunteering to fight and defend their land and to prevent another massacre like Bucha’s, with only the elite units used to assault Russian positions, the Russian mobilized are being thrown as cannon fodder to assault the Ukrainian defences.

⚡️Argentina, China & the Big Picture
Argentina has stated that it’s willing to renegotiate with the UK over the Falkland/Mal Islands, which may be an attempt to destabilize the West.

The US has sanctioned 28 Chinese companies over sanction violations and trade with Iran. ¤ This is a sign to everyone to avoid violating sanctions, including by trading with Russia. The collective West is showing China that there will be a harsh response and grave consequences for any country that aids Russia. ¤ At the same time, the Chinese drone company, DJI, has halted its contracts to export drones to Russia.

[The Economist reports China being furious at the Russian Government for not keeping the potential military cooperation secret, especially when China’s economy is dependent on trade with the US and the EU.]

⚡️Russian diplomatic circus
When giving a speech at a press conference in India, the audience laughed at Lavrov’s declarations of “Ukraine has attacked Russia”. Lavrov managed to keep poker face thanks to his long experience in this position.

⚡️Russian oil & gas
Russian oil and gas extraction fell by half and profit from the export fell by 46% in February.
In June, the Russian government may not only lose its remaining army to the Ukrainian counteroffensive but also be unable to pay pensions and salaries to the Russian public workers.

⚡️Sanctions
The US and the collective West have called on Turkey and the UAE to end trade with Russia. Moreover, the American Government has warned about the criminal responsibility for any company that intentionally does business with Russia, even though a third party.

The Russian oligarchs who directly fund Kremlin’s regime are facing confiscation of property (luxury villas) in France. At the same time, Swiss bankers trying to hide Putin’s financial assets are facing criminal charges.

The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen has stated that there will be a special tribunal for Russian war criminals. The West has taken a strategic decision, aiming to hold the Russian regime and Russian regime collaborators accountable for their crimes.

⚡️Putin’s response to sanctions
In response to Western sanctions and the struggling Russian economy, Putin has signed a law allowing the confiscation and nationalization of Russian businesses that cannot fulfil their contractual obligations to the Russian military.

The association with Putin brings only misery to those who do it. The Russian oligarchs, elite, and populace should ask themselves why they chose to continue to suffer because of one man.

⚡️Tanks for Ukraine
The German Rheinmetall is planning the construction of a factory and production of up to 400 tanks a year German tanks in Ukraine.

While this provoked another hysteric outburst from Medvedev, who threatened the German company with an Kalibr missiles, it’s entirely possible that by the time of construction Ukraine may not only have an air defence to protect the military-industrial complex but may become…
…part of NATO.

Rheinmetall is also discussing the buyback of Leopard 1 from Switzerland to upgrade them and send them to Ukraine. ¤ At the same time, the UK will send more Challenger tanks and other APCs than previously discussed.

⚡️The Western values
Scholz has met Biden in Washington DC, praising Germany’s help to Ukraine. While China may quietly try to negotiate with Germany and Belarus, both countries’ future development and civilizational prospects are aligned with the collective West. ¤ Next stream is on Monday, 6th of March.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKMUT AXIS /0010 UTC 5 MAR/ Street-fighting continues within Bakhmut: the situation remains fluid and serious. UKR forces repelled RU attacks N and S of the city and counter-attacks SW of Ivanivske have driven RU units back to Klischiivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1632169880194625539?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost As an expert on Trump’s thousands of demented & unhinged rants, this may be the craziest & most desperately deranged one of all time. He’s like a stream of consciousness Grandpa Simpson who can’t help but show his immense fear & lunacy at levels umimaginable for any other person.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1632070787468509185?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump This Animal Prosecutor that they stuck on me over the Boxes Hoax is trying to TORTURE my people into telling lies. It’s all for political reasons, and the fact that l’m leading, big, in all of the polls. He’s flying people from all over and throwing them in front of a D.C. Grand Jury. They are confused and scared – they’ve never done this before. These Democrat Marxist pigs should be the ones that are investigated. The nice guy prosecutor in the Biden documents case hasn’t even started yet!

🐣 RT @AndrewC66721154 When others would have fled, he stayed. When the Russian hit squads were in Kyiv, he stayed. He has led his country with dignity, bravery and pride.

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua China is angry with the russian federation because their arms sales discussions were made public, – The Economist.
[TextLink:] 🖼 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1632004204549091328?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] [Cover of Economist:] Chinese arms could revive Russia’s failing war
// But China’s leaders are treading carefully for now

🐣 RT @MeidasTouch CPAC lost their major sponsors. Many of their usual high profile speakers refused to show. There’s barely anyone in attendance. ¤ This is a dying movement.

🐣 RT @ZaleskiLuke Trump’s willing to treat his fellow citizens like mortal enemies. He is the most divisive character in American history. He’s an effective vehicle for Putin’s aim of destroying the nation. He is dividing and conquering us and his followers have no idea they’re at war with America
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZaleskiLuke/status/1632035351253463041?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The U.S. Injustice Department, which has dangerously become the Radical Left Democrats WEAPONIZED SYSTEM OF LAW, is threatening and harassing many people that work for me, wanting them to say anything bad in order to be left alone or even, set free. They are being carted off to Washington, D.C., and put before a Grand Jury, where the modern day Gestapo does everything in its power to make them look and sound as bad as possible. This Soviet style of “Justice” is going to take down the U.S.A. Bad!

🐣 RT @Tendar Russia committed crimes unseen since the WW2. A Nuremberg tribunal 2.0 is needed. ¤ President of the EU commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the agreement to set up the International Centre for Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in The Hague.
💽 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1631953225870979073?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The illiterate, utterly deranged lunatic & imbecile has now put “STOLLEN” in all CAPS—even funnier since he is talking about money this time when he says it. Nearly every single word in here is a delusionally insane lie.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1632051664025952261?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump But the Radical Left Democrat Prosecutors go after Trump over the Boxes Hoax, Horseface, and all other trivia. They’ve STOLLEN millions of dollars, caught on tape in the Laptop from Hell, and nothing happens. Likewise, the Election fraud, to put these people in office, was massive. Millions of votes, on tape, in “ballot stuffing” alone. Little Legislative approval, FBI/Twitter, FBI/Facebook-All a big disgrace! We are a Third World Nation, with mostly FAKE NEWS. MAGA!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1310 UTC 4 MAR/ On 3 MAR, UKR forces destroyed bridges at Khromove & across the Bakhmutka River to slow RU advances. UKR counter-attacks SW of Ivanivske have put UKR troops in contact at Klischiivka. UKR air defense destroyed eight RU recon UAVs of various types.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1632002660718071808?s=20/photo/1
// ✛ “It is assessed as likely that UKR will begin to disengage in areas east of the Bakhmutka River. The arrival of UKR reinforcements are considered sufficient to support retrograde operations to series of previously prepared defensive positions.”

🐣 RT @wartranslated Update on Bakhmut, 4 March – Kyianyn.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1631991835764707334?s=20/photo/1
// as rumors swirl about fall of Bakhmut, Kyianyn pushes back against believing them and says any order to leave Bakhmut will be directed from above; chastises over attributing battle more significance than to other battles, some wins/some losses: ‘Bakhmut will be Ukraine,’ regardless of the outcome of this battle

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe said Russia has lost more than 200,000 troops since the start of its invasion in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, describing the extent of the war as “unbelievable.”
⋙ KyivIndependent: NATO commander in Europe: Russia’s losses in Ukraine amount to over 200,000 troops https://tinyurl.com/27wpxfp8

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, U.S. Army General Christopher Cavoli, said that Russia has lost more than 200,000 troops since the start of its invasion in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, describing the extent of the war as “unbelievable.” ¤ He added that over 1,800 Russian officers were killed or wounded, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

Cavoli also said that Russia has lost “far more” than 2,000 large battle tanks and that its army fires an average of 23,000 artillery shells per day.

The U.K. Defense Ministry previously estimated that Russia’s army and private mercenary groups have likely lost 175,000-200,000 people in Ukraine, with up to 60,000 killed. According to a report, prisoners recruited by the Kremlin-backed private mercenary Wagner Group have suffered a casualty rate of up to 50%. ¤ “The Russian casualty rate has significantly increased since September 2022 when ‘partial mobilization’ was imposed,” reads the report.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported on March 4 that Russia had lost 152,190 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 last year. ¤ This number includes 820 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress The number of Russian invaders killed by the Ukrainian Army exceeds the size of many European militaries 🎞️ UA War Infographics
◕ https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1631840665926508544?s=20/photo/1
// 150.6K Ru killed

🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien First time I’ve seen a clear Ukrainian claim on this. Oleksii Danilov says Ukrainians believe the Russians are losing 7 soldiers for each Ukrainian lost in the Bakhmut fighting. That would be extreme, and explains why the Ukr have drawn things out—if true https://tinyurl.com/yk2mz2d2

🐣 RT @JimmySecUK Situation around Bakhmut is increasingly confused. Bridges out of the city have been blown, units have been pulled out, but official Ukrainian sources denying any withdrawal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @HickPhilistine I think this exactly what I would expect if they are withdrawing. During the Lysyschansk/Hirske/Zolote withdrawal it was similar until they were out, just don’t want to give away exactly what/when it is happening.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TStanfield1789 They should withdraw. It has zero strategic value. It has served its purpose of delaying and attriting the Russian army.

⭕ 3 Mar 2023

TheBulwark, William Kristol and Jeffrey Gedmin: The Ukraine War Has Transformed Europe—for Good https://tinyurl.com/y4574uan “[The] European future can and must be in the spirit of what Zelensky says and stands for.”
// The notion of a Zeitenwende—a major turning point—is not just German anymore. Putin’s war has become a Zeitenwende for all Europe.

[ … ] What is now widely understood is that the Europe of the last three decades ended on February 24, 2022, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The full-scale character of the war, and its brutality in every respect, has proved more bracing than those countless transatlantic seminars on how much of a nation’s GDP should be spent on defense. The largest land war in Europe since 1945 has been more than a wakeup call. It has been an alarm bell that that continues to ring every day with a loudness and persistence that may be difficult for Americans to appreciate.

Putin’s war has become Europe’s Zeitenwende. The extraordinary leadership of Ukraine’s President Zelensky has been absolutely crucial. The United States has stepped up in a very important way. But what’s been also striking is Europe’s reaction, and the way Europeans are emerging from their cocoon.

Germany, a country of few flags, feels suddenly comfortable with Ukrainian flags pretty much anywhere. They were certainly in plentiful view in the neighboring Czech Republic, at the train station in Prague and in the old city square. … It’s also where we listened to Czech President-elect Petr Pavel, a retired army general and former NATO military committee chief, denounce appeasement, past and present.

By the way, Czechs have taken in about half a million Ukrainian refugees—more per capita than any other EU nation. But many other nations, including Poland and Germany, have been very generous, and they seem not be seeing much in the way of a public backlash.

In Berlin, there’s a lot of discussion of various aspects of the German Zeitenwende. We have ourselves written about its bumpy, although in our view singularly promising, path. But the larger story is one of generational change and ideological transformation.

In Germany, the Greens—with politicians in their thirties, forties, and early fifties—are leading the way. They don’t mind talking straightforwardly about the struggle for freedom and the responsibility to defeat tyranny. Younger Social Democrats have turned their back on the legacy of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, late of Rosneft and Gazprom. In less than a year, cautious Germans have moved from providing helmets to Leopard tanks. Their liberation from dependence on Russian energy has been pretty spectacular.

For Czechs, the war feels close. You could fly from Prague to Kyiv in two hours—faster than flying from New York to Chicago. (Well, you could do that before Ukrainian airspace was closed by Russian fighter jets.) It was striking in our discussions how much the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is back in Czech consciousness.

For Nordics and Balts, the threat is even closer. The Swedes and Finns are racing to join NATO, with broad public support. There’s a vision emerging among the Czechs, Poles, and Northern Europeans of a Europe with serious military capacity. There’s a new focus on geopolitical strategy with defense and deterrence at its core. And Europe’s strategic center of gravity is shifting to a broader constellation of nations, away from the almost complete dominance of France and Germany.

Which brings us back to Ukraine. There’s a clear sense in Europe that a clock is now ticking. There’s a feeling of urgency, an understanding that we must finally give the Ukrainians the weapons they need for victory this year. As one European told us, both Europe and the United States need “less incrementalism, more decisiveness.”

This broad European Zeitenwende won’t be easy. But the new frontline European nations are looking ahead. They see a need and opportunity for new structures that can protect European democracies for years to come. And there’s a growing conviction that victory in Ukraine can and should lead to meaningful political change in Russia itself.

For Americans, this is an opportunity to join our frontline European friends not only in a commitment to Ukrainian victory but also in thinking more clearly of what Europe can look like when Ukraine wins.

That European future can and must be in the spirit of what Zelensky says and stands for. Europe’s future is not in the spirit of Orbán. Nor of Schröder. And certainly not of Putin.

🐣 RT @warmonitor3 The defence of Bakhmut goes down in history. ¤ An embarrassment for the Russian military whatever way they spin it.
// No “Bakhmut Holds” banner tonight

🐣 RT @anders_aslund This is also indicative of the intellectual level of the Putinistas.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @pete_moss44 If this is the level of Russian callousness to their own men, one realises just how callous the Russian administration is with Ukrainians – given that they brand Ukrainians, including children, as “Nazi’s”.
[Text:] “Today’s Ukrainians are a race of degenerates that crawled up from the sewage. Genocide is in order.” ¤ Aleksandr Dugin, ¤ Professor of Moscow State University ¤ Ideologue of “Novorossya
⋙ 🐣 Dostoyevsky to Dugin: quite a devolution

TIME, Igor Novikov: How Giuliani and Trump Destabilized Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2s48mtff Even during the (first) impeachment, Rudy and Trump were still blackmailing Zelensky, though by then, Trump “much preferred back channels”

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost This is not a remotely sane person. It never ceases to be astonishing.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1631820743175729152?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The Racist Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is presiding over one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the U.S., and doing NOTHING about it, is being pushed relentlessly by the Radical Left Democrats, the Fake News Media, and the Department of “Injustice,” to bring charges against me for the now ancient “no affair” story of Stormy “Horseface” Danials, where there is no crime and charges have NEVER been brought on such a case before. In the meantime, Hunter & Joe Biden skate!

🐣 RT @Tomthescribe Donbas is full of small towns like this one near Lyman, just wiped off the map and abandoned. There are dozens of mini-Bakhmut’s or Mariupols scattered around these lands.
💽 https://twitter.com/Tomthescribe/status/1631599530813603840?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @thehill Garland reaffirms US commitment to holding Russia accountable in surprise Ukraine visit https://trib.al/G9JDsh8

🐣 RT @NOELreports Zelenskyi’s daily video. ¤ “Every day, Ukrainian heroes give their lives to stop Russian aggression. And that is why the world has a clear moral obligation to our soldiers, to each and every one who is currently in battle and who defends freedom.”
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1631770707557269504?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @D4nciingQueen Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska warns: “Russia could run out of money next year”. According to The Guardian, the oligarch said this Thursday, at an investment conference in Siberia, that “there will be no money next year” and the help of “foreign investors” will be needed. 1/4
📌 https://twitter.com/D4nciingQueen/status/1631637748170760193?s=20

🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Ukrainian Commander of Eastern Forces Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi visited troops in Bakhmut today, proving there’s still a road into the city. He said Russians increasing forces, including units of Wagner & regular army. “Intense fighting in and around the city.” via Land Forces
¤ https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1631671464037429248?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @NATO Putin’s intentions are clear for the world to see. No one should be fooled by Russia’s litany of lies
💽 https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1631645471704842240?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated Incredible footage of combat in the residential area of Bakhmut. The enemy is on the same street as the Ukrainians, 15 meters away. The task, at a minimum, is to create a flurry of fire to prevent enemy assault. Source: MotoLife.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1631757166217424900?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @k_sonin This is hilarious. And embarrassing. Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Lavrov says “the war we are trying to stop was launched against us” and the Indian audience – supposedly sympathetic – audibly laughs. Russian “diplomats” think that the lies they use to feed Putin’s fantasies [to get promoted] could be taken as anything but lies by anyone else.
💽 https://twitter.com/k_sonin/status/1631681166808940544?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: As 2024 race begins, special counsel advances with focus on Trump lawyers https://tinyurl.com/bdaznsdk
// Prosecutors have sought information from multiple attorneys and senior aides to the former president, triggering new legal battles

Federal prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election have asked witnesses extensive questions about the actions of Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump — including where he got his information about alleged fraud, what he did in the days around Jan. 6, 2021, and what he knew about the actions coming that day, people who have appeared in front of the grand jury say.

Investigators looking into classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and private club, have sought to force testimony from another Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, by saying there is evidence that the former president used the attorney’s legal services in furtherance of a crime.

And prosecutors have repeatedly sought information on the actions of yet another Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, in connection with both classified documents and Trump’s false electors scheme, three people said. They have quizzed multiple Trump attorneys involved with the documents case, including Christina Bobb, Alina Habba and Jesse Binnall, according to the people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.

The investigative activity highlights one of the ways in which the Trump probes are unusual and complex — turning some of his many current or former attorneys into witnesses or potential investigative targets. A Trump spokesman said the legal strategy was a sign of weakness in the case against the former president.

The probes are led by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to insulate the work from political influence. Smith’s pace appears to be quickening as the 2024 presidential election starts to take shape, with Trump once again a candidate and President Biden — Garland’s boss — poised to seek a second term. Trump so far has two declared Republican opponents. Legal experts say that if Smith brings criminal charges against Trump, those charges would likely be pending when the GOP primary debates begin in August. …

🐣 RT @KyivPost 🇺🇸🇩🇪US President Joe #Biden and German Chancellor Olaf #Scholz met at the White House. ¤ Both leaders promised to continue supporting #Ukraine as long as necessary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Bundeskanzler Thank you for your leadership and friendship, Joe! It’s good to be back here in Washington. Transatlantic coordination is indispensable and has never been stronger. We are steadfast in our support for #Ukraine. Freedom and peace for Ukraine is our common goal. @Potus

🐣 RT @NOELreports “The decisive battle between Russia and Ukraine will take place this spring and it will be the last before the end of the war,” says Kirill Budanov, head of the GUR.
⋙ 🐣 wish EU would hurry with the MBTs or the battle will be fought with IVFs, possible but still …

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer POSSIBLE RU OFFENSIVE? Ukraine has begun evacuation of elderly and vulnerable civilians from Kupiansk. Intel reports the shifting of RU armor and motor rifle units north of Svatove. MAP CREDIT: LiveUMap.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1631725962118443009?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated Aleksandr Khodakovsky is worried that while Russia is busy with Bakhmut, Ukraine might strike soon and deal a defeat that will eclipse Bakhmut and much more. [Telegram link]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1631711474241482753?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Ukraine is obviously preserving the personnel resource, realiing that if there are bones, the meat will grow. Western sources talk about the formation of new Ukrainian units and filling the existing ones with blood, and a situation is being created when we, distracted by Bakhmut or Vuhledar, may face another attack, which, if we do not repel it, will eclipse Bakhmut, washing away the joy of a difficult and expensive local victory with the bitterness of a possible non-local defeat. 1 sincerely wish the men to put an end to the difficult story with Bakhmut – they deserve a sense of satisfaction with what they have achieved – but all thoughts are now about something else. About where and when the enemy will begin the attack, how we will meet him and how we will respond later. The examples before our eyes testify that anything can happen. I hope that the decrease in the daily consumption of ammo is dictated by the desire to accumulate a reserve just in case

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel partially responsible for Russia’s war, Bundestag MP Strack-Zimmermann says ¤ “In 2008, Germany & France blocked Ukraine’s accession to NATO because of Russia, which was a strategic mistake,” Strack-Zimmermann told @ntvde. https://tinyurl.com/y4e2d5rh

🐣 RT @UKRWarSitRep The new package of US military assistance includes missiles for the HIMARS MLRS, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, howitzers and tank bridge layers #Ukraine #UkraineWar #Russia #UkraineInvasion
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/UKRWarSitRep/status/1631710322342993921?s=20/photo/1
// Defense budget

[Text:] [Blinken:] … Pursuant to a delegation of authority from President Biden, I am authorizing our 33rd drawdown of U.S. arms and equipment for Ukraine since August 2021, valued at $400 million. This military assistance package includes ‘more

● ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS and howitzers,
● ammunition for Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles,
● Armored Vehicle Launched Bridges,
● demolitions munitions and equipment, and
● other maintenance, training, and support. …’

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT / 1550 UTC 3 MAR/ UKR forces destroyed bridges at Khromove & across the Bakhmutka River in Bakhmut. RU increased aviation strikes in support of infantry ops against UKR Lines of Communication & Supply (LOCS). UKR air defense downed a RU Mi-24 attack helicopter & an Su-25.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1631681374846328833?s=20/photo/1

Reuters: Germany trains Ukrainians on advanced IRIS-T SLM air defence weapon https://tinyurl.com/yckx4nwy Berlin has promised to send four of the coveted systems, with the second due to arrive within weeks – two years before Germany’s own air force can expect its first

⭕ 2 Mar 2023

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2340 UTC 2 MAR/ In the past 48 hours, a number of RU attacks across the P-66 HWY were broken up by UKR forces. Probes S of Kreminna were also repelled. As a result, RU offensive operations were paused today. RU may be expected to resume offensive operations shortly.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1631434077977866241?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @sentdefender The Pentagon stated today that it is “Nonsense” that the U.S. would ever Support or provide Intelligence for Ukrainian Strikes on Russian Territory, they further stated that, “We are not at War with Russia nor do we seek a War with Russia.”

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost There needs to be a new category of insanity invented for this maniac. At least a lawyer helped him write it this time.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1631429182730436608?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Statement from Trump Spokesperson on the Department of Justice’s Amicus Brief on Presidential Immunity

President Trump’s speech and statements on January 6, 2021, repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and respect for our men and women of law enforcement. President Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops to ensure peace and safety on January 6, 2021, only to have that offer rejected by Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. The D.C. Courts should rule in favor of President Trump in short order and dismiss these frivolous lawsuits. The Department of Justice has rightfully agreed that presidential immunity is broad and absolute. If it were not, Joe Biden would be personally liable for the disasters in Afghanistan, our Southern Border, record drug use causing massive destruction of families and lives, and many other terrible crises that he has caused. Additionally, other Presidents throughout history would be held responsible for catastrophes they potentially may not be responsible for. All witch hunts and hoaxes have to end!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FALSE FLAG FLOP: Russia claims “Ukrainian forces” have stormed into the Russian city of Bryansk. Moscow claims “hostages are being held”, by a group of up to 50 Ukrainian fighters. Kyiv denies any involvement in Putin’s latest ‘action movie’.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1631422550428270595?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NewcomAU: False flag fears as Vladimir Putin makes wild claim about Ukraine troops https://tinyurl.com/2p97ja9m
// Russia has claimed Ukrainian forces are storming across the border amid fears Moscow is staging a false flag attack

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Christopher Wray is getting away with doing a lousy job https://tinyurl.com/n7x5e99n “The problem is not that Wray … is showing favoritism to a Democratic administration. It’s that he is not doing his job when it comes to threats from rightwing authoritarianism”

🐣 RT @francis_scarr I haven’t seen anything like this on Russian state TV since Ukraine’s counter-offensives last year ¤ Karen [m.] Shakhnazarov says Russia needs to recognise the fact that it might lose and that anyone who thinks the West is about to fall apart is deluding themselves

🐣 RT @officejjsmart Russia 🇷🇺 is losing its largest partner! ¤ Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 has announced a new strategic cooperation agreement with the United States 🇺🇸! ¤ A key member of the pro-🇷🇺 military bloc is moving away from Moscow 🇷🇺, which has become, globally, a toxic pariah. ¤ – The Moscow Times

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1900 UTC 2 MAR/ At great cost, RU continues ops against UKR Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS). RU units are in contact within the N & E areas of the city and continue to infiltrate and consolidate lodgments within the urban area. UKR reinforcements arrive in AO.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1631366018311282700?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @washingtonpost Breaking news: Former president Donald Trump can be held liable in court for the actions of the mob that overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Justice Department said Thursday.
⋙ WaPo: Trump can be sued by police over Jan. 6 riot, Justice Department says https://tinyurl.com/56kpen96
// Two U.S. Capitol Police officers and 11 Democratic House members are seeking to hold Donald Trump liable for injuries they suffered during the riot.

🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov In #Russia, president Putin called today’s events in #Bryansk region “a terrorist act”. ¤ Putin: “those who penetrated the territory of the Bryansk region want to deprive us of historical memory, our history and language”. ¤ Another reason to think this was a false flag operation.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russian media claims that 50 Ukrainian saboteurs infiltrated across the border into Russia’s Bryansk Oblast towards the villages of Lyubechany and Sushany. ¤ Ukraine’s General Staff denied claims saying the Ukrainian army operates only in the territory of Ukraine.

Reuters: Scholz urges China not to arm Russia as U.S. explores sanctions https://tinyurl.com/xjb9zhjf “My message to Beijing is clear: use your influence in Moscow to urge the withdrawal of Russian troops,” Scholz said. “And don’t deliver any weapons to the aggressor Russia”

⭕ 1 Mar 2023

VOA: Ukraine Says It Has Defeated Russia’s Attempt to Inflict Wintertime Pain https://tinyurl.com/3bkjp2jv “Despite the cold, darkness, and missile strikes, Ukraine persevered and defeated [Putin’s] winter terror” ~ Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba

NYT, Thomas Edsall: This Is Trump’s ‘Magic Trick’ https://tinyurl.com/4v755txu “The parallel to Fox News, [poliscientist Gary] Jacobson noted, ‘is obvious: Trump’s support depends on continuing to meet expectations he has created; doing otherwise might turn his audience elsewhere’”

NYT: In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes https://tinyurl.com/yc2hvu8d “Blown up on mines, hit with artillery or obliterated by anti-tank missiles, the charred hulks of Russian armored vehicles now litter farm fields all about Vuhledar”
// A three-week fight in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

🐣 RT @TruWordsRSpoken Trump’s going to burn the whole party to the ground if he loses the nomination. ¤ Oh wait, he’ll burn it down if he wins. ¤ Win/win.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TruWordsRSpoken/status/1631012740461649923?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Failed former Congressman David McIntosh and his Globalist friends at Club for No Growth, who fought me all the way in 2016, and LOST, and then fought me again in 2020 Senate Races in Ohio, Alabama, North Carolina, New Hampshire, plus more, and LOST AGAIN, are now threatening to spend money against me early because their new boy, Ron DeSanctus, the man who wants to cut Social Security and MediCare, has dropped so drastically in the Polls to me. No Growth Members know there will be RETRIBUTION!!!

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en As our Warrior spoke about the situation in Bakhmut yesterday, Russian airstrike happened. ¤ It is so horrible what our Defenders have to live through. Glory to Heroes! 📹: Infosich2/TikTok
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1630978182785400836?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @albir2024 Another # Bakhmut update. Ukrainian forces holds the city and where the fighting is going. Bakhmut is fulfilling its main tasks to contain and demilitarize a huge concentration of enemy troops, and the Russians have found a calling “to see Bakhmut and die.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT: Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister, Hanna Maliar, reports that UKR is sending reinforcements to the Bakhmut area of operations. Heavy fighting continues on the M-03 and H-32 HWYs, and RU forces are reported to be in contact within the urban area.
⋙ NewVoiceUkraine/YahooNews: Ukraine sends reinforcements to Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/mwhhbvwf

As the situation in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, becomes increasingly challenging for the Ukrainian military, Kyiv has dispatched additional reinforcements there, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister, Hanna Maliar, told Ukrainian TV broadcasters on Feb. 28.

According to her, Russian troops have concentrated their main efforts around Bakhmut, in an attempt to capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast. ¤ She clarified that the Commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, during his recent trip to Bakhmut, decided to move additional units there.

Maliar said the decision to hold Bakhmut is purely military, and not political. ¤ On Feb. 28, Ukraine’s General Staff reported that invading Russian forces are focused on the offensive on the Kupyansk, Lymanske, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Shakhtarsk axes in Donbas. ¤ On Feb. 27, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the situation in Bakhmut is becoming ever more difficult, as the Russian invaders systematically destroy every structure Ukrainian troops could use defensively.

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost We are numb to his insanity at this pt, but imagine if any other Ex-POTUS made a single post that was this conspicuously deranged—their family would immediately seek psychiatric care for them & the public would be in an utter state of shock. ¤ Also, he still can’t spell STOLEN!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1630943417189699585?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the <- Presidential Election of 2020, despite MASSIVE amounts of proof to the contrary, was not Rigged & Stollen, then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS should get out of the News Business as soon as possible, because they are aiding & abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA with FAKE NEWS. Certain BRAVE & PATRIOTIC FoxNews Hosts, who he scorns and ridicules, got it right. He got it wrong. THEY SHOULD BE ADMIRED & PRAISED, NOT REBUKED & FORSAKEN!!!

⋙ 🐣 faux outrage: he’s cosplaying that he really believed the election was “rigged and stollen”; he knows he lost but that will be his defense strategy for his sedition trial

Newsweek: Fact Check: Did Zelensky Say U.S. Will Send Its Kids to War for Ukraine? https://tinyurl.com/m3p9wbkt No. He suggested that Russia would not stop if it defeated Ukraine, but could go on to attack NATO countries, resulting in the U.S. becoming involved directly:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1630970690974121986?s=20/photo/1

“Are American children any different from ours? Don’t Americans enjoy the same things as we do?” he asked rhetorically. “I don’t think we’re very different.”

Zelensky suggested that if American support for Ukraine weakened and depleted, and Kyiv went on to lose the war against Russia, NATO members including the U.S. risk being dragged into a bigger conflict.

This, Zelensky predicted, is because “Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO member states, and then the U.S. will have to send their sons and daughters, exactly the same way as we are sending our sons and daughters, to war.

“And they will have to fight because it’s NATO that we’re talking about and they will be dying, God forbid, because it’s a horrible thing.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1415 UTC 1 MAR/ The situation is assessed as deteriorating. RU units are in contact in the N & E urban areas of Bakhmut city. UKR missile/artillery forces targeted nine RU troop concentrations and two air defense complexes. Heavy fighting along M-03 and H-32 HWYs.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630932129356951552?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ABC The number of plots that were disrupted grew by nearly three times, from 81 in 2014 to 456 in 2021, according to data from the Government Accountability Office.
⋙ ABCNews: Domestic terrorism-related cases increased by more than 350% over 8 years: Watchdog https://tinyurl.com/439wdyn5
// Domestic terrorism-related cases increased 357% from 2013 to 2021, according to the Government Accountability Office.

🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine “We see Ukraine’s frontline units effectively employing security assistance every day on the battlefield,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, Celeste Wallande said
⋙ NewVoiceUkraine: Pentagon finds no evidence of misuse of US weapons in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4mnwebpt
// The United States didn’t find any evidence that U.S.-supplied weapons that were transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine ended up outside of Ukraine, CNN reported on Feb. 28, citing Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, Celeste Wallander

⭕ 28 Feb 2023

🔄 📋 📊 WaPo, Philip Bump (Feb 28): Underrecognized: Extremist murders are usually from right-wing actors https://tinyurl.com/3kt9vbem Data for 2013 to 2022 from the Anti-Defamation League (Jewish hate-monitoring organization)
// 2/28/2023
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1656944250142040066?s=20/photo/1 -3

The first chart shows the ideologies of politically motivated murders.
● 90% of incidents and 75% of deaths were by rightwing extremists.
● About 5% of inclidents and 20% of deaths were by Islamic radicals.
● About 5% of inclidents and 5% of deaths were by leftwing extremists (like “antifa”)

The second chart shows the that during the last 7 or so years (since Trump), almost all incidents and deaths were by right wingers.

This last chart shows who people think is responsible, leftwing or rightwing. It is msybe not surprising that Democrats blame the rightwing and Republicans blame the leftwing. But it’s the Republicans who are wrong.

🐣 RT @FaceTheNation Fmr. Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice on potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates calling for the U.S. to pull back on its aid to Ukraine: ¤ “To those who are going to run for office, be careful what you say…Just remember dates. 1914, 1941, 2001. These conflicts always come home”

WaPo, Nicholas Eberstadt: China’s collapsing birth and marriage rates reflect a people’s deep pessimism https://tinyurl.com/yckrhn5d “In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in President Xi Jinping’s rule”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VUHLEDAR /2220 UTC 28 FEB/ RU is reported to have deployed reinforcements from Melitopol to bolster the battered 155th Naval Infantry Brigade. An attempt to flank Vuhledar is considered likely, possibly by an RU offensive based out of Mykilske and Volodymvrivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630692685727035393?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @SykesCharlie Demented Florida Man has some thoughts.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1630566147190923266?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers, who will again be leaving in droves – they already are. There is MASSIVE evidence of voter fraud & irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election. Just look at the documentary “2000 MULES” and you will see large scale ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, or votes cast without Legislatures approval, or just recently, the FBI/Twitter Files Scandal. RIGGED!!!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1940 UTC 28 FEB/ Despite RU operations S and W of Kreminna, UKR forces have maintained contact within the Kreminna urban area along the C-130514 HWY. In the last 24 hrs, RU units were reported in contact at Dibrova, SW of Kuzmyne and in the Serebryansk Forestry Area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630654687807414290?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1450 UTC 28 FEB/ RU forces are in contact in the urban areas of Bakhmut. UKR is holding along the N-S rail right-of-way between Yahidne & Khromove. RU forces are increasing their operational tempo with the objective of taking urban space & severing Ukrainian LOCS.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630579903421640705?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Reuters: Blinken warns China’s Wang Yi against aid to Russia in Ukraine. ¤ Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was concerned China may provide lethal aid to Russia, warning top diplomat Yi it “would have serious consequences in our relationship,” Reuters reports

⭕ 27 Feb 2023

Law&Crime: Dominion bombshells reveal how Rupert Murdoch, Paul Ryan, and Fox’s top lawyer secretly reacted to Trump’s ‘wild’ election claims https://tinyurl.com/ycke9mxw

TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols (2/27): To Save Ukraine, Defeat Russia and Deter China https://tinyurl.com/5n6mx9un “Chinese aid would be yet another sign that the authoritarians intend to rewrite the rules—or at least the few left—that govern the international system”
// The future of the world order is at stake.

American intelligence officials are concerned that China is considering sending lethal aid to Russia. The West must increase the speed and scale of aid to Ukraine, to remind Beijing that it should stay out of a war Moscow is going to lose.

Since the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against an innocent neighbor, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his diplomats have said many of the right things, warning against escalation in Ukraine, including the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and reaffirming the principle of state sovereignty in international affairs. But China has also, of course, tried to provide support for a fellow authoritarian regime by continuing trade with Russia, criticizing Western sanctions, and in general pretending that Putin’s war of aggression—including his many crimes against humanity—is just another routine spat in the international community.

Now Beijing might be pondering a more aggressive move. CIA Director Bill Burns said over the weekend that China may be considering sending lethal aid (that is, artillery shells and the like rather than military gear or supplies) to Russia to help Putin’s forces, who are still floundering about in a bloodbath of their own making. Providing shells without more launchers might not help Russia very much in the short term, but it would be a provocative move meant to signal to the West that the authoritarians can and will support each other in attacks against their neighbors—an issue important to Beijing as it continues to covet Taiwan.

Burns indicated that the Chinese had not yet made a decision, and that the U.S. was discussing the possibility in public as a way of trying to warn them off. The Biden administration has been extremely savvy about releasing intelligence, and this seems to be yet another strategic leak. ¤ We know what you’re thinking, the Americans are saying to China. Don’t do it. …

… Russia has escalated the violence despite the West’s measured approach. Putin remains as stubbornly delusional as ever, and he is sending thousands more troops into battles that have already killed or wounded some 200,000 men. A year of pretenses is over: The Russians themselves now know—as does the world—that this is Putin’s personal war and not, as he has tried to frame it, a campaign against neo-Nazis or shadowy globalists or militant trans activists. The West, meanwhile, has fully embraced its role as “the arsenal of democracy,” as it did against the actual Nazis, and Western arms, powered by Ukrainian courage and nimble Ukrainian strategy, are defeating Putin’s armies of hapless conscripts, corrupt officers, and mercenary criminals.

Now it’s time for the West to escalate its assistance to Ukraine, in ways that will deter China and defeat Russia. For example, the U.S. and NATO do not yet have to send advanced fighter jets to Ukraine—but they can start training Ukrainian pilots to fly them. To Russia, such a policy would say that things are about to get much worse for Putin’s forces in the field; to China, it would say that our commitment to Ukraine and to preserving the international order we helped create is greater than Beijing’s commitment to Moscow. As the Washington Post writer Max Boot noted last month, the Chinese president has an interest in helping a fellow autocrat, but he is also “an unsentimental practitioner of realpolitik” who “does not want to wind up on what could be the losing side.”

… [I]f Putin remains unmoved and unwilling to stop, then the only answer is to increase the costs of his madness by sending more tanks, more artillery, more money, more aid of every kind. (We could also reopen the issue of whether we should provide longer-range systems, including the Army’s tactical missile system, the ATACMs.)

China must be warned away from assisting Russia, because so much more than the freedom of Ukraine is at stake in this war. Chinese aid would be yet another sign that the authoritarians intend to rewrite the rules—or at least the few left—that govern the international system of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation constructed while the wreckage of World War II was still smoldering. Many Europeans, who are closer to the misery Russia is inflicting on Ukraine, understand this better than Americans do. …

Americans who ask “What does any of this mean to me?” will find out just how much it means to them when things they want—or need—are provided only through the largesse and with the permission of their enemies. We knew this during the Cold War, and we must learn it again. We should ignore the pusillanimous Putinistas among the right-wing media. Instead, the United States and its allies must make the case, every day, for Ukrainian victory—and send the Ukrainians what they need to get the job done.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin is quite melancholic today about the prospects of the 3-day war: time is running out, air strikes have stopped, production of missiles isn’t going well, and the president has checked out… https://t.me/strelkovii/4070
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1630175329422655489?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] Days, like grains of sand in an hourglass, flow away and flow away … There is less and less time left to make the necessary decisions before they lose their relevance …

Tanks, guns, ammunition and all other weapons and equipment flow in a wide stream to the so-called “Ukraine”, but strikes at supply lines have not been carried out, and are not being carried out. Strikes on the power system have been stopped. “Decision-making centers” in Kyiv make decisions in the most comfortable and safe way, no one even tried to endanger them so far. Meanwhile, the supply of missiles and precision-guided munitions of all kinds over the past year in the Russian Federation has clearly not increased (I won’t be arguing that it simply does not exist now, otherwise I would be accused either of “disclosing military secrets” (which I do not know) or of “defeatist moods” ” (Which I don’t have and can’t even have)). Problems with ammunition and simply the production of the most conventional weapons in the Russian Federation are also increasing every day.

And, against the backdrop of all this, the irremovable “marshals” continue to “beat their foreheads” (not their own, unfortunately) against the enemy’s prepared defenses in the Donbas. With extremely insignificant successes (and more often without any success), but with heavy losses.

There is no martial law and it is not expected (based on the statements of a person who outwardly resembles the president), the borders are open, oil and gas are flowing to partners (including Kyiv). The Central Bank of the Russian Federation is increasing investments in US government bonds.

And the only “entertainment” for angry patriots dumbfounded by reality is the public mutual scuffle paid for by gentlemen Shoigu and Prigozhin, which is ugly as it is, and testifying both to “how rotten everything is” in our country, but also to the fact that in the military leadership – unity of command. (And who of the two indicated persons is “more right” you should decide for yourself, if you wish. As for me, it’s better to avoid sorting out two sorts of crap).

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1210 UTC 27 FEB/ 0600 brief of the UKR Gen’l Staff did not clarify initial reports of UKR offensive progress N of Bakhmut. UKR forces were confirmed to have broken up RU attacks in the vicinity of Dubovo-Vasylivka and Yahidne, as well as enemy attacks on the urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630178012837601281?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CRIMEA THE VULNERABLE: General Ben Hodges @general_ben lays out the plan for Crimea’s liberation. Long-range strikes to cut off Crimea’s logistics. Daily precision munition attacks on the Black Sea Fleet and RU air forces will prepare the battle space for a land campaign.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630188206313418754?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @general_ben Priority: use long-range precision strike to isolate Crimea, then make it untenable for Russian forces. Drive Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol with daily precision strikes. Ditto for Russian Air Force at Saky, etc. Allow no sanctuary for Drone lunches. Land forces can come later.
¤ https://twitter.com/general_ben/status/1630091591997071361?s=20
[See convo in comments]
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisFlaherty8 I think the argument isn’t that a Crimean victory is impossible; just that it’s probably impractical while Mariopal, and other vast swathes of Ukraine lie in ruins under Russian control. Crimea can be retaken, as the Soviets knew well, but it would cost a lot of blood.
↥ ↧
Politico, Rory Finnan: Why Crimea Is the Key to Peace in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/595t8uc5
// Peace is only possible if Ukraine keeps Crimea. Here’s why.

⭕ 26 Feb 2023

💙🐣 RT @wartranslated A quick review of “deescalation”, “regrouping”, “uneasy decision” and “concrete/effective” stages of the SMO by Girkin as he wraps up one year of the war. “In its current state, the Russian army is unable to defeat the Ukrainian Armed Forces”.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1629881909030387712?s=20/photo/1

💙🐣 📋 RT @LukeDCoffey The cost of US military aid to Ukraine is 25¢ per day per American
For this investment Ukraine is dismantling the military of a top US adversary & China’s top partner
There is no “forever war” because we aren’t fighting
This isn’t a proxy war because Russia attacked Ukraine

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT / FLASH TRAFFIC/ On 26 FEB, UKR forces launched a combined arms counter-attack SE along the M-03 HWY axis. Timely reporting by Jarosław Wolski @wolski_jaros indicates that RU forces have been flanked and driven SE down the M-03 HWY toward Berkhivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1630022705117274113?s=20/photo/1

NYT, David French: Why Fox News Lied to the Viewers It ‘Respects’ https://tinyurl.com/38x9wjdp Fox followed its viewers “straight into a morass of lies and conspiracy theories that should undermine Fox’s credibility for years to come”

Thanks to a recent filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit against Fox, there is now compelling evidence that America’s most-watched cable news network presented information it knew to be false as part of an effort to placate an angry audience. It knowingly sacrificed its integrity to maintain its market share.

Why? There are the obvious reasons: Money. Power. Fame. These are universal human temptations. But the answer goes deeper. Fox News became a juggernaut not simply by being “Republican,” or “conservative,” but by offering its audience something it craved even more deeply: representation. And journalism centered on representation ultimately isn’t journalism at all.

To understand the Fox News phenomenon, one has to understand the place it occupies in Red America. It’s no mere source of news. It’s the place where Red America goes to feel seen and heard. If there’s an important good news story in Red America, the first call is to Fox. If conservative Christians face a threat to their civil liberties, the first call is to Fox. If you’re a conservative celebrity and you need to sell a book, the first call is to Fox. ¤ … ver time Fox morphed into something well beyond a news network.

Fox isn’t just the news hub of right-wing America, it’s a cultural cornerstone, and its business model is so successful that it’s more accurate to think of the rest of the right-wing media universe not as a collection of competitors to Fox, but rather as imitators. From television channels to news sites, right-wing personalities aren’t so much competing with Fox as auditioning for it. … ¤ Take, for example, the online space. Fox News is so dominant that, according to data from December, you could take the total traffic of the next 19 conservative websites combined, and still not reach half of Fox’s audience.

But that kind of loyalty is built around a social compact, the profound and powerful sense in Red America that Fox is for us. It’s our megaphone to the culture. Yet when Fox created this compact, it placed the audience in charge of its content. ¤ During the Trump years, Fox faithfully upheld its end of the bargain. If you were Republican and felt embattled for supporting Donald Trump, a quick visit to Fox (especially in prime time) would calm your mind and soothe your soul. …

As the Trump years wore on, the prime-time messaging became more blatant. Supporting Trump became a marker not just of patriotism, but also of courage. And what of conservatives, like myself, who opposed Trump? … ¤ Our disagreement was cast as an act of outright betrayal. People like me had allegedly turned our backs on our own community. We had failed in our obligation to be their voice.

So you can start to understand the shock when, on Election Day in 2020, Fox News accurately, if arguably prematurely, called Arizona for Joe Biden. It broke the social compact. By presuming the fairness of the election and by declaring Joe Biden the winner of a previously red state, Fox sent a message to its own audience — an audience that had been primed to mistrust election results by Trump and by reports on Fox News — that it did not hear them. It did not see them.

In the emails and texts highlighted in the Dominion filing, you see Fox News figures, including Sean Hannity and Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, referring to the need to “respect” the audience. To be clear, by “respect” they didn’t mean “tell the truth” — an act of genuine respect. Instead they meant “represent.” …

But there is a difference between coming from a community and speaking for a community. In journalism, the former can be valuable, but the latter can be corrupt. … [I]n extreme instances — such as what we witnessed from Fox News after the 2020 presidential election — it can result in almost cartoonish villainy.

There are courageous reporters at Fox. We learned some of their names in the Dominion filing. They were the people who had the courage to tell the truth. But then there are the leaders, and the prime-time stars. Tough? Courageous? Hardly. When push comes to shove, they embody the possibly apocryphal remark of the French revolutionary Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” And follow them they did, straight into a morass of lies and conspiracy theories that should undermine Fox’s credibility for years to come.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FLASE [sic] FLAG? Unconfirmed reports say that a Russian A-50 AWACS aircraft has been damaged in an attack on Machulishchi airfield in Belarus. It is also claimed that one Belarusian soldier is dead after clashes with Ukrainian troops.
⋙⋙ EuroWeeklyNews: Belarusian partisans claim responsibility for blowing up important Russian plane at Belarus air base https://tinyurl.com/3u9mudh5
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NOTE: The destruction of the Russian A-50 at Machulishchi airfield in Belarus is variously reported as the work of Belarusian partisans, UKR saboteurs or UKR stand-off weapons. Updates as information develops.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Belarus has been loudly warning it would get involved in the war if it were attacked ~ which I took as an alert to be on the lookout for false flags

🐣 RT @nexta_tv Czech President-elect Petr Pavel compared Putin’s current actions to Hitler’s expansionist policies toward Czechoslovakia ¤ “Before the WWII, Hitler behaved in exactly the same way that Putin is behaving now in Ukraine,” Pavel said during a Ukraine solidarity action in Prague. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv Petr Pavel recalled that Hitler used the German national minority in the Sudeten territories of Czechoslovakia to incite hatred and violence. Moscow, he said, also justified the invasion of Ukraine, among other things, by allegedly repressing Russian-speaking residents there. 2/2

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1430 UTC 26 FEB/ UKR forces destroyed retention dikes to flood an area S of the M-03 HWY to slow the advance of RU forces toward Berkhivka. UKR units are reported in contact within the urban area of Bakhmut west of the T-13-02 and south of Patrice Lumumba Blvd (H-32).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1629853368024801280?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports Putin talked about the collapse of Russia
“If the West ever succeeds in destroying the Russian Federation and establishing control over its ruins, they may not survive but Muscovites, Uralians and others will,” he said. ¤ Ok. 🫠
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1629776083359789059?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 25 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @Ukrainewartoday #Kuleba says ISW director is sure of #Ukraine’s victory. ¤ The Institute for the Study of #War is sure that #Ukraine will #win the #war, Foreign Minister #Dmytro Kuleba wrote after meeting #ISW director Kimberly Kagan on Feb. 25.

🐣 RT @StateDept NATO protects 1 billion+ people in Europe & North America from 21st-century threats, from cybercrime to pandemics such as COVID-19, and empowers all members to have an equal voice in decisions affecting the alliance. Read some examples of @NATO in action. https://tinyurl.com/2hv7ycj5

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1610 UTC 25 FEB/ UKR forces broke up a large RU assault south of Kreminna. 70 RU dead were left on the battlefield after the attacking force was defeated. UKR carried out 20 aviation strike missions & artillery/missile forces targeted RU troop concentrations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1629510498952593411?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Maybe the China-haters in Congress should reconsider their at-times tepid support for Ukraine in light of Pompeo’s point. (So many tectonic plates are shifting given China’s recent moves regarding possible lethal aid to Russia)
⋙ 🐣 RT @mikepompeo China wants Putin to win. ¤ The best way to deter the CCP is to help Ukraine defeat Russia.

🐣 RT @francis_scarr Igor Girkin says Russia needs a Chinese “lend-lease” if it’s to continue fighting in Ukraine “with any level of success” ¤ He complains that Russian generals led by the “cretin” Gerasimov are burning through armour at a rate that Russian defence plants can’t withstand
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1629433899326603264?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Chepicoro09 China produces more than half of the world steel, China has the capacity to become the “arsenal of the dictatorships”… Girkin is right

🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, has given an interview to Russian milblogger Vladlen Tatarsky in which he explains why he thinks Wagner is experiencing severe ‘shell hunger’ in eastern Ukraine. It includes a lot of interesting details. A rough translation:
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1628676822261985283?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/ynuemy2r
⋙ 🐣 another way Ru is utterly dysfunctional, luckily for us, but the West too has been caught flat-footed providing enough ammunition to Ukraine: we thought rifle and artillery warfare between large armies was a thing of the past; we were woefully mistaken

🧵 RT @NikaMelkozerova Zelensky now says the scariest day of the war for him so far was Bucha and what he saw there after liberation. “I saw that devil was here,”he said during the press conference in Kyiv today. And here’s how he looked that day.
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/NikaMelkozerova/status/1629153796109500416?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @rshereme “Was”. A simple word that is used in everyday life, but it is not that simple for us, because now ordinary Ukrainians cannot say “was” without bursting into tears. This was my home. This was my friend. This was my dog. This was my car. This was my job. And this was my father ….
💽 https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1629207441828372480?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1450 UTC 25 FEB/ RU has cut the M-03 HWY between Dubovo-Vasylivka & Pidhorodne. RU continues to sustain heavy losses in attacks S of the HWY. UKR air defense reports downing a RU Mi-24 helicopter [24 FEB], 2 ‘Lancet’ loitering munitions and an ‘Orlan-10’ recon UAV.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1629490760138498050?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN! In hour of Ukraine’s heroic fight this past year, I wanted to dedicate this thread to highlighting Ukraine’s heroes throughout the centuries. Today, I will list my Top 10 Ukrainians of all time! 1/24
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1629482719934664705?s=20

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “This is where I’ve been living for a year” – @ZelenskyyUa showed Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Komarov his wartime living conditions and his wardrobe.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1629427232618815488?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 24 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Arming a country that defends itself from aggression is legitimate and is an act of defending the UN Charter. On the contrary, helping an aggressor is illegitimate and defies the Charter. If you give weapons to Russia, you commit a crime. ¤ UNSC address: https://bit.ly/3ZdwqZQ
⋙ 🐣 RT @mykhalreynolds I have said this many times it is 100 % legitimate, rational, and morally irreproachable to aid a country against illegal acts of aggression. Chapter VII articles 39-51 go over this in great detail. Aiding Russia would be the equivalent to participating in genocide & terrorism.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “This is where I’ve been living for a year” – @ZelenskyyUa showed Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Komarov his wartime living conditions and his wardrobe.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1629427232618815488?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ABCWorldNews “The idea that China is going to be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational,” Pres. Biden tells @DavidMuir of China’s peace plan. https://abcn.ws/3Ixsvk5
💽 https://twitter.com/ABCWorldNews/status/1629303920198660098?s=20/photo/1

ABCNews: Biden tells ABC’s Muir ‘we would respond’ if China sends weapons to Russia https://tinyurl.com/w73e4mn6
// He spoke in an exclusive interview at the White House Friday.

During an exclusive interview with ABC’s David Muir, President Joe Biden said Friday the U.S. “would respond” if China were to supply Russia with lethal weapons in its war against Ukraine, although he said he didn’t “anticipate” China doing so, despite warnings from administration officials China may be considering the move.

“I don’t anticipate — we haven’t seen it yet, but I don’t anticipate a major initiative on the part of China providing weaponry to Russia,” Biden told Muir in an interview at the White House one year after the Russian invasion began.

Muir pressed Biden on whether China providing weapons to Russia in the future would be crossing a line, but Biden insisted that the U.S. “would respond” and referred to sanctions other countries have received after supporting Russia.

🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA Even one day of war is a lot – it costs lives that cannot be returned. We remember everyone. We celebrate not a year of war, but a year of resilience, humanity and salvation. A year of united Ukraine that has changed the world. A year of those who made faith and hope a reality
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskaUA/status/1629010781848354816?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en First Leopard tanks have arrived to Ukraine! ¤ Polish Prime Minister @MorawieckiM, Prime Minister @Denys_Shmyhal and Defense Minister @oleksiireznikov have welcomed them. ¤ Grateful to our Allies for helping us bring Victory day closer!

🔄 🐣 the [Chinese] proposal is not serious: half just restates existing UN and IAEA rules ¤ but then it proposes replacing NATO, eliminating the ability to impose any sanctions, restoring supply chains (eg Russian gas); borders are to be “negotiated”; no mention of justice for war crimes
// Chinese peace proposal

(📊) WaPo: Mitch McConnell tells US to ‘wake up’ to threat of Russia on Ukraine war anniversary https://tinyurl.com/58x3ktb4 He “urged the US and its allies to renew their resolve to help Ukraine as it stands up to Russian ‘thuggery,’ tacitly pushing back against members of his own party”

Ukrainians vowed Friday to fight on as the world marked the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which violently ended decades of European stability and unleashed a charged battle between autocracy and freedom.

The war, which has displaced millions of Ukrainians and killed tens of thousands on each side, has galvanized Western powers around defending a vulnerable democracy on Europe’s eastern edge, injected the NATO military alliance with a new sense of purpose and spurred the European Union to designate Ukraine as an official candidate for membership. …

Zelensky recalled the initial moments of the war, when much of the world expected Kyiv to fall within days and U.S. officials offered to ferret him out of the city to escape assassination. He declined to go. ¤ “That is how Feb. 24, 2022 began. The longest day of our lives. The hardest day of our modern history,” Zelensky said in a video address. “We woke up early and haven’t fallen asleep since.” …

A year into the conflict, it remains unclear what sort of concessions he or Putin might accept as part of a negotiated settlement. The Ukrainian leader has put forward a 10-point peace proposal, which includes the full withdrawal of Russian troops, the restoration of his country’s borders and a special tribunal to adjudicate alleged Russian war crimes.

After their discussion with Zelensky, the G-7 nations cited the president’s plan and voiced support for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” expressing their willingness to take part security guarantees that would aim to ensure Russia cannot mount future cross-border attacks. …

[T]he United Nations overwhelmingly approved, with 141 nations voting in favor, a resolution affirming Ukraine’s sovereignty and calling for Russia’s withdrawal. While 32 nations including China and India abstained from the vote, Russia was joined by only six other countries in voting against the measure. …

President Biden underscored support from the United States, by far the biggest military backer, after making a symbolically potent surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday. “A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase the people’s love of liberty,” Biden said on Twitter. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.” …

Congressional Republican leaders however remain strongly on Kyiv’s side. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate’s top Republican, said U.S. aid was a “core” American interest. “It is not an act of charity,” McConnell said Friday. Some lawmakers from both parties are pressing the White House to quickly provide additional aid and include fighter jets and longer-range missiles. …

As the war enters its second year, the role of China remains unclear. The Biden administration has said China is actively considering providing lethal weapons to Russia, which would further damage Washington’s already tense relations with Beijing. … ¤ British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that “international order” was at stake. “Putin cannot, must not, win in Ukraine,” Cleverly said. …

(📊) WaPo: Mitch McConnell tells U.S. to ‘wake up’ to threat of Russia on Ukraine war anniversary https://tinyurl.com/58x3ktb4
// The Senate Republican leader pushed back against calls from within his own party to pare back U.S. funding in support of Ukraine

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday urged the United States and its allies to renew their resolve to help Ukraine as it stands up to Russian “thuggery,” tacitly pushing back against members of his own party who have become loudly skeptical of Ukraine’s fight as the conflict passes the one-year mark.

“America and our friends need to finish waking up from our holiday from history, welcome Finland and Sweden into NATO by this summer, and make significant investments in military modernization and our defense-industrial capacities that are commensurate with the major challenges we face,” McConnell said in a statement, shortly before appearing alongside President Sauli Niinisto in Helsinki to support Finland’s bid to join NATO.

The message marked a stark contrast to the one pushed by former president Donald Trump and some congressional Republicans, who criticized President Biden’s trip to Kyiv earlier this week and have called for ending or slowing aid to Ukraine. In a tweet, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga), a hard-right ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and one of dozens of House Republicans to vote against Ukraine aid in May, called Biden’s trip “insulting” and proof that he “chose Ukraine over America.”

But nearly 50 U.S. lawmakers, including McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), traveled to the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week to reassure European allies that Congress, which is split between a GOP-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate, will continue to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with weapons and funds. …

“If Putin were given a green light to destabilize Europe, invading and killing at will, the long-term cost to the United States in both dollars and security risks would be astronomically higher than the minuscule fraction of our GDP that we have invested in Ukraine’s defense thus far,” McConnell said in the statement.

Congress appropriated billions in aid for Ukraine at the end of last year, which was expected to last through September. ¤ The issue is dividing Republicans thought to be vying for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Trump, who has announced his candidacy, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have criticized Biden’s avowed commitment to assisting Ukraine, while former vice president Mike Pence and announced candidate Nikki Haley have argued for a forceful posture against Russia. Trump has said he believes the U.S. aid risks inciting a third world war.

Eleven House Republicans supported a “Ukraine Fatigue” resolution last month in Congress, calling for an end to all aid, but it’s unclear whether they will win out. McCarthy has said he does not favor a “blank check” when it comes to Ukraine aid, but he has not foreclosed on the possibility of providing additional support. And some of McCarthy’s top allies, including Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also went to Munich last week.

Recent polling has shown some erosion in public support for the assistance, driven by Republicans’ increasing skepticism. About a quarter of Americans said in a recent Pew poll that too much aid is flowing to Ukraine, up six percentage points since September and 19 percentage points since March, shortly after the war began. An Associated Press poll found that 48 percent of voters support continued assistance, down from 60 percent in May. … McConnell said helping Ukraine sends a message to China, as well. …

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2320 UTC 24 FEB/ Heavy fighting is ongoing S of the M-03 HWY between Dubovo-Vasylivka and Pidhorodne. RU advances on this axis have been made at the expense of heavy losses of men and equipment. UKR air defense reports downing a Russian Mi-24 attack helicopter.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1629256776968204288?s=20/photo/1
// second Bakhmut update today

🐣 RT @POTUS Over the past year, our commitment to the people and future of a free, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine hasn’t wavered. ¤ And it never will.
💽 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1629251195398152192?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @olex_scherba Zelensky: “Two things I had luck with – my country and my family. Immensely thankful to my wife. Love my parents whom I never see now…”. ¤ Yep. Ukraine wins because of two things. One is courage. The other is love. ¤ #StandWithUkraine #UkraineWillWin
💽 https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1629197073785430020?s=20/photo/1
// tags: tearful Zelensky tearful
⋙ 🐣 RT @drmom1984 Zelenskyy may be a talented actor but he was not acting when he gave this response. His tears were real. His love for family and country is real.

🐣 RT @LeaderMcConnell A year into Russia’s escalation in Ukraine, it’s safe to say it has not turned out how Putin thought it would. He thinks he can wear the free world down. Today alongside President Niinistö [President of Finland], we delivered the message that we will continue to support Ukraine.

NYT, J Michael Luttig: Mike Pence’s Dangerous Ploy https://tinyurl.com/bdhrey4u “Mr. Pence’s decision to brand the Department of Justice’s perfectly legitimate subpoena as unconstitutional is a far cry from the constitutionally hallowed ground on which he stood on Jan. 6”

🐣 RT @anders_aslund Paul Krugman: “Why has Russia’s military failed so spectacularly? Because modern wars aren’t won by strutting guys flexing their biceps. They’re won mainly through logistics, technology and intelligence…that Russia does badly and Ukraine does surprisingly well.”

🐣 RT @POTUS I think Senator Romney would be the first to tell you that we don’t always agree. ¤ But he knows what I know: that standing with Ukraine — and standing up for freedom — advances our national security.
⋙ 🧵 RT @MittRomney It is in America’s interest to support Ukraine. If Russia can invade, subjugate, and pillage Ukraine with impunity, it will do the same again to others, and a world at war diminishes the security of Americans.
📌 https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1628817687098060800?s=20

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @ReportWar1 🇺🇦🇷🇺The advisor to the head of Zelensky’s office, Podoliak, stated after the publication of the PRC plan that any proposal should include a ‘return to the 1991 borders’. #Russia #Ukraina #UkraineWar #Ukraine #UkraineWarNews #RussiaUkraineWar #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineRussianWar

🐣 RT @michael_brodsk My tweet exactly a year ago. A year of brutal, tragic and pointless war
⋙ 🐣 RT @michael_brodsk [Feb 24, 2022] Can’t believe it is really happening #Kyiv #Ukraine
🖼 https://twitter.com/michael_brodsk/status/1628881797357371392?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @juliaioffe It’s hard to believe it’s been a year. A year of senseless, mind-stilling slaughter, a year of an imperial bloodlust that just won’t quit, but also a year of Ukrainians not giving in and defying all the odds.

🐣 RT @jaketapper “Russia has already lost this war,” Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a CNN town hall Thursday night.
⋙ CNN: Takeaways from CNN’s town hall a year after Russia invaded Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4rm8msnb

💙 RT @MacaesBruno [Kiyanyn:] A 500-year war approaches its end
💽 https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1629117857459060744?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Zelensky on war anniversary: ¤ “Ukraine has surprised the world. Ukraine has inspired the world. Ukraine has united the world. There are thousands of words to prove it, but a few will be enough: HIMARS, Patriot, Abrams, IRIS-T, Challenger, NASAMS, Leopard.” ¤ President’s Office
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Read Zelensky’s full address on the occasion of the 1-year anniversary of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine here:
⋙≣ KyivIndependent: Zelensky’s address on 1-year anniversary of Russia’s all-out war https://tinyurl.com/2s3pk4ys

🐣 RT @NOELreports “As for the “peace plan” proposed by China, they do not have much credibility. They haven’t condemned the invasion until now, but instead signed a limitless partnership agreement with Russia days before,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. ¤ You are totally right Jens
⋙ 🐣 the “peace plan” would replace NATO w “Euroasian security framework” (ie, no US), eliminates sanctions without UN Sec Council approval😂, restores prior trade patterns (eg Ru gas), and skirts punishment for war crimes ¤ many points simply reiterate the UN charter and IAEA rules

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ‼️Austin: the 🇺🇸USA is preparing motorized infantry brigades of the Armed Forces of 🇺🇦Ukraine, and this will allow to break through the defense of the 🇷🇺Russian military ¤ «We are training and equipping several motorized infantry brigades – this is quite a significant potential.»

🐣 RT @sherwiebp China’s 12-point plan for Ukraine peace #sabcnews
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/sherwiebp/status/1628944613753950210?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 1. Russia doesn’t accept Ukraine as a separate country, so how would “respecting sovereignty” work?
2. New security apparatus for EuroAsia: Goodbye NATO, US; no “bloc” expansion: forget it, Sweden, Norway etc: add Russia, China
3-4. Ceasefire: so Russia rearms
⋙⋙ 🐣 … 10. Stop “unilateral sanctions“ that don’t have UN SC approval: so Russia and China will veto: end of sanctions
11. Supply chains (see Sanctions): eg restore gas flow from Russia
✛ No mention of justice: no Hague, no ICC
[much of the rest is covered in UN charter, IAEA etc]

🔄 💙 📔 FMPRC: China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis https://tinyurl.com/4xs2v938
// main areas of concern flagged: 1) alliances, 2) ceasefire, 3) sanctions

1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected. 

‼️2. Abandoning the Cold War mentality. The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly. There is no simple solution to a complex issue. All parties should, following the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and bearing in mind the long-term peace and stability of the world, help forge a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture. All parties should oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security, prevent bloc confrontation, and work together for peace and stability on the Eurasian Continent.

!? 3. Ceasing hostilities. Conflict and war benefit no one. All parties must stay rational and exercise restraint, avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions, and prevent the crisis from deteriorating further or even spiraling out of control. All parties should support Russia and Ukraine in working in the same direction and resuming direct dialogue as quickly as possible, so as to gradually deescalate the situation and ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire. 

4. Resuming peace talks. Dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis. All efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis must be encouraged and supported. The international community should stay committed to the right approach of promoting talks for peace, help parties to the conflict open the door to a political settlement as soon as possible, and create conditions and platforms for the resumption of negotiation. China will continue to play a constructive role in this regard. 

5. Resolving the humanitarian crisis. All measures conducive to easing the humanitarian crisis must be encouraged and supported. Humanitarian operations should follow the principles of neutrality and impartiality, and humanitarian issues should not be politicized. The safety of civilians must be effectively protected, and humanitarian corridors should be set up for the evacuation of civilians from conflict zones. Efforts are needed to increase humanitarian assistance to relevant areas, improve humanitarian conditions, and provide rapid, safe and unimpeded humanitarian access, with a view to preventing a humanitarian crisis on a larger scale. The UN should be supported in playing a coordinating role in channeling humanitarian aid to conflict zones.

6. Protecting civilians and prisoners of war (POWs). Parties to the conflict should strictly abide by international humanitarian law, avoid attacking civilians or civilian facilities, protect women, children and other victims of the conflict, and respect the basic rights of POWs. China supports the exchange of POWs between Russia and Ukraine, and calls on all parties to create more favorable conditions for this purpose.

7. Keeping nuclear power plants safe. China opposes armed attacks against nuclear power plants or other peaceful nuclear facilities, and calls on all parties to comply with international law including the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) and resolutely avoid man-made nuclear accidents. China supports the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in playing a constructive role in promoting the safety and security of peaceful nuclear facilities.

8. Reducing strategic risks. Nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought. The threat or use of nuclear weapons should be opposed. Nuclear proliferation must be prevented and nuclear crisis avoided. China opposes the research, development and use of chemical and biological weapons by any country under any circumstances.

9. Facilitating grain exports. All parties need to implement the Black Sea Grain Initiative signed by Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine and the UN fully and effectively in a balanced manner, and support the UN in playing an important role in this regard. The cooperation initiative on global food security proposed by China provides a feasible solution to the global food crisis.

‼️ 10. Stopping unilateral sanctions. Unilateral sanctions and maximum pressure cannot solve the issue; they only create new problems. China opposes unilateral sanctions unauthorized by the UN Security Council. Relevant countries should stop abusing unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction” against other countries, so as to do their share in deescalating the Ukraine crisis and create conditions for developing countries to grow their economies and better the lives of their people.

11. Keeping industrial and supply chains stable. All parties should earnestly maintain the existing world economic system and oppose using the world economy as a tool or weapon for political purposes. Joint efforts are needed to mitigate the spillovers of the crisis and prevent it from disrupting international cooperation in energy, finance, food trade and transportation and undermining the global economic recovery.

12. Promoting post-conflict reconstruction. The international community needs to take measures to support post-conflict reconstruction in conflict zones. China stands ready to provide assistance and play a constructive role in this endeavor.

🐣 RT @AnonOpsSE #BREAKING Chinas Proposed for ending #RussianUkrainianWar
This has been leaked to #Anonymous and it’s expected to be released by Beijing in the coming days. #Russia #Ukraine #China
China’s Peace Plan
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AnonOpsSE/status/1628939519582957568?s=20/photo/1

● Respect sovereignty of all countries
● A country’s security cannot be at expense of other countries’ security
● Regional security cannot be guaranteed by strengthening or even expanding military blocs
● Cease fire and stop fighting, prevent Ukraine crisis from further aggravating or even getting out of control
● Gradually promote de-escalation and easing of situation and finally reach comprehensive ceasefire
● Dialogue, negotiation are only viable way to resolve Ukraine crisis
● Maintain safety of nuclear power plants, oppose armed attacks on nuclear facilities
● Nuclear weapons cannot be used and nuclear war cannot be fought
● We oppose development, use of biological and chemical weapons by any country under any circumstances
● Oppose any unilateral sanctions not authorized by the UN Security Council

🐣 RT @kalev1990 February 24th is forever a part of our history. It has already been etched in memory by the #Bucha’s blood, #Mariupol’s ashes, #Kharkiv’s tears, #Bakhmut’s fire & the resistance of the whole of #Ukraine, which has become not just a shield, but a sword of #Europe. Just remember!

⭕ 23 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @China_MFA The US is the No.1 violator of sovereignty and interferer in the internal affairs of other countries. Since the end of WWII, the US has reportedly sought to subvert 50+ foreign governments, interfered in elections in 30+ countries & attempted assassination on 50+ foreign leaders.
⋙ 🐣 please: (recent:) Viet Nam, the Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, Shanghai, plus devastating domestic misadventures like the Great Leap Forward and the draconian COVID-19 lockdowns, not to mention threats to Taiwan and claims to the South China Sea ~ China is no role model
⋙⋙ 🐣 also: Tiananmen Square; and those are just the ones I, not a China expert, can think of; your “weather” balloons have violated the sovereignty of at least 40 countries ¤ where would China be today without the US marketplace and the stealing of US trade secrets?

⋙ 🐣 Post the lists mentioned, please, so our Intelligence Community and @StateDept can respond. ¤ Also, please post your “peace plan” and explain how Russia did not invade Ukraine, whose borders snd sovereignty are recognized by the United Nations.

🐣 RT @PatronDsns During the past year, the 🇷🇺 launched almost 5,000 missiles and 3,500 air strikes. “Kyiv in 3 days”, “Let’s go to Berlin like our grandfathers”, “Everyone will respect and fear us”. But it’s been a year since they became a laughingstock. So cruel and angry but a laughingstock.
🖼 https://twitter.com/PatronDsns/status/1628853474921267202?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MORE ON THE WAY: The US is expected to announce a further $2 billion Ukraine aid package on Friday. Included will be more HIMARs, 155mm artillery ammunition, combat and reconnaissance UAVs, mine clearance equipment and anti-drone technology.
⋙ CNN: US expected to announce $2 billion Ukraine aid package on Friday https://tinyurl.com/3nzcxzjx
// Defense budget

The Biden administration is expected to announce another $2 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative [USAI] funds on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion, a US official said Thursday. 

Unlike drawdown packages, which are pulled directly from US weapons stocks and can be shipped quickly to Ukraine, USAI [Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative] packages are purchased or contracted from the industry. Though the aid can take far longer to arrive in Ukraine, it also signals a longer-term commitment to providing assistance to Kyiv in what the US sees as a protracted conflict against Russia. ¤ This is new funding for purchases and new contracts for equipment for Ukraine, including:

● HIMARS rockets [launchers or missiles?]
● 155m artillery ammunition
● multiple types of drones (UAVS)
● Counter UAV equipment
● Mine clearing equipment
● Secure communications equipment
● Funding for training and maintenance

The US announced its 32nd drawdown of US equipment for Ukraine just three days ago, valued at $450 million, which included

● more HIMAR and Howitzer ammunition,
● Javelin anti-tank missiles and
● air surveillance radars.

The announcement came the same day President Joe Biden made a highly secretive visit to Kyiv, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and then giving an impassioned speech in support of Ukraine from Warsaw.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WAGNER OUT? Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, is watching his career fade. UKR intel reports that the RU military is setting up a rival Private Military Contracting firm, Yastreb [Hawk]– an organization closely aligned with RU intelligence.
⋙ YahooNews/UkrainskaPravda: Russian secret services set up new private military company to oust Wagner mercenaries General Staff https://tinyurl.com/2p9a64up
⋙ 🐣 RT @MCTothSTL There is a growing proliferation of PMCs in Moscow. Even Shoigu has one now. ¤ Fears of PMCs causing a post-Putin civil war are one major reason why the Biden administration is arguably not tying to outright win this war in Ukraine as I wrote in @TheHill.
⋙⋙ TheHill: Is winning not an option in Ukraine? https://tinyurl.com/2djtb2ye

🐣 📋 RT @robbertt4321 Russia has visually confirmed lost 47% of its tanks in active service in the first year of the invasion… ¤ Data from @oryxspioenkop & the Military Balance 2022, retrieved on February 23rd.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/robbertt4321/status/1628895410738589698?s=20/photo/1

🐣 📋 RT @SecRaimondo Taiwan alone produces 92% of the world’s leading-edge chips – even though the majority of them are still based on American technology created at UC Berkeley with federal funding. ¤ It’s not right – and we’re going to fix it with the CHIPS and Science Act.

WaPo: Oral history: Leaders recall dismay, fury on first day of war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/34z3m947 “I thought about the rockets flying over my children, over all of our children. This means that there will be a huge number of deaths. It was clear” ~ Volodymyr Zelensky
// Political, military and intelligence officials describe their reaction to the Russian invasion and what they did that first day

TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The War in Ukraine Is the End of a World https://tinyurl.com/jec5btr8 “I underestimated the power of Soviet imperial nostalgia. And so today, I grieve”
// A shroud is settling over the dreams many of us had at the end of the 20th century.

[…] I grieve for the innocent people of Ukraine, for the dead and for the survivors, for the mutilated men and women, for the orphans and the kidnapped children. I grieve for the elderly who have had to live through the brutality of the Nazis and the Soviets and, now, the Russians. I grieve for a nation whose history will be forever changed by Putin’s crimes against humanity.

And yes, I grieve, too, for the Russians. I care not one bit for Putin or his criminal accomplices, who might never face justice in this world but who I am certain will one day stand before an inescapable and far more terrifying seat of judgment. But I grieve for the young men who have been used as “cannon meat,” for children whose fathers have been dragooned into the service of a dictator, for the people who once again are afraid to speak and who once again are being incarcerated as political prisoners.

Finally, I grieve for the end of a world I knew for most of my adult life. I have lived through two eras, one an age of undeclared war between two ideological foes that threatened instant destruction, the next a time of increasing freedom and global integration. This second world was full of chaos, but it was also grounded in hope. The Soviet collapse did not mean the end of war or of dictatorships, but after 1991, time seemed to be on the side of peace and democracy, if only we could summon the will and find the leadership to build on our heroic triumphs over Nazism and Communism.

Now I live in a new era, one in which the world order created in 1945 is collapsing. The United Nations, as I once wrote, is a squalid and dysfunctional organization, but it is still one of the greatest achievements of humanity. It was never designed, however, to function with one of its permanent members running amok as a nuclear-armed rogue state, and so today the front line of freedom is in Ukraine. But democracy is under attack everywhere, including here in the United States, and so I will celebrate the courage of Ukraine, the wisdom of NATO, and the steadfastness of the world’s democracies. But I also hear the quiet rustling of a shroud that is settling over the dreams—and perhaps, illusions—of a better world that for a moment seemed only inches from our grasp.

I do not know how this third era of my life will end, or if I will be alive to see it end. All I know is that I feel now as I did that night in Red Square, when I knew that democracy was in the fight of its life, that we might be facing a catastrophe, and that we must never waver.

🧵 RT @NATO ❝I’d always been a journalist… on day two of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I went and joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine.❞ This is Pavlo’s story [1/10]
📌 https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1628687934000885760?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @NATO 🗣️Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of this century
❝We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.❞ [9/10]
⋙ 🐣 RT @NATO ❝We haven’t won yet. But in many ways, we have won.❞
Read Pavlo’s full story on #NATOreview: http://bit.ly/3IQbpzf [10/10]

💙 🐣 RT @ManiatiGeorge When I saw this clip on February 24th evening my time…I knew these men here were cut from a different mold. I showed it to my wife. She cried. She was worried they wouldn’t be able to hold the Orcs from taking Kyiv. I knew Kyiv would not fall..too big..and the Ukrainian spirit..
💽 https://twitter.com/ManiatiGeorge/status/1628549905768714241?s=20/photo/1
// clip 2/24/2022: Zelensky addresses nation with his team: “We are here”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Semper1908 When I saw that I cried. And for the next week I went to bed every night fearing Kyiv would fall while I slept. And then one day I realised the Russians were just failing and that maybe Ukraine would triumph. And that little flower just grew in my heart, victory after victory

🐣 RT @GoncharenkoUa The UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution calling on Russia to immediately withdraw its troops from Ukraine ¤. Against – only 7 (Russia and Belarus, Syria, North Korea, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Mali – true friends of Putin)
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/GoncharenkoUa/status/1628864048367382536?s=20/photo/1
// In Favor: 141; Abstentions: 32 (incl China, India, Iran, Pakistan, So Africa, etc)

🧵 RT @justartsndstuff “Putin prepared invasion of Ukraine secretly from his inner circle and caused elite discontent with military aggression – FT ¤ One of the oligarchs asked Lavrov how Putin could have planned such a large-scale invasion in such a narrow circle that most senior Kremlin officials, 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/justartsndstuff/status/1628788969897922560?s=20

⋙ the economic cabinet and Russia’s business elite did not believe it was even possible. ¤ “He has three advisors,” Lavrov replied, “Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.” ¤ Even as the enormous cost of the invasion to Russia becomes apparent to Putin, 2/

⋙ the Kremlin leader is more determined than ever to see it through, people who know him say. ¤ “The idea was never that hundreds of thousands of people would die. It all went horribly wrong,” said a Russian ex-official. ¤ Some officials are trying to convince him to end the war, 3/

⋙ pointing to the economic damage caused by the sanctions. ¤ “But how can you convince a madman? His brain will collapse if he realizes that it was a mistake,” the source concluded.” END/ [link to Telegram

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VUHLEDAR /1320 UTC 23 FEB/ Two RU probes toward the T-05-24 HWY at Vuhledar were broken up. UKR reports that elements of the Cossack Detachment (Volunteers) assigned to RU 155th Brigade of Marine Infantry (Pacific Fleet), have refused orders to engage in offensive operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1628746280527593472?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @kajakallas Explained to @bbcnickrobinson why it is important to end the cycle of Russian aggression. This aggression cannot pay off. ¤. Also emphasised why accountability is crucial and why no Russian leader can be immune from responsibility. ¤ Listen from 08:45.
🔊 BBC: https://tinyurl.com/4jvwk4ka/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian propagandists complain that they need more allies and no one is really coming to their side. ¤ Skabeyeva consoles them that as soon as Russia has real successes, allies will appear. ¤ I’ve got bad news for her.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1628651370336374784?s=20/photo/1

KyivPost: Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Yermak Speaks Openly with Kyiv Post about War with Russia https://tinyurl.com/tf2y26dt ‘Unless there are radical changes in the structure of the Russian Federation, there will always be a risk of another full-scale invasion of Ukraine’ ~ Yermak
// The top Ukrainian official told Kyiv Post that only NATO membership will protect Ukraine from another future war with Russia, adding that the Kremlin has “no chance” of winning against the alliance.

🐣 RT @NOELreports Prighozin reports that the “ammunition train” has started moving. Referring towards his tirade yesterday against the Russian military leadership, complaining about the lack of ammunition and an immediate need for it.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1628652615285309440?s=20/photo/1

🚫 🐣 RT @vinm300 #Ukraine
Xi Peace proposition facts
a) Ceasefire
b) halt to weapons for Ukr
FM Kubela has seen part of it & didn’t reject
Therefore (speculation) :
c) Russia withdraws, replaced by UN peace-keepers
d) UN diplomacy to resolve borders within 10yrs
Xi’s amour propre needs success
⋙ 🐣 corr: Dmytro Kuleba ¤ Ukr asked for a vote on its peace proposal by the UN assembly; I think the vote is today(?) ¤ I doubt either Zelenskyy or the Ukr people would be willing to hand over to the UN decisions on restoring Ukraine’s 2014 borders

🐣 RT @mhmck Reacting to the significant losses of personnel suffered by the invaders in the offensive near Vuhledar, the so-called “Cossacks” attached to the 155th Marine Brigade (RU) refuse to go into combat. ¤ Source: Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information, 06:00, 23 February 2023

⭕ 22 Feb 2023

DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: 10 Surprising Lessons of the Ukraine War So Far https://tinyurl.com/2jcy6ky7 “4. Poland is the new Germany. (And Estonia is the new France.)” “8. Ukraine is already in the EU and NATO whether you (or Russia or Turkey) like it or not.”
// From revealing Putin’s weaknesses to new ways to wage war to intriguing new power centers, the war in Ukraine has served up one surprise after another—and we can expect many more.

● While Ukraine has pleaded for fighter jets for a year, unmanned aircraft have stolen the show.
● “No Time for Sergeants” was once a TV hit in America. It has been a flop for the Russian army.
● Speaking of time, it’s time for traditional navies to realize their time will soon be up.
● Poland is the new Germany. (And Estonia is the new France.)
● Vladimir Putin may be a madman, but at least he has the common sense not to want to be obliterated in a nuclear war with NATO.
● Speaking of Putin, stick a fork in him. He may not be quite done yet, but he will be soon… and besides if anyone deserves to have a fork stuck in him, it’s Putin.
● TikTok is more than just an annoying teenage time-waster and Chinese espionage plot.
● Ukraine is already in the EU and NATO whether you (or Russia or Turkey) like it or not.
● With friends like Turkey, Israel, the global South and Elon Musk, who needs enemies?
● And the most important lesson of all is, as it will be for the remainder of this century, everything is always about China.

🐣 RT @POTUS Bucharest Nine leaders have provided critical security assistance to Ukraine and critical support to millions of refugees. ¤ We’ve helped ensure Ukrainians can access basic services. ¤ And together, we’ll continue our enduring support for Ukraine as they defend their freedom.

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost His panic has now understandably reached a new level.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1628432153049731074?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump This Georgia case is ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time. Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) “foreperson” of the Racist D.A.’s Special Grand Jury, going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts. This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court. Atlanta is leading the Nation in Murder and other Violent Crimes. All I did is make TWO PERFECT PHONE CALLS!!!

🐣 RT @AustinAustin231 The #UN General Assembly will vote today on a peace plan for #Ukraine which includes most of plan proposed by #Ukraine. President #Zelensky is calling for all nations to vote for the plan.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Magyar, the mastermind behind “Magyar’s birds” goes into detail about how his air reconnaissance group operates, and what his specific responsibilities in the unit are. It works like taxi – whoever accepts the enemy destruction order first, gets to hit it.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1628546751677300736?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HickPhilistine Its stuff like this that lets Ukraine do more with less. A force multiplier and faster adaptability than on the Russian side where this kind of initiative is discouraged rather than adopted.
⋙ 🐣 RT @1901James These guys invented a new way of fighting. Drones were used before, of course, but the scale, precision and the entire process used in Ukraine is on an entire different level to anything else except probably the USA. It is probably the most efficient price per target in any war.

🐣 RT @AmbVasyl An excellent oped by @WarintheFuture reflecting on 1 year of the Russian full scale invasion. “A year when Ukraine reminded us what a lion’s heart looks like”
⋙ SydneyMorningHerald, Mick Ryan: A year when Ukraine reminded us what a lion’s heart looks like https://tinyurl.com/3htk3rrc “In his darkest hour, … Zelensky demanded of the free world not a way out of the war but a way to stay, save his people and win the war”
// “It was a roar heard around the world”
// A year on from the invasion of Ukraine, the Western world has been reminded of what a nation with a lion’s heart looks like.

🐣 RT @ @TruWordsRSpoken FACTS NOT FEELINGS MATTER #EastPalenstineOH #TrumpDerailment
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TruWordsRSpoken/status/1628540701830180864?s=20/photo/1

● No, Buttigieg couldn’t have prevented the disaster
● No, Buttigieg is NOT responsible for the clean-up
● No, Democrats didn’t order the train cars be burned
● Yes, Gov. DeWine ordered the train cars be burned
● Yes, The Norfolk Southern CEO donated to DeWine
● Yes, Trump removed safety standards
● Yes, Trump weakened the EPA
● Yes, we ALL should be working together to make sure this doesn’t happen again

📊 Bipartisan Report: Marist Poll for NPR/PBS: Biden Approval Rating Rises Again As Policy Wins Continue https://tinyurl.com/4tv844ns 49% approve (23% “strongly”)/45% disapprove amid strong economic news, lower gas prices, overseas successes

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2120 UTC 22 FEB/ RU units attempted to advance W of Kreminna; they are reported to have been defeated in heavy fighting, losing armored vehicles as they retreated. UKR counter-battery fire destroyed RU guns at Stara Krasnyanka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1628503477180678144?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @VolodyaTretyak As always an amazing interview with the Chief of GUR, Kyrylo Budanov, from 22.02.2023. He talks about Russian mobilization, Russia’s weapon production capabilities, his opinion on Bakhmut, not accidental arsons in Russia, and the near future of the war.
⋙ WarTranslated: Forbes.ua interview: GUR’s chief Kyrylo Budanov interview https://tinyurl.com/5d6sf324
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien The Russian offensive is indeed underway–its just of such poor quality that ‘not everyone can even see it’ Ouch. There is also a number of really important points made in the article
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Ukrainians are studying Russian ammunition production–the Russians cant make nearly enough to replace what they are using. Then some really interesting ideas on how Russian munitions production is struggling overall.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Near the end Budanov repeats a prediction–the war will turn in the Spring (when presumably the Ukrainian Army will have finished preparing its forces) at that point the Russian offensive will be crushed.

WaPo, David Ignatius: What a year of war has revealed of three leaders https://tinyurl.com/ye26mz7r “Who could have imagined that a Ukrainian comic actor named Volodymyr Zelensky would prove to be the first truly heroic leader of the 21st century”

War reveals the essential traits of human character that shape events. Who could have imagined that a Ukrainian comic actor named Volodymyr Zelensky would prove to be the first truly heroic leader of the 21st century. Who would have bet that Putin, the canny and cynical ex-KGB officer, would grossly misread both intelligence and history and ransom his country to what amounted to a fairy tale about the “oneness” of Russia and Ukraine.

Perhaps most surprising of all, who would have bet that an 80-year-old U.S. president, a man who was garrulous, sentimental and sometimes appeared senescent, would turn out to the most undervalued American leader in modern times. President Biden’s brave visit Monday to Kyiv was a defining moment in his presidency. Even conservative commentators who make a living trashing him had to be stirred by the sight of him standing in St. Michael’s Square while air raid sirens wailed.

… In Putin’s case, this vanity led him to march his nation off a cliff. On Feb. 24 last year, Putin launched the invasion with a speech that is still astonishing for its sense of victimization and desire for revenge.

Putin cast the Ukraine story as a tale of Russian innocence and Western perfidy. In expanding NATO eastward toward Russia’s borders, the United States and its allies had shown a “contemptuous and disdainful attitude” and behaved “rudely and unceremoniously from year to year.” The West had hurt Russia’s feelings, in other words.

Putin’s chief war aim, bizarrely, seemed to be greater respect. The West, rather than treating a disoriented post-Soviet Russia “professionally, smoothly, patiently,” had flaunted its power with a “state of euphoria created by the feeling of absolute superiority, a kind of modern absolutism.” NATO had talked of inviting Russian cooperation, but Putin insisted: “They have deceived us, or, to put it simply, they have played us.”

Zelensky’s piece of this story is a combination of raw courage and an actor’s intuitive understanding of how to play the role of his life. … Zelensky resisted U.S. offers of help in evacuating Kyiv. When he emerged from his bunker after the initial days of assault in his green fatigues, surrounded by his fellow ministers, you sensed a change in Earth’s gravitational field. “I’m not hiding,” he said. “And I’m not afraid of anyone.” …

In the end, war is a test of wills. Putin was convinced that his cold-eyed, brutal resolve would outlast everyone else’s. But a year on, Putin’s staying power begins to look questionable, while Zelensky and Biden have never looked stronger.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKMUT /1400 UTC 22 FEB/ RU forces continue operations against UKR Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS). UKR forces are in contact in the eastern suburbs of Bakhmut, north and south of the H-32 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1628392297120337923?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @POTUS There is no sweeter word than freedom, no nobler goal than freedom, and no higher aspiration than freedom. ¤ All that we do now must be done so our children and grandchildren will know it as well: Freedom.
💽 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1628378676491390980?s=20/photo/1
// Biden in Warsaw before a crowd of 30K

🐣 RT @AustinAustin231 The Mariupol city council (Ukrainian authorities, not Russian occupiers) says that a Russian ammo depot has been hit near the Port of Mariupol. Russian sources are shocked but confirm that strikes took place, and claim that a previously unseen weapon was used.
⋙ 🐣 possibly this … these were included in the previous package of mil aid: they double the range for HIMARS and are exceptionally precise
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1628378476641234947?s=20/photo/1
// Ground-launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB)

🐣 RT @POTUS Mr. President, you and all Ukrainians remind the world of what courage is – every single day. ¤ We have every confidence that you’re going to prevail and we will be with you for as long as it takes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Kyiv stands strong. Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and most important, it stands free. @Potus said this today in Warsaw after a historic visit to Ukraine. We all stand united and brave – 🇺🇦, 🇺🇸 and our entire coalition of victory. 1/2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUaI thank @POTUS and all of America for their leadership in rallying the world in support of freedom and for their vital assistance to Ukraine. Together we are heading towards a common victory, and we must ensure it this year already! 2/2

🐣 RT @nytimesworld A delegation of five House Republicans led by Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday, one day after President Biden’s visit.
⋙ NYT: A House Republican delegation visits Kyiv and Zelensky in a show of bipartisan American support https://tinyurl.com/apmn4p4w

According to a spokeswoman for the committee, Mr. McCaul met with Mr. Zelensky and Representative Darrell Issa of California, Representative Max Miller of Ohio and Representatives Jake Ellzey and Keith Self of Texas. Margaret Kibben, the House chaplain, also attended.

The group met with Mr. Zelensky, Ukraine’s top finance, defense and foreign officials, as well as several members of Ukraine’s parliament, the committee spokeswoman said. The American delegation also visited Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that Russian forces have ravaged over the last several months, making it the site of some of the worst atrocities of the war.

Mr. Zelensky updated the Americans on the state of the war and expressed confidence in Ukraine’s position, his office wrote in a readout of the meeting. He also outlined the Ukrainian army’s artillery needs and thanked the congressmen for their support, nearly one year since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“We are grateful for all the steps that have been taken, which have been endorsed by the president of the United States and the Congress,” Mr. Zelensky said, adding appreciation “for the aid packages for our army, our military on the battlefield. And, of course, for the financial support to overcome all the challenges that have arisen as a result of Russian aggression.”

🐣 RT @nytimesworld A delegation of five House Republicans led by Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday, one day after President Biden’s visit.
⋙ NYT: A House Republican delegation visits Kyiv and Zelensky in a show of bipartisan American support https://tinyurl.com/apmn4p4w

🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv Yesterday, a Congressional delegation led by #HFAC Chair @RepMcCaul and I met with survivors of Russia’s atrocities in Bucha. I am horrified by their stories of brutal murders of civilians by Russia’s forces. The U.S. is committed to ensuring those responsible are held to account
🖼 https://twitter.com/USAmbKyiv/status/1628360122949926913?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 Thank you, @RepMcCaul, for visiting Bucha. There are many Buchas ~ virtually any town or city Ukr troops have entered after Ru have left. ¤ Please share your insights with your colleagues in the House who do not yet understand the serious threat faced to civilization itself.

🐣 RT @sandumaiamd Had a very good meeting with President @AndrzejDuda today to discuss pressing security challenges and Moldova’s EU accession. ¤ Poland is a key partner in our pursuit of a democratic, prosperous future for 🇲🇩. ¤ Grateful for 🇵🇱’s unwavering support in advancing our shared goals.

NYT: Ukraine appears to attack deep into Russian-occupied territory https://tinyurl.com/2kv99djz “The Ukrainian General Staff said only that Ukraine’s Air Force had launched 8 attacks on the temporary bases of Russian troops & 2 strikes on … Russia’s anti-aircraft missile systems”

🐣 RT @RFERL The treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms accord between the two superpowers, restricts each nation to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers.
⋙ RFERL: Russia’s State Duma Approves Putin’s Move To Suspend New START Nuclear Deal https://tinyurl.com/2p95t86x

🐣 RT @uarealitynow (CNN) Russia carried out a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears to have failed around the time President Joe Biden was in Ukraine on Monday, according to two US officials familiar with the matter.

💙 WaPo: A year in the trenches has hardened Ukraine’s president https://tinyurl.com/59hf8yr8 “Experience and tragedy … washed over him. Cynicism battled with idealism inside him. He had seen the aftermath of atrocities and grasped the hands of the loved ones of Ukraine’s dead soldiers”
// // Volodymyr Zelensky came into office thinking peace with Putin was possible. He now believes victory is the only answer.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️CNN: Russia’s nuclear-capable ICBM Sarmat allegedly failed test. ¤ Russia’s nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat appears to have failed a test launch around Feb. 20, according to the U.S. officials.

⭕ 21 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @ DucuGavril I’m hoping for a plot twist here, something that would destroy the “myth of putin” completely. Something in the classic russian genre of decay and destruction. 🥲
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated There’s a noticeable rift between Wagner and MoD supporters on the channels. Prigozhin himself is livid. I don’t believe this is psyops. But I wouldn’t go as far as saying this might lead to something. But it’s great it’s happening, nevertheless.

🐣 RT @Azovsouth Wagner terrorist boss Prigozhin, said he was not invited to Putin’s dry speech today and that he was busy storming office after office looking looking for ammo to give his stranded Wagner criminals in #Bakhmut. ¤ He has also accused Gerasimov and Defense Minister Shoigu of treason

Politico [EU]: ‘Treason!’ Wagner boss slams Russia’s military leaders https://tinyurl.com/3e85wbch
// They want to ‘destroy’ Wagner, says Yevgeny Prigozhin about Russia’s defense minister and army chief.

🧵 RT @WhiteHouse One year after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, President Biden traveled to Kyiv to meet with President Zelenskyy. Here’s how it happened. ¤ On Sunday at 4:15 AM EST, @POTUS departed D.C. on Air Force One for Germany – where the plane refueled and was wheels up at 6:29 PM CET.
📌 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1628046905178566658?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @GirkinGirkin [tr] Over the past day, units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine have repelled attacks by invaders in the areas of the settlements of Kuzemivka and Dibrova in the Luhansk region and Fedorivka, Yagidne, Berkhivka, Bakhmut and Kurdyumivka in the Donetsk region. ¤ (and Kurdyumivka, yes)

🐣 🗳 RT @gelliottmorris First big night of 2023 elections this year and Democrats are doing very well
– Liberal WI Supreme Court candidates >50% total
– In NH, D outrunning 2022 by 10pts
– A KY state senate seat that was Biden+30 is D+55
– Dems on track to swing VA04 by 10pts; huge rural vote swing

🐣 RT @thejackhopkins BREAKING: Vladimir Putin has initiated a draft. All college students are now going to war. He is sending them to be slaughtered in Ukraine. This man is desperate, and approaching panic mode.

🐣 RT @NSC_Spox 30,000 crowd count for President Biden’s speech tonight, according to the Warsaw Mayor’s office. 🇺🇸🇵🇱🇺🇦
💽 https://twitter.com/NSC_Spox/status/1628089403364249600?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukraine TVD, 8-19 FEB 23. The past 2 weeks of February saw the Russian Winter Offensive intensify as major pushes continued in Kreminna, Bakhmut, and Vuhledar. Russian made few gains, Ukrainian defenses continue to hold. #UkraineRussiaWar #RussianArmy #UkraineFrontLines
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1628213037768273922?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @officejjsmart 🇷🇺 FOR THEE, NOT ME ¤ Below each of these smiling faces of Russia’s leadership are the names and ages of their sons. ¤ How many of them have sons in the Russian Army? ¤ None of them.
🖼 https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1628129125780099075?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /2320 UTC 21 FEB/ Reports indicate that UKR has engaged elements of the RU 55th Motor Rifle Brig and the 331st Reg of the 98th Division (Airborne) east of Yampolivka. RU forces also launched attacks toward Dibrova, south of Kuzmyne and again at Bilohorvika.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1628167902879748096?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AustinAustin231 Momentum in #Washington is shifting toward sending #Ukraine ATACMS and F-16 Fighter Jets, says a Senior U.S. Lawmaker (#Reuters)
¤ https://twitter.com/AustinAustin231/status/1628133987142053889?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1230 UTC 21 FEB/ N of Bakhmut, RU units are attempting to expand control of the M-03 HWY. UKR units were in contact at Berkhivka, Pidhorodne and south of the T-13-02/M-03 jct. RU pressed attacks in the E Bakhmut suburbs, along the Patrice Lumumba Blvd /H32 axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1628008111662325760?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “The West was not plotting to attack Russia. President Putin chose this war. Every day the war continues is his choice. ¤ It’s simple. If Russia stopped invading , it would end the war. If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, it would be the end of Ukraine” – @POTUS

🐣 RT @NOELreports Belarus said that there is a significant grouping of Ukrainian troops massed near its border and warned that this posed a threat to its security. “At present, a significant grouping of the Ukrainian army is concentrated in the immediate vicinity of the border,” The MoD said.

🚫 🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️The 🇷🇺Russian Federation is going to seize the airport in Chisinau for the transfer of troops, – 🇲🇩Moldovan Prime Minister Recean [Dorin Recea]
🌎 https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1628066431517569030?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MariusBatca In fact, Zelensky said that. In response, Prime Minister Dorin Recean said that this is one of the “multiple scenarios” to destabilize the situation in the Republic of Moldova.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Update from Bakhmut, 21 February: No success by Russians in Bakhmut, although frequent assaults continue. Comments on the world stage events – Kiyanyn.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1628060306629951492?s=20/photo/1
// on Budapest Memorandum; Chinese drones etc

🐣 it’s a sad fact of history that who the aggressor was depends on how far back you want to go ¤ but in 1991-2, when the USSR collapsed, many states became independent and were recognized by the UN ¤ Putin never accepted this, calling it the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20thC

🐣 RT @BlaySylvester Summary of Putin’s speech [Bingo card]
¤ https://twitter.com/BlaySylvester/status/1627971470495293441?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated More madness from Prigozhin this morning who declares there’s “direct work to destroy Wagner” as even the sapper shovels are not provided to the PMC anymore. “These officials decided it is their country, their people, they will decide when they die”, he adds.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1627970502173028353?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ktotakoe France 2019. Putin’s speech on implementation of the 2015 Minsk agreements and recognition of a special status of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. The reaction of Zelensky speaks for itself.
💽 https://twitter.com/ktotakoe/status/1625110927421874177?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 20 Feb 2023

NYT, David Axe: Some of the Best Weapons in the World Are Now in Ukraine. They May Change the War https://tinyurl.com/48pv5xky “Allied countries are reaching deep into their arsenals to make sure [Ukraine’s] anticipated counteroffensive has the best possible chance of succeeding”

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Exclusive: a consortium of international investigative journalists including @holger_r and myself have obtained the Russian Presidential Administration’s strategy document for Vladimir Putin’s takeover of Belarus by 2030.
⋙ YahooNews: Revealed: Leaked document shows how Russia plans to take over Belarus https://tinyurl.com/23n8b4mp
// The document, written for Putin’s Presidential Administration, envisages the total incorporation of Belarus into a “Union State” with Russia by 2030.

TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Biden Went to Kyiv Because There’s No Going Back https://tinyurl.com/mezz83z2 “He’s the American president. He made an unprecedented trip to a war zone, one where there are no U.S. troops to protect him. And, yes, he’s old. But he went anyway”
// The president’s surprise visit sent a message to Moscow—and to European leaders.

🐣 RT @WarMonitors ⚡️What to expect from Putin’s speech via the Kremlin Pool
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1627939549417467905?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] There are only four hours left before Putin’s message. The head of state did not address the Federal Assembly for 1 year and 10 months, during which time the political environment has accumulated a lot of expectations regarding the president’s speech. We share the main ones:

● The speech should inspire “the country and the army” and paint an image of the future. In this case, the president should not ignore the support of new regions of Russian Federation.

● The theme of the special operation will become the leitmotif of the President’s message and will determine many other topics: social security for the participants of the MD, equipping the army, training fighters.

● The President will outline socio-economic tasks. Will touch upon the issues of the standard of living in the country, demography, incomes of the population, prices for food and medicines

● Interlocutors in the agricultural sector are concerned about the removal of restrictions on grain exports, the abolition of duties, large-scale procurement interventions and electricity tariffs.

● Entrepreneurs expect to understand what kind of social and economic assistance the authorities expect from business, and what kind of support they are ready to give in return. In addition, businesses are waiting for signals regarding changes in the tax area. The message will also be addressed to an external audience.

● The head of state will talk about the fight against terrorists and saboteurs, the modernization of the military-industrial complex and the results of confronting Western sanctions.

🐣 RT @anders_aslund Cleverly, @POTUS showed courage & commitment by going to Kyiv the day before Putin is supposed to give his annual speech to the Russian Federal Assembly in secluded Gostinny Dvor beside the Kremlin in Moscow. ¤ Let us see how far that coward will be from any person!

🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Lemme give you a detailed plan for Putin’s big speech due tomorrow:
1. Russia has never attacked anyone.
2. They made us do this, we didn’t have a choice.
3. The survival of Russia is at stake now.
4. It’s all still part of the plan though.
You’re welcome.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Putin to deliver speech ahead of one year mark of war in Ukraine. ¤ Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will give a speech on Feb. 21 updating Russia’s political and military elite on the state of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began nearly one year ago.

(📊) USNews&World/AP (2/14): GOP Leaders Start Laying Groundwork for More Ukraine Aid https://tinyurl.com/mrxkrw24 ‘Leading Republicans in Congress are launching an early & aggressive effort to make the case for why the US should continue spending billions on the war effort’
// 2/14/2023; Republicans assuming new positions of leadership in the House and Senate are not waiting for the next funding debate over Ukraine to begin making the case for why the U.S. should continue supporting the war-torn nation

Leading Republicans in Congress are not waiting for the next debate over assistance to Ukraine, instead launching an early and aggressive effort to make the case for why the U.S. should continue spending billions of dollars on the war effort. ¤ One of their main challenges: winning over skeptical Republican colleagues.

“I’m very much focused on the dissension within my own party on this,” Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Associated Press. ¤ McCaul plans to hold a hearing in the spring focused on Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians, to try to bring home the war’s terrible toll. ¤ “I find that moves the dial, when they see these horrific killings of children,” McCaul said. …

With opponents of Ukraine spending warning of fraud and corruption, the House Armed Services Committee is planning to hold monthly classified briefings for lawmakers to detail, dollar by dollar, how the U.S. security aid is being allocated.

The briefings will be every two weeks for key staff, said Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers of Alabama, and a public hearing is in the works “to try to get more visibility for the public into the tracking that we’re doing.” …

The inspectors general for the Defense and State departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development are the lead offices tracking Ukraine spending. Rogers said he is encouraging NATO to bring in a third party to track U.S. weapons to assure the public they don’t end up in the wrong hands. …

Recent polling from Gallup found that about two-thirds of Americans support aid for Ukraine to help it regain its territory, even if it means a prolonged conflict. But that support varied depending upon political party. Nearly half of Republicans, or 47%, say the U.S. is doing too much compared with 35% of independents and just 10% of Democrats.

In the Senate, Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has consistently pressed the Biden administration for more robust action to help Ukraine win the war. He wore a bright blue and yellow tie to the State of the Union address last week — the colors of Ukraine’s flag — to trumpet his support.

The ranking Republican on the Senate’s Armed Services panel, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is using the bully pulpit as well. He spoke at length on the Senate floor about Ukraine and followed up with an op-ed in the National Review, a conservative outlet.

“It is a relatively modest amount that we are contributing without being asked to risk life and limb,” Wicker told the AP. “The Ukrainians are willing to fight the fight for us if the West will give them the provisions. It’s a pretty good deal.” ¤ “And what we’ve done is expose Russia’s very soft, vulnerable underbelly and we’ve made it less likely that any of our NATO allies will be attacked.” …

🐣 China’s import/export market is seriously intertwined with that of the U.S., in a way Russia’s has never been ¤ At a time when Biden is already promoting a “Built in America” agenda, China has much to lose
⋙ 🐣 RT @KashPrime Authoritarian leaders don’t have to listen to their population or business leaders. Choosing to back Russia is suicide for the Chinese economy, just as invading Ukraine set Russia back decades. Unfortunately doesn’t mean they won’t do it; we just need to prepare ASAP.

🐣 RT @mhmck Today is the Day of Commemoration of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred. ¤ Nine years ago today was the worst day of killings on Maidan by Putin-Yanukovych forces. ¤ But it was also the day of the triumph of the Revolution of Dignity. The Ukrainian people held firm and won.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck EuroMaidan is a pivotal event in European history. The Russian fascist state started its long-planned invasion of Ukraine to crush it. ¤ Learn more at the web site of the National Memorial to the Heavenly Hundred Heroes and Revolution of Dignity Museum.
¤ https://maidanmuseum.org/en

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Biden’s Kyiv visit shows Putin seriously misjudged his courage https://tinyurl.com/mr44khsb “Biden is rarely more animated than when he talks about drag racing in his Corvette at triple-digit speeds. He is a man with considerable tolerance for risk”

As President Biden walked the streets of Kyiv on Monday beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, air raid sirens began to wail. A Russian fighter jet had reportedly taken off from Belarus, carrying the type of hypersonic missile that Ukraine’s defenders cannot shoot down. The two leaders did not flinch.

Say what you want about Biden, he lacks neither courage nor resolve. His surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital might be the first time a sitting president has braved an active war zone — with no inviolable U.S. military cordon around him — since 1864, when Abraham Lincoln went to see the fighting at Fort Stevens, near the northern tip of the District of Columbia, and came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters. “Get down, you damn fool!” shouted a young Union officer named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who later served as a justice on the Supreme Court. …

What many people fail to understand about Biden, the oldest president in our history, is the extent to which he is guided by a sense of mission. He came out of retirement and ran for the White House only because he believed he had the unique ability, and thus the obligation, to save the nation from another four years of Donald Trump. And he has faced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the same burden of duty imposed by history.

“I’m a great respecter of fate,” Biden said last year, having seen so much of it during his long and eventful life: He lost his first wife and daughter to a car accident, lost his first son to cancer, almost lost his second son to drug addiction. And in 1988, he suffered two brain aneurysms and was given no better than a 50 percent chance of survival. ¤ In his 2007 book, “Promises to Keep,” Biden wrote: “Maybe I should have been frightened at this point, but I felt calm. In fact, I felt becalmed, like I was floating gently in the wide-open sea. It surprised me, but I had no real fear of dying.” …

… [Putin] neglected to take into account Biden’s deep and abiding Roman Catholic faith, his belief in destiny, his commitment to the rules-based international order — and the fact that Biden is rarely more animated than when he talks about drag racing in his Corvette at triple-digit speeds. He is a man with considerable tolerance for risk. …

Other world leaders allied with Ukraine have visited Kyiv, as have other high-ranking U.S. officials, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But Zelensky said Monday’s was “the most important visit in the whole history of the Ukraine-U.S. relationship” — and that was an understatement.

Without Biden’s leadership and diplomacy, it is hard to imagine how the NATO alliance could have been made stronger by Putin’s invasion, rather than weaker. Without Biden and Congress providing what almost amounts to an open spigot of military and economic aid, it is hard to imagine Ukraine not only surviving the Russian onslaught but also reclaiming lost territory and inflicting massive casualties on Putin’s forces. …

It would be no surprise if Putin reacted to the Biden visit with a deadly barrage of missiles against civilian targets. No one can keep Putin from waging his war. But Biden can — and will — keep him from winning it.

🐣 RT @ Cristinamarie62 @POTUS this is a personal message for you from Magyar and his comrade on the front lines in Bakhmut, Ukraine. 🇺🇦🤝🏽🇺🇸
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Update from Bakhmut, 20 February – Magyar
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1627807713152360448?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @FerransRichard Magyar, please understand It’s actually the other way around: The President of the United States came to Ukraine to honor YOU & your fellow brave citizen-soldier brothers & sisters. ¤ The President represents all of us who honor you as well. ¤ That’s the simple truth. ¤ Slava Ukraini🇺🇦
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ gina_shreve Wow!! I just saw This clip from Magyar aired on CNN News!! ¤ @wartranslated please tell Magyar 🇺🇸🇺🇸people heard Him today!! Heroyam Slava 💪🙏🏻🇺🇦🌻🙏🏻

🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Bakhmut Holds! ¤ Heavy assaults take place to the north sector of the frontline they throw everything. ¤ There is firefights for every metre. ¤ To the south more assaults towards the road attempting to bypass Ivanivske from the west

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2245 UTC 20 FEB/ There has been no briefing by the UKR Gen’l Staff for the last 24 hours. RU forces are reported to have crossed the M-03 HWY north of Bakhmut, and captured the important M-03/T-05-13 HWY junction
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1627799256437256194?s=20/photo/1

🐣 .@MSNBC: Don’t listen to MTG, Biggs or Gaetz about aid to Ukraine. Talk to the chairs:
@RepMikeRogersAL, Armed Services: @HASCRepublicans
@RepMcCaul, Foreign Affairs: @HouseForeignGOP
@RepMikeTurner, Intelligence: @HouseIntel
@RepMarkGreen, Homeland Security: @HomelandGOP

💽 MSNBC: Adm. Stavridis: China sending lethal military aid to Russia could trigger more U.S. aid to Taiwan https://tinyurl.com/2p8d2jut
// Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis join Andrea Mitchell to break down what’s at stake if China provides lethal military aid to Russia. Stavridis explains that China providing aid to Russia could lead the U.S. to respond by sending more aid to Taiwan. He says, “Let’s hope both sides can kind of step back from this. It’s in neither sides’ interest for China to take this on, supporting this rotten regime in Moscow.”

RT @ Timodc First look at DeSantis foreign policy:
– Blames US for Russian invasion of Ukraine
– Attacks US president while in war zone
– Signals we should dial back support for Ukraine
– minimizes RUS threat
– Anti Afghanistan withdrawal
– Bellicose talk about China
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Ron DeSantis on Fox & Friends on Biden’s visit to Ukraine: “I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, Ok, he’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own borders here… we have a lot of problems accumulating here.”

━━━━━━━▼ House support for Ukraine
🔄 🐣 Key House Defense Committees:
@RepMikeRogersAL, Armed Services: @HASCRepublicans
@RepMcCaul, Foreign Affairs: @HouseForeignGOP
@RepMikeTurner, Intelligence: @HouseIntel
@RepMarkGreen, Homeland Security: @HomelandGOP
~ combat MD Iraq Afgh; CODEL 2022 met Ze; pro-mil-aid, but wants itaccounted for

4️⃣ Newsweek (2/9): Full List of Republicans Backing Matt Gaetz’s Resolution to End Ukraine Aid https://tinyurl.com/4veuce5k 9 are members of the “Cosplay 🤡 Caucus” (voted to not certify Biden); Luna is new; Massie is anti-Trump, but voted not to honor Hill cops
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1627930964620894208?s=20/photo/1
// 2/9/2023

Eleven (of 435 House Members) oppose Ukraine aid:

Andy Biggs KY 🤡
Lauren Boebert CO 🤡
Matt Gaetz FL 🤡
Paul Gosar of AZ 🤡
Marjorie Taylor Greene GA 🤡
Anna Paulina Luna FL (new member; may have falsified bio)

Thomas Massie KY (anti-Trump; opposed honors for capitol cops)
Mary Miller IL 🤡
Barry Moore AL 🤡
Ralph Norman SC 🤡
Matt Rosendale MT 🤡

3️⃣ 🐣 RT @HASCRepublicans Chairman @RepMikeRogersAL, @RepGaramendi @DonaldNorcross @RepLisaMcClain @Rep_Clyde, @RepMalliotakis, & @RepMarkAlford released the following statement after a CODEL to Romania and Poland to conduct oversight of the U.S. aid being sent to Ukraine. https://tinyurl.com/2naxnzrs
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/HASCRepublicans/status/1625933597122170903?s=20/photo/1
// 2/15/2023

[Text:] The American people have every right to know that U.S. military equipment donated to Ukraine is being used for its intended purpose – Ukraine’s fight for national survival.

As a bipartisan Congressional delegation, we traveled to Poland and Romania to conduct oversight of this process. We came away with a clear understanding of the various safeguards the U.S. government, in partnership with the Ukrainians and other nations, have put in place to ensure each article is accounted for and tracked to the frontline of the war.

We traveled to the International Donation Collection Center in Poland to see firsthand the accounting and tracking practices which provide accurate counts of shipments into Ukraine. While there, we also met with General Agudo and the Department of Defense’s Security Assistance Group Ukraine, who provided us with a comprehensive briefing which detailed how the U.S. tracks our donations directly to the frontline. We left that briefing confident in our ability to track U.S. equipment from the moment it leaves our possession and makes it into the hands of Ukrainian warfighters.

We also relayed the concerns of Americans with the following message: should we confirm that any defense articles are siphoned off, diverted, or missing the flow of U.S. equipment would cease to be tenable. Our job of oversight is not done and we will continue to monitor U.S. equipment flowing into Ukraine.

Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO)

⋙ 🐣 This visit (CODEL) was clearly intended to counter the small number (“about 10 co-sponsors out of 435 members“) of GOP voices in the House calling for scrutiny of military aid sent to Ukraine and to respond to Speaker McCarthy’s statement that there can be “no blank check”

2️⃣ 🐣 RT @saletan On CNN, @RepMcCaul and @RepMikeTurner dismiss the latest House resolution to cut off aid to Ukraine.
McCaul: “That bill had about 10 co-sponsors out of 435 members.”
Turner: “There are 435 members of Congress. There are probably 400 that are for continuing this direction.”
// 2/19/2023
⋙ 🐣 These are not just two random House members
.@RepMcCaul is Chair Foreign Affairs Cmte: @HouseForeignGOP
.@RepMikeTurner is Chair Intelligence Cmte: @HouseIntel

1️⃣ 🐣 RT @HouseForeignGOP @HouseForeignGOP CHM @RepMcCaul and @HASCRepublicansCHM @RepMikeRogersAL release a joint statement urging the Biden administration and allies to swiftly send Ukraine weapons needed to win
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/HouseForeignGOP/status/1615802390023933952?s=20/photo/1
// 1/18/2023

[Text:] The current handwringing and hesitation by the Biden administration and some of our European allies in providing critical weapon systems to Ukraine stinks of the weak policies of 2021, such as not sanctioning Nord Stream 2 or providing U.S.-origin Stingers before the full scale invasion. While those policies failed to deter this conflict, the current indecision and self deterrence will prolong it – costing Ukrainian lives. Now is the time for the Biden and Scholz governments to follow the lead of our U.K. and Eastern European allies – Leopard 2 tanks, ATACMS, and other long-range precision munitions should be approved without delay.”

⋙ ForeignAffairsCmte (1/18): McCaul, Rogers Urge Admin & Allies to Swiftly Send Ukraine Weapons Needed to Win https://tinyurl.com/58tevhbs //➔ The chairs of key House committees urge Biden “to transfer to Ukraine urgently critical weapon systems they need to defeat Russia”
// 1/18/2023
━━━━━━━▲

🐣 RT @cozad_june Sharing grief is one of his super powers.
🖼 https://twitter.com/cozad_june/status/1627714453973385216?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @BradBeauregardJ President Zelenskyy wipes tears from his eyes as President Biden meets with Ukrainians in Kyiv. ¤ So proud of our president for making this courageous and dangerous trip.
💽 https://twitter.com/BradBeauregardJ/status/1627639661026852865?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @KyivIndependent Exactly nine years ago on Feb. 20, 2014, Ukraine was going through one of the bloodiest days in the three-month-long EuroMaidan Revolution. Also known as the Revolution of Dignity, it is often credited as one of the most consequential events in Ukraine’s modern history.
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1627686188311105541?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Historic. Timely. Brave. I welcomed @POTUS in Kyiv as Russian full-scale aggression approaches its one-year mark. I am thankful to the U.S. for standing with Ukraine and for our strong partnership. We are determined to work together to ensure Ukraine’s victory.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1627631915263004672?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @vinm300 24 Feb 2023 Wang Yi in Moscow will present China’s “Peace proposition”
It will be the same as Deal 1 (9 Nov) : demilitarised Crimea under UN, with a UN referendum after 7yrs
Difference : Crimea will be under the Aegis of Ukrainenfor those 7yrs – NOT Russia
Putin accepted Deal
⋙ 🐣 what about the rest of Ukraine?
🐣 RT @vinm300 Thanks for asking Putin agreed to give up Donbas on 9 Nov, &
Russia would “demilitarise Crimea, UN referendum in 7yrs”
Deal 2 24 Feb Russia will give up Donbas (maybe ‘Basque autonomy’ UN transitioned)
“Crimea demilitarised” by Ukraine – UN transition, UN referendum after 7yrs
⋙ 🐣 thanks a lot; looking forward to the written proposal
the Ukr proposal, of course, wants reconstruction, criminal prosecutions, etc, and ALL territory returned, plus security guarantees and a fast path into the EU
~ hard to see Putin explaining to his people

🐣 📋 RT @lance_cotten Today Is Mon. Feb 20th, 2023 and Joe R Biden has been in Office for 761 Days. Since in office he has reduced the debt in his first year by $1.7T. Pres.Biden has passed the biggest infrastructure bill in History! The Lowest Unemployment in 50yrs! Tap the 💙 and RT to keep it going.
🖼 https://twitter.com/lance_cotten/status/1627630446258319362?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports A video of Biden and Zelenskyi visiting the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery where they laid flowers for those who died. They also visited the plaque that was dedicated to Joe Biden on the Alley of Courage in Kyiv.
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1627659113940373507?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @WhiteHouse Today, President Biden is in Kyiv to reaffirm America’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. ¤ The United States of America will stand with the Ukrainian people for as long as it takes.
🖼 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1627644745735438340?s=20/photo/1 -4

NYT, Oksana Zabuzhko: The Problem With Russia Is Russia https://tinyurl.com/mpkuf8d3 “Russia will not become a democracy until it falls apart. … Russia is not really a nation-state but [a] premodern multiethnic empire living on geographic expansion and resource looting”

The dismemberment of the Soviet empire was duly halted at the borders of the Russian Federation — at the cost of two devastating Chechen wars, for which the Kremlin was given a free hand both domestically and internationally. As a result, Chechnya-Ichkeria became a testing ground for the military strategy now applied against Ukraine: state terrorist warfare.

What if, I keep asking myself, Russia’s new totalitarianism had not been so lightheartedly overlooked by the rest of the world in the 1990s? Back then, to spare humanity the rise of a new Hitler, it would have been enough to let Russia go on peacefully shrinking under proper international control. Alas, the West agreed to blame Communism alone for all the atrocities of the Soviet regime. Russian imperialism was never identified as a problem.

Could this have been — as my war-honed anticolonial acuity prompts me to believe — a case of latent imperialistic solidarity? Was it guilty pleasure that for decades made the elites of the former Western empires smile indulgently, rather than shudder, when faced with the brazen colonial supremacy with which Moscow was treating its non-Russian subjects? I fail to see any other reasonable explanation for why so many in the West clung to the irrational belief that democratic transformation in Russia was just around the corner. …

Russia will not become a democracy until it falls apart. That’s because Russia is not really a nation-state but the same premodern multiethnic empire living on geographic expansion and resource looting as 300 years ago — and is thus doomed to reproduce, again and again, under whatever ideological cover, the same prison-ward-like political structure that alone keeps it together. …

[T]he age of imperialism is over. If there could be any positive result found in the 12 months of this horrific war — in tens of thousands of people murdered, raped and mutilated, in millions of lives ruined, in the best black soil on earth littered with mines, in innumerable treasures of cultural heritage turned to debris — it would be that we Ukrainians have all together, in a united effort of resistance, proved that non-Russian lives matter.

🐣 RT @DefenseU On the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, on the Day of Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, our most reliable partner, the United States of America, sends a powerful message to our enemy: tyranny will not defeat the Free World!
Welcome to Ukraine, Mr.President @POTUS

🐣 RT @ APonomarenko This is what historic figures do. ¤ In hard times, they take the leadership and overcome, instead of just drifting with the tide and rolling over. ¤ That’s what makes them different from generic and mediocre managers.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Bombshell audio recording indicates Prigozhin is unable to solve any issues with ammunition for Wagner. ¤ This morning, Prigozhin’s mouthpiece channel posted a 7-minute recording of him saying that he is forced to “apologise and obey” to get ammunition.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1627623132528779264?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Richard Haass is clueless. He doesn’t know about the 5x rampup in US production of artillery shells or the EU ammunition alliance to inventory & identify ammo to be sent to Ukraine. As for China, it’s anyone’s guess and he’s guessing, too, but I doubt China wants to ruin US trade

🐣 “Humanity is outraged in me & with me – We must not dissimulate or forget this indignation, which is one of the most passionate forms of love” ~ George Sand
#Ukraine
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1627620937536249857?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AUSTROHNGARO2 U.S. President Biden in #Kyiv: ¤ #Ukraine will receive a new $500 million military aid package to be announced on Tuesday.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AUSTROHNGARO2/status/1627615306658054144?s=20/photo/1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 20, 2023
Statement from President Joe Biden on Travel to Kyiv, Ukraine

As the world prepares to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, I am in Kyiv today to meet with President Zelenskyy and reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

When Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us. But he was dead wrong.

Today, in Kyiv, I am meeting with President Zelenskyy and his team for an extended discussion on our support for Ukraine. I will announce another delivery of critical equipment, including artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments. And I will share that later this week, we will announce additional sanctions against elites and companies that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine. Over the last year, the United States has built a coalition of nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific to help defend Ukraine with unprecedented military, economic, and humanitarian support – and that support will endure.

I also look forward to traveling on to Poland to meet President Duda and the leaders of our Eastern Flank Allies, as well as deliver remarks on how the United States will continue to rally the world to support the people of Ukraine and the core values of human rights and dignity in the UN Charter that unite us worldwide.

🐣 RT @POTUS As we approach the anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, I’m in Kyiv today to meet with President Zelenskyy and reaffirm our unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

🐣 RT @NOELreports Biden in Kyiv, while the air alarm goes off. Today is going to be a good day. ¤ 👊👊👊

🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Biden makes a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, to demonstrate his commitment to beating back Russian invaders nearly a year after Putin invaded the country. Story with @shearm will post momentarily.

🐣 RT @Purtova_aa President Biden @POTUS is already in Kyiv! This is a moment that will go down in history. It is a symbol that Ukraine is not alone. Our friends are by our side. We are united in our goal of preserving Ukraine, its western and democratic growth path.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Purtova_aa/status/1627606913943732225?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @general_ben Exactly what our President should be doing…personal presence to convey American commitment. I hope POTUS will use this opportunity to say that US policy is for Ukraine to win, to eject Russia from all Ukrainian territory, and that we will do all that is necessary.

🐣 RT @@KyivPost US President Joe Biden in #Kyiv. ¤ To the sounds of air raids, #Biden honored the fallen defenders of #Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/MikeStaresinic/status/1627607612324732929?s=20/photo/1

⬇️ Mykola 🇺🇦🇺🇸🇵🇱🇨🇦🇬🇧🇱🇹🇱🇻🇪🇪🇫🇮
🐣 RT @Mykola65109280 ⚡️Deputy Head of MFA of 🇺🇦 #Ukraine Melnyk: “In #Kyiv, we are preparing a surprise. It is important for us that on the eve of the anniversary of the 🇷🇺aggression, we feel and see not only verbal support but also the presence of our important and main partners. Let’s wait and see.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/Mykola65109280/status/1627592147699482625?s=20/photo/1
// 🇺🇸US, 🇵🇱Poland, 🇨🇦Canada, 🇬🇧UK, 🇱🇹Lithuania, 🇱🇻Latvia, 🇪🇪Estonia, 🇫🇮Finland
// photo of Biden

🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 20 February 2023 ¤ Find out more about Defence Intelligence: http://ow.ly/N1Lu50MWtH0
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦

● Russia continues to pursue several offensive axes in eastern Ukraine: Vuhledar, Kremina, and Bakhmut. Casualties reportedly remain high, particularly in Bakhmut and Vuhledar. Specifically, the ‘elite’ 155th and 40th Naval Infantry Brigades have sustained very high losses in Vuhledar and are likely combat ineffective.

● Russian forces are likely under increasing political pressure as the anniversary of the invasion draws near. It is likely that Russia will claim that Bakhmut has been captured to align with the anniversary, regardless of the reality on the ground.

● If Russia’s spring offensive fails to achieve anything then tensions within the Russian leadership will likely increase

⭕ 19 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian TV aired the first installment of the cringiest docu-series, “The Woman on Top”—an ode to the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan. She urged everyone not to lie and then lied the whole time. BTW, LOL, they’ve included the same clip of me—twice.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1627532773102583808?s=20/photo/1
// [See Comments]
⋙ 🐣 RT @Prune602 “My lies can lead to a catastrophe for my Motherland” ~Margarita Simonyan ¤ Congratulations Champ! You did it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Prune602 [Caption:] “The truth is her weapon” ¤ Margarita Simonyan? Is…is today Opposite Day?

🧵 RT @KofmanMichael A few thoughts on the Russian winter offensive, which began 3+ weeks ago, and has so far yielded little progress for RU forces. Poor force quality, loss of junior officers, ammunition, and equipment constraints limit Russian offensive potential. Thread. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1627309427907854336?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/577s9xck

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Deporting children to denationalize them, as Russia is doing, is indeed a war crime. In fact, “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” is genocide, according to 1948 convention. Summary here, full report @YaleSPH.
⋙ NPR: Russia deports thousands of Ukrainian children. Investigators say that’s a war crime https://tinyurl.com/3b9p8hw6
// 2/14/2023.

🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv I honor the courage and sacrifice of the Heavenly Hundred who, nine years ago, gave their lives fighting for a better future for Ukraine. In the midst of Russia’s horrific war, the United States stands with you in support of a future worthy of them and so many Ukrainian heroes.
💽 https://twitter.com/USAmbKyiv/status/1627543052553183232?s=20/photo/1

NYT: U.S. Warnings to China on Arms Aid for Russia’s War Portend Global Rift https://tinyurl.com/55jz2thh
// Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken says Washington has indications that Beijing is strongly considering giving military aid to Moscow for the war in Ukraine.

[N]ew warnings by U.S. officials that China may be preparing to give weapons and ammunition to Russia ‌for its war on Ukraine portend the worst of the old Cold War.

In that decades-long shadow struggle, the United States, the Soviet Union and occasionally China poured military resources into protracted wars around the globe, engaging in bloody proxy conflicts from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan.

American officials say that China, unlike Iran and North Korea, has over the year of the war in Ukraine refrained from giving material aid to Russia. President Biden has stressed to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, that any such move would have far-reaching consequences.

There is no doubt that China’s entry into the war in that manner would transform the nature of the conflict, turning it into an epochal struggle involving all three of the world’s largest superpowers and their partners on opposing sides: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea aligned against the United States, Ukraine and their European and Asian allies and partners, including Japan and South Korea.

Warnings to China from Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state — made in multiple settings on Saturday and Sunday, including on television — revealed that the Biden administration believes Beijing is close to crossing the line. And the fact Mr. Blinken spoke out publicly shows the desperation of the United States as it tries to dissuade Mr. Xi and his aides from doing so.

Officials in Washington and European capitals, including here in Madrid, one of the staunchest aid providers to Kyiv, say that they are bracing for a new Russian offensive in Ukraine this spring, and that they need to do everything they can this winter to blunt Russia’s chances of breaking through Ukrainian defenses.

Mr. Blinken confronted China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, when the two met on Saturday night on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, telling him Washington believed that China was “considering providing lethal support to Russia in its efforts in Ukraine,” the secretary of state said in an interview with Margaret Brennan of CBS News. ¤ “And I was able to share with him, as President Biden had shared with President Xi, the serious consequences that would have for our relationship,” Mr. Blinken said. …

American officials say China has deepened its ties with Russia during the war. And last Thursday, on the eve of the security conference, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said, “China stands ready to work with Russia to further advance our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.” ¤ Wang Yi, the foreign policy official, is expected to go to Moscow in the coming days, a trip that U.S. officials are closely watching. Russia has said Mr. Xi will visit it sometime this year. …

The United States has few, if any, good cards to play with China. Though the two nations remain robust trade partners, relations are at one of their lowest points in decades, made worse by the crisis that erupted over the Chinese spy balloon that entered the continental United States at the start of this month.

A long readout of the meeting between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Wang issued by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, did not mention any talk of Ukraine and Russia, but did say the two officials clashed over the balloon episode, and said more broadly that “the United States is using all means to block and suppress China.”

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said on Italian radio last Friday that Mr. Wang had told him that Mr. Xi plans to make a “peace speech” on the war in the coming days. ¤ U.S. officials and some European officials say they are skeptical, asserting that Chinese officials are trying to make it appear as if China is a neutral broker seeking a peace agreement when in reality it is edging toward giving material aid to the Russian war effort.

Barry Pavel, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy research group in Washington, said in an online post that news that Mr. Xi was preparing a speech was “very troubling both for why China is doing this as it also is considering lethal support to Putin, and also what form the ‘peace plan’ may take and how that too, will support Putin’s offensive.”

🐣 RT @IuliaMendel China’s top diplomat Wang Yi said at the Munich conference that world leaders need to think “about what kind of efforts we can make to stop this war.” Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to deliver a “peace speech” Feb. 24, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
⋙ 🐣 Alarming: Don’t forget that China claims Taiwan is part of China, similar to Russia’s claim that Ukraine is part of Russia.

WaPo, Robyn Dixon and Catherine Belton: Putin, czar with no empire, needs military victory for his own survival https://tinyurl.com/2s44u7nz “Putin’s vision of Russia horrifies many [elites], who confide that the war has been a catastrophic error that has failed in every goal”

President Vladimir Putin likes to portray himself as a new czar like Peter the Great or Ivan III, the 15th-century grand prince known as the “gatherer of the Russian lands.” But Putin’s year-long war in Ukraine has failed so far to secure the lands he aims to seize, and in Russia, there is fear that he is leading his nation into a dark period of strife and stagnation — or worse.

Some in the elite also say the Russian leader now desperately needs a military victory to ensure his own survival. “In Russia, loyalty does not exist,” one Russian billionaire said.

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began with hubris and a zeal to reshape the world order. But even as he suffered repeated military defeats — diminishing his stature globally and staining him with allegations of atrocities being committed by his troops — Putin has tightened his authoritarian grip at home, using the war to destroy any opposition and to engineer a closed, paranoid society hostile to liberals, hipsters, LGBTQ people, and, especially, Western-style freedom and democracy. …

[B]usiness executives and state officials say Putin’s own position at the top could prove precarious as doubts over his tactics grow among the elite. For many of them, Putin’s gambit has unwound 30 years of progress made since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin’s vision of Russia horrifies many oligarchs and state officials, who confide that the war has been a catastrophic error that has failed in every goal. But they remain paralyzed, fearful and publicly silent. …

As the casualties mount in Ukraine, filling graveyards across Russia’s provinces, Moscow’s glittering facade conveys a hedonistic, indifferent city. Its restaurants and cafes are crammed with glamorous young patrons sporting European designer wear, taking selfies on the latest iPhones, and ordering truffle pizza or duck confit to be washed down with trendy cocktails.

But beneath, Putin is creating a militarized, nationalistic society, fed on propaganda and obsessed with an “existential” forever war against the United States and NATO. So far, no one in officialdom has had the nerve to object — not publicly, at least. …

The president seems forever haunted by the moment when as a young KGB officer serving in Dresden, the Soviet Union “gave up its position in Europe” as the Berlin Wall collapsed. And his pursuit of the empire lost with the subsequent Soviet collapse is throwing his country back into a gray, repressive and isolated past. For Putin, his efforts are a quest to right what he has perceived as historical wrongs. In his near-maniacal revisionist view, Ukraine has always belonged to Russia.

But even if Putin somehow forces Ukraine into capitulating and ceding occupied territory, those in the elite who lean toward a more liberal society stand to lose the most. Punitive Western economic sanctions are likely to remain in place, and some oligarchs undoubtedly would be pressed to pay to rebuild Russia’s new lands. Some analysts predict a sweeping purge of oligarchs and others deemed insufficiently patriotic.

Already, there are shocking glimpses of Putin’s new Russia: A couple in a Krasnodar restaurant were arrested, handcuffed and forced to the floor after being denounced to the police by an eavesdropper who heard them quietly bemoaning the war. ¤ An older woman on a bus was dragged from her seat, thrown to the floor and roughly pushed out the door by passengers because she called Russia an empire that sends men to fight in cheap rubber boots. ¤ Videos purportedly show members of the Kremlin-approved but technically illegal mercenary Wagner Group executing “traitors” in beatings with a sledgehammer.

Former central bank official Alexandra Prokopenko described an atmosphere in which officials fear prison amid intimidation by the security services. ¤ “It is a concern for every member of the Russian elite,” said Prokopenko, who is in exile in the West. “It’s a question of survival for high-ranked, mid-ranked officials who all remained in Russia. People are quite terrified about their safety now.” She said former colleagues still at the bank told her they saw “no good exit for Russia right now.” …

Kremlin image makers convey Putin’s power in staged events where he looks the archetypal dictator — often a lone figure in the distance placing flowers at monuments to past military heroes. His staged appearances with purported ordinary Russians seem scripted and artificial, with participants simpering in nervous awe. The same faces keep appearing in different settings — dressed as soldiers, fishers or churchgoers, raising questions about how many real people the president ever meets.

As the war casualties pile up, Putin and top propagandists extol a fatalistic cult of death, arguing that it is better to die in Russia’s war than in a car accident, from alcoholism or from cancer. … [A] man who died in war “did not leave his life for nothing,” he said. “His life was important.” …

🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Everyone should watch “Twenty Days in Mariupol.” A landmark in the culture that helps us understand the conflict of our time.
💽 ⋙ 🐣 RT @bbcselect As we approach a year since the start of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, three @BBCNews documentaries premiere in the US and Canada on Select. Watch Mariupol: The People’s Story, Putin vs the West and Ukraine: The People’s Fight from today: https://bit.ly/3S3MZoI

🐣 RT @justartsndstuff “The new Prime Minister of Moldova announced the need for the demilitarization of Transnistria. ¤ Dorin Recean said that Transnistria should be demilitarized, RU troops should be expelled from there, after which economic and social integration of citizens will be necessary

🧵 RT @ PhillipsPOBrien There is alot to Blinken saying this publicly that needs to be unpacked. The 1st reason is the USA must be very concerned that China is actually going to supply significant military support to Russia. So far, most have said that China was more helping around the edges.
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1627375456491130880?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/yvewwhyh
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TheresaAFallon Blinken said US is “vy concerned”🇨🇳is considering supplying🇷🇺w/weapons & ammunition in🇺🇦. ¤ Blinken warned that such support would have “serious consequences” for the US relationship with Beijing during a meeting on the sidelines of #MSC2023.

The 2nd thing is that this indicates that China must believe that the Russian army is in terrible shape and desperately needs aid. The Chinese are assumed to be studying how effective sanctions can be if the US order sticks together. [ForeignAffairs link]

The 3rd–this is really important because a major (and regular) supply of Chinese military products would be a real benefit to Russia. Russian domestic production seems to be woefully inadequate to make up for Russian losses. China can produce far more.

I would go so far as to say that the only way Russia can wage a long-war is with significant Chinese support in both finished munitions, spare parts and specialized components such as microchips.

The 4th, is that this will lead almost definitely to an escalation in the aid given to Ukraine (and one wonders if the Chinese decision makers are wondering whether this is worth this risk). If China basically throws in militarily with Russia, Western aid to Ukraine is increased.

the 5th, the USA has to believe that the Chinese government is torn about how much military aid to give Russia and by going public they are trying to put maximum pressure on Beijing not to do this. ¤ It would be one of the most fateful choices of the war–so bears watching closely.

🐣 RT @anders_aslund The Munich Security Conference attracted many more top politicians than Davos World Economic Forum this year. Politicians have become more interested in discussing security policy than in socializing publicly with billionaires. Also, Munich is not for profit.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2045 UTC 19 FEB/ Wagner PMCs continue efforts against the critical M-03 / T-13-05 junction. On 19 FEB, UKR forces broke up a series of RU ground attacks on Dubovo-Vasylivka and Berikhivka, South of the M-03. RU casualties mount in a series ineffective infantry attacks.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1627407790565203968?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FROM SWEDEN WITH LOVE: Stockholm will be sending C-90 Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) to UKR. Equipped with updated optics, night vision, thermal targeting systems and armed with a 40mm Bofors L/70 auto cannon, the C-90 will prove troublesome for Ukraine’s uninvited guests.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1627089181683126276?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LONG DISTANCE PUNCH: The UK has said it will provide long range weapons to UKR. One system under consideration is the Stormshadow SCALP/EG, a stealthy air-launched cruise missile. https://tinyurl.com/yxef7ata
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1627314493700153348?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mhmck President Biden needs to fire Jake Sullivan and all his incompetent, unqualified advisors who are stuck in pre-1991 thinking about Russia and Ukraine. ¤ The only policy which serves US national security is total victory for Ukraine and utter defeat for the Russian terrorist state.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MERCI PARIS: The French Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, said the the first shipment on AMX-10 Fighting Vehicles will be handed to Ukraine next weekend. A highly mobile recon vehicle with modern sensors and a tank-killing 105mm gun, the AMX-10 will make an impression.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1627300531474427909?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Speaking at #MSC2023, @kajakallas said that for sustainable peace in Europe, Russians must face their past and modern crimes through a tribunal for Russia’s leadership and by facing historical crime
⋙ EuromaidanPress: For sustainable peace, all Russians must face their crimes – Estonian PM https://tinyurl.com/5d47dyzw
// For sustainable peace in Europe, Russians must face their past and modern crimes, Estonian President Kaja Kallas said at the Munich Security

🐣 RT @SlavaUk30722777 Witch had a crazy idea in Bakhmut #Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1627158314286194688?s=20/photo/1.

🐣 RT @Hilmatthews1
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Hilmatthews1/status/1627084508188282882?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @@laurenboebert One thing you can be sure of – I’ll never go woke.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Leslieoo I’m sure of that. To be woke requires awareness, an enlightened mind, exposure to different cultures and different types of people. It requires maturity to realize that not everyone looks like you or thinks like you and that’s okay.
Woke is an antonym of ignorance.

⋙ 🐣 we used to just say liberal
1. willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.
2. relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

🐣 📋 RT @RobbieGramer Secretary of State Antony Blinken says China is considering sending Russia weapons to help its war in Ukraine in an interview with @margbrennan
⋙ CBSNews: Transcript: Secretary of State Antony Blinken on “Face the Nation,” Feb. 19, 2023 https://tinyurl.com/4kkhh8wf

MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is in Germany attending the Munich Security Conference. Mr. Secretary, I know you just met with your Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, who has publicly said the U.S. response to the spy balloon was ‘absurd,’ ‘hysterical,’ and an ‘effort to divert attention away from domestic problems.’ Was he that dismissive to you in private?

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: Margaret, I don’t want to characterize what he said, I can tell you what I said. I made very clear to him that China sending a surveillance balloon over the United States, in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law, was unacceptable, and must never happen again. We also had an opportunity to talk about what’s happening here in Munich, the focus of the conversation of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and concerns that we have the China’s considering providing lethal support to Russia, in its efforts in Ukraine. And I was able to share with him, as President Biden had shared with President Xi, the serious consequences that would have for our relationship. Finally, it was important for me to underscore that we believe having lines of communication, engaging in direct diplomacy, is very important. We have a responsibility to manage our relationship in a responsible manner. That’s part of what this evening was about.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Does that mean their defense minister will pick up the next phone call from Secretary Austin instead of refusing it?

SEC. BLINKEN: Well, it’s one of the things that we talked about. The importance of having lines of communication, including military-to-military lines of communication. It’s vital to making sure that there aren’t miscommunications, misunderstandings, especially if you’ve got a crisis or some other situation on your hands. And so I tried to impress upon my Chinese counterpart the importance of having those contacts, including military-to-military.

MARGARET BRENNAN: A senior Pentagon official said last week that President Xi Jinping was caught by surprise by the surveillance balloon and that he doesn’t trust his own military. Did the left and right hand of the Chinese government not know what was going on?

SEC. BLINKEN: I can’t speak to that, Margaret. But what I can- what I can tell you is this. It doesn’t matter in the sense that China is responsible for this action. And ultimately, as the leader of the country, President Xi is responsible. It’s one of the reasons it was important for me on behalf of President Biden to share directly with the most senior Chinese foreign policy official, the very clear determination that this must not happen again.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, if Colin Kahl, this Pentagon officials’ comments are accurate, that would raise the risk of miscalculation if China doesn’t have control over its own military. That’s why I wanted you to clarify that.

SEC. BLINKEN: So Margaret, I can’t again- I can’t speak to the- the Chinese views on this. I can only imagine that China must be in the process of trying to draw its own lessons from this incident. And of course, we’re not the only- the only ones concerned, Chinese use these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents. So one of the things I’m hearing here in Munich, is real concern about the surveillance balloon program. I suspect the fact that it’s been exposed by us is going to have to cause China to take another look at this.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m going to come back to what you mentioned in terms of providing support to Russia. There is open-source reporting that Chinese companies are providing surveillance equipment to that mercenary group, the Wagner group fighting in Ukraine. Does the U.S. consider this to be providing military support to Russia?

SEC. BLINKEN: We’ve been concerned from day one about- about that possibility. In fact, if you go back to the very first conversations that President Biden and President Xi had about Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, just a couple of weeks into the war, President Biden shared with with President Xi our deep concern about the possibility China would provide lethal support to Russia to- to Russia in this effort, as well as engaged in the systematic evasion of sanctions. And the reason for that concern was just weeks before the aggression, you’ll remember that President Xi and President Putin had a meeting in which they just talked about a partnership with no limits. And we were concerned that among those- among the lack of limits would be Chinese support for Russia in the war. We’ve been watching this very closely. To date, we have seen Chinese companies and of course, in China, there’s really no distinction between private companies and the state. We have seen them provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Lethal support, what would that entail? What do you think–

SEC. BLINKEN: Weapons. Weapons.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s ammunition, that’s–

SEC. BLINKEN: Primarily weapons.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Primarily–

SEC. BLINKEN: There’s a whole gamut of things that- that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Iran is also accused of providing more weaponry to Russia here. So they are–

SEC. BLINKEN: That’s right. We’ve seen Iran provide–

MARGARET BRENNAN: They are building an alliance.

SEC. BLINKEN: We’ve seen Iran provide drones that Russia is using in Ukraine to attack civilian infrastructure, to kill civilians. This is something that’s been going on for months. We’ve been working to expose that, to take action against it, to sanction it. There’s an increasingly noxious relationship between Russia and Iran. And it’s actually a two way street. Not only is Iran providing this- this equipment to Russia, but Russia is also providing military equipment to Iran, including, it looks like, sophisticated fighter planes. That’s something that looks like it may be happening, which would make Iran an even greater threat, if it acquires that technology. So this is something that we’ve been talking about with allies and partners around the world. That relationship is a growing concern.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And that would make them party to this conflict directly. In other words, this isn’t just a war between Russia and Ukraine.

SEC. BLINKEN: Well, what we’ve seen with Iran is that the malicious activities that it’s engaged in, through – throughout the region, and it’s been engaged in for years, we now see that expanding out to other parts of the world, and particularly in this case, to Russia’s war against Ukraine. And that’s, of course, a real concern. We’ve also seen them targeting opponents of the regime, including in the United States, as you know, some individuals were arrested just a short while ago for trying to assassinate an Iranian journalist in New York, who opposes the regime.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So from your conversation with your Chinese counterpart, do I understand that usually, when you say it’s a direct conversation, that’s “diplo-speak” for it didn’t go very well? It was pretty heated? Or did you make plans to visit Beijing in the near future?

SEC. BLINKEN: It’s “diplo-speak” for saying it was very important to speak very clearly, very directly, about the deep concerns we have. The concerns that we have about this surveillance balloon, and the entire program, the concerns we have about the possibility that China will provide lethal material support to Russia and its war effort against Ukraine–

MARGARET BRENNAN: But there was no apology?

SEC. BLINKEN: And it’s important that- again, don’t want to characterize what they said, although it’s safe to say there was no apology. But again, it’s also important, and this is why it was also useful to have this meeting this evening, also important to have these direct lines of communication, to make sure that- that we are talking to engage in diplomacy. We have to manage this relationship responsibly. We have to make sure that the competition that we’re clearly engaged in, does not veer into conflict, into a- into a new Cold War. It’s not in our interest, I won’t speak to theirs, but it’s not in ours. But at the same time, we will very resolutely stand up for our interests. We will resolutely stand up for our values. That’s what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

MARGARET BRENNAN: In terms of Russia’s war, 97% of its military is already engaged in this fight in Ukraine, according to the UK, but they have substantial airpower they haven’t tapped into yet. Do you see evidence that Russia is preparing an aerial attack on Ukraine?

SEC. BLINKEN: Russia’s losses have been horrific. You’re right that 90- 97 percent or so of their ground forces have been engaged in this war, which is extraordinary. And the losses to date have been horrific. Public figures suggest 200,000 casualties, that is a combination of those killed, and those wounded. The destruction of their war machine itself, the tanks, the armored vehicles, the missile launchers, etc, has also been extensive. In terms of airpower, they tried some of this early on. Ukraine’s air defenses were actually successful in shooting down a lot of Russian aircraft. So they backed off of using aircraft. That doesn’t mean that they won’t try to do that going forward. But at least to date, Ukraine has had air defenses that have allowed it to pose such a threat to Russian aircraft that they haven’t really been flying.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So do you see a change in the U.S. position to greenlight other countries to provide fighter jets to Ukraine? Do you expect any policy change when President Biden visits Poland in the days to come?

SEC. BLINKEN: Margaret, what we’re focused on is trying to the best of our ability to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs, when it needs it, to deal with the challenge it faces in the moment. And all along, we’ve been very clear that we shouldn’t fixate or focus on any particular weapons system, because it’s not just the weapon system. You’ve got to make sure that the Ukrainians are trained to use it, you’ve got to make sure they have the capacity to maintain it, because if they’re not trained to use it, it’s not going to do them a lot of good. If they can’t maintain it and it falls apart in a week, it’s not going to do them a lot of good. And so, some of these weapons systems of one kind or another, are highly sophisticated, things that they haven’t used in the past, we’ve got to make sure that- that they have the capacity to use them and use them effectively–

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re talking about U.S. jets there, it sounds like, versus- versus the Soviet-era jets–

SEC. BLINKEN: Well, I’m talking about any- any–

MARGARET BRENNAN: that Poland has, for example, that could be transferred, that they’ve offered to transfer–

SEC. BLINKEN: I’m talking about any sophisticated piece of military equipment that the Ukrainians haven’t had practice using in the past. But the other thing is this, we’re also very focused on the here and now and the months to come. Right now, what’s going on is this. The Russians are engaged in an offensive along the eastern front, and they’re putting a huge amount into it and they are suffering terribly for that effort, as I said, losing a huge number of forces, using- losing a huge number of pieces of equipment. And the Ukrainians are doing everything that they can with our assistance to withstand that, and they’re doing that very, very well. But in the months ahead, we fully anticipate that Ukraine will engage in its own counter offensive. And what’s vitally important is that they have what they need for that counter offensive, not what they may need in a year or two years. We’re working on that too, but the focus now has to be on what would they be able to use right now to defend themselves against the Russian offensive, and to engage in their own offensive to take back more of the land that was seized by Russia by force.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m going to ask you, lastly, about this designation of crimes against humanity that the Vice President announced. She cited horrific things like a four-year-old girl being raped by Russian soldiers, thousands of Ukrainian children being taken from their families, to say that this constitutes legally crimes against humanity. President Biden has already used the term genocide. Is the State Department working on a genocide determination?

SEC. BLINKEN: We will, as always, look at every legal possibility when it comes to going after the atrocities that Russia is committing in Ukraine. The determination that- that we made crimes against humanity that the Vice President announced today is unfortunately, starkly clear. And we’ve seen that almost from day one. We saw it in Bucha, when the Russian tide receded, we saw what was left in its wake, and it’s horrific. And we continue to see it across the country, the fact that they’re targeting civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure, so that people freeze to death, don’t have the lights on.This practice that, as a parent, is almost impossible to fathom, of literally seizing Ukrainian children, sending them to Russia, sending them to centers, there are about 43 of them that we found. There was a project undertaken by Yale University with our support that has documented this, to 43 centers in Russia and some in Ukrainian territory that Russia now holds. Some of these places are closer to Alaska than they are to Ukraine. Separating them from their families and then having them adopted by Russians. This is in and of itself, horrific. It also speaks to the fact that President Putin has been trying from day one to erase Ukraine’s identity, to erase its future. That’s what’s going on, and that too, is a crime against humanity.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Some of what you described is consistent with the statutory basis for the Genocide Convention. So I’m hearing what you’re saying as you are potentially looking at that?

SEC. BLINKEN: We will look at every possible determination, but we’re going to follow the facts, and we’re going to follow the law. These are very serious determinations, and we will engage in them very seriously.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Secretary Blinken, thank you for your time today.

🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the semi-daily livestream with Oleksiy Arestovych, former Ukraine’s Presidential Head of Office advisor, Day 330, January 19th. Kindly brought to you by Janat: @Janat_H1 Read thread or visit: https://tinyurl.com/crtvp93e
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1627240278321991682?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/2p8ut9yb

⚡️ Munich Security Council
– Feygin: US President Biden is expected to address Putin and RF citizens during his visit to Warsaw. Munich security council’s message foreshadows what that speech might be about: “Moscow lost and needs to surrender.”

– Arestovych: Russia could have taken a prominent place in the global arena and participated in the formation of a new, fair world order. Putin chose to take RF citizens hostage and started the largest war since WWII.

This led to tectonic changes in global security, and Russia is no longer a global power: Macron called for UN security council reform where RU may not remain a permanent member.

Addressing RF citizens, Biden might say that the new, restructured world order could exclude Russia, but RF citizens still have a chance. They must stop the senseless new offensive and mobilization efforts which will be futile and only result in more deaths. ¤ The united world is determined to fight RF until RF is defeated.

Germany’s Foreign Affairs minister Annalena Baerbock stated that Germany would not support the proposal of territorial concessions to Ukraine in exchange for peace with RF.

To do otherwise is to condone Russia’s aggression, betray the UN charter, and make the people of Ukraine Russia’s prey. RU must withdraw its troops, then peace talks can begin. The West clearly stated its position to support Ukraine until RF’s defeat.

It is up to RF and its president to determine the scale of this catastrophe. Russia can still withdraw its troops, extradite war criminals, pay reparations, and return to the global community, or suffer a catastrophic defeat and be excluded from the new world order.

⚡️ China
China’s Xi plans a ‘peace speech’ on the invasion anniversary, which will not be to Putin’s liking. But the speech will be welcomed by a “peace party” beginning to form behind the scenes in Moscow.

This “peace party” can use it to build stronger arguments to win the doubters in RU, presenting the positions of both the West and China.

⚡️ Weapons
The UK pledges to be the first to supply long-range missiles.
Sunak said the irony is that all NATO weapons and equipment were always intended for Moscow, so these deliveries are strictly within purpose.

While the UK, US, and Germany do not promise jets, they will support any country that will supply – logistics, training, and maintenance.

⚡️ Frontline Update
Air raids: there were four cruise missile strikes, with two intercepted. ¤ There were hits, but the power supply wasn’t interrupted. 16 missile strikes today. Despite heavy losses, RU continues with the offensive in Bakhmut, Kupyansk, Lyman, and Avdiivka directions. MoD of RF reported the capture of Dvorichna, a settlement of 650 people. Ukraine denied.

RU tries to push UA away from Svatove-Kreminna highway, advance toward Lyman and Slovyanks, and encircle Bakhmut. Russia withdraws one artillery regiment from Bakhmut due to heavy losses. RU efforts in the Avdiivka-Maryinka direction resulted in no advances.

Vugledar: RU changed troop concentration and direction of attack but failed. Kherson: artillery exchanges with RU targeting civilian objects and UA targeting military aims.

⚡️ Wagner-MoD Conflict
The rift between the RU private military company and the Army is spilling over into broad information space. Wagnerites shot portraits of generals Lapin and Gerasimov (chief of the general staff).

Wagner accuses MoD of not supplying them with ammunition and shot a grim video from the morgue to indicate their losses could have been avoided.

As an authoritarian, centralized state, RU will not tolerate such statements from a field commander.

RU doesn’t need the Wagner group inflated into an army. Wagner will become a smaller, tamed, more manageable company for specific missions, for example, in CAR. Its leader Prigzhin will not become a political figure.

⚡️ New Ethics in Politics
Ukraine fights for new ethics from this war to form the basis for postwar world order – Andriy Yermak at Munich Security Conference.

This new ethics should include three points: 1) injustice should be unprofitable; 2) injustice must be reprehensible; 3) benefit should be determined only by justice.

⚡️ Russian Offensive
Arestovych called it suicide. ¤ The new offensive might last 4-6 weeks and result in devastating losses. The time is just as unfavorable as last year, the army is weakened, with inadequate equipment and troops suffering from low morale. There will be waves of cruise missile attacks.

They even might take another small village. But ultimately, everyone in the RU government, army, and society will realize that their political goals cannot be reached with military means. Not clear what this realization will lead to.

Three surprises to expect after this “offensive”:
– It will be much smaller than predicted
– It will be shorter than predicted
– It will create a sense of dead-end and senselessness in everyone in Russia
– Russian people may never know the real scale of the losses, but they will all understand this was pointless.

Putin is preparing a speech before the federal assembly on Feb 21; the next day, he will speak at the Luzhniki stadium in front of the state employees.

State Duma invited representatives of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and, possibly, Transnistria to its upcoming gathering. Without much success in Ukraine, Putin might take a compensatory measure and announce these territories as new members of the union state.

Moldova and Georgia will have to take a stronger position on that. If this measure is taken, long-range missiles might be supplied by not only UK.

It is unlikely Putin will announce general mobilization. ¤ Mobilization never stopped, but RU lacks training grounds and equipment to train its troops.

⚡️ #SaveMisha
Feygin: February 20 – a global campaign in support of the ex-president of Georgia, Saakashvili, will occur in multiple capital cities. ¤ We need a wide public response to this initiative worldwide.

This issue is being discussed in State Department, and President Biden might address the government of Georgia during his press conference in Warsaw. ¤ Georgia faces its biggest defeat in foreign policy if it loses its European integration opportunity

🐣 RT @McFaul Biggest impression from #MSC2023 . Western leaders keep saying to Ukraine we will be with “as long as it takes.” Ukrainians keep saying, be with us stronger and faster now (more & better weapons sent faster). Ukrainians don’t feel like they have a lot of time.

🐣 RT @NOELreports The Supreme Commander of NATO’s Joint Forces in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, supports providing Ukraine with the most advanced Western weapons, including F-16s and long-range missiles, to bring it closer to victory, he said in a closed door meeting
⋙ Politico: F-16s, longer-range missiles could help Ukraine beat Russia, U.S. general privately tells lawmakers https://tinyurl.com/576s9tpm
// Gen. Christopher Cavoli’s comments go further than other administration officials

⭕ 18 Feb 2023

WaPo: Top U.S., Chinese diplomats hold first meeting since balloon incursion https://tinyurl.com/4uecja3k
// Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, discussed China’s surveillance activities and alliance with Moscow — topics that have brought diplomatic relations between Beijing and Washington to new lows

The viewpoint of China is looming particularly large at Munich’s traditionally Eurocentric conference given the surprise announcement that Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to deliver a “peace speech” on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ¤

China will lay out its position on resolving the Ukraine conflict in a document underscoring that warring countries’ territorial integrity must not be violated, said Wang, who spoke on a panel at the conference on Saturday.

Wang said world powers need to start thinking “about what kind of efforts we can make to stop this war” and underscored that “nuclear wars must not be fought.”

Despite Beijing’s expressions of interest in bringing an end to the conflict, Blinken did not come away from the discussion believing that China is poised to break with Russia, said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive discussions.

NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Biden Should Give Ukraine What It Needs to Win https://tinyurl.com/ypx98uss “Putin is all in, and we should be as well. That means fighter aircraft, ATACMS, high-end anti-ship cruise missiles — the kitchen sink” ~ James Stavridis, former NATO allied commander

NYT Editorial: Putin Began His Unjust War One Year Ago. Here’s What Ukraine Needs Now https://tinyurl.com/4cuda7z9 “A conflict that ends with a stronger Ukraine will send a message that the US does have the resolve and capability to help counter the excesses of autocrats and bullies”

A conflict that ends with a stronger Ukraine will send a message that the United States does have the resolve and capability to help counter the excesses of autocrats and bullies. The Biden administration’s regular declarations of full support for Ukraine, even when military aspects of that support are under discussion, demonstrate that America has not, as Mr. Putin thought, forever lost its ability to lead. America’s readiness to stand up to Mr. Putin has united most of the world’s major democracies behind a common cause.

It is hard to imagine, for example, that without a strong commitment from Washington, Sweden or Finland would have applied to join a NATO that only three years ago President Emmanuel Macron of France described as “brain-dead,” or that Germany would have agreed to send German tanks to repel Russia. And while key allies such as Britain, France, Germany, Poland and others may not match America’s level of support, they have shown a readiness to absorb far greater economic consequences stemming from sanctions on Russia. …

… [S]erious diplomacy has a chance only if Russia accepts that it cannot bring Ukraine to its knees. And for that to happen, the United States and its allies cannot waver in their support.

TheGuardian, James Meek: One year after the start of war, what lies ahead for Ukraine? https://tinyurl.com/3dyx2wxm “A year ago, the world doubted Ukraine’s survival; now is the time to plan how to help it live and thrive”
// It’s a year since Vladimir Putin’s savage invasion began. The west has been Kyiv’s arsenal and banker but what role would it play in a conflict that could last generations?

… Popular uprisings in 2004 and 2014, in which intellectuals and the emergent middle class played a lead role and European bourgeois democratic ideals came to the fore, failed to alert the west that the old, simplistic framework of a nationalist versus Soviet nostalgist schism in Ukraine was breaking down. Too many in the west were still ready to believe that, in some fundamental sense, Ukraine “belonged” to Russia. When in 2014 Russia annexed Crimea and sent troops into eastern Ukraine to salvage the failing armed uprising it contrived there, there was anxiety in the west, wringing of hands and mild sanctions, but no serious consequences for Putin.

Last year’s invasion shocked the west, and provided us with an entire new set of cliches: Ukraine the brave, the defiant, the ingenious, the suffering, the wronged, screaming “Why?” over the body of a dead newborn. Ukraine, the defender of civilisational values; Ukraine, keeping calm and carrying on as the original writers of the slogan imagined, Ukraine, capturing tanks with tractors, giving a battlecruiser the finger and sinking it. Fleets of Russian tanks pouring down Ukrainian highways in rigid formation, blown apart by a handful of daring Ukrainian improvisers on quad bikes using donated western anti-tank missiles and drones ordered on the internet.

The sense of purpose and righteous mission this has generated in the west is real, and has broad public support, but it has a short time-horizon. Even the overall strength of support in the west for Ukraine since the invasion began conceals radical shifts in the west’s sense of the country. In the first few days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the scope of Putin’s ambition became clear, horrified watchers in Europe and America guessed the days to the country’s inevitable fall. A few weeks later, when Ukraine held Russia at the gates of Kyiv, there was admiration and surprise at the country’s resilience.

When the savage nature of Russian occupation emerged in towns like Bucha, a shiver of pity, anger and shame ran through the west, and support for arming Ukraine grew appreciably. The Russian retreat from Kyiv and north-eastern Ukraine raised hopes; doubts set in about Ukraine’s ability to push Russia further; in autumn, the Ukrainians swept Russia from Kherson and Kharkiv, western weapons began to flow and complete victory seemed plausible; the Russians dug in, and began, with methodical waves of missiles, to destroy the Ukrainian economy. … …

If Putin’s ideal Ukraine is a shrunken Russian vassal, Ukraine’s own ideal is security against Russia, and integration with the west, to which the west’s reply is: not yet. Not yet – perhaps never – to Nato, not yet to the EU, not yet to an effective air force. If the west is to keep faith with Ukraine, and encourage it to accept any loss of territory – to lay the grounds, one far-off day, for the good relations it ought to have with a better-run Russia that has learned to lose its contempt for its neighbour’s statehood – it has to make a better offer than “not yet”. It will be exceptionally difficult, since the offer would have to include a military element of peacekeeping troops or air power that will infuriate Putin, and trade terms with the EU that will be politically hard for Europe.

It will be expensive, it will be open-ended, and it will come under constant and furious political attack from inside the west and from outside. It will be hostage to the future politics of Ukraine, Russia, the US and Europe. It’s worth it. A year ago, the world doubted Ukraine’s survival; now is the time to plan how to help it live and thrive.,

🐣 📋 RT @uasupport999 Russia has lost 200 thousand soldiers in the war with Ukraine, – Blinken at the Munich conference. ¤ According to American sources, this figure includes killed and wounded soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces.

🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Big sign they are losing the war – “The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed the names of the four military district commanders, finalizing a complete turnover of the Russian military’s initial command since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.”

🐣 RT @@PStyle0ne1 🤡 Russian troops have 2-3 weeks left, – Ghirkin ¤ According to his conviction, the invaders have 2-3 weeks of offensive operation left. Afterward, there is nothing left to fight on. At the same time, the main problem of the Russian army is the communication and control system.

WaPo Editorial: How to break the stalemate in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3vwdnuwu “[T]he West’s overarching goal must be ensuring that the Russian tyrant gains nothing by his aggression. To allow an outcome that rewards the Kremlin in any way would be a moral travesty”

Nearly a year after Vladimir Putin unleashed carnage in Ukraine — a war triggered by Kyiv’s aspiration to be fully democratic, pluralistic, European and forever free of Moscow’s yoke — the West’s overarching goal must be ensuring that the Russian tyrant gains nothing by his aggression. To allow an outcome that rewards the Kremlin in any way would be a moral travesty. It would also deal a potentially lethal blow to the principle on which Western stability and civilized international conduct rests: that sovereign states cannot be invaded, subjugated and subjected to mass slaughter with impunity.

To thwart Russia and safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, the United States and its European allies have little choice but to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv. That means equipping Ukrainian forces with more decisive weapons and in greater numbers, imposing more aggressive sanctions on Moscow and galvanizing a more muscular international coalition to isolate and ostracize Russia. …

Kyiv will need greater numbers of almost every type of weaponry — artillery shells, which it is firing at a rate of nearly 100,000 per month; fighting vehicles; advanced drones; and, especially, high-tech air defense systems. The United States and its allies, especially Germany, should accelerate their production and supply of air defense systems to blunt Russia’s systematic campaign to pulverize Ukrainian power stations and degrade critical infrastructure.

Kyiv will also need advanced Western fighter jets. Providing that air capability has been ruled out for now by Mr. Biden, in the case of U.S.-made F-16s. He should reconsider on the condition that Kyiv commits that the jets will be used to defend Ukraine on its own territory, not for attacks inside Russia. Sooner or later, the West will need to provide Ukraine with weapons systems that not only help to end the war but also dissuade Russia from launching new ones. The most effective deterrent will be a convincing array of military muscle on the ground and in the skies — as well as, eventually, NATO membership and the security guarantee it provides.

… Only when the Kremlin grasps that victory is impossible — that it cannot hold sovereign Ukrainian territory seized illegally — will negotiations be possible. …

Western public opinion has so far remained relatively solid behind Ukraine’s plight, despite signs of slippage in some countries. In a January poll by Gallup, nearly two-thirds of Americans supported Ukraine’s effort to regain its territory taken by Russian aggression. That’s roughly the same proportion that held that position last summer, although Republican backing for the war is wobbly. As costs mount to sustain Ukraine’s survival, Kyiv’s successes on the battlefield would help buttress public opinion in the United States and Europe.

Mr. Biden and allied leaders will also be crucial in stiffening Western resolve by reminding their electorates that the bloodletting in Ukraine is a war of aggression led by a dictator deluded by dreams of imperial revival. They need to drive home the point that the inevitable result of a Russian victory would be a far more dangerous world — and an invitation to further aggression by Moscow. The targets of that aggression would likely be other nearby states, including NATO members whose security rests on the assumption that U.S. and European troops will ride to the rescue. …

[A] principal lesson from the past year is that the risk of escalation is overblown. Ukraine is in a defensive war to recapture its own territory. As for the Russian autocrat, he has nothing left to escalate with other than manpower and nuclear weapons. If the West adequately arms Ukraine, he cannot win with the former and is very unlikely to resort to the latter, which would alienate his most important ally, China. A tactical nuclear strike by Russia would be one of history’s greatest acts of strategic self-immolation, cementing Russia’s pariah status for decades.

This is a pivotal moment in 21st-century history and a critical juncture for U.S. interests, leadership and prestige. The crucial objective should be fortifying Ukraine so that Russia’s unwarranted war is understood by dictators as a cautionary tale — and not as a template for remaking the world to their liking.

🐣 RT @NOELreports NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged to increase military assistance to Ukraine. “For the alliance, the risk of an escalation of the conflict is not comparable to the risk of a Russian victory.”

🐣 RT @Tendar Russians who suddenly fall out from windows after questioning Putin’s sanity and competence clearly have underestimated the *gravity* of the situation.
⋙ BI: Top Russian military official dead after plunging out of high-rise https://tinyurl.com/mt83n3zb
// Marina Yankina, the head of the financial support department for the Russian Defense Ministry’s Western Military District, was found dead Wednesday.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Ukrainian anthem at Maidan on fire, 18 February 2014 when Ukrainians fought against pro-Russian president for the right to join the EU.
We will never forget those who gave their lives for our freedom.
9 years ago we didn’t allow to break us and we won. We will win now, too.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1626977723707977728?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2100 UTC 18 FEB/ RU operations in the Kreminna Area of Operations (AO) appear to have temporarily paused. Intel confirms that RU has concentrated forces N of the urban area of Kreminna: RU units can be assumed to be readying for combined arms operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1627049512534515712?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1450 UTC 18 FEB/ It is assessed that Russian units have effectively interdicted the M-03 HWY is between Berikhivka and Pidhorodne. With recent RU gains North of Bakhmut, the struggle for control of the M-03 HWY is entering a critical phase.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1626956617878056961?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @USNATO Russia’s savage attacks on Ukraine are the latest demonstration that President Putin has no interest in meaningful diplomacy. The United States, our NATO Allies and partners will continue to support Ukraine’s self-defense.
💽 https://twitter.com/USNATO/status/1626510262009307138?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv We have examined the evidence, and I have heard firsthand from survivors. There is no doubt: Russia’s forces committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine. For all the victims, known and unknown, of this systematic violence: Justice must be served.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SecBlinken Based on the law and available facts, I have determined that members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials have committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine. All those responsible for these atrocities must be held accountable.
⋙⋙ State[.]gov: Crimes Against Humanity in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4ax95a9w

… Members of Russia’s forces have committed execution-style killings of Ukrainian men, women, and children; torture of civilians in detention through beatings, electrocution, and mock executions; rape; and, alongside other Russian officials, have deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, including children who have been forcibly separated from their families.  These acts are not random or spontaneous; they are part of the Kremlin’s widespread and systematic attack against Ukraine’s civilian population. …

There can be no impunity for these crimes.  All those responsible must be held accountable. As today’s determination shows, the United States will pursue justice for the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes.

🐣 RT @marlowc2324 “The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed Crimes against Humanity, and I say to all perpetrators & their superiors that you will be held to account. On behalf of all of the victims, known & unknown, Justice will be served.” ¤ – US Vice President #Munich

🐣 RT @GermanyDiplo #USA & Germany are in lockstep in our support for #Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s war of aggression. – @ABaerbock & @SecBlinken also spoke in the margins of #MSC2023 about our cooperation in the #NATO alliance & the upcoming summit in Vilnius.

🐣 RT @MavkaSlavka OTD, February 18 2014, then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, ordered the Berkut riot police to use disproportionate force, with stun grenades, rubber bullets and real ammunition on people protesting on the Maidan in Kyiv (to be known as the Revolution of Dignity).
🖼 https://twitter.com/MavkaSlavka/status/1626865718221475840?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 💽 RT @MavkaSlavka Watch: “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” https://youtu.be/yzNxLzFfR5w

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone My kind of headline: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is to urge world leaders to “double down” on military support for #Ukraine. In a speech at the Munich Security Conference, Sunak will say allies must give the country “advanced, #NATO-standard capabilities.” [BBC:] https://tinyurl.com/4nf6zf7d

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Deep Thoughts from Deranged Grandpa Ranty at 1:04 a.m.:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1626827173729533954?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious “Meatball Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will. Even though FoxNews killing lightweight Paul Ryan is revered by him, Low Energy Jeb Bush is his hero and always at his side, his beaches and State were closed for long periods of time, his testing, testing, testing for the China Virus didn’t work out too well, and his loyalty skills are really weak, it would be totally inappropriate to use the word “meatball” as a moniker for Ron!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /0010 18 FEB/ RU units appear to have finally taken Krasna Hora, and have advanced into the adjacent town of Paraskoviivka. A RU airstrike hit Berikhivka; this failed to dislodge UKR defenders, who continue hold the M-03 HWY and the Bakhmut urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1626730977677479937?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 17 Feb 2023

RFE/RL: What Happened in Vuhledar? A Battle Points To Major Russian Military Problems https://tinyurl.com/ydkdjyct Estimates from Ukrainian & Russian sources said Russia lost around 130 armored vehicles; up to 500 dead. A U.S.-based think tank blamed “highly dysfunctional tactics”

The town’s relative high elevation makes it optimal for staging artillery and rocket systems, to threaten not only Pavlivka, but also the east-west T-0509 highway, which leads to a bigger highway connecting the port of Mariupol and the major city of Donetsk. ¤ It also puts at risk a major rail line that can be used to resupply troops in Donetsk and Mariupol, but also ship supplies west to Zaporizhzhya, which is under Russian control. ¤ Some military analysts have speculated that Zaporizhzhya could be the focus of a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive.

… Russian units again attacked Vuhledar — units from the 155th brigade as well as the 40th Naval Infantry Brigade, based on the Pacific peninsula of Kamchatka … ¤ It didn’t go well. ¤ By the end of the first week of February, the Russian offensive apparently stalled. … Russian commanders then tried a flanking assault from the north, but that failed in the face of fierce Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes from higher ground, and heavily land-mined approaches to the town.

Estimates by Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia lost at least 130 armored vehicles, including 36 tanks, though some observers said those figures were likely exaggerated. ¤ But anecdotal reports circulating on Telegram, plus aerial video and still photos from fields near Vuhledar, showed major losses of equipment for Russian units, estimated at between 20 and 40 tanks and other vehicles. … [U]p to 500 soldiers in total may have been killed. …

Igor Girkin, a former Russian military intelligence officer who is now an outspoken critic of Russian commanders’ conduct of the war, also suggested a major loss. He claimed that more than 30 armored vehicles were destroyed and that “dozens” of tank crew members were killed, with “even higher” losses among naval infantry special forces, and motorized riflemen. ¤ “Without much difficulty, the enemy again held his positions in the fortified area, which had already been repeatedly attempted to take in the spring and summer of last year (also head-on),” Girkin, who has been convicted in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, wrote on his Telegram channel.

The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, said in its February 10 assessment that the video footage that had circulated widely indicated “highly dysfunctional tactics.” ¤ Tactics, it said, “that are far more indicative of the fact that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is likely comprised of poorly trained mobilized personnel than of poor command.” ¤ “Fear of commanders, unwillingness to correct mistakes, failure to use the experience of a year of war, and routine bureaucracy: those are the main reasons for what happened,” Rybar wrote on February 11. “Systemic changes are needed in how they approach the conduct of hostilities.” ¤ Otherwise, Rybar said, “Vuhledar will be repeated time after time.”

🧵 RT @LukeDCoffey [thread] Nobody in the think-tank community gets it right all the time. I’ve been wrong and I try being the first to admit when I am. That’s how you learn. But one year ago, just before the invasion, Samuel Charap and Scott Boston of Rand got it WRONG. ¤ And I mean W.R.O.N.G. 👇🏻
📌 https://twitter.com/LukeDCoffey/status/1626765593549455360?s=20

🧵 RT @nexta_tv THREAD Russian Z-bloggers are losing faith in the offensive and winning the war ¤ Russian Z-bloggers are losing faith in a successful offensive after the failed battle near Vuhledar, where 2 elite brigades of marines were destroyed with a hundred pieces of military equipment. 1/5
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1626557958510239744?s=20/photo/1
// starring (tags) Igor Strelkov Igor Girkin @girkingirkin etc

🐣 RT @nomasofi Orcs, time to give up. You got no choice.💪💪
💽 https://twitter.com/nomasofi/status/1626680035372421131?s=20/photo/1
// video: new Archer self-propelled howitzer firing Excaliber shells

🐣 RT @Tendar General Dynamics Ordnance in Scranton, Pennsylvania, producing 155mm shells for the Ukrainian army. ¤ Another factory in Texas will also produce the same type of shells. ¤ The USA ramping up the production capacities. #USA #Pennsylvania #Texas #Ukraine
🖼 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1626753732590419971?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @broe_jake Russian State TV is openly stating that Putin is building a Third Russian Empire… a Third Empire… a Third Realm… a Third Reich. I swear, everyone in the Kremlin looked at the what the Nazis did in the 1930s and said, “Let’s just copy them.”
💽 https://twitter.com/broe_jake/status/1626722457578270721?s=20/photo/1
// 1. Peter the Great, 2. Stalin, 3. Putin

🐣 RT @MunSecConf Last year, President @ZelenskyyUA visited Munich just a few days before Russia brutally attacked his country. Today, he took the stage #MSC2023 to share his vision for next year’s conference
💽 https://twitter.com/MunSecConf/status/1626703072050159616?s=20/photo/1

CNN, Oliver Darcy: Analysis: Fox News has been exposed as a dishonest organization terrified of its own audience https://tinyurl.com/ydkmnxnu “[A] stunning legal filing [was] made public on Thursday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News”

Fox News has been exposed like never before. ¤ A trove of newly-released text messages and emails have laid bare how the right-wing media giant operated with little regard for fact in the weeks and months following the 2020 presidential election. The correspondence reveals that the network’s senior-most executives and highest-profile hosts chose not to disclose what they believed to be the truth of the election out of fear that that the facts would alienate Fox News’ audience and throw the highly profitable business into ruin.

The messages were contained in a stunning legal filing made public on Thursday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, showing the network’s executives and talk hosts privately trashing lies pushed by former President Donald Trump’s camp and his supporters asserting the 2020 election was rigged.

But, despite privately acknowledging the realiity of the situation, the network allowed the lies to take hold on its air, in large part because executives and hosts were terrified that telling its sizable audience the truth would prompt them to tune out.

After the election, an incensed Trump had attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.

Trump was enraged that Fox News was the first network to call the critical swing state of Arizona for now-president Joe Biden. And he couldn’t stand that the network, rightfully, declared Biden as the winner of the presidential contest.

In the days and weeks after the presidential contest had been called, Fox News’ audience listened to Trump and rebelled against the channel. Fox News shed a chunk of its audience while Newsmax gained significant viewership. …

Rupert Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman, emailed Suzanne Scott, the Fox News chief executive, telling her that Newsmax needed to be “watched.” Murdoch said that he didn’t “want to antagonize Trump further” and stressed to her, “everything at stake here.”

The messages underscore that Fox News did not live up to the basic journalistic principle that news organizations are supposed to deliver the news to viewers, without fear or favor. Instead, the right-wing talk channel engineered its coverage to appeal to its audience which was actively being lied to by Trump and his campaign surrogates. ¤ “Our viewers are good people and they believe [the election fraud claims],” Tucker Carlson acknowledged in one message to Laura Ingraham.

A week after the election had been called, Sean Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.” ¤ “It’s vandalism,” Carlson responded. ¤ Hannity then discussed the damage a competitor could really do to Fox News, describing it as a potentially “serious problem.” ¤ “That could happen,” Carlson replied. … …

In a statement Thursday night, Fox News argued that the court filing contained cherry-picked quotes lacking context. ¤ “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” the network said.

RFE/RL: How Did Everybody Get The Ukraine Invasion Predictions So Wrong? https://tinyurl.com/27c5jhu7 “The only thing that stopped the Russians from going into Kyiv was the group of a few hundred volunteers that had been preparing for this invasion for months”

On February 22, 2022, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, took a phone call from the United States’ top diplomat.

According to Borrell, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told him that Russia, after months of building up a massive military force on Ukraine’s border, was, in fact, going to invade.

“Tony Blinken phoned me and told me, ‘Well, it is going to happen this weekend’,” Borrell recalled in a speech months later. “And certainly, two days later, at 5 o’clock in the morning, they started bombing Kyiv. We did not believe that this was going to happen. ¤ “We did not believe that the war was coming,” he said. …

“Undoubtedly, it was a great intelligence success,” said Konrad Muzyka, a Polish-based defense analyst. “We’re used to talking about intelligence failures when it comes to the U.S.: the failures to predict the invasion of Georgia, Syria, all the stuff during the Cold War, the invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia.”

“What the U.S. intelligence community predicted was spot-on,” he said. “They provided everyone with a lot of warning, which was luxurious, because you usually don’t really get that much warning.” …

With upwards of 175,000 troops deployed in regions along the Ukrainian border, and naval dominance in the Black Sea, Russia’s forces were expected to steamroll into Ukraine, taking Kyiv in a few days and toppling President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government.

Instead, Russia’s efforts to quickly seize Kyiv from the north were thwarted — in large part by the successful defense of an airfield just north of the capital, which prevented paratroopers from landing. In the south, Russia had more success, capturing the administrative capital of the Kherson region and then, after a weeks-long siege, capturing the Azov Sea port city of Mariupol.

By spring, Russian units had withdrawn from northern districts, retreating across the border and redeploying for a new effort in eastern Ukraine.

“Why Russia did not prevail — why it was instead stopped in its tracks, routed outside major cities, and put on the defensive — has become one of the most important questions in both U.S. foreign policy and international security more broadly,” Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Rand Corporation, a U.S. think tank, wrote in an article published this month in Foreign Affairs.

“Where people got it wrong it was in their assessments of the Russian Army,” Freedman said. “It was not preordained that the Russians would screw up so badly.”

… “Despite a poor plan on Russia’s part, Russia has shown it was not the military we thought it was going into the war. And that expectation of Russia was based on assumptions that modernization and training efforts over a decade would produce results on the battlefield. We have not seen that.”

“The Russians have been working very hard at building up what you might call a Potemkin village of military capability,” Davies said. …

He pointed to the example of Russia’s newest tank — the T-14 Armata — which, despite vaunted technologies and military officials bragging about its capabilities, has yet to be deployed in Ukraine.

“It’s easy to look at an adversary on paper, look at it and count [equipment]…. You can take all the satellite photographs you want. You can count up all the tanks and armored fighting vehicles, and the aircraft and what have you, and add up the balance sheet — who’s got more on one side or the other,” he said. “But the willingness to use it, the ability to use it, and the skill in using it: You can’t see that in a satellite photograph.” …

The same missed prognosis holds true for Ukraine, whose forces, many experts forecast, would not be able to hold out for long against a larger, better-equipped Russian Army. Instead, supplied with some Western weaponry and intelligence, Ukrainian forces thwarted the early Russian attempt to capture Kyiv.

“We did not foresee how effectively Ukraine would resist,” Borrell said in his October speech.

“I overestimated the Russian capabilities,” Muzyka said. “On the other hand, you have to remember the initial confusion and chaos on the Ukrainian side, in the initial days of the war.

“The only thing that stopped the Russians from going into Kyiv was the group of a few hundred volunteers that had been preparing for this invasion for months, and it was their resistance in Bucha and Irpin that stalled Russian advances.”

Later, Ukraine surprised Russia — and outside observers — when it staged a lightning counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region in the northeast and pressured Russian forces in the Kherson region, in the south, until they withdrew across the defensive barrier of the Dnieper River — abandoning the only regional capital they had taken since the February invasion. …

Western governments and analysts were not alone in their predictions about how the invasion of Ukraine would unfold. Russia’s intelligence also was flawed, according to multiple Russian press accounts and public statements by Western officials. …

“There’s a dog that’s not barking in the night in all these discussions,” [Davies] said.

“I have a sneaking suspicion…that the Ukrainians probably had quite good intelligence on the Russians,” Davies said, “and had quite a long time to invest in having good intelligence on the Russians. And [they] seem to have been better prepared for the poor state of Russian preparation than everyone else.

“How solid, how detailed the intelligence was that the Ukrainians had on the Russians, and what kind of intelligence — especially their human operations — had on the Russians,” he said. “I think that will, when all the papers come out years from now, prove to be much more significant in how things played out then than we’re giving them credit for right now.”

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The flopsweat & terror is dripping off of him.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1626711777471000576?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] The Democrats have really WEAPONIZED the Department of Injustice, even sending political operatives to work in the Manhattan D.A.’s Office. They want to GET “Trump” this way, because they know they can’t beat me at the polls. They’ve been after me for years with Hoaxes and Witch Hunts, but as I become more and more popular, at least partially because of the contrast between now and just 3 years ago, it only gets more dangerous and worse. America will not become a Marxist Nation!

NYT, N. Eisen, E.D. Perry & A.L. Copeland: It’s Time to Prepare for a Possible Trump Indictment https://tinyurl.com/mt9dzdmv “It would be the trial of the 21st century, no doubt a long and bumpy ride — but a necessary one for American democracy”

If Mr. Trump is charged, it will be difficult and at times even perilous for American democracy — but it is necessary to deter him and others from future attempted coups. …

Still, the debate is worth having, and the risks are worth taking. The core American idea is that no one is above the law. If there is serious evidence of crimes, then a former president should face the same consequences as anyone else. If we do not hold accountable those who engage in this kind of misconduct, it will recur.

It would be the trial of the 21st century, no doubt a long and bumpy ride — but a necessary one for American democracy.

NYT, Michelle Goldberg: What Fox News Says When You’re Not Listening https://tinyurl.com/35acjvw6 After the “incalculable damage” the accurate Arizona projection did to Fox ratings, “hyping false claims about election fraud was a way for Fox to win its audience back”

As the Dominion filing lays out, there was panic at Fox News over viewer backlash to the network correctly calling Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. Despite its accuracy, the call was viewed, internally, as a catastrophe.

“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson texted his producer. He added, “An alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.” Sean Hannity, in an exchange with fellow hosts Carlson and Laura Ingraham, fretted about the “incalculable” damage the Arizona projection did to the Fox News brand and worried about a competitor emerging: “Serious $$ with serious distribution could be a real problem.”

Hyping false claims about election fraud was a way for Fox to win its audience back. While the Arizona call was “damaging,” Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott wrote in a text to Fox executive Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son, “We will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” …

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa David defeated Goliath not by conversation, but by courage & sling. Courage we do have. The sling should get stronger. So that the next year we would gather for the Post-War @MunSecConf. We shall prevail over Putin & “putins” in 🇷🇺 & all over the world.

🐣 RT @Azovsouth 🔥🔥 Pro Kremlin accounts reports of growing tension between #Prigozhin & #Shoigu ¤ In his dreams Prigozhin wished to capture Bakhmut before Jan 2023 but was intervened by Shoigu & the Rashists forces. These sentiments have angered Putin & the tension has grown even wider & bitter

🐣 RT @NOELreports “We will hold Bakhmut. Anyone who complains that the defense demands too many victims should not forget: if we withdraw, another city will become a new Bakhmut. That is why our soldiers fight for every square centimeter,” minister Dmytro Kuleba said to WAZ

🐣 RT @SollenbergerRC NEW: Special Counsel Jack Smith is reportedly investigating payments to Trump’s Save America PAC vendors—and it could finally unravel what one campaign finance expert called “one of the biggest campaign finance violations in history.” Me
⋙ DailyBeast: Trump’s Shell Spending Scheme Comes Under DOJ Scrutiny https://tinyurl.com/3tmzxk3z
// Special counsel Jack Smith appears to have set his sights on a number of Trump’s vendors. And there’s plenty to look into.

WaPo: In wake of Ukraine war, U.S. and allies are hunting down Russian spies https://tinyurl.com/26jjxhyd “[T]he fallout may add to the list of consequences that Russian President Vladimir Putin — a former KGB officer … failed to anticipate when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine”
// Officials caution that Russia retains significant capabilities despite exposure of multiple operatives in Europe

WaPo: Fox News hosts, execs privately doubted 2020 conspiracies shared on air https://tinyurl.com/9e7z9r2h “‘Not a single Fox witness testified that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true,’ Dominion argued in the filing”
// Rupert Murdoch called election conspiracies ‘really crazy stuff,’ according to new legal filings in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit

🐣 RT @kajakallas I’m going to #MSC2023 with 3 messages:
Ukraine must win and the aggressor must be defeated.
No Russian crime against Ukraine must go unpunished.
Grey areas in European security create instability and lead to war – they must become a thing of the past

⭕ 16 Feb 2023

🔊 TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: Ben Wittes: Jack Smith at Ramming Speed https://tinyurl.com/mtuhjx42 “Mike Pence is erasing his own profile in courage by trying to resist special counsel Jack Smith’s subpoena”

🧵 RT @ TheStudyofWar Ukrainian officials stated that Russian forces aim to capture #Bakhmut by the first anniversary of the invasion of #Ukraine, which would require a significantly higher rate of Russian advance than anything seen for many months. http://isw.pub/UkrWar021623
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1626430734624858113?s=20

CNN: Fox News stars and executives privately trashed Trump’s election fraud claims, court document reveals https://tinyurl.com/56yacfnr

🐣 RT @ ErikWemple Fox News wiggled out of a defamation suit by arguing people shouldn’t take the programming seriously (specifically, Tucker Carlson’s show). Perhaps to fend off that defense, the Dominion filing goes into detail to show that the network’s people see themselves as journalists:
¤ https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1626385740106956801?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @krassenstein Text messages revealed from Fox News personalities in Dominion Case:
– Trump is “a demonic force, a destroyer” – Tucker Carlson
– Trump’s election fraud allegations are “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense.” – Dana Perino
In other words, Fox News knows Fox News is FAKE!

🐣 RT @mmfa They knew it was a lie: The behind-the-scenes happenings at Fox while the network pushed false claims about Dominion
💙 ⋙ MMFA: They knew it was a lie: The behind-the-scenes happenings at Fox while the network pushed false claims about Dominion https://tinyurl.com/53h7s3ce
// Newly released filing in defamation lawsuit shows the full extent of how Fox lied about Dominion and dishonestly pushed the “Big Lie” after the 2020 election

In March 2021, Dominion filed a defamation suit against Fox for the false claims the network pushed after the election. Those false claims were extensive: In the two-week period after Fox News declared Joe Biden the president-elect, the network questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it almost 800 times, including by using Dominion as a scapegoat. Fox became an outlet that aired Trump campaign lies about Dominion voting machines getting hacked without any evidence.

For Dominion to prove defamation, the company must show that Fox acted with “actual malice,” meaning that Fox knew the allegations made about Dominion were false or that Fox acted in reckless disregard for the truth. …

Here’s some of the damning quotes from the filing showing how much Fox’s executives and employees knew they were lying about Dominion or the election at the time:

● Fox star Tucker Carlson to his producer Alex Pfeiffer about Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s campaign lawyers: “Powell is lying.” [11/16/20]

● Host Laura Ingraham to Carlson and fellow host Sean Hannity: “Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Sorry but she is.” [11/15/20]

● Carlson to Ingraham: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson replied: “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.” [11/19/20]
Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch: “Really crazy stuff.” [11/19/20]

● Murdoch after watching Giuliani and Powell on November 19, 2020: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott replied, “Yes Sean [Hannity] and even [Jeanine] Pirro agrees.” [11/19/20]

● Fox reporter Lucas Tomlinson to anchor Bret Baier: “It’s dangerously insane these conspiracy theories.” [12/1/2020]

● Fox Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt on whether the allegation that Dominion rigged the election was true: “No reasonable person would have thought that.”

● Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott responded “Yes, I believe that,” to the question “You believe, since at least the time that Fox News called the election on November 7th, that Joe Biden was legitimately elected the President of the United States, correct?”

● As the filing outlined, Carlson texted a redacted name “that it was ‘shockingly reckless’ to claim that Dominion rigged the election ‘[i]f there’s no one inside the company willing to talk, or internal Dominion documents or copies of the software showing that they did it’ and ‘as you know there isn’t.’” [11/21/20]

● Fox’s internal “fact checks” about Dominion allegations reported they were “incorrect” and “not evidence of widespread fraud.” [11/13/20; 11/20/20]

● After canceling Pirro’s November 7 show, Fox executive David Clark told Executive Vice President of Primetime Programming Meade Cooper: “Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be token.”

● Ingraham’s producer Tommy Firth texted Fox executive Ron Mitchell: “This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm—as many times as I’ve told Laura it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump tweeting about it.” [11/8/20]

● Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch: “Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a question of trust—the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Murdoch replied: “Yes. But needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.” Scott responded: “Yes today is day one and it’s a process.” [11/9/20]

● Fox News Washington, D.C., Managing Editor Bill Sammon to Fox Political Editor Chris Stirewalt on the network’s coverage of “supposed election fraud”: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make[] good journalists do bad things.” [12/2/20]

● Carlson to Ingraham: Powell’s “a nut, as you said at the outset. It totally wrecked my weekend. Wow… I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.” Ingraham responded to Carlson: “No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.” [11/22/20]

● Rupert Murdoch told Scott to read a Wall Street Journal piece about Newsmax, telling her: “These people should be watched, if skeptically. Trump will concede eventually and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can. We don’t want to antagonize Trump further, but Giuliani taken with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here.” [11/16/20]

● Scott: “Privately, I had a number of conversations with Sean where he wanted the President to accept the results.”

● After White House correspondent Kristen Fisher fact-checked Giuliani and Powell’s press conference, she received a call from her boss, Bryan Boughton, in which he “emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it,” and said that Fisher “needed to do a better job of…—this is a quote—‘respecting our audience.’” [11/19/20]

● Fox Corp. Senior Vice President Raj Shah wrote: “shit is so crazy right now. so many people openly denying the obvious that Powell is clearly full of it.” Carlson’s producer Alex Pfeiffer replied: “She is a fucking nutcase.” [11/22/20]

● Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott, “It’s been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won,’” and that such a statement “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen.” [1/5/21]

● Carlson complained to Hannity about Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich, who “was ‘fact checking’ a tweet by Trump that mentioned Dominion—and specifically mentioned Hannity’s and Dobbs’ broadcasts that evening discussing Dominion” Carlson reportedly wrote: “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the fuck? I’m actually shocked…It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” [11/12/20]

● According to the filing, “Ingraham herself testified that she has no basis to believe Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election or that it is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chavez (and agreed its ownership is ‘readily ascertainable’).”

● Anchor Dana Perino also called the voter fraud allegations “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense.”

● Powell sent an email to Bartiromo about voter fraud claims that “Powell had received from a ‘source’ which the author herself describes as ‘pretty wackadoodle.’” According to the filing, “Bartiromo agreed at her deposition that this email was ‘nonsense’ … and inherently unreliable.”

● As the filing laid out:

Each circumstantial factor cuts strongly in Dominion’s favor. But here, the words of multiple Fox employees provide overwhelming direct evidence of actual malice. In addition to the evidence cited above, the excerpts below feature just some of the additional examples showing Fox employees knew at the time that these claims—and the guests promoting them—were:

● “ludicrous” –Tucker Carlson [11/20/20]
● “totally off the rails” –Tucker Carlson [12/24/20]
● “F’ing lunatics” –Sean Hannity [12/22/20]
● “nuts” –Dana Perino [11/16/20]
● “complete bs” –Producer John Fawcett to Lou Dobbs [11/27/20]
● “kooky” –Maria Bartiromo, regarding email received from Powell [11/07/20]
● “MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS” –Raj Shah, Fox Corporation SVP [11/21/20]

Fox knew that it was pushing lies about Dominion and the election, and the network continued to smear the company and spread conspiracy theories anyway.

🐣 RT @KatiePhang “[Fox News] hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity & Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in messages with each other in the weeks after the election.”
⋙ NYT: Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff.’ https://tinyurl.com/mx9h9vpw //➔ It’s never been clearer that Fox’s business model is based on lying to their viewers, that Ratings are King, and the stars, producers and owners are all in on it
// The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.

🐣 RT @leahmcelrath I’ve never seen anything quite as damning as the evidence in this Dominion lawsuit against Fox News. ¤ Setting aside Dominion, these Fox News people have contributed to the destruction of the social fabric of this nation and harmed not only our democracy but countless families.

🧵 RT @ErikWempel Huge day in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News defamation case, with both sides filing summary-judgment motions. Dominion’s version is a nearly 200-page document bursting with text messages from network talent in the tense days following the 2020 presidential election. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1626372140479004672?s=20

🧵 RT @willsommer This filing in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News is one of the most remarkable documents I’ve ever seen. Filled with private texts between Fox stars like Hannity and Carlson, plus Murdoch, all admitting they knew Fox’s stolen election claims were lies.
📌 https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1626382493480878080?s=20

≣ 📔 🔆 This❗️⋙ Dominion v. Fox: Court Doc: [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/3s5f9pk8 192p
// “DOMINION’S BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF ITS MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ON LIABILITY OF FOX NEWS NETWORK, LLC AND FOX” Jan 17, 2023

DailyBeast: REVEALED: Fox Stars Think Trumpworld Figures Are Just as ‘Insane’ as You Do https://tinyurl.com/3a8r9xnx “As the start of an explosive brief unsealed Thursday evening as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network argues: ‘Fox knew’”
// Tucker, Sean, Laura, and others privately trash-talked the conspiracy theorists they were putting on the air, according to an unsealed filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ suit.

Behind the scenes of the shows where they were amplifying baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, the star hosts, producers, and executives of Fox News were furiously messaging each other. They reacted in frustration and bewilderment to their own broadcasts, calling the conspiracy theorists to which they were ceding airtime “F’ing lunatics,” “totally off the rails,” and “MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS.”

As the start of an explosive brief unsealed Thursday evening as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network argues: “Fox knew.”

“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the dominion stuff’ was ‘total bs,’” the filing continues. “Yet despite knowing the truth—or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth—Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd,’ and ‘shockingly reckless.’”

The partially redacted, 192-page filing is stuffed with texts, emails, and testimony from marquee names like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham lashing out at key Trumpworld figures and insulting them in bitter terms.

Sidney Powell? An “unguided missile,” “dangerous as hell,” and “poison,” according to Carlson. ¤ Mike Lindell? “On the crazy train with no brakes,” as Gary Schreier, senior vice president of programming for Fox Business, phrased it. ¤ Rudy Giuliani? “So full of shit,” a Lou Dobbs Tonight producer snapped.

The concerns wormed their way up to the top of the food chain, according to the filing. On Nov. 19, Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s powerful chairman, watched as his network broadcast the entirety of a press conference held by Giuliani and Powell, who took turns spewing vitriolic remarks about the election. Murdoch then fired off a text: “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.”

The messages show that Murdoch also at one point asked Fox CEO Suzanne Scott if it was “unarguable that high-profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6 [was] an important chance to have the results overturned.” ¤ Network executives responded to his query with 50 examples proving as much, the brief states.

On Nov. 7, the New York Post, another Murdoch family jewel, published an editorial begging Trump to “stop the ‘stolen election’ rhetoric” and help yank Giuliani off TV. Scott, according to the filing, ensured the editorial “received wide distribution” inside the company. That was the same day Fox called the election for President Joe Biden.

Less than 24 hours later, Murdoch told Scott, “Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”

In the days and weeks that followed, the filing states, any “effort to prevent false charges from spreading” by the network became markedly less overt.

Dominion’s lawyers have a high bar to clear in finding the “actual malice” they need to prove to win the case. The company’s attorneys need to demonstrate that Fox either knew that what it was broadcasting was false, or that it acted with reckless disregard of the truth. ¤ The term “actual malice,” a standard established in the landmark 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, is used 45 times in Thursday’s briefing.

“Here… literally dozens of people with editorial responsibility—from the top of the organization to the producers of specific shows to the hosts themselves—acted with actual malice,” the filing explains in its opening pages. Then it begins pulling receipts. ¤ On Nov. 5, Bret Baier, Fox’s chief political correspondent, texted, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None. Allegations—stories. Twitter. Bullshit.” ¤ Exactly a week later, a producer for The Ingraham Angle texted an executive, “This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm—as many times as I’ve told Laura it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump tweeting about it—” The rest of the producer’s message is redacted. …

🐣 RT @TeamPelosi We are in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they fight for their nation and for Democracy – for themselves and for the world. -NP #SlavaUkraini
💽 https://twitter.com/TeamPelosi/status/1626290312766423041?s=20/photo/1
// Recalling JFK’s innaugural address, which she attended: “‘ … To the citizens of the world, ask not what America can do for you, but what we can do together for the freedom of mankind.’ And Joe Biden did just that.”

🐣 RT @atrupar Mitch McConnell on Fox News: “I’m gonna try to help explain to the American people that defeating the Russians in Ukraine is the single most important event going on in the world right now … there should be a bipartisan support for this.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1626244170917478400?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ Maks_NAFO_FELLA Wow 👀👀👀
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1626317881490214914?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] TheTimes [UK]: Russia is losing as many as 2,000 men for every 100 yards gained in human wave assaults in eastern Ukraine, according to Nato intelligence.
↥ ↧
TheTimes [UK]: Russia ‘loses 2,000 troops for every 100 yards won’ https://tinyurl.com/5435845h
// Nato is racing against the clock to get anti-aircraft missiles and ammunition to Ukraine […]

🐣 RT @ neal_katyal Very important thread by Judge Luttig. The most impt individual tweet is the one where he points out that any privilege would yield to the demands of criminal process. Pence’s legal maneuvering is frivolous and about delay, not about protecting our Constitution.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @judgeluttig It is an unsettled question of constitutional law whether a Vice President of the United States possesses qualified Speech or Debate Clause privileges and protections when he or she serves, in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, as President of the Senate
📌 https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1626375756946321408?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @drothkopf I’d add that the Const. specifically identifies Sens & Reps as those receiving the protections of the Speech or Debate clause & refers to the VP, specifically, elsewhere w/no such protections. In fact, were a VP to have them, he’d have more such protections than the president.

NYT: Russia lost about half of its tanks since invading Ukraine, new report says https://tinyurl.com/msx5d7sh “The report also identified…Russian difficulties on the battlefield, including undertrained reservists being called to the front lines w/o ammunition or proper equipment”
// A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Russia’s tank and artillery fleets had suffered “significant attrition” in the war.

🧵 RT @ ChrisO_wiki 1/ Three Russian generals are reported to have been sacked over the provision of poor-quality uniforms, which has left troops fighting in Ukraine without adequate protection against the cold. A further scandal has erupted over the decision to appoint a new uniform provider. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1626148736295440385?s=20

🚫 WaPo: As Russians inch forward near Bakhmut, Ukrainians dig fallback defenses https://tinyurl.com/yfx75ur2
// waiting to post

🧵 RT @andrewmichta I’m increasingly convinced that #Putin and “Putinism” have been made possible by the accumulation of resentments across the Russian society. #Putinism has emerged from Russians’ inability to accept that they lost the Cold War because the Soviet Union could no longer compete 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/andrewmichta/status/1626104801397276672?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/sde4d6sc

#Putinism is akin to the Dolchstoßlegende that emerged in Germany after its 1918 loss in Wold War I. It argued that the great German people were never defeated, but betrayed by cowardly politicians-stabbed in the back. That German legend fueled DEU interwar national resentment.2/

Roughly within a decade after WWI the Dolchstoßlegende and the national resentment it fueled gave rise to Hitler and his attempt to re-litigate the outcome in 1918. Only the unequivocal defeat of Germany in 1945 buried the legend, foreclosing the path to empire through war.3/

At a risk of over-rationalizing history, I’d argue that for the past 30 yrs Russia has travelled a trajectory similar to that of interwar Germany. Putin’s neo-imperial aspirations are nested in a sea of RUS national resentment over loss of power & prestige on the world stage. 4/

The Russian story that Putin has been pushing is one of the West, having taken advantage of Russia’s weak leaders (Gorbachev, Yeltsin, etc) robbed Russia of it glory to diminish its “velikiy russkiy narod [great Russian people],” That it is now poised to destroy RUS civilization. 5/

If I’m right, the Russian threat to its neighbors and its neo-imperial drive will not end regardless whether Putin remains in power or not. In the long duree of Russian history, it can only break if Russia is decisively defeated in #Ukraine- in a way that every Russian sees it 6/

That’s why so much is riding on the outcome of the war in #Ukraine. If Russia wins it will see this as a civilizational victory over the West. It will be emboldened to press on into #Georgia, #Moldova and down even breaching the @NATO line. 7/

But if Russia is defeated in #Ukraine, the collapse of the legend of “velikiy russkiy narod” could unleash centrifugal forces in RUS that would foreclose its path to empire. It would be a period of instability & risk but it would offer Europe a path to peace. #ArmUkraineNow End

🧵 RT @Frialum I still want to ask those who say that we must separate Russian culture from the context of war – how do they explain that Russians so easily wage war and commit genocide in Ukraine? How do they have so little empathy toward Ukrainians? You know, it’s not coming from nowhere.
📌 https://twitter.com/Frialum/status/1626103287152881670?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Frialum The answer is simple and complicated at the same time – it’s their imperial culture and how they explain the history with this grand idea that all neighboring people are inferior to them and thus have fewer human rights than them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Frialum And when so-called cultural institutions in Europe invite Russians for another talk about “great Russian art or literature, or philosophy” they embrace their chauvinistic worldview, and they give them a platform to spread it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Frialum Ask yourself why even Europeans knew so little about Ukraine before the war. Why was it such a surprise that Ukrainians are a nation with its own long history and multilayered culture? Mb because everybody has seen it only through the eyes of Russians and their “culture?

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1945 UTC 16 FEB/ The 1800 (local) briefing of the Gen’l Staff indicated UKR forces are counter attacking SW of Kreminna. UKR troops are in contact in the western limits of the urban area of Krimenna. RU efforts to maneuver west of Lysychansk have been broken up.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1626305273521442825?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1320 UTC 16 FEB/ RU forces are assessed to have functionally interdicted the M-03 HWY North of Krasna Hora. RU units appear to have been driven back from the H-32 HWY S of Chasiv Yar, with UKR troops in contact in the vicinity of Klischiivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1626207979136602113?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VUHLEDAR /0200 UTC 16 FEB/ It is assessed that 2 RU Brigade Tactical Groups (BTGs) lost more than 40 Main Battle Tanks and upwards of 130 Infantry Fighting Vehicles in a series haphazard attacks on Vuhledar– making it one of the worst defeats suffered by RU since World War II.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1626038204410331141?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PlessierMarc Hi Chuck, So was that over the last 10 days or so, and does 2 brigades equate to 10,000 soldiers? Also, what do you believe the casualty rates were for them 30, 50 or 70% maybe?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulAndCoffee Yes, this is a loss summation from the past couple weeks there. The UK intelligence folks estimate that, in this time span & just in that area, total KIA, WIA, MIA & captures total ~5,000 men. That’s a LOT of men made combat ineffective from ~12 days of engagements in one area.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /0030 UTC 16 FEB/ A 14 FEB Russian surge west of Kreminna has been halted and reversed by UKR counter-attacks. RU probes were broken up by Ukrainian forces at Novosadove and Zarichne, with RU units withdrawing back across the P-66 highway.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1626013797818281984?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 15 Feb 2023

🐣 📋 RT @CSwampthing The US has given $50B to Ukraine over 12m, yes that’s right just $13/month per American or 42 cents per day. ¤ Yes that’s right, for less than a cup of coffee per day you too can vaporize the russian army! ¤ This has got to be the best deal in the history of foreign relations.

CNN: Exclusive: Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows subpoenaed by special counsel in Jan. 6 investigation https://tinyurl.com/yc3jfhey “Meadows received the subpoena sometime in January, the source said”

WaPo: Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushback https://tinyurl.com/4w4rw9s6 “[E]lection denialism does not appear to be going away, even as the evidence has grown — in public polling as well as in the midterm election results — that most Americans have grown tired of it”
// The growing effort by election officials and others is intended to counter mistrust arising from Donald Trump’s claims of a rigged 2020 vote

🐣 RT @ TheStudyofWar Kyiv’s continued defense of #Bakhmut … has been “strategically sound” because it sapped Moscow’s momentum, ISW said late Tuesday. Kyiv’s defense has “degraded significant #Russian forces,” including units from the #Wagner Group. @AP http://ow.ly/hEhm50MT7wQ.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Prigozhyn declares Russians shouldn’t downplay the enemy by saying Bakhmut is “surrounded”, his best guess is encircelemnt will happen in March-April now, although new weapon deliveries will have a significant impact in this estimation.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1625912951373692929?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ DefMon3 Artillery wizard and owner of the “Stick of death” Magyar talk about the Situation in Bakhmut today. Video from @wartranslated
💽 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1625926693004116003?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1430 UTC 15 FEB/ On 14 FEB, UKR conducted offensive actions against at Krasna Hora & Chasiv Yar. At present, the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) is unclear; these two operations may be described as raids.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1625863816935342082?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer PUTIN’S TROLLS: RU is increasingly turning to social media to sew disinformation and attack Ukraine’s supporters. Cambridge University has put together a 5-minute game to show you the techniques trolls use disseminate fake news on any topic. https://goviralgame.com/en/play
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1625619765438849030?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua British intelligence claims that the production of weapons and equipment in the Russian Federation “is becoming a critical weak point” and does not meet the needs of the Russian Federation in waging war against Ukraine

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian The United States signed a contract for the production of ammunition for Ukraine, – Welt. ¤ According to the publication, the contract was signed with two companies for more than $500 million. The first artillery ammunition under this order should be delivered next month.

🐣 RT @starsandstripes Time is growing short for Ukraine’s military backers to gather vast quantities of new equipment and move it along supply lines that are fast becoming overwhelmed with shipments Kyiv awaits as it plans to launch a spring counteroffensive.
⋙ Stripes: Ukraine’s allies rush to send more equipment, risking logjams https://tinyurl.com/2p8cxv5a

🐣 RT @NOELreports Around 6,000 Ukrainian children were forcibly put into 43 “re-education camps” in Russia. Under the guise of recreation, children are being brainwashed with Russian propaganda. Some camps even provide military training for children.
⋙ Conflict Observatory: Russia’s Systematic Program for the Re-education and Adoption of Ukraine’s Children https://tinyurl.com/4npe9az8

⭕ 14 Feb 2023

TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum & Nataliya Gumenyuk: ‘They didn’t understand anything, but just spoiled people’s lives’ https://tinyurl.com/7cff5pv7 “They discovered a world different from the one they knew. So they smashed it up, hit back at it, & are still trying to destroy it forever”
// How Russian invaders unleashed violence on small-town residents

🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ BREAKING-Crime Fraud Exception: not unusual that Jack Smith is seeking to learn communications between atty Corcoran and Trump, arguing it’s not covered by privilege if Trump were doing it to further a crime. The DC judge ruled in favor of govt on this issue in Manafort case.

NYT: Prosecutors Seek Trump Lawyer’s Testimony, Suggesting Evidence of Crime https://tinyurl.com/ufwa2edt ‘The crime-fraud exception allows them to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe legal advice or services have been used in furthering a crime’
// tags: crime fraud crime/fraud; The Justice Department cited the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege in demanding testimony from a lawyer representing former President Donald Trump in his documents case.

🐣 RT @grantstern When you think about the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the GOP’s tepid response, keep in mind that the Trump Administration did what railroad lobbyists wanted the most. ¤ They repealed an Obama Administration safety rule for trains with hazardous chemicals.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/grantstern/status/1625235092908961795?s=20/photo/1

🧵 📊 Survey: A survey was carried out in Ukraine for the Munich security conference. 85% of Ukrainians said that Russia retreating to pre-February 2022 borders would not be sufficient cause for peace.
📌 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1625764872318251010?s=20
⋙ 🐣 89% would be willing to carry on the war until victory even in the event of a nuclear strike by Russia.
⋙ 🐣 The main conclusion that was drawn from this survey was that the united determination of the Ukrainians to defend their democracy is the main reason for the resilience of Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 via @wartranslated
¤ https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1625617555585900550?s=20

🧵 RT @wartranslated Short summary of the livestream with Oleksiy Arestovych, former Ukraine’s Presidential Head of Office advisor, Day 355, February 13th (yesterday). Kindly brought to you by Stepan: twitter.com/childsacrifice1 Read thread or visit: https://tinyurl.com/3u9b7ybn
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1625617555585900550?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/5brtrnws

⚡️ Wagner: PMC Wagner killed another person with a sledgehammer as if it was ISIS. Arestovych would like for the Ukrainian authorities to clarify how exactly prisoners are exchanged with Russia as he is not satisfied with this process that has allowed this to occur twice now.

Wagner’s significance on the front is diminishing however they are still fighting in all the main directions, mainly Bakhmut.

⚡️ Battlefield update: The enemy is still concentrating their forces on the Kupyiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlivka directions.

Enemy attacks were repulsed in Hryanykivka north of Kupyiansk, near Kreminna. Bakhmut is being attacked from all directions. Several enemy attacks in the Siversk salient were also repulsed.

The enemy is trying to cut off the Siversk salient, which is critical for success in the Lyman and Bakhmut directions. Despite claims by Wagner, Krasna Hora has not yet fallen.

The Russians are having no success in Avdiivka and Vuhledar and some of their units have gone into defense. The overall situation is complicated, especially around Bakhmut/Siversk.

⚡️ Stoltenberg: The head of NATO Jens Stoltenberg said that the Russian offensive has started.

He also added that the current stage of the conflict is the logistics phase and the pace of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine should be increased. This will be discussed at the NATO meetings on 14-15 February.

President Duda also commented that Russia could win in Ukraine if Kyiv does not receive urgent support from the West. This was said to create buzz before the NATO meetings. However, Ukraine will receive the weapons and Russia will not win.

⚡️ 📊 Survey: A survey was carried out in Ukraine for the Munich security conference. 85% of Ukrainians said that Russia retreating to pre-February 2022 borders would not be sufficient cause for peace.

89% would be willing to carry on the war until victory even in the event of a nuclear strike by Russia.

The main conclusion that was drawn from this survey was that the united determination of the Ukrainians to defend their democracy is the main reason for the resilience of Ukraine.

⚡️ Sanctions: According to Politico, upcoming sanctions may affect 3 major Russian banks including Alfabank, 130 financial personnel, the exporting of construction equipment from the EU, and the importing of bitumen from Russia.

A ban on the exporting of Russian diamonds is also being discussed. Ukraine has accused Russia of deliberate sabotage of the grain deal as the rate of inspections of ships is deliberately sabotaged.

⚡️ Negotiations and Belarus: The Hungarian foreign minister visited Belarus and phrased Hungary’s desire for Negotiations in Ukraine. Columbia, Brazil and Argentina also announced their support for negotiations.

Lukashenko also spoke to the CSTO implying that Belarus will eventually have to get involved in the conflict. The governments of France, Canada and Brazil (?) called for their citizens to leave Belarus.

Arestovych believes this is a warning to Belarus or any other CSTO countries that war may break out on their home soil if they decide to get involved in Ukraine.

⚡️ India: India has halted talks with Russia concerning the purchase of new fighter jets and helicopters.

This shows that the world is assessing the performance of Russian weapons on the battlefield. India refusing to buy weapons would be a very major blow to the Russian defense industry.

🐣 RT @JeffLawsonOttaw Prigozhin’s Freudian slip on Telegram. ¤ “Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance and grinding,…” ¤ Not liberated, but taken.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JeffLawsonOttaw/status/1625538378111369227?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Press Service of Prigozhin [likely on Telegram]
“We publish a comment by Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin:”

“I don’t understand where this nonsense comes from. In all directions, the enemy is becoming more active, pulling up more and more new reserves. Every day, from 300 to 500 new fighters approach Bakhmut in all directions. Artillery fire intensifies every day. To date, heavy fighting is going on in the north. There are no prerequisites for encircling the enemy in the northern regions. House after house is stormed, square meter after square meter. Hard work is going on. Where the stories about some kind of environment and something else come from is not at all clear. Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance and grinding, the meat grinder is working. In [ … ? … ]

From CNN: https://tinyurl.com/4e8hk273

Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance and grinding, the meat grinder is working,” Yevgeniy Prigozhin said in a statement distributed on a Wagner Telegram channel. “For the meat grinder to work properly, it is impossible to suddenly start festivities. There won’t be any festivities anytime soon.”

Despite months of intense battle, Wagner and Russian forces have failed to capture Bakhmut, though they are slowly pushing towards encircling the city.

And yet, Prigozhin cautioned that that was anything but imminent. He was responding to a question about whether Wagner forces had captured a small portion of northern Bakhmut.

“I don’t understand where this nonsense comes from,” he said. “In all directions, the enemy is becoming more active, pulling up more and more new reserves. Daily 300 to 500 new fighters approach Bakhmut in all directions. Artillery fire intensifies with each day.”

“To date, heavy fighting is going on in the north. There are no prerequisites for encircling the enemy in the northern regions. Attack is carried out house by house, square meter by square meter. We are seeing the full-blown military engagement. It is just not clear where all these stories about some encirclement and something else come from.”

↥ ↧
🐣 RT @pedrodesanta93 [tr] Official statement by Mr. Prigozhin on rumors of a quick takeover of Bakhmut: “I don’t understand where this nonsense comes from. In all directions, the enemy is becoming more active, pulling more and more reserves.
💽 https://twitter.com/pedrodesanta93/status/1625702256971505665?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group, whose mercenaries, along with the Russian regular army, have been attempting to capture Bakhmut, says the battle for the city is far from over.
⋙ KyivIndependent: Ukraine war latest: Wagner boss says Russia won’t capture Bakhmut soon, West says no planes for now https://tinyurl.com/4rmzcxk2
// Key developments on Feb. 14: No news on fighter jets for Ukraine after Ramstein, US says; Pentagon head says allies to help Ukraine launch

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group, whose mercenaries, along with the Russian regular army, have been attempting to capture Bakhmut, says the battle for the city is far from over. ¤ “Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow because there is heavy resistance and grinding,” he said on Feb. 14, referring to the battle for the city as a “meat grinder.”

“We will not be celebrating in the near future,” he added. ¤ Bakhmut and surrounding areas remain the primary focus of Russia, as Moscow seeks to open up the main road leading to two other cities in the east — Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

On Feb. 12, Russia claimed it had seized control of Krasna Hora, a village about five kilometers north of Bakhmut, but Ukraine denied the statement the next day. ¤ However, the U.K. defense ministry said in its daily intelligence update that over the past three days, Russia’s Wagner mercenaries had “almost certainly” made further small gains around the northern outskirts of Bakhmut, including into the Krasna Hora.

The battle for Bakhmut is the fiercest at the moment, according to Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said on Feb. 14 that the fighting for the eastern city is the most extensive in terms of losses, and Ukrainian forces continue to repel attacks. ¤ “I would describe it as a war of attrition. The Russians are suffering huge losses,” he said.

Ukrainian officials describe the situation in the city as very dire. ¤ Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on national television that “there is not a single square meter in Bakhmut that is safe or that is not in range of enemy fire or drones.”

… NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that providing Ukraine with Western fighter jets was “not the most important issue now,” though adding that it was an “ongoing discussion.” …

🐣 RT @igornovikov A few days ago Prigozhin (the founder of the Wagner mercenary group) posted a video in a SU-24 fighter jet “over Bakhmut” inviting President Zelensky to a dogfight. ¤ Well… That SU-24 has been shot down by our forces yesterday ¤ I suppose the dogfight is postponed

‼️ 🐣 RT @Azovsouth Wagner terrorists boss Prigozhin said, it won’t be possible for the Rashists Orcs to take Bakhmut in the near future. This comes after Putin banned the words #Wagner & #Prigozhin in🇷🇺 ¤ At this stage Prigozhin is ready to withdraw his Wagner criminals from the #Bakhmut front. [⁉️]

🐣 RT @jennycohn1 I think I’m done with this bird. I reactivated only so I can find my own research and to post a farewell thread of some of my work. Thank u to those who supported me. It’s been an interesting 7 years or so. I hope I made a small difference 4 the better. 1/
📔 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1625535958723743745?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1615 UTC 14 FEB/ RU forces have extended a salient west of the city. UKR forces report breaking up a RU assault east of Nevske. RU forces are reported in contact at Kuzmyne, near Shypylivka, and N of Bilohorivka as RU attempts to push SW out of the Kreminna AO.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1625526974994169856?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1520 UTC 14 FEB/ Despite heavy losses & minimal gains near Krasna Hora, RU press & sympathetic social media continue to issue daily claims of victory. UKR forces remain in strong defensive positions in the urban center.
// 2 Su-24Ms, 1 Su 25 downed by UKR air defense.Fighting continues along the H-32 HWY south of Chasiv Yar.UKR air defense downed two Su-24M strike fighters, believed to have been piloted by Wagner PMC pilots. UKR missile/Artillery strikes interdicted 7 concentrations of RIItroons
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1625511743978872833?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ GlasnostGone US top general Mark Milley castigates Russia, branding the war “a barbaric Russian invasion”, one started by Putin “brutally, illegally & in an unprovoked way. For 🇺🇦, it’s not a war of aggression, it’s a war of defence. For 🇷🇺, it’s a war of aggression.” https://tinyurl.com/mr3rar7d

🐣 RT @pravda_eng The Minister of Defense [of UA Reznikov] stated that he was “very satisfied” with the results of Ramstein-9. He noted that 54 representatives of the world participated in the meeting, which means that “the anti-Kremlin coalition is growing.”

🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin opened the eighth meeting of the Ramstein format on February 14, declaring the readiness to continue efforts to support Ukraine against the background of continued Russian attacks on peaceful cities. ¤ More news here https://english.nv.ua

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en We are all witnessing a dying Moscow empire in agony. Over there barbarians with sledgehammers and propagandists run wild, leadership is going crazy from inevitability of retribution. ¤ Sadly, Ukrainians are not just historians who observe the fall. Empire’s last strike is at us.
⋙ 🐣 I dream of a day without Russia’s malign, disruptive influence throughout the world, and am thankful beyond measure for Ukraine’s sacrifice, its bravery and commitment to freedom. I wish we could do much, much more. Godspeed, Heroes. Slava Ukraine‼️ 🇺🇦 💙 🇺🇦

NYT: NATO Defense Ministers to Discuss Supplying More Ammunition to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2p9dn2nj Faced with wave after wave of “cannon fodder” Wagner prisoner-recruits and poorly trained “mobiks” with guns at their backs, Ukrainians risk being overwhelmed in Bakhmut

🐣 RT @nexta_tv According to the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS), the ships and submarines of #Russia’s Northern Fleet carry tactical nuclear weapons on board. This is the first time in 30 years.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarekZezulka Nice, nato submarines (UK and US) are carrying them all the time.

🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Starlink Competitor Touts Pentagon Partnership, Blasts Musk
⋙ BloomberlLaw (Oct): Starlink Competitor Touts Pentagon Partnership, Blasts Musk https://tinyurl.com/y5yfsdyy
// 10/19/2022; Bill Gates-funded; Rivals of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications are gaining attention from the Pentagon as Musk draws criticism for Starlink’s Starlink’s unavailability in contested areas like Ukraine

⭕ 13 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @ Reuters Russian forces bombard Ukraine’s Bakhmut in what NATO sees as start of new offensive http://reut.rs/3RStPSJ

r🐣 RT @ JEyal_RUSI Interesting: @SlawomirDebski, @PISM_Poland director, said Orbán’s position on Russia has in effect ended bilateral ties, as well as activities of the Visegrád Four. “Nobody wants to meet the Hungarians anymore.” @VisegradPlus @BalazsOrban_HU
⋙ TheGuardian: Hungary’s staging of the opera War and Peace puts spotlight on its Russia stance https://tinyurl.com/yc38mwdn Budapest “has emerged as the friendliest European Union capital towards Russia since the war broke out last year”
// Patriotic Russian opera opens in Budapest as first anniversary of war in Ukraine approaches

Orbán, who won a fourth consecutive term in office at election last spring, has long thrived on criticism from abroad. He has proudly announced he is building an “illiberal democracy” in contrast with what he views as the degenerate, “woke” west. ¤ However, even some of Orbán’s conservative friends have been alarmed at the Hungarian prime minister’s courting of Russia. Most notably, it has torpedoed the country’s warm relations with Poland. The two countries had previously supported each other over criticism on rule of law issues from Brussels, but now Poland has emerged as a leading supporter of Ukraine.

Sławomir Dębski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw, a thinktank close to the Polish government, said Orbán’s position on Russia has in effect ended bilateral ties, as well as activities of the Visegrád Four, a grouping of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia that holds frequent leader summits and has often been aligned on issues in the past. …

🐣 RT @ NewVoiceUkraine “Just ‘de-putinization’ (of Russia) will certainly not be enough,” said Ohryzko.
⋙ NewVoiceUkraine: Post-war Russia must be disarmed, former Ukrainian FM argues https://tinyurl.com/yckpysec
// Moscow must be made unable to attack its neighbors again in the future, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in 2007-2009 and head of the Russian Research Center, Volodymyr Ohryzko, said in an interview with NV Radio on Feb. 13

🐣 RT @wartranslated Wow, a damning piece by Prigozhyn’s mouthpiece Grey Zone channel, suggests (confidently) that the Vuhledar assault was an attempt by the Rus. MoD to take away some of Wagner’s fame after Soledar. A serious attack on MoD with Wagner promising to “protect its prey”.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1625203163111235585?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated It almost seems that Prigozhyn is dead serious on taking over certain authority (not power (yet)) among the Russian army and the MoD is facing a major challenger in the face of Wagner, especially after catastrophes like in Vuhledar. [Ru link]
⋙⋙ [Comments interesting]

🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba In December 1991, Russia illegally usurped the USSR’s seat in the United Nations Security Council. No legal procedures defined by the UN Charter were upheld. This gave Moscow a feeling of absolute impunity which led to numerous crimes. The UNSC will be better off without Russia.

🐣 RT @haynesdeborah Vital words from #NATO chief @jensstoltenberg that could decide who wins in Ukraine – the side that makes ammo fastest: “It is clear we are in a race of logistics. ¤ “Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative”

🐣 RT @paulmcleary NEW: US concerns over Ukraine using ATAMCS to strike into Russia have subsided, the Pentagon is now telling Kyiv is doesn’t have enough to spare w/ @laraseligman @alexbward
⋙ Politico: U.S. tells Ukraine it won’t send long-range missiles because it has few to spare https://tinyurl.com/d29bmsac
// The Biden administration wants to ensure it has enough ATACMS for the U.S. military.

🚫 🧵RT @EuromaidanPR BREAKING Representatives of five regions of the russian Federation announced the start of preparations for referendums on their independence (!) 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1625104167290167297?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR The leaders of certain regions, namely: the Urals, Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad Region), Ingria (Leningrad Region), Siberia and the Kuban, declared their intention to fight on the side of Ukraine and ask for help from NATO and the EU in secession from the russian Federation. 2.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR Five russian regions will hold referendums on independence https://tinyurl.com/bddjm8kv #UkraineFrontLines
🌎 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1625323225554071554?s=20/photo/1
// hmmmm, interesting psyops

This was reported by “censor.net.” ¤ “We announce the beginning of the process of secession from Moscow and the first referendums of free people who live in Königsberg, Ingria, Siberia, Ural and Kuban, on the sovereignty of our states,” the group members said.

This became known during the “Post-Russia Forum” at the premises of the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday, January 30. Initiative groups emphasize that the time has come for real changes.

“We appeal to our compatriots to take part in referendums and say their firm yes to independent Königsberg, Ingria, Ural, Siberia and Kuban,” they called.

The members of the initiative groups also noted the advantages in the field of economy for each individual region, if it decides to separate from the russian federation. The initiators announced their slogans: “Enough to feed Moscow!”, “Enough to die for the Kremlin!”, “Vote for the Independence of your republic! Choose a happy future for yourself and your children!” They plan to hold a referendum on February 16 on an online platform; the organizers will soon announce about it.

The announcement is made not by the officials from the mentioned regions, but initiative representatives willing to stress attention on the problems people in russia face with now, due to the full-scale war against Ukraine. Any referendum results will have no legislation background and will not come into force the next day. But it is already something, that the ordinary citizens in russia will surely discuss.

NYT: G.O.P. Legislative Agenda Hits Snags Amid Party Divisions https://tinyurl.com/s2j2svcj 🤡 🤡 🤡
// Republicans have pulled back on legislation to crack down on unauthorized immigrants and support law enforcement as internal disputes conspire with a tiny majority to freeze them in place.

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING: substantial win for Willis; but three portions may be released Thursday but won’t include names of those thought to have lied to the special grand jury.
⋙⋙ [CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/2y232fd 8p
⋙ 🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Key: the portions to be released include the introduction/conclusion, as well as a section discussing concern that “some witnesses may have lied under oath… Because the grand jury does not identify those Witnesses, that conclusion may be publicly disclosed at this time.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ If the special grand jury thinks there were witnesses who lied to them, then you can pretty sure that they are going to have recommended prosecution for folks. That makes it pretty clear that they hardly think there were no crimes to see here!

🧵 RT @DionisCenusa #Moldova: The picture of allegedly planned subversive actions by Russia in Moldova becomes clearer. President Sandu revealed the details received from Zelensky last week. The alleged subversive actions could include the following: 1) attacks on state institutions with the⤵️
📌 https://twitter.com/DionisCenusa/status/1625075455379361794?s=20

🐣 RT @AP Moldovan President Maia Sandu has outlined what she described as a plot by Russia to overthrow her country’s government using external saboteurs and derail its aspirations to one day join the European Union.
⋙ AP: Moldova’s President outlines Russian ‘plan’ to topple gov’t https://tinyurl.com/s76snmd9
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — Moldova’s President outlined Monday what she described as a plot by Moscow to use external saboteurs to overthrow her

🐣 RT @nytimes Ukraine’s military on Monday barred aid workers from entering Bakhmut as Russian forces tightened their grip, in what could be a prelude to a Ukrainian withdrawal and the biggest tactical gain for the deeply troubled Russian invasion since July.
⋙ NYT: Ukraine Bars Aid Workers From Bakhmut as Russia Tightens Its Grip https://tinyurl.com/jys75j8u
// With Moscow’s forces closing in, the besieged city is too dangerous for the volunteers, Ukrainian commanders said, in what could be a prelude to a Ukrainian withdrawal.

🚫 WaPo: U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war https://tinyurl.com/4xvkjvps
// appeasement; As first anniversary nears, White House fears flow of arms may be harder to come by

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1320 UTC 13 FEB/ RU continues operations against the M-03/ T-05-13 JCT north of Bakhmut. Repeated claims that RU has captured Krasna Hora are false: UKR forces remain in contact within the urban center. Fighting continues along the H-32 HWY south of Chasiv Yar.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1625121586981347328?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VUHLEDAR AXIS /1345 UTC 13 FEB/ RU forces have advanced north of Grafske and enveloped the UKR salient between the T-05-09 HWY in the west and the O-0531 road in the east. Outflanked, UKR forces in Blahodatne and Volodymvrivka withdrew in an orderly manner.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1625128665087373319?s=20/photo/1

📋 WaPo: Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus https://tinyurl.com/2p8wf23v “Initial data show that at least 500K, and perhaps nearly 1 million, have left … — a tidal wave on scale w emigration following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution & the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991”
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1625031837897695232?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 12 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote DID YOU KNOW: the US & some EU members are paying Elon for Starlink for Ukrainian forces but Elon jammed it so it won’t work for drones saying “this wasn’t meant for war” but then launched “Starshield” last month which is Starlink but “for war”?
⋙ SpaceNews (1/19): With Starshield, SpaceX readies for battle https://tinyurl.com/3t42ke6m
// 1/19/2023; Government-focused ‘secured satellite network’ positions SpaceX to heed the Pentagon’s call for commercial allies

🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the livestream with Oleksiy Arestovych, former Ukraine’s Presidential Head of Office advisor, Day 353, February 11th. Kindly brought to you by Stepan: https://twitter.com/childsacrifice1 ¤ Read thread or visit:
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1624716793183981568?s=20
⋙ 💽 WarTranslated: Day 353, February 11th. Summary of Arestovych and Feygin broadcast https://tinyurl.com/34myhdd9

NYT: Jack Smith, Special Counsel for Trump Inquiries, Steps Up the Pace https://tinyurl.com/uvjzskx7 “The intensified pace of activity speaks to his goal of finishing up before the 2024 campaign gets going in earnest, probably by summer”
// Named less than three months ago to oversee investigations into Donald J. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power and his handling of classified documents, the special counsel is moving aggressively.

The intensified pace of activity speaks to his goal of finishing up before the 2024 campaign gets going in earnest, probably by summer. At the same time, the sheer scale and complexity and the topics he is focused on — and the potential for the legal process to drag on, for example in a likely battle over whether any testimony by Mr. Pence would be subject to executive privilege — suggest that coming to firm conclusions within a matter of months could be a stretch. …

In looking into Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after his election loss and how they led to the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Smith is overseeing a number of investigative strands. The subpoena to Mr. Pence indicates that he is seeking testimony that would go straight to the question of Mr. Trump’s role in trying to prevent certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the election and the steps Mr. Trump took in drawing a crowd of supporters to Washington and inciting them.

His team is sifting through mountains of testimony provided by the House Jan. 6 committee, including focusing on the so-called fake electors scheme in which some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and some campaign officials assembled alternate slates of Trump electors from contested states that he had lost.

More recently his team has been asking witnesses about research the Trump campaign commissioned by an outside vendor shortly after the election that was intended to come up with evidence of election fraud. The existence of that research was reported earlier by The Washington Post. …

In the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information, and whether he obstructed justice when the government sought the return of material he had taken from the White House, investigators are casting a wide net. They appear to be seeking to recreate not only what took place once Mr. Trump had departed the White House with hundreds of sensitive documents, but also how he approached classified material and presidential records long before that, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Smith’s team is seeking interviews with a number of people who worked in the Trump White House and who had familiarity with either how he consumed classified information, or how he dealt with paper that he routinely carted with him in cardboard boxes, during much of the span of his presidency. …

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor and former F.B.I. official, said of the cascade of Trump aides and lawyers becoming drawn into investigations. “It’s just a whirling dust cloud, and everyone who gets near it gets covered in grime.” …

🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava Russians have already launched an offensive in five areas ¤ The occupants have deployed a large number of forces and equipment at the Kupyansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vuhledar directions, but continue to suffer huge losses and have no success,” -Vladyslav Selezniov.

🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Ukraine’s Minister of Finance @SergiiMarchenk3 in the @FT: It’s time to cut Russia out of the global financial system.
⋙ FT: It is time to cut Russia out of the global financial system https://tinyurl.com/y3kv82se
// Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and financing of terrorism makes a mockery of the idea of a ‘rules-based order’

🧵 RT @FreudGreyskull [SoW:] https://tinyurl.com/mpcmzstw #Ukrainian military officials and #Russian pro-war nationalist voices are downplaying Russia’s ability to launch a sweeping large-scale offensive in #Donetsk Oblast in the current circumstances of the Russian Armed Forces. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/FreudGreyskull/status/1624678306552614917?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @FreudGreyskull Russian forces’ reported culmination and tactical failures around #Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast, have likely further weakened the Russian ultranationalist community’s belief that Russian forces are able to launch a decisive military effort.

⭕ 11 Feb 2023

WaPo: After helping prince’s rise, Trump and Kushner benefit from Saudi funds https://tinyurl.com/4pb7y9zp
// An investment fund overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is backing ventures that profit the former president and his senior adviser, raising questions of conflict

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /2120 UTC 11 FEB/ RU continues attempts to cut Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) into Bakhmut. RU has consolidated a salient N of Krasna Hora, threatening the M-03 HWY. UKR air defenses downed a Russian Su-25 strike aircraft.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1624517992884105217?s=20/photo/1

HistoryChannel (2019): Why Have There Been So Many UFO Sightings Near Nuclear Facilities? https://tinyurl.com/453vmm44 “In the last 75 years, high-ranking U.S. military and intelligence personnel have also reported UAPs near sites assc’d w nuclear power, weaponry and technology”
// 6/2023/2019; It started in the 1940s, near A-bomb development sites. More recently, something has been stalking nuclear carrier strike groups.

NYT (1/13/2023): Did Aliens Land on Earth in 1945? A Defense Bill Seeks Answers https://tinyurl.com/4kh9y8tp 1945 was the year when, by one account, “a large, avocado-shaped object” struck a tower in NM known as the “Trinity Site,” where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated”
// The Defense Department’s annual spending bill requires it to review U.F.O. sightings dating to 1945, the year some believe an object from space crashed in the New Mexico desert.

WIRED, Chantel Tattoli (Feb 2022): Jacques Vallée Still Doesn’t Know What UFOs Are https://tinyurl.com/2at4bde2 “Vallée’s papers, entrusted to Rice University, will ultimately include files on some 500 anomalous events that he has personally investigated”
// After six globe-trotting decades spent probing “the phenomenon,” the French information scientist is sure of only one thing: The truth is really, really out there.

🐣 RT @ wartranslated More on the mobiks from 1231 regiment I posted about earlier, addressing the command personally. They’ve been robbed of all equipment and sent to assault a height the locals were unable to take for ages. Several battalions of mobiks before them have already been slaughtered.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1624536177863802881?s=20/photo/1

WaPo, Matt Bai: I should care more about Hunter Biden. Here’s why I don’t. https://tinyurl.com/yc4t4wam 😕

WaPo: Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret https://tinyurl.com/4wapwa6w The researchers found no evidence that Trump had won the election. The results were shared with Trump, Meadows and others prior to the January 6th attack.
// An outside firm’s work was never released publicly after researchers uncovered no evidence that the election had been rigged for Joe Biden

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court.

About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. ¤ … The Trump campaign’s commissioning of its own report to study the then-president’s fraud claims has not been previously reported. …

Senior officials from Berkeley Research Group briefed Trump, then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and others on the findings in a December 2020 conference call, people familiar with the matter said. Meadows showed skepticism of the findings and continued to maintain that Trump won. Trump also continued to say he won the election. The call grew contentious, people with knowledge of the meeting said. …

The findings from Berkeley were among the many streams of information after the election that showed Trump he lost. According to testimony presented to the Jan. 6 committee, Trump was repeatedly told by advisers that he did not win the election but continued to cast about for others who would entertain his theories and say that he had won. Dozens of judges — including many Trump appointees — rejected his campaign’s attempts to challenge election results in court. …

The Berkeley research was done through a subsidiary company called East Bay Dispute and Advisory. Federal Election Commission filings show the Trump campaign paid East Bay Dispute and Advisory more than $600,000 in the final weeks of 2020. A person familiar with the matter said there were also other researchers commissioned to help prove electoral fraud from outside Berkeley Research Group. The payments were described as consulting fees.

The states studied by the analysts over a period of several weeks included Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, according to people familiar with the matter. All but Nevada had been won by Trump in 2016 but flipped to the Democratic nominee four years later.

🐣 RT @ruinwanderer A fuller video of the Russian collapsing offensive at Vuhledar previously advertised as a big winter offensive. There’s quite a bit of movement back and forth with people running not knowing what to do.
💽 https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1624610924509253632?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 10 Feb 2023

Politico: Biden prepares largest Pentagon budget in history as spending cuts loom https://tinyurl.com/bdc7hzcr ‘ … reflecting efforts to simultaneously counter the threat from Russia, keep pace with China’s growing technological advantage, modernize aging arsenals and fight inflation’
// Lawmakers have threatened defense cuts in larger battle over the debt ceiling.

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Aaaand..its Friday Midnight Meltdown from Citrus Caligula.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1624271420577689601?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] @realDonaldTrump [ts] Will Trump Hating Prosecutor Jack Smith be investigating the FACT that they SPIED on my campaign, even as I was in the Oval Office, they Stuffed the Ballot Boxes (per 2000 Mules), used Covid to cheat, that the FBI pushed Twitter & Facebook around, causing massive voter disruption, and so much more? That’s really what he should be looking at, not asking a very decent Mike Pence why he didn’t send the votes back to State Legislatures for scrutinization, which he could have done. Get the RIGGERS!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1910 UTC 10 FEB/ UKR forces report breaking up a desultory RU assault on the O-0528 HWY axis at Dibrova. RU maintains a strong presence in the area; despite the apparent lull, it’s assessed RU is capable of large-scale maneuver operations from Kreminna on short notice.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1624120227666460693?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1720 UTC 10 FEB/ Cutting UKR Lines of Communication & Supply (LOCS) remain a RU priority. RU has advanced North of Krasna Hora, threatening the M-03 HWY. UKR missiles, artillery and strike aviation targeted RU troop concentrations & HQ elements in heavy fighting.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1624093813609316352?s=20/photo/1

Politico [EU]: Moldova’s pro-EU government falls after months of pressure from Russia https://tinyurl.com/mvnu6aw3 “Moldova has found itself precariously close to the war, and has been keen to strike a balancing act as it seeks to protect itself militarily without provoking Moscow”
// Moldova was granted EU candidate status last June, but has faced intense pressure from Moscow.

🐣 RT @flash_news_ua ⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi: “Several russian missiles passed through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. These missiles are a challenge to NATO, collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped. The world must stop it.
💽 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1624024302323367942?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 I agree it’s a challenge to NATO, but Moldova is not part of NATO. My guess is the US will want to not over-react but make clear we expect the government in Moldova to proceed with selecting a new PM without outside interference.. No little green men, no pressure from Russia
⋙ 🐣 RT @flash_news_ua [Ze:] I thank everyone who understands this. Thanks to everyone who helps. And of course, I thank our Air Force, all our anti-aircraft fighters, everyone who protects Ukraine and our people.”

🐣 RT @thehoff102 I don’t like the sound of this. The Kremlin and its proxies in Moldova have been trying to bring down the pro-Ukrainian pro-European and pro-Western Moldovan Government led by their President Maia Sandu over the last year.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @GreenSquareAC The Prime Minister of Moldova, Natalia Gavriliță, has just announced she is resigning, and it looks like the entire government in Chisinau will also resign.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @GreenSquareAC “Moldova is expected with open arms inside the EU — Moldova has friends — but if the government had had the same support at home, we would have progressed more and faster,” Gavrilita told reporters in Chisinau.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @GreenSquareAC A new government will be nominated by President, Maia Sandu, and then needs to be approved by Moldova’s parliament.

🐣 RT @EUwatchers Day 351: highlights from Zelenskyi’s addresses to European Parliament, European Council in Brussels https://uacrisis.org/en/day-351 source/editor : Дмитро Васильєв
⋙ UACrisis: Day 351: highlights from Zelenskyi’s addresses to European Parliament, European Council in Brussels Оригінал статті – на сайті Українського кризового медіа-центру: https://uacrisis.org/en/day-351

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi made a trip to Brussels on Thursday, February 9, a day after he made a surprise visit to the UK and France. In Brussels, Zelenskyi delivered a speech to the European Parliament and later addressed the 27 EU leaders gathered for a summit.

The European Council is meeting for a summit in Brussels on February 9-10 to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine, EU support for Ukraine, and results of last week’s EU-Ukraine summit. Here are the highlights from President Zelenskyi’s addresses to the European Parliament and the European Council.

“Ukrainian European way of life”

During an address to EU lawmakers, President Zelenskyi said: “All of us, Europeans, each and every one of the hundreds of millions of people on our continent, combine these two statuses — representatives of Europe and leaders of Europe. This combination reflects what our Europe, a modern Europe, a peaceful Europe, gives to the world. European way of life. European path of life. European manner of life. European rules of life.”

“When everyone matters. When the law rules.”

“When states strive to be social and societies strive to be open. When diversity is a value and the values of the different are united by fair equality.”

“When borders are inviolable, but one does not feel them as they cross them.”

“When people believe in tomorrow and are willing to take to the streets to fight for their tomorrow. When there is only one single barrier between the president and the protesters, and that is fair elections.”

“This is our Europe. These are our rules. This is our way of life. And for Ukraine, it’s a way home, a way to its home.”

“Now I am here in order to defend our people’s way home. All Ukrainian men and Ukrainian women, [people] of different ages, political beliefs, social classes, religious views, personal history, who share European history with all of you.”

“There is an attempt to destroy the Ukrainian European way of life by an all-out war. But what for?”

“In order to fully destroy the European way after the Ukrainian European way of life is destroyed, [destroy it] for each of the 27 elements of the European way of life — the 27 countries of the European Union. We will not allow that to happen.”

“We defend ourselves against the most anti-European force in modern world.”

“This total war that has been unleashed by Russia is not just about territory in one part of Europe or another,” President Zelenskyi said as he addressed the European Parliament.

“Its threat is not only in the fact that there is a dictator with huge stockpiles of Soviet-made weapons and weapons supplies from other dictatorships, in particular the Iranian regime. In order to be able to wage this war, the Kremlin has been consistently destroying, step by step, year after year, what we see as the basis of our Europe.”

“The sacred value of human life has been completely destroyed in Russia as well. No one matters to the authorities there, except for those inside the Kremlin walls, their relatives and their wallets. For them, for the Kremlin, all others, all 140 million citizens are just bodies capable of carrying weapons — carrying weapons to Ukraine and on the battlefield, keeping others obedient or being obedient themselves.”

“The rule of violence and obedience are the rules there instead of the rule of law.”

“The Russian regime not only hates everything, any sociality and diversity, but also deliberately stirs xenophobia and tries to make all the inhuman things that happened in the 1930s and 1940s part of the norm on our continent.”

“But will it last forever? This is a question for all of us. The answer is no! No! Europe! We are defending ourselves against the most anti-European force in the modern world. We are defending ourselves. We, Ukrainians, are on the battlefield with you.” …

President Zelenskyi called on EU leaders to “enhance the dynamic of our cooperation and act faster than the aggressor can mobilize its potential.” He thanked them for the “sanctions packages that are already in force.”

“But have they sufficiently limited Russia’s aggressive potential? This is a path that needs to be completed,” he added.

“We need to add security to our freedom and unity. (…) The European Union is already on the way toward the security. Fundamental steps have already been taken, but we have to go all the way through. We must enhance the dynamic of our cooperation and act faster than the aggressor can mobilize its potential.”

“Security interaction [between the EU] and Ukraine created a historical precedent for any aggressor, and set an example of why one should not start aggression against Europeans. Russian aggression must inevitably fail,” Zelenskyi said.

“The sooner freedom and European values are restored in all of Ukraine, including the parts that are now occupied, the more solid and lasting will be the peace in all of Europe,” he said.

Zelenskyi called for a special tribunal to prosecute Russia for its crime of aggression against Ukraine. “There must be a compensation mechanism for all the damage caused by Russian terror,” he said.

“These are all part of the peace formula. Ukraine has never sought this or any other war. Ukraine has never provoked it and has always tried to maintain peace,” Zelenskyi said. …

⭕ 9 Feb 2023

NYT, Bret Stephens: How to Destroy (What’s Left of) the Mainstream Media’s Credibility https://tinyurl.com/ms43nced “Our job is to collect and present relevant facts and good evidence. … The only place where nonobjective truth can play a valuable role … is in the Opinion section”

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: The Republican clown-car caucus is undermining itself https://tinyurl.com/2p98xrvj “Right now, we have one center-left political party — the Democrats — and one flaming hot mess of ego, resentment and paranoia. It’s going to be a long two years”

💙 🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukraine TVD, 1-7 FEB 23. The first week of February saw the Russian Winter Offensive move into full swing as major pushes were made in Kreminna, Bakhmut, and Vuhledar. The Russians made some gains but Ukrainian defenses held. #UkraineRussiaWar #RussianArmy #UkraineFrontLines
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1623857574679392257?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @TristanSnell BREAKING: Putin plans to destroy nation of Moldova. ¤ Ukraine intercepted the Russian plans and handed them over to their western neighbor Moldova. ¤ Putin’s plan for 2023 is clearly to expand his war of aggression, surrounding Ukraine on another front. ¤ Moldova must be defended.

🐣 RT @RonaldKlain He’s not wrong.
⋙ 🐣 RT @seungminkim Yowza — McConnell, to KY radio guy Terry Meiners, absolutely knifes Rick Scott on his 12-point plan: ¤ “This is a bad idea. I think it will be a challenge for him to deal with this in his own reelection in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any other state in America.”
¤ https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1623842177750118400?s=20

🐣 RT @ABC EXCLUSIVE: Former Vice Pres. Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former Pres. Trump, according to multiple sources.
⋙ ABC: Mike Pence subpoenaed by special counsel overseeing Trump probes: Sources https://tinyurl.com/2tsvdp84
// It follows months of negotiations between prosecutors and Pence’s legal team.

WaPo: SpaceX questions Ukraine’s use of Starlink for war https://tinyurl.com/e6sbxwk4 “Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Kyiv was not worried” ⇊ ⇊
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1623811566641594369?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Kyiv was not worried. “If you believe that we use only Starlink, and because of this we don’t have any other options of use for this or that weapon — this does not correspond to reality at all,” Danilov told The Washington Post. “Let’s not rush to conclusions. We need to clarify to what extent this will be an influence, or not be an influence. Maybe we need to change the means of attack in one sector or another.”

🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald Ukraine has been using Starlink for drones for nearly a year, and SpaceX suddenly decides it’s against the rules just as the long-expected big new Russian offensive starts? This effectively means the company is aiding fascist Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @julianborger Fury in Ukraine as Elon Musk’s SpaceX limits Starlink use for drones Report by @dansabbagh ¤ The decision partially blinds Ukrainian forces just as they face new Russian offensives in the East and South.
⋙⋙ TheGuardian: Fury in Ukraine as Elon Musk’s SpaceX limits Starlink use for drones https://tinyurl.com/37n8uxyn

🐣 RT @RepDanGoldman In 2020, Sens Grassley and Johnson funneled through their committees Russian disinformation provided to them and Rudy Giuliani by a Russian intelligence agent in order to damage candidate Joe Biden. ¤ It was a gross abuse of power and a “weaponization of the federal government.”

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin believes that with Wagner terminating recruitment, its days are basically numbered. But given the state of the Russian armed forces, there will be no one to replace the death battalions who were the only ones to achieve any success in recent months.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1623635097680244736?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] With regard to the statement by E. Prigozhin on the termination of the recruitment of prisoners in the Wagner PMC. – I believe that the termination of the recruitment was caused by the “order from above”. And (after some time) it will seriously affect the Wagner’s ability to successfully assault one position after another head-on, as is happening now near Bakhmut.

Simply due lacking the resources for replenishment of large losses in the infantry. I refrain from evaluating the expediency and correctness of such a measure, since it is a “double-edged sword.”

The only thing I will repeat for the hundredth time is that the “death battalions” cannot win the war in the absence of normal military discipline and order in the rest of the active army. And the active army (judging by the numerous video messages to the president from the “mobiks”) – everything remains in the same “amazing” state (in terms of supply, armament, provision of basic food and uniforms, etc.) and demonstrates the same signs of decay that our media and “cheerleaders” “relish” when discussing the problems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2140 UTC 9 FEB/ RU artillery resumes fire missions against the urban area of Kreminna– confirming UKR presence in the city. RU forces carried out attacks at Shypylivka and Zolotarivka. This may indicate the opening of a new RU axis of advance based in Lysychansk.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1623797589215772672?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2100 UTC 9 FEB/ RU forces have registered important gains in the Bakhmut Area of Operations (AO). North of the city, RU forces threaten the M-03 HWY. South of Bakhmut, RU units are in contact across the H-32 west and east of the rail right of way at Chasiv Yar.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1623788525626720256?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Chuck, you thought Ukr would retreat to Chasiv Yar and take up defensive positions there. Does this mean it’s too late for that?

🐣 RT @petestrzok Starlink – now paid for in Ukraine by US/NATO – just reduced capability, helping Russia. ¤ “There are things that we can do to limit [Ukraine’s] ability to do that,” referring to Starlink’s use with drones. “There are things that we can do, and have done.”
⋙ Reuters: http://reut.rs/

Harvard (4/13/2021): The Effect of Spanking on the Brain https://tinyurl.com/b6n6ph36
// Spanking found to impact children’s brain response, leading to lasting consequences

🐣 RT @mhmck By constant and fruitless assaults on Vuhledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, the 155th Marine Brigade of the Russian fascist invaders is being wiped out. ¤ Losses – especially of personnel – of this “elite” Russian unit are catastrophic.

🐣 RT @LeaderMcConnell Russia’s brutal aggression has brought @NATO even closer together. Our allies are deepening their commitments to collective defense. Glad to meet with Secretary General @jensstoltenberg today and discuss the future of the strongest military alliance the world has ever known.

NYT (2017): In Targeting Political Groups, I.R.S. Crossed Party Lines https://tinyurl.com/yc7wspxy An exhaustive Treasury Dept Inspector General Report found that the IRS also targeted left-wing groups (words like “Progressive,” “Occupy,” “Green Energy,” & “ACORN”) #weaponization
// 10/5/2017

WaPo, Philip Bump (12/5): No, limiting the Hunter Biden laptop story didn’t cost Trump the election https://tinyurl.com/2p83cj2y The MRC poll cited was “a push poll of the rankest sort,” like telling people their candidate “was an alien from the planet Toxicus” #weaponization
// 12/5/2022

🧵 RT @atrupar I’m going to follow the House Republican hearing on “weaponization” of the government. Thread starts here.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1623739261227790336?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: U.S. declassifies balloon intelligence, calls out China for spying https://tinyurl.com/ye294tsj The State Department revealed what it’s calling “a sophisticated effort to surveil ‘more than 40 countries across 5 continents’”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer VICTORY at VUHLEDAR /1532 UTC 9 FEB/ UKR forces broke up a Russian company-sized armor & mech. infantry attack on Vuhledar. More than 31 RU vehicles were damaged, destroyed or abandoned in a failed attack across the T-05-09 HWY. RU KIAs estimated at 400 plus scores wounded.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1623702105172152321?s=20/photo/1

CNBC: Russian forces are closing in on the strategic city of Bakhmut, giving Ukraine a tough choice to make https://tinyurl.com/bddex8pe “The Russians are desperate to advance ahead of the one year anniversary of this aggression” ~ Yuriy Sak, advisor to Ukraine’s defense ministry

⭕ 8 Feb 2023

Politico: House Republicans’ wanted list: Hunter Biden, big tech and the FBI https://tinyurl.com/msdm8cxd Hunter Biden, Twitter and the FBI: 1. House Republicans: 0.
// Republicans’ Wednesday Twitter hearing was a who’s who of the party’s major targets.

WaPo, Paul Waldman: Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s strange ‘woke’ rant reveals a big GOP problem https://tinyurl.com/bdh3pc5m The GOP “can demagogue an issue brilliantly, but they can’t persuade the middle to support their policies”

🐣 RT @UkrainianNews24 Ukraine is preparing for a large-scale Russian offensive in Donbas . Moscow has concentrated hundreds of thousands of troops in the east of the country, using tactics of brute force and numerical superiority, trying to destroy the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 8, 2023 https://tinyurl.com/yckryztu

🧵 RT @anneapplebaum Do people who think the Russian war in Ukraine should be ended for “humanitarian” reasons not understand what is happening in Russian-occupied Ukraine? They haven’t read about the torture chambers? The mass murders? Deportation of thousands of children?
📌 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1623432463753134080?s=20

There may be less bombardment of occupied Kherson or Donetsk provinces at the moment, but an even uglier, bloodier and more terrifying humanitarian crisis is unfolding there. You want to make that crisis permanent? You want more people to die?

You say you want to stop the suffering in Ukraine. Do you have any idea what kind of suffering would follow a Ukrainian capitulation? Or even a decision to hand over more Ukrainian territory?

Also, what makes you think Putin has given up on his original plan to occupy Ukraine, kill Zelensky, carry out genocide and install a puppet government? How is your negotiation going to persuade him to give up that imperialist dream? What’s your plan?

🧵 RT @WarintheFuture There is so much to learn from the war in #Ukraine. But, as we approach 1 year since the Russian invasion, we should also be thinking about how our potential adversaries might learn from the conflict. 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1623436354284843008?s=20

WaPo: At combative hearing, GOP fans allegations of collusion by government, Big Tech https://tinyurl.com/2s372bz3 “Twitter hearing ends with no testimony that FBI tried to influence Twitter’s decision on the Hunter Biden laptop”

🐣 RT @NOELreports In #Bakhmut the situation is precarious. The M03 to Slovyansk is operationally cut. RU troops are in the vicinity of the highway. UA does fight back. The aim is to encircle UA troops in Paraskoviivka and Krasna Hora. In the latter, some positions have reportedly been abandoned.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1623432479595167745?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko
Democrats: we need to protect social security and Medicare
Republicans: we need to see the president’s son’s dick

🐣 RT @RVAwonk AOC, as usual is on fire: ¤ “Political operatives [are] weaponizing the use of this committee… A whole hearing about a 24-hour hiccup in a right-wing political operation. That is why we are here right now. It’s an abuse of public resources and an abuse of public time.”

🐣 RT @JDLuckenbach Keep an eye on Daniel Goldman. He’s going to be an absolute star. ¤ This guy will not let Republicans lies go unchallenged.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Rep. Goldman schools Comer on facts in the Hunter Biden story that the New York Post got wrong
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1623364616213483520?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Goldman: “So far we’ve seen no actual evidence of any lies or any support for Joe Biden being involved in anything having to do with Ukraine other than promoting US foreign policy.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1623365159447142400?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @atrupar House Republicans are unveiling their inflation plan this morning
⋙ caption: “OVERSIGHT HEARING ON HUNTER BIDEN CENSORSHIP”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1623337349097697281?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Goldman: “Let’s run down what Twitter know about this hard drive and this story when it was published. First, the sole source of the hard drive was Rudy Giuliani, who had been working closely with Russian intelligence agents throughout 2020.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1623408363999485952?s=20/photo/1
↥
🐣 RT @tooronlists The Republican Party can’t cut taxes for the rich any more than they already have, soooooooooo, they got nothin’. ¤ But alas Caesar, the people must be entertained!! Send in the clowns!, Que the M&M battle!, Release the pronouns!, Fire the Conspiracy cannon!! Are you not amused!

USAToday, Rex Huppke: Dark Brandon’ shows up at State of the Union, mops the floor with lost Republicans https://tinyurl.com/y6s6hvk8 “[T]hey ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff”
// Biden went off script regularly, parrying GOP lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.

President Joe Biden, at the ripe age of 80, came out with ample vim and vigor in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address and proceeded to mop the House floor with the howling, discombobulated remains of the Republican Party.

Preaching populism and leaning hard on his noted skill as the empathizer-in-chief, Biden bounded through a speech that acknowledged the nation’s struggles while remaining unerringly optimistic. He went off script regularly, parrying Republican lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the whole party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.

I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech – they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff.

⭕ 7 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL Whoa. It’s not often you see an 80 year old man giving a public beat down to 222 grown adults, but my word. What a night.

🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger Joe Biden sparring with the crowd and winning wasn’t something I expected.

🐣 RT @POTUS Nearly 25% of our country’s debt was added under my predecessor. ¤ How did Congress respond? They lifted the debt ceiling three times. They paid America’s bills. Tonight, I’m asking this Congress to follow suit. ¤ The full faith and credit of America will never be questioned.

🐣 📋 RT @WhiteHouse In the last two years, President Biden cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion. ¤ This is the largest deficit reduction in American history.

🐣 RT @ KeithOlbermann Hi, Professional Cynic Here, the President just gave the best State of the Union speech I’ve ever heard.

🐣 RT @djrothkopf To anyone who thinks Joe Biden should not run for re-election listen to this speech. Listen again. He is the best candidate either party can muster. He has the best record of any president’s first two years in modern memory. And he’s very good at making the case for his agenda.

🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 That was one of the best speeches President Biden has given. He called out Republicans. He made his accomplishments clear. He spoke directly to the American people. And he offered bold policies that would help American families. That was a true State of the Union speech. Amazing.

Politico: Why Biden’s Speech Worked https://tinyurl.com/282hafxf
// He had a clear political message, and his populist outrage sounded genuine

🐣 RT @ TVietor08 Really strong speech from Biden. Love the contrast of his (mostly) unifying message vs the ranting extremist idiot faction. The WH must be so happy about the heckling and energy it brought.

🐣 RT @RepRaskin What a brilliant, refreshing speech that revives true American populism—progressive democratic populism, not right-wing authoritarian fake-populism. Biden sounds Rooseveltian and is taking American politics by storm.

WaPo: Biden, in State of the Union, mixes bipartisanship with defiance https://tinyurl.com/2p8cxm8w
// Speech is marked by unusual back-and-forth between president and Republican lawmakers

🐣 RT @sbg1 Biden made perhaps the best speech of his presidency. The heckling from Republicans only helped make his points

🐣 RT @POTUS Done. And we’re set to decrease it by another $250 billion over the next decade.
⋙ 🐣 RT @POTUS By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half what it was before I took office. ¤ I’m the only president ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.

🐣 RT @ MuellerSheWrote Brilliant bit of unanimity as Biden forces republicans to pledge to take Social Security and Medicare cuts off the table. Absolutely perfectly handled. #sotu2023

🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL I’m not sure anyone expected Biden to so quickly and ably put Republicans on the ropes and then just keep swinging, all with a smile on his face. ¤ This is a very good speech and a very good look for the President.

🐣 RT @KamauMandela We have a President who understands where we are, accomplishing & working to get major things done for ALL Americans while doing it with class. ¤ Tonight’s #SOTU speech was a homerun. Forever proud to be Team 46. It’s more work ahead. Well done, @POTUS! ¤ Let’s finish the job!🇺🇸

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS/2315 UTC 7 FEB/ RU resumed artillery fire missions against targets in Kreminna– confirming a UKR lodgment in the city. Sources report that UKR troops are engaged with RU units in central Kreminna along Kuybyshev St and south of School No 4 in the city center.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1623097040908566528?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2250 UTC 7 FEB/ Heavy fighting ongoing in the Bakhmut Area of Operations (AO). RU’s aim is to cut UKR supply lines & seize road junctions to dimmish UKR maneuver options. RU forces, including airborne units, attempt to cut the the M-03 / T-05-13 HWY junction.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1623089460593164288?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @JosepBorrellF Information oils the engine of democracy. ¤ Russia is using information manipulation & interference as a crucial instrument in its war of aggression against Ukraine ¤ We have plenty of evidence – over 15.000 cases collected and published by @EUvsDisinfo, to expose & raise awareness

⭕ 6 Feb 2023

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Prosecutors must carefully select which charges, if any, to bring against Trump https://tinyurl.com/yc3bvt6s “[T]he public’s desire for Trump to be held accountable is not sufficient reason to file every possible criminal case against him” [‼️]

🧵 ISW: #Ukrainian officials assess that #Russian forces are preparing to launch a large-scale decisive offensive in eastern Ukraine in mid to late February. https://isw.pub/UkrWar020623
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1622803359739809793?s=20/photo/1 -4
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/29az9ed5

2/ Key takeaways for February 6, 2023: Select Russian nationalist voices continued to express skepticism towards #Russia’s ability to launch a successful offensive in #Ukraine past late February.

3/ German Chancellor Olaf Scholz undermined Russian President Vladimir #Putin’s false narrative that the provision of German tanks to #Ukraine threatens Russian security.

4/ Kremlin-appointed Russian and occupation officials continue to implement social benefit schemes that target children and teenagers in occupied areas of #Ukraine to consolidate social control and integration of these territories into #Russia.

5/ Kremlin-appointed Russian and occupation officials continue to implement social benefit schemes that target children and teenagers in occupied areas of Ukraine to consolidate social control and integration of these territories into Russia.

6/ Russian Commissioner on Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova (appointed by #Putin) is likely working directly on Putin’s orders to institute several social institutions and programs in occupied areas of #Ukraine to collect personal data on children…

7/ …carry out various social programming functions aimed at integrating occupied areas using pseudo-humanitarian organizations, and set conditions to legitimize and institutionalize the deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families.

8/ Russian President Vladimir #Putin continues to open the door for further institutionalized corruption in Russia through legislative manipulations.

9/ The Kremlin continues to deny Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin legitimacy and authority in #Russia. Prigozhin’s appeal in the Russian nationalist information space may also be declining as he continues to overcompensate for the culmination of Wagner’s attack around Bakhmut.

10/ Failures of Western sanctions efforts against the provision of arms components to Iran have likely contributed to #Russia’s ability to bypass Western sanctions to acquire components for combat drones through military cooperation with #Iran.

NYT: Russian Attacks Intensify in Eastern Ukraine Ahead of Expected Offensive https://tinyurl.com/35tp8k8m “Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov … , said that Moscow was determined to break through Ukraine’s defensive lines before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion”
// Russia is deploying hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers, in small groups, to probe for vulnerabilities in Ukrainian defensive lines.

💙 NYT: Outnumbered and Worn Out, Ukrainians in East Brace for Russian Assault https://tinyurl.com/mw3248z4 If you read anything, read this: gifted article
// The war is intensifying in a string of villages on the eastern front, where doctors struggle to handle an influx of gruesome injuries and soldiers fret about a Russian army sending waves of new conscripts.

🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Recently there has been more speculation about the timing & size of 2023 Russian offensives in #Ukraine. That the Russians will attempt them is almost a given. Russia has been assembling the pieces of their 2023 offensives since late last year. 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1622748080482418688?s=20

🐣 RT @dpatrikarakos I embedded with UA Special Forces fighting in Bakhmut. This is the story of life & death on the frontlines of the war’s most intense battle. In it, you see both the determination of #Ukraine 🇺🇦 & the cost of #Russia|n🇷🇺 imperialism. My latest for Unherd.
⋙ Unherd, David Patrikarakos: The madness behind the battle for Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/yssmwew9
// Russian troops are dying in their thousands here

📊 WaPo, Aaron Blake: GOP’s ‘weaponization’ committee viewed as more suspect than its targets https://tinyurl.com/2p8uak2k polls, polls, polls

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /2310 UTC 6 FEB/ RU forces resumed serial offensives & armed reconnaissance across the P-66 HWY. RU artillery fire missions are plotted inside central Kreminna– confirming that UKR forces have maintained contact within the urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1622731212899991552?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1405 UTC 6 FEB/ UKR reports ‘complete lack of coordination’ between Wagner PMC & RU forces in the Bakhmut Area of Operations. UKR forces were again in contact S of the H-32 HWY at Ivanivske. UKR Gen’l Staff reports 9 aviation strike missions on RU troops & HQ elements.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1622595573730709512?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 5 Feb 2023

RT @tribelaw “The Koch network joins the Club for Growth and several of the party’s biggest individual donors, such as finance billionaires Kenneth C. Griffin and Stephen A. Schwartzman in signaling their opposition to Trump’s current campaign.” The balloon’s bursting
⋙ WaPo: Koch network to back alternative to Trump after sitting out recent primaries https://tinyurl.com/mrxr6ya9
// The return of one of the biggest spenders in American politics to the presidential primary field poses a direct challenge to the former president’s comeback bid

NYT: Taking Aim at Trump, Koch Network Will Back G.O.P. Primary Candidates https://tinyurl.com/35r2af3j “The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter” ~ letter from Americans For Prosperity (AFP) to donors
// The move by the alliance of conservative donors could provide an enormous boost to a Republican alternative to the former president.
⋙ Letter to AFP donors: https://tinyurl.com/b25rm9sc

🐣 RT @ademyarslan White House says stands ready to provide “any and all” needed assistance following the massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ademyarslan/status/1622460889566793735?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] TheWhiteHouse: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 5, 2023 Statement from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the
Earthquake in Turkiye and Syria
The United States is profoundly concerned by the reports of today’s destructive earthquake in Turkiye and Syria. We stand ready to provide any and all needed assistance. President Biden has directed USAID and other federal government partners to assess U.S. response options to help those most affected. We will continue to closely monitor the situation in coordination with the Government of Türkiye.

🐣 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Prigozhin says Ukraine is not withdrawing from Bakhmut, and won’t: “Fierce battles are going on for every street, every house, every stairwell…The Ukrainian Armed Forces are not retreating anywhere. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are fighting to the last man.”

😅 RT @EdKrassen Republicans: “Trump would have shot down a Chinese spy balloon. ¤ Pentagon: “It happened three times under Trump and he didn’t shoot it down.” ¤ Republicans: “Hunter Biden!”

⭕ 4 Feb 2023

DefenseOne: Key Republicans Launch Two-Part Plan to Pressure Biden on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yncypt3x
// Sen Roger Wicker, Rep Mike Rogers; National security committee leaders in Congress are waging a public campaign to signal they support sending more advanced weapons to Ukraine–and faster than Biden is allowing

Republicans have launched a two-front campaign to pressure the Biden administration in the coming months into sending more advanced weapons to Ukraine, including some the president has so far been reluctant to provide. But the conservatives’ push comes with the expectation of more and faster progress by Ukraine, as polls indicate declining support for the effort to arm Ukraine, particularly among Republicans. 

The first part of the dual campaign is to conduct closed-door classified information gatherings in Congress, like the recent classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing that included Celeste Wallander, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and William LaPlante, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, according to two people with direct knowledge of current discussions within Republican leadership. 

The second part is a public-facing campaign to call on President Joe Biden to provide things like Grey Eagle drones, and the long-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which would help Ukraine strike at the Russian artillery batteries continuously lobbing missiles at Ukrainian forces. Kyiv has been requesting ATACMS since the start of the war, but the requests have grown louder as the United States approved other pieces of equipment it previously resisted, such as M-1 Abrams tanks.

The public portion of the Republicans’ campaign could take a variety of forms. Virtually every Armed Services Committee hearing in the House and Senate provides opportunity for comment, the two individuals said. Lawmakers could also speak on the issue during floor speeches and media engagements. …

🐣 RT @krassenstein GOP this morning: How dare Biden not shoot the Chinese Spy Ballon down. ¤ GOP at 2PM: How dare Biden wait so long to shoot balloon down. ¤ Pentagon: We tracked the balloon, jammed it’s signal & gathered data on it, before shooting it down over the Atlantic. ¤ GOP Now: Silence

🧵 RT @ CanadianKobzar Fellas! Stay awhile and listen! Today I present a Two cautionary tales from Ukrainian history. Two divided eras of Ukrainian history following the collapse of golden ages – The fragmentation of Rus in the 12th century and the Ruin of the 17th. 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1621972437620359168?s=20

🐣 RT @jimsciutto Notable: US officials say they were able to block the balloon from gathering intel during its overflight of the US, while the US military was able to turn the tables, so to speak, to gather intel on the balloon itself and its equipment.

🐣 my guess is they waited to shoot the balloon down over water, not because someone on the ground might get hurt (mostly was over unpop. areas), but in the hope of recovering the technology intact ~ as opposed to a hard landing; plus, easier to locate

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1310 UTC 4 FEB/ RU forces continue offensive operations against Krasna Hora. UKR has maintained a disruptive lodgment near Klischiivka. UKR missiles, artillery and strike aviation targeted RU troop concentrations and HQ elements in heavy fighting.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1621856267605000195?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1245 UTC 4 FEB/ RU continues determined offensive efforts in the Kreminna Area of Operations (AO). During the period 3-4 FEB, RU forces resumed serial offensives & armed reconnaissance across the P-66 HWY. UKR artillery and air strikes hit RU troops.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1621849727607111683?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @tomiahonen Here is latest daily count of cumulative Russian losses in their disastrous year-long invasion war into Ukraine, via the excellent Kyiv Independent RT @KyivIndependent ¤ That number of dead Russian soldiers inside one year, 130,000… is STAGGERING ¤ Let’s do a bit of math […]
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1621816826354192384?s=20
⋙🐣 RT @tomiahonen In WW1, your chance to die was 4% per year ¤ In WW2, it was 3% per year ¤ For Soviet soldier, 8% died per year in WW2. That was worst casualty rate of any army of WW2 ¤ In Ukraine, for Russian soldiers it is EIGHT TIMES DEADLIER than WW2 = 68% death rate! ¤ This is sheer madness!
// numbers appear to exclude newly mobilized

🐣 📊 RT @jburnmurdoch German public opinion on allowing its tanks to be sent to Ukraine is striking: ¤ 75% of Green voters back sending tanks, vs just 6% of AfD. ¤ Really shows how the Greens have embraced pragmatism (see also agreeing to keep nuclear pants open), while AfD captured by pro-Russian nuts.
◕ https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1621807289970704384?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NAChristakis Here, @billmaher @RealTimers rightly sees the Maoist elements of many denunciation cases in the arts and academia. This idea that humans can simply negate reality, with words, is an old one — and well understood for its limits if not falsity.
⋙ 🐣 RT @billmaher If you’re part of today’s woke revolution, you need to study the part of revolutions where they spin out of control.
💽 https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1621850269725196288?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @olex_scherba Nice. Ukraine’s security service hacked a zoom-call between moscow and the quislings in Ukraine. And officially notified the latter that they’re charged with treason. ¤ And then let them listen to ukraine 🇺🇦 anthem. ¤ #StandWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1621803146501554176?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NikaMelkozerova This is mind-blowing. Chechens fighting for Russia after Grozny, after everything… Buryats dying for Russia while their native culture is almost destroyed.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Kadyrov’s detachments do not allow Buryats to retreat from the battlefield, urging them to stand with shovels against tanks. ¤ True comradery.
💽 https://twitter.com/NikaMelkozerova/status/1621826267434696706?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @olex_sherba All you need to do is convince people that freedom doesn’t exist. That it’s a western ploy to conquer others. Also, liberate them from the “chimera of conscience”… ¤ Someone did terrible things to them when they were weak. Now they’re strong – and entitled to do it to others.

⭕ 3 Feb 2023

OCCRP: Kremlin-Linked Group Arranged Payments to European Politicians to Support Russia’s Annexation of Crimea https://tinyurl.com/2p86vyz6
// For years, a secret organization run from inside Russia’s parliament successfully interfered with European policies on occupied Ukraine. Leaked emails give a new overview of the operation and show how European Union politicians who helped push Moscow’s agenda were offered cash and perks.

● Leaked emails show how a Duma insider built a network of analysts, journalists, and others who helped him push the Kremlin’s interests abroad.

● His group offered cash to European politicians to propose pro-Russian motions in their local legislatures, and paid far-right activists to publish pro-Kremlin articles in European media outlets.

● The network arranged trips to occupied Crimea for European politicians and businessmen, with travel and accommodation covered by Russian state-funded organizations and honoraria apparently offered to some individuals.

● It also helped bring European political figures to Russia to act as election observers, with a 68,000-euro budget allocated to the project.

EuromaidanPress: US announces $2.175 bn worth aid for Ukraine, confirms it includes longer-range rockets https://tinyurl.com/7298vfbj ‘The ground-launched, bomb-tipped rocket Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) will double Ukraine’s strike range to 150km’
// Defense budget

The US has announced two new military aid packages for Ukraine worth $2.175 billion in total.

“Pursuant to a delegation of authority from the President, I am authorizing our 31st drawdown of US arms and equipment for Ukraine since August 2021, valued at $425 million. In addition, the US Department of Defense will be committing another $1.75 billion in support for Ukraine under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to help strengthen Ukraine’s military,” US State Secretary Antony Blinken’s press statement reads.

According to the statement, the packages include “critical air defense and counter-drone capabilities,” armored infantry vehicles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, artillery ammunition, and “conventional and long-range rockets for US-provided HIMARS.” Brigadier General Patrick Ryder also told a news briefing at the Pentagon that the packages also include counter artillery and air surveillance radars, communications equipment, PUMA drones, and medical supplies.

According to The Independent, the air defense equipment included in the package are the HAWK air defense firing units.

Reuters adds that Gen. Ryder told that a new rocket included in the US military aid package is the ground-launched, bomb-tipped rocket Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB). These rockets would double Ukraine’s strike range as the GLSDB’s range is 151 km against the 77 km range of standard HIMARS rockets.

🐣 RT @gtconway3dg [“ghost of George Conway”] Mark Pomerantz: “He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law … In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti.”
⋙ NYT: Trump Likened to Mob Boss John Gotti in Ex-Prosecutor’s New Book https://tinyurl.com/2p83wevh
// Mark F. Pomerantz, who resigned from the Manhattan district attorney’s office last year, wrote that he had pursued a racketeering case against the former president.

Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest early last year after the newly elected district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump at that time. By then, the inquiry was more narrowly focused on whether the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans.

But for months beforehand, Mr. Pomerantz had mapped out a wide-ranging possible case against the former president under the state racketeering law, according to the soon-to-be published book, “People vs. Donald Trump.” That broader approach was based on the theory that Mr. Trump had presided over a corrupt business empire for years, a previously unreported aspect of the long-running inquiry.

Mr. Pomerantz and his colleagues cast a wide net, examining a host of Trump enterprises — including Trump University, his for-profit real estate education venture, and his family charitable foundation.

“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Mr. Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.” …

🐣 RT @PKouretsos Goodnight Moon,
Goodnight Chinese high-altitude spy balloon,
Goodnight stars,
Goodnight air,
Goodnight persistent overhead reconnaissance everywhere.

NYT: Zelensky insists ‘no one will give away Bakhmut’ https://tinyurl.com/2p9b8bk9 “The challenge for Ukraine, he said, is to resist the increased Russian pressure while waiting for its own forces to gather strength, complete training on new weapons systems and build up its arsenal”

🐣 RT @JosepBorrellF [EU official] Our meeting in Kyiv today underlines the vital importance of our bilateral agenda. It demonstrates that the European dream of the Ukrainian people is becoming reality. ¤ The EU and Ukraine are closer together than ever. Ukraine’s future lies within the EU.

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua The great offensive of the Russian Federation will end by April and will not be successful – ISW
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua Putin probably overestimated the strength of the Russian army again, and therefore its major offensive in the east of Ukraine will end prematurely in the spring rainy season and will not be effective, analysts of the Institute for the Study of War are convinced

🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua The great offensive of the Russian Federation will end by April and will not be successful – ISW

WaPo, Sean Connelly (Oct): In the 1850s, the Irish faced the same hostility as today’s immigrants https://tinyurl.com/4kbssz44 “The parallels between the era of the American Know-Nothings and the present day are undeniable”
// 10/6/2022; This history provides lessons about why our current immigration panic is misguided

⭕ 2 Feb 2023

NYT: Soaring Death Toll Gives Grim Insight Into Russian Tactics https://tinyurl.com/2p89ytwv “American officials … say the strategic value of Bakhmut simply is not in line with the price Russia has paid”
// Moscow is sending poorly trained recruits, including convicts, to the front lines in eastern Ukraine to pave the way for more seasoned fighters, U.S. and allied officials say.

🐣 RT @BillKristol Continue to supply Ukraine money? ¤ All voters: 63% favor, 34% against.(79% of Democrats, 51% of Republicans, 55% of independents favor) ¤ Continue to supply Ukraine weapons? ¤ All voters: 64% favor, 33% against. (79% of Ds, 55% of Rs, 56% of indies favor)
⋙ FoxNews: Fox News Poll: Bipartisan support for sending funding, weapons to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/34s8vby6
// Over half of American voters think Ukraine is winning the war against Russia
// 1/27-1/30/2023

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1425 UTC 2 FEB/ RU forces have cut the T-05-13 HWY N of Bakhmut at Blahodatne. UKR staged a disruptive counter-strike against RU areas near Klischiivka. UKR Missile and Artillery targeted RU troop concentrations and a HQ element.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1621151491741618177?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /2150 UTC 2 FEB/ During the period 1-2 FEB, RU forces conducted a series of armed reconnaissance and offensive operations. UKR forces report contact W of the P-66 HWY between Ploschanka & Bilohorivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1621247758907719682?s=20/photo/1

NYT: Putin Promises Victory in Ukraine as His Forces Strike Key City of Kramatorsk https://tinyurl.com/4vnrf8n8 https://tinyurl.com/2xcan3wm “Russia’s slow gains in the east and its attempts to capture the nearby city of Bakhmut have come at a huge cost in lives, Ukraine says”

⭕ 1 Feb 2023

🐣 RT @ john_sipher “Russia is a whole separate world, submissive to the will, caprice, fantasy of a single man…Contrary to all the law of the human community, Russia moves only in the direction of her own enslavement and the enslavement of neighboring people.” Peter Chaadaev 1854

🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Ukrainian forces are inflicting significant losses on the most highly trained and capable brigades of the Russian army around Bakhmut, Kreminna and Vuhledar. ¤ In these areas naval brigades, airborne divisions and Spetsnaz units continue to take losses in frontal assaults.

🐣 RT @nytimes On Wednesday, the head of Ukraine’s military administration in Luhansk said that Russia was “trying to advance” from Kreminna and the city of Svatove. Ukrainian officials say they expect the Kremlin to renew its offensive soon in Luhansk and in Donetsk.
Ukrainian soldiers firing shells toward Russian fortifications located inside the city of Kreminna, at the end of December.
⋙ NYT: The town of Kreminna is in the cross hairs in the fight for northern Luhansk https://tinyurl.com/msf7tecu

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1230 UTC 1 FEB/ The 0600 brief of the Gen’l Staff reports UKR forces are in contact at Terny, Chervonopopivka & Dibrova. UKR forces have apparently maintained some positions in Kreminna. RU offensive ops aim to secure the east bank of the Zherebets reservoir.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1620762145326788608?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT / 2145 UTC 1 FEB/ RU Wagner PMC units conduct offensive operations at Krasna Hora in an attempt to capture the T-05-13 / M-03 HWY junction. S of the city, Wagner & VDV units continue efforts to reach the H-32 Hwy in the vicinity of Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1620899569620983833?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer FRIENDS LIKE THESE: @abdbozkurt reports that Turkey’s President Erdogan, smarting over a US refusal to provide F-35 fighter jets, now proposes a Turkish alliance with Syria, Russia and Iran. Erdogan has previously voiced doubts about the ascension of Sweden & Finland to NATO.
⋙ 🐣 RT @abdbozkurt #Turkey’s President #Erdogan threatened to make the US pay a price for what he claimed unfulfilled promises on fighter jets, vowed to make an alliance with #Russia, #Iran, and #Syria to bring peace in the region.

WaPo: Amid attacks from DeSantis, AP African American studies course is updated https://tinyurl.com/3mkdkxjy //➔ the revised course outline is significantly improved over the previous one; the course will be a better preparation for serious scholarship in college
// The College Board denies that it watered down the course after criticism from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)
⋙ WaPo doc: College Board: Proposed AP African American Studies Course [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/v677caxm 234p

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /0000 UTC 01 FEB/ RU forces maintain a lodgment across the T-05-13 HWY north of Blahodatne, and are attempting an encirclement of Krasna Hora. UKR forces are in contact east of the T-05-13 / M-03 HWY and continue to hold this important junction.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1620572197256564736?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 31 Jan 2023

🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukraine TVD, 1-31 JAN 23. The first month of 2023 saw a determined effort by the VSRF to finally seize control of Bakhmut in central Donetsk, blunt ZSU advances in Luhansk, and expand territorial control in Zaporizhzhia. #UkraineRussiaWar #RussianArmy #UkraineFrontLines
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1620626767366209537?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Stormy thanks Trump for his confession.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1620494501751177217?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @StormyDaniels Thanks for just admitting that I was telling the truth about EVERYTHING. Guess I’ll take my “horse face” back to bed now, Mr. former “president”. Btw, that’s the correct way to use Tweet quotation marks. Donald J. Trump @realDonald Trump, With respect to the “Stormy” 💋
⋙ [Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump With respect to the “Stormy” nonsense, it is VERY OLD & happened a long time ago, long past the very publicly known & accepted deadline of the Statute of Limitations. I placed full Reliance on the JUDGEMENT & ADVICE OF COUNCIL, who I had every reason to believe had a license to practice law, was competent, and was able to provide solid legal […]

⋙ 🐣 RT @KAFearless Also.. the statute of limitations has NOT run out 😂😂😂
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KAFearless/status/1620501720731361280?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Statute of limitations on Trump over Stormy Daniels I have seen a few posts that claim that AG Bragg allowed the statute of limitations to run out against Trump on the Stormy Daniels case. ¤ That’s what Trump claims, but, as usual, it is a false claim. Under NY law, the statute of limitations can be extended an additional 5 years if the suspect continually lives outside of NY. Trump spent 4 years in DC and has lived in Florida since then. So Bragg is able to pursue the case, still within NY’s statute limits. Scroll down to the end of this article to read what it says about the NY statute of limitations.

🐣 RT @Reuters The euro zone posted an unexpected rise in GDP in the fourth quarter, amid warnings that growth in 2023 is expected to be among the weakest on record https://reut.rs/3Hjdem5
⋙ 🐣 Goldman Sachs now says the US and the EU (except for the UK) may not have a recession this year

TheIntercept (2020): Erik Prince Offered Lethal Services to Sanctioned Russian Mercenary Firm The WagnerGroup https://tinyurl.com/34vwac2f
// 4/13/2020; A business relationship between Prince and Wagner would, in effect, make the prominent Trump administration adviser a subcontractor to the Russian military.

🐣 RT @BlackKnight10k Attorneys General*
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BlackKnight10k/status/1620598348888825857?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @ @realDonaldTrump The Democrat D.A.’S, Attorney Generals, and Prosecutors are very DANGEROUS to the well being of our Country. Many are deranged and only interested in pleasing the Fake News Media and the Democrat Party. Fair and True Justice means NOTHING in our Country anymore. I am being hit by so many DEMOCRAT Prosecutors, LOCAL, STATE, & FEDERAL, all to keep me from “running,” and all because I am leading by sooo much. The great people of our Country aren’t going to take it. MAKE AMERICA
GREAT AGAIN!

WaPo: GOP report shows plan to ramp up focus on disproven election fraud claims https://tinyurl.com/2p8mv2b8 “The report suggests building a massive new party organization involving state-level ‘election integrity officers’ & intensive new training models for poll workers & observers”
// The report prepared by the Republican National Committee proposes expanding ‘election integrity’ activities in response to perceptions of a rigged process

🐣 RT @NOELreports $1.725 billion will be received from the USAI (weapons from industry, not from current US stock) and used to purchase GLSDB with a 150km range. No delivery time has been announced. The US has rejected requests for 300km range ATACMS missiles, writes Reuters.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports The United States reportedly is readying a $2.2 billion package of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time, and other munitions and weapons, two U.S. officials briefed on the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Frank68332165 Finally! goes further than HIMARS and just as precise. The same launcher as HIMARS can be used.
◕ https://twitter.com/Frank68332165/status/1620569598868484099?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Former US President Donald Trump says he trusts Russian dictator Vladimir Putin over America’s own intelligence services
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1620561715305017344?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] Remember in Helsinki when a 3rd rate reporter asked me, essentially, who I trusted more, President Putin of Russia, or our “Intelligence” lowlifes. My instinct at the time was that we had really bad people in the form of James Comey, McCabe (whose wife was being helped out by Crooked Hillary while Crooked was under investigation!), Brennan, Peter Strzok (whose wife is at the SEC) & his lover, Lisa Page. Now add McGonigal & other slime to the list. Who would you choose, Putin or the Misfits?

⋙ 🐣 Brennen, Comey, Strzok, McCabe and Page are all good ret. FBI leadership or agents targeted by Trump. McGonigal is now in hot water for taking $$ from and working with Deripaska and acting in ways that may have helped get Trump elected over Hillary Clinton.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1325 UTC 31 JAN/ Two RU offensive probes were undertaken during the period 29-30 JAN. The first, north of Kreminna, was repulsed by UKR east of Terny. RU forces retreated with losses. A second RU thrust on the O-0528 HWY was apparently also broken up by UKR forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1620409645801283584?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports Currently, approximately 326,000 Russian soldiers are fighting in Ukraine says head of intelligence Budanov in The Washington Post.
⋙ WaPo: Ukraine intel chief predicted Russia’s war. He says Crimea will be retaken https://tinyurl.com/yc7x9zxr

It was Feb. 23 — the night before Russia launched its war on Ukraine — and Budanov had staked his career on being the rare Ukrainian official who was convinced that Russia was about to attack and attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital. ¤ He and his wife stared at the clock that night, anxious that Budanov could soon be out of work if all did not go as he had loudly predicted to Ukraine’s skeptical political leadership. …

Eleven months later, the 37-year-old Budanov’s words carry serious weight with President Volodymyr Zelensky and others in Kyiv. In Ukrainian political circles, he is respected as the one person — along with U.S. and British intelligence — who correctly warned months in advance what Russia was planning. ¤ At the time, he was largely brushed off. Most other Ukrainian government and military officials expected Russia’s invasion to be limited to the eastern part of the country rather than a full scale, three-pronged attack.

Budanov’s forecast for this year is that Russia will focus on occupying more territory in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A renewed offensive from its forces stationed north of Ukraine, in Belarus, is unlikely, he said, and just an attempt to distract and divide Kyiv’s troops. He also said that “we must do everything to ensure that Crimea returns home by summer.”

Asked if he thinks Ukrainian troops reaching Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed illegally in 2014, could trigger Russian President Vladimir Putin to use a nuclear weapon, Budanov said: “This is not true. And Crimea will be returned to us. I’ll tell you more: It all started in Crimea in 2014, and it will all end there.”

Budanov’s other claims have included that Putin is terminally ill with cancer and has multiple body doubles. “It’s an open question if it’s the real Putin now,” Budanov said. He is so confident in his intelligence that he occasionally opens a folder to give exact figures — “approximately 326,000 Russian forces” fighting in Ukraine now or that Russia has just 9 percent of its stock of Kalibr long-range missiles left.

Budanov’s quick rise to becoming one of the youngest generals in Ukraine’s history accelerated in August 2016, when a lieutenant colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, was killed in Crimea, allegedly by Ukrainian saboteurs. Budanov was believed to have been one of the Ukrainian special operators involved, working behind enemy lines, and he was later awarded Ukraine’s “Order of Courage” for undisclosed operations. In 2020, then just 34, he was named head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, or GUR. …

He remains a target for the Kremlin. After an explosion on the Crimean Bridge in October, Moscow named Budanov and other GUR agents as the culprits. ¤ Ukrainian officials, including Budanov, have not publicly claimed responsibility for the bridge attack or others deep into Russian territory. … ¤ “What’s next?” Budanov asked, repeating a request that he serve up further predictions. “Ukraine’s victory,” he said. “I’m not saying anything new.

🐣 RT @MarQs__ The US is readying a $2.2 billion package of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time, and other munitions and weapons, two U.S. officials briefed on the matter told Reuters
⋙ YahooNews/Reuters: U.S. readies $2.2 bln Ukraine aid package with longer-range weapons [⁉️] – sources https://tinyurl.com/3k5v7p6n

WaPo, Manuel Roig-Franzia: A conservative judge helped stop Trump on Jan. 6. He wants to finish the job https://tinyurl.com/bdhzpm52
// Michael Luttig, one of the most celebrated legal minds of his generation, never ascended to the Supreme Court. But many think the retired jurist played a far more consequential role for the nation. Now he envisions ‘the beginning of the end of Donald Trump.’

🐣 Slavery in many forms has been the rule not the exception through human history & prehistory. Oppression of one group by another is the natural state of nature. This makes the aspirations of the Enlightenment & US founding principles, however imperfectly fulfilled, remarkable

🐣 RT @NOELreports According to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, any peace negotiations should be conditional on Russia withdrawing its troops from the territory of Ukraine. In addition he said there can be negotiations with Ukraine only, not behind their backs or on behalf of them.
⋙ 🐣 Stated US policy: “Nothing about them without them”

⭕ 30 Jan 2023

WaPo, Boris Johnson: Putin has paved the way for Ukrainian membership in NATO https://tinyurl.com/nevv2x34 “Ukrainians should be given everything they need to finish this war, as quickly as possible, and we should begin the process of admitting Ukraine to NATO, and begin it now”

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote YES! @JudiciaryDems are going to look into the Durham misconduct. Please ask Wray, Garland, Barr, and Durham to testify before your committee, @SenatorDurbin. We deserve to know why Durham has not been fired for cause, or investigated himself. [TheHill:] https://tinyurl.com/2p8mneyc
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote [1/27] THREAD: Did the Durham probe cross a line from prosecutorial discretion to misconduct, or even criminal misconduct? I believe this new reporting is something @TheJusticeDept needs to address – either by press conference or testimony to @HouseJudiciary or both. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1618974945639530496?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ How has Garland been letting this idiotic investigation go on this long?? I can only imagine that he thought shutting it down would make him look partisan. Now Durham is going to write his Deep State conspiracy report for his fans.🙄

WaPo, Aaron Blake: The crimes Trump could be charged with in Fulton County, Georgia https://tinyurl.com/h47z876h

According to legal experts, including a group at the Brookings Institution and Georgia State University law professor Clark D. Cunningham, a few could be in play. Below is a look at the various crimes that could be cited, along with the past conduct pointing in that direction and how compelling the publicly available evidence is.

● Solicitation to commit election fraud
● Conspiracy to commit election fraud
● Intentional interference with performance of election duties
● Interference with primaries and elections/filing false documents
● False statements
● Racketeering

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1350 UTC 30 JAN/ A growing concentration of RU forces are centered at Kreminna. These RU are assessed to be preparing offensive ops, likely a thrust west on the O-0528 HWY axis. The goal would appear to be the capture of Dibrova, Zarichne and ultimately Lyman.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1620048165323030528?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2040 UTC 30 JAN/ RU units have made significant progress in isolating Bakhmut. Advancing from Soledar, RU forces have crossed the T-05-13 HWY north of Blahodatne. This salient has severed Bakhmut’s principal north-south Line of Communications & Supply (LOCS).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1620156596641992704?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @harrylitman Very big development. The Stormy Daniels hush money case that DA Bragg previously mothballed is now being presented to a grand jury. via @NYTimes
⋙ NYT: Manhattan Prosecutors Will Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury https://tinyurl.com/2p93wcfn
// The Manhattan district attorney’s decision represents a dramatic escalation of the inquiry, and sets the case on a path toward criminal charges against the former president.

WaPo: Some Democrats are worried about Harris’s political prospects https://tinyurl.com/4a3nuvar Plagued by staff turnover, communications missteps and a number of “resets,” is Harris an asset in 2024 and a viable candidate to lead the party to a Democratic presidency in 2028?
// At a pivotal point in Biden’s term, many party activists are not sure the vice president has shown she is up to winning the top job

NYT, David Firestone: Bill Barr’s Image Rehab Is Kaput https://tinyurl.com/t4vv8pke //➔ The House Committee on the “weaponization of government” should call on him to testify and see which version of Bill Barr appears

Former Attorney General William Barr has spent the last year in a desperate salvage operation for what’s left of his legal and ethical reputation. During his 22 months in office, he allowed his Justice Department to become a personal protection racket for his boss, Donald Trump, and left prosecutors, the F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials subject to the worst impulses of the president. But then, in his 2022 memoir, Mr. Barr did an about-face, bashing Mr. Trump for lacking a presidential temperament and singling out his “self-indulgence and lack of self-control.”

In the book, he urged Republicans not to renominate Mr. Trump in 2024, accusing the former president of going “off the rails” with his stolen-election claims by preferring the counsel of “sycophants” and “whack jobs” to that of his real advisers. Clearly concerned that history was paying attention, he was even stronger in his videotaped testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, loosing a variety of barnyard epithets and bitter insults to describe Mr. Trump’s legal strategy. He said the president had become “detached from reality” and was doing a disservice to the nation. …

But if Mr. Barr harbored any fantasy that he might yet be credited with a wisp of personal integrity for standing up for democracy, that hope was thoroughly demolished on Thursday when The Times published the details of what really happened when Mr. Barr launched a counter-investigation into the origins of Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The reporting demonstrated a staggering abuse of the special counsel system and the attorney general’s office, all in a failed attempt by Mr. Barr to rewrite the sour truths of Mr. Trump’s history.

It was bad enough when, in March 2019, Mr. Barr tried to mislead the public into thinking the forthcoming Mueller report exonerated Mr. Trump, when in fact the report later showed just how strong the links were between the campaign and the Russian government, which worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton. A few months later Mr. Barr assigned John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, as a special counsel to investigate Mr. Mueller’s investigation, hoping to prove Mr. Trump’s wild public allegations that the federal intelligence officials had helped instigate the claims of Russian interference to damage him. …

When the Justice Department’s own inspector general prepared to issue a report saying that, while the F.B.I. made some ethical mistakes, the investigation was legitimate and not politically motivated, Mr. Durham lobbied him to drop the finding. When that effort was unsuccessful, Mr. Barr reverted to his usual pattern of trying to spin the report before it was issued, disagreeing with its finding before it was even out. Mr. Durham then followed up with a similar statement, shattering the clear department principle of staying silent about a current investigation.

The two men even traveled to Britain and Italy together, pressuring government agencies there to disclose what they told U.S. spy agencies about the Trump-Russia connections. That infuriated officials of those governments, who said they had done nothing of the kind, and no evidence was ever found that they had. But on one of those trips, The Times reported, Italian officials gave the men a tip which, people familiar with the matter said, linked Mr. Trump to possible serious financial crimes. (It is not clear what those crimes were, and more reporting will be necessary to reveal the details.) Did Mr. Barr follow protocol and turn the tip over to regular prosecutors in his department for investigation? No. Instead, he gave it to his traveling companion, Mr. Durham, who opened a criminal investigation but never made it public and never filed charges, and when word began to trickle out that a suspected crime had been discovered, he falsely let the world think it had something to do with his original goal.

The Durham investigation, of course, has never presented any evidence that the F.B.I. or intelligence agencies committed any misconduct in the course of the Russia investigation, bitterly disappointing Mr. Barr and especially his patron, Mr. Trump, who had assured his supporters for months that it would produce something big. Desperate for some kind of success, Mr. Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked for Democrats in their dealings with the F.B.I., over the objections of two prosecutors on the special counsel team who said the case was far too thin and who later left the staff.

Mr. Sussmann was acquitted last May of lying to the bureau, and the jury forewoman told reporters that bringing the case had been unwise. Mr. Barr later tried to justify the trial by saying it served another purpose in exposing the Clinton campaign’s starting the Russia narrative as a “dirty trick.” The trial did nothing of the kind … .

One of the other casualties of this deceitful crusade was the deliberate damage it did to the reputations of the F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and officials in Mr. Barr’s own department. All of these agencies have had many problematic episodes in their pasts, but there is no evidence in this case that they willfully tried to smear Mr. Trump and his campaign with false allegations of collusion. They were trying to do their jobs, on which the nation’s security depends, but because they got in Mr. Trump’s way, Mr. Barr aided in degrading their image through a deep-state conspiracy theory before an entire generation of Trump supporters. Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt for proof that these same government offices were “weaponized” against conservatives, an expedition that is likely to be no more effective than Mr. Durham’s and Mr. Barr’s. …

🐣 Does Russia have an inferiority complex? With about 60% of the population of Russia, Germany has about 240% of Russia’s GDP. Other statistics:
GDP Pop.
$. 1.8Tr 143M Russia
$ 32.4Tr 959M NATO
$ 23.3Tr 332M US
$ 16.6Tr 448M EU ($4.3Tr, 83M Germany)

⭕ 29 Jan 2023

WaPo: Black Memphis police spark dialogue on systemic racism in the U.S. https://tinyurl.com/6an2yubu
// By Robert Klemko, Silvia Foster-Frau and Emily Davies

My Comment: Police in this country kill a disproportionately high percentage of Blacks compared to Whites. For Blacks, about 10% more are killed than would be expected based on population. For Whites, it’s about 15% fewer. Metropolitan areas with the highest levels of police killings cluster in the Southeast.

But what worries me most is that police killings in this country are at least 10 TIMES what they are in other developed countries. In the US in 2019, there were 33.5 police killings per 10 million people. In Canada, there were 10, in European countries 1 or 2, in Japan 0.

My hunch is that focusing entirely on systemic racism may blind us to other factors, including “toxic” police culture, male “pack” behavior, the militarization of police departments, and the guns, the guns, the guns.

🐣 RT @OneLoveNLAW “The Russians only understand our strength” – Petr Pavel is hot and based AF
🖼 https://twitter.com/OneLoveNLAW/status/1619824769955934209?s=20/photo/1

JerusalemPost: Drone attack on Iranian weapons factory was phenomenal success – sources https://tinyurl.com/25fscefy “Multiple large drones with significant amounts of explosives were involved and hit their targets with pinpoint accuracy” ~ Mossad?
// The Islamic Republic claimed that the drone attack had failed and only cause minor roof damage.

🐣 RT @lindacosylife Blinken: All options available to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon https://ara.tv/4ttvb This is how the war machine uses propaganda. Tell Iranian people that we are worried about their freedom and that we are going to help them get rid of their government. Chaos
⋙ Al-Arabia: Blinken: All options available to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon https://tinyurl.com/mr2swsu3 “Blinken highlighted US support to Iranian people, stressing that the decision of ‘regime change’ remains ultimately up to the [Iranian] people”
// US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said on Sunday that Iran has rejected the current proposal

US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said on Sunday that Iran has rejected the current proposal to return to the nuclear agreement, adding that Washington still believes that diplomacy is the most effective way to deal with the Iranian nuclear file [sic]. ¤ Blinken said in an exclusive interview with Al-Arabiya that Iranian youth are defending their basic rights in the face of Tehran’s regime, adding that US focus now is on the Iranian regime’s suppression of its people in the streets.

‘We support the Iranian people’

Blinken highlighted US support to Iranian people, stressing that the decision of “regime change” remains ultimately up to the people. He added: “The Iranian regime is convincing its people of the idea that the US wants regime change.” ¤ In addition, he stressed that Iran supports Russia in its war against Ukraine and provides it with drones and other weapons, expressing his concern about Tehran providing Moscow with drones and missiles.

‘All options are available’

He stressed that US President Joe Biden stressed his determination that Iran not acquire nuclear weapons, explaining that all options are available on the table to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. ¤ He pointed out that Washington has punished all those responsible for repression in Iran, stressing that his country continues to search for ways to disrupt Iran’s malign activities.

‘Deterring aggressors’

Blinken also said that the main goal of US military efforts was deterring aggressors, specifically the US military exercises with Israel. ¤ He announced that he would hold talks with the Israelis and Palestinians to reduce the escalating tensions.

‘Important relationships’

As for the Saudi-American ties, Blinken said that the relations between his country and the Kingdom have been important and ongoing for decades, noting that Saudi Arabia has provided great support to Ukraine in the face of the Russian war. ¤ He said that Saudi Arabia voted against the Russian war in Ukraine before the UN General Assembly, stressing the need for relations with Saudi Arabia to reflect common interests and values.

He also said: “We were worried about the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production.” ¤ He reaffirmed that Washington is working with Riyadh to end the war in Yemen.

🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine Blasts erupted at five military sites across Iran at night on Jan. 29, with the Iranian Defense Ministry saying there had been a drone attack on at least one of its facilities.

🧵 RT @RitchieTorres Iran is the leading aggressor of the Middle East; the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world; and a longstanding oppressor of its own people. ¤ The Iranian regime has been shaken to the core by a revolution led by powerful women.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1619692061959262210?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/2p9ferm

The women in Iran, who are risking their lives in confronting a monstrous and murderous regime, are among the most courageous freedom fighters in the world.

The United States must stand with our Iranian sisters in their fearless fight for freedom. ¤ On September 13th, 2021, Masha Amini was brutally beaten to death by the Iran’s Orwellian morality police merely for not wearing a head covering.

Out of the tragedy of Masha’s murder came a spontaneous groundswell of thousands of Iranian women rising up for their freedom, some removing their head coverings and cutting their hair as a poignant form of protest.

The revolution there reminds us that the future of Iran does not belong to a regime whose malevolence and obsolescence have become too glaring to ignore.

Iran’s future belong to its people led by its fearless formidable female freedom fighters. ¤ The vision of a free and democratic Iran is an unrealized dream whose time has come, whose realization is long overdue.

🐣 RT @ABCWorldNews: Drone strikes hit several targets, including a munitions factory inside Iran, and according to the Wall Street Journal, Israel may have been behind the attacks. It comes amid renewed tensions in the Middle East. @lamahasan has more. https://abcn.ws/2XvP3JQ

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1445 UTC 29 JAN/ A RU attack was broken up short of the H-32 HWY. UKR staged a disruptive raid against RU rear areas near Andriivka. UKR Missile & Artillery targeted RU troop concentrations, EW stations and air defense complexes. UKR supply lines threatened.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1619705612312674304?s=20/photo/1

WSJ: Israel Strikes Iran Amid International Push to Contain Tehran https://tinyurl.com/e7kp2eta “Israel’s latest strike comes as Israeli and American officials are discussing new ways to combat Iran’s destabilizing operations, including its deepening military cooperation with Russia”
// Israeli, American officials discuss new ways to combat Iranian operations

Israel’s latest strike comes as Israeli and American officials are discussing new ways to combat Iran’s destabilizing operations, including its deepening military cooperation with Russia. ¤ Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns made an unannounced trip to Israel last week to discuss Iran and other regional issues, according to people familiar with his visit. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday to continue the U.S.-Israel talks about Iran and other regional issues.

Last week, the U.S. and Israel carried out their largest-ever joint military exercise involving more than 7,500 personnel from both countries and a series of scenarios to test their ability to take out air-defense systems and refuel jet planes—both of which could be key elements of a major military strike on Iran.

WaPo/AP: Iran says drone attack targets defense facility in Isfahan https://tinyurl.com/56wkk3dk “Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said early Sunday”

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ The events in Iran are the consequences of their policies, said Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesman of the Verkhovna Rada of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

🚫 🐣 RT @manamuntu Iran Nuclear site totally destroyed! ¤ This video is from yesterday night,the National Nuclear Center of Iran has been bombed by NATO which caused an Earthquake of 5.5 magnitude in the nearby areas. This is a revenge attack by NATO, Iran supplied drones to Russia despite warnings!
// waiting confirm

🐣 RT @KorsasErik The list of objects in #Iran on which #missile strikes were carried out has become known
-Headquarters of the IRGC
IRGC Special ForcesBase “Quds”
-Ammunition and UAV Production Center
-Refinery.
-Weapons factory.
-Military bases in #Hamadan and #Keredzh
#iranunderattack #Iranian
💽 https://twitter.com/KorsasErik/status/1619582453328523265?s=20/photo/1 -4

⭕ 28 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @AnonOpsSE Internet services suspended across the #Iran after multiple drone strikes on Iranian cities Tehran, Karaj, Narmak, Hamadan, Isfahan, Khoy, Azarshahr and Tabriz. Drone factories and other military installations targeted. Irani fighter jets are hovering in own sky.

🐣 RT @ExScientia_Vera Dear Iran & the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution: ¤ You were advised by the greatest military power in the world not to assist Russia in its genocidal war against Ukraine. You fucked around anyway, and find out you did.
💽 https://twitter.com/ExScientia_Vera/status/1619532496760360960?s=20/photo/1
// Lloyd Austin: On Iran providing military support to Russia is “We think … it’s a really, really bad idea. And we’ll leave it at that”

🐣 RT @noclador The mullah regime in Iran is one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world and it constantly exports it’s vile ideology, brutality, and cruelty to other nations. ¤ To the nation bombing this regime tonight: thank you! Please continue!

🐣 RT @TreasChest Residents of the capital of Iran rejoice at attacks on military facilities and shout from their windows “Death to the dictator, death to Khamenei.”

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer ISRAELI AIR STRIKES? Jason Jay Smart @officejjsmart reports that several aerospace / drone manufacturing plants in Iran have been attacked. Iran’s Telegram channels claim that Israeli aircraft have been reported over several cities in the Islamic Republic.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ officejjsmart Iran 🇮🇷 is being attacked. A number of weapons / drones factories have been struck. ¤ Iranian 🇮🇷 Telegram indicates that Israeli 🇮🇱 Air Force has been seen over multiple Iranian cities. ¤ Seems Russia’s 🇷🇺 drone supplier, to attack Ukraine 🇺🇦, may be going out of business!!! 👍👍👍
⋙⋙ 🐣 to date, Israel hasn’t shown much interest in helping out Ukraine; Zelensky has complained about it multiple times ¤ so what changed?

🐣 RT @ igorsushko 🚨 #Iran: What appears may have been a bunker-buster strike against an underground weapons factory in Iran was followed by a significant earthquake in the area.

🐣 RT @igorsushko Overnight in #Iran, in addition to strikes on oil refineries, munitions manufacturers, and multiple military bases, extreme-precision strikes reportedly eliminated individual human targets. Iran has been supplying weapons and munitions to #Russia for use against #Ukraine.

🐣 RT @davidfrum Seriously, no one country operating alone would have dared a strike like this. Whoever was the tip of the spear – it’s a world coalition acting to stop Iran from supplying Russia with weapons of atrocity and genocide. Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s fitting.
⋙ 🐣 do you have a source, or it this conjecture? ¤ I trust your writing, David, but this seems like quite a branch to go out on
⋙ 🐣 RT @seybertooth It was obviously Israel and of course they “dare”, they know they can do what they want under the unlimited cover from their sugar-daddy America (and the veto protection in the UN). ¤ I’m no fan of Israel’s militarily aggression but in this case it is justified and convenient.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Israel has a way of doing things the US disapproves of and then expecting the US to back them up ¤ I did read Blinken will be paying them a visit soon; the very awkwardness of that implies to me the US didn’t know ~ if, that is, it was Israel

NYT: How an Oligarch May Have Recruited the F.B.I. Agent Who Investigated Him https://tinyurl.com/3u292sbx
// The bureau tried to court Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate, as an informant. Instead, one of its own top agents may have ended up working for him.

TheDrive: Iran Claims It Has Come Under Drone Attack Following Explosions https://tinyurl.com/bdz4z6u2
// The Iranian Ministry of Defense claims drones struck a facility in Isfahan as reports of blasts in other cities cause alarm.

🐣 RT @KateGoesTech 🇺🇸 reconnaissance planes have entered 🇮🇷 controlled region of Syria 🇸🇾 ¤ It’s happening

🐣 RT @JasonMBrodsky Targeting #Iran’s drone or nuclear program are possible explanations concerning attack on the MODAFL facility in Esfahan. #Israel in 2021 warned Tehran was training proxies at the Kashan Air Base, north of Esfahan. That base also made a cameo appearance in training Russians. 1/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @JasonMBrodsky Although the MODAFL facility was not in same location as the Kashan Air Base, that general area is of interest relating to the drone program. Of course Esfahan also has interesting facilities related to Iran’s nuclear program. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @JasonMBrodsky In 2022, Iran informed IAEA that it intended to produce centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at a new location in Esfahan following the attack on the TESA Karaj complex. So these are some potential reasons, but we’ll have to wait for more details. 3/3

🐣 RT @NewsBreakingX 🇮🇷 Iran. Situation at the moment
▪️ A fire at a factory for the production of ammunition and UAVs.
▪️ Fire at an oil refinery.
▪️ Fire at the weapons factory.
▪️ Explosions at the military base in Hamadan and Keredzh.
▪️ Explosions on some military units.

🐣 RT @k_sonin Whoever is behind the attack on the Iranian factory that produces Shahed drones tonight, I hope it will help not only to dwarf Iran’s military cooperation with Russia, but bring freedom for Iranians closer.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MrFukkew The factory that produces ammo and Shahed kamikaze drones is hit by a kamikaze drone in Isfahan, Iran. Oops! #Iran #Ukraine #Russia #UkraineRussiaWar️
💽 https://twitter.com/MrFukkew/status/1619481702191202305?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Neighbour88 David, it’s precision missile strikes at several facilities within a very short timeframe. ¤ I’ll give you one guess. ¤ Iran are now in this war whether they like it or not. ¤ Russia cannot protect themselves, never mind their abettors.
⋙ 🐣 Iran made its choice

🐣 RT @WernerDThomas Turkie, Azerbaijan, Israel, Emirates, Saudies, Taliban, everybody is fed up with the gangster Mullahs

🐣 RT @ NOELreports Local authorities confirm the explosions at the munitions factory in Isfahan, — IRIB News ¤ Iranian media also reported drone attacks on military facilities in the Iranian cities of Tabriz, Hamadan and Karaj.

🐣 RT @stavridisj So happy to see my dear friend and former NATO colleague, Peter Pavel, become the leader of the Czech Republic. He is a strong voice for freedom, democracy, and trans Atlantic alliance!

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Whoa! Multiple blasts reported in Iran. There were explosions at a military factory in the city of Isfahan from a drone attack ¤ Iran’s Defense Ministry says there was an ammunition depot was hit. Meanwhile, Iranian drones continue to kill Ukrainians

🐣 RT @anneapplebaum The new Czech president is a former general who supports Ukraine, has broad Nato experience and wants his country firmly anchored in the democratic world. The Czechs have just made an important civilizational choice.
// Petr Pavel @general_pavel

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian 🇺🇸✈️ The Pentagon insists on sending F-16s to Ukraine, – Politico. ¤ A group of military officials are quietly pushing the Pentagon to approve sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine to help our country defend itself, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️🇺🇦Ukraine is conducting accelerated negotiations with Western countries on the transfer of aviation and long-range missiles to Kyiv, said Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine.

🐣 RT @stavridisj This is the right thing to do. Tanks will be helpful, better aircraft will be decisive via #politico
⋙ Politico [EU]: At the Pentagon, push to send F-16s to Ukraine picks up steam https://politi.co/3WJWKcC
// Kyiv has renewed its request for modern fighters in recent days after the U.S. and Germany approved transferring tanks.

🐣 RT @lindyli The ex-girlfriend of Russia-funded FBI agent McGonigal stayed at Giuliani’s home for an extended period
Giuliani knew AHEAD of time that Comey was gonna sabotage Clinton
Nothing to see here ¤ Just traitors literally in bed with each other & prostituting themselves to Daddy Putin
⋙ 🐣 Giuliani bragged they had something ‘up their sleeve’ and it had to do with players in the FBI

🐣 RT @SkinnerPm I don’t know how I can continue to be a police officer in America. I do know I don’t want to right now. Law enforcement in America is the scattered good will of individual officers in a change-resistant structure with fundamental principles & philosophies that are utterly rotten
⋙ 🐣 you might consider writing a book; it would be a good book ♡

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Imagine if Jack Smith met with Garland weekly to sip bourbon, and then asked the DoJ Inspector General to lie in a report about his investigation into Jeffrey Clark, then found Biden committed a crime but covered it up. Because that’s what Durham did.

🐣 RT @polialertcom Man Who Assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick Sentenced To 80 Months In Prison

🐣 RT @BernieSanders While working families struggled to pay outrageously high gas prices last year, Chevron made a record $35.5 billion in profits & will spend $75 billion to manipulate its stock price in order to make the rich even richer. We must ban stock buybacks & enact a windfall profits tax.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1310 UTC 28 JAN/ UKR troops are engaged in the urban area of Krasna Hora as RU tactical units attempt to take the T-05-13 / M-03 HWY junction. South of the city, the UKR Gen’l Staff reports two RU attacks were repelled S of Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1619319943375523840?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1325 UTV 28 JAN/ RU launched attacks across the P-66 HWY, engaging UKR troops at Novosadove & Chervonopopivka. UKR is a reported to have rebuffed these sallies. UKR air defense downed a RU ‘SuperCam’ recon UAV, as well as an Mi-8 helicopter.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1619325559238172672?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa We share 🇮🇱 pain after the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. Among the victims is a 🇺🇦 woman. Sincere condolences to the victims’ families. The crimes were cynically committed on the Intl Holocaust Remembrance Day. Terror must have no place in today’s world. Neither in 🇮🇱 nor in 🇺🇦

🐣 RT @ TODAYshow A New Jersey man was sentenced to almost seven years in prison for assaulting Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick during the Jan. 6 riots.

🐣 RT @pewglobal Majorities say voting, helping reduce climate change effects, staying informed, getting COVID-19 vaccination are important for being a good member of society https://pewrsr.ch/3ZZygyM
◕ https://twitter.com/pewglobal/status/1619280880500985858?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 27 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @theworldindex World’s Top 10 Richest People:
1.🇫🇷Bernard Arnault: $190b
2.🇺🇸Elon Musk: $167b
3.🇺🇸Jeff Bezos: $126b
4.🇺🇸B Gates: $112b
5.🇺🇸W Buffet: $108b
6.🇺🇸Larry Ellison: $101b
7.🇮🇳Gautam Adani: $93b
8.🇺🇸Larry Page: $92b
9.🇺🇸Steve Ballmer: $89b
10.🇺🇸Sergey Brin: $88b
(Bloomberg Jan 27, 22)

🐣 RT @UkraineAidOps Today is International #HolocaustRemembranceDay, a day to remember the past and reaffirm our commitment to the promise #NeverAgain
Genocide once again haunts and we must take a stand against it! Will you join us?
⋙ 🎹 RT @michael_brodsk The Ukrainian Army choir singing Eli Eli at #BabynJar on the #HolocaustMemorialDay
💽 https://twitter.com/michael_brodsk/status/1618953814257860608?s=20/photo/1
piano

🐣 RT @Tendar Russian pundits are in panic mode and they have all reason to be. What amazes me is that how this conversation between Solovyov and Alex Kots reflects the obvious. Russia is in huge trouble and they feel it maybe better than anyone in Kremlin.#Ukraine
💙 ⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin’s No. 1 Cheerleader Rips into Russia’s War Failures https://tinyurl.com/2p8aw54y
// Putin’s favorite propagandist (Vladimir Solovyov) lost it on his latest TV show, blasting the failed tactics and strategy that’s left Russia losing in Ukraine and facing worse to come.

Top Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has been spending his weekends on the frontlines in order to support and promote Russia’s stuttering invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, all that time being confronted by the grim reality is teaching Solovyov just how badly this war is going. ¤ And he’s not happy about it.

In a wild rant on Thursday, Solovyov attacked the overall strategy, claimed the Russian Army was failing miserably to suppress their enemies, and said he had first-hand evidence of foolish tactical errors on the frontline.

During his show Full Contact, Solovyov was raging about the recent announcement that Ukraine would soon be getting Abrams and Leopard-2 tanks from NATO countries. The host started his monologue with a deep sigh, asking, “So, we lived long enough to see this?” He urged the audience not to trust the numbers of the tanks slated for the upcoming deliveries, predicting they will send even more: “They will deliver everything. I’ve been saying it for a while, these bastards will also rehabilitate Hitler in our lifetime… this is where everything is going… WWIII is underway and the West has returned to its Nazi roots. Germany got tired of concealing its Nazi nature and America finally openly acknowledged its own Nazi ways.”

Calling Americans “conniving liars,” Solovyov said that their arrogance is Russia’s own fault: “We aren’t creating any threats against them. We aren’t conducting strikes against New York, we aren’t banging Washington, we aren’t threatening Miami, we aren’t doing anything to endanger Americans. They blew up our pipelines, we just wiped our face off. They’re delivering heavy tanks, we’re wiping our face off. Stop talking about red lines! It’s a totally empty phrase that doesn’t mean a thing!”

Enraged, Solovyov screamed: “Berlin, Paris, Madrid, London, Washington should be on fire! The capitals of Nazi countries who made a decision to go to war with Russia… Why wasn’t Kyiv wiped off the face of the earth after the Nazi nation of Ukraine conducted a strike against our strategic aviation base? Stop resorting to empty, worthless words!”

The host went on to claim: “Strikes are being carried out against our cities! Against our land! Russian soldiers are perishing! Russian people are dying! Nazis are rejoicing! How are we planning to respond? By howling that avoiding nuclear war is the most important thing? Then why the heck do we have a stockpile of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons? To be afraid to use it? So that big decorated generals would gasp, “Do you want a nuclear war?” Do you want the destruction of Russia with conventional weapons, of which NATO countries have 3 and a half times more than we do?”

Solovyov yelled that destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure was insufficient. He demanded to know: “Why do Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk [Dnipro] still exist?” He angrily shouted: “We are no longer stationed near Kyiv! Was it a damn goodwill gesture? A goodwill gesture? And Kharkiv was a goodwill gesture? No one was executed by shooting for [surrendering] Kharkiv! No one was sent into retirement, at least not publicly. The society didn’t get any answers to its questions. I’m asking you, why did you move the frontline closer to Belgorod? We still didn’t get back to those positions! In response—silence. Silence.”

Solovyov demanded that enemies be destroyed “on their land”: “Citizens of NATO countries should not feel at peace, while the Russian man is suffering… Citizens! A war has been declared against us. Wake up! Wake up.”

Solovyov’s guest, military correspondent Alexander Kots, revealed one of the reasons for the host’s helpless rage: glaring incompetence and mismanagement of the invading forces by their military leadership. Discussing new items slated for delivery to Ukraine by NATO countries, Kots said: “While we have this list, only on paper for now, we should start thinking about what we will do when or if all of it gets to the frontlines. Somehow, we have to counter their artillery systems and tanks. For the last month, throughout the holidays, as a member of the presidential Human Rights Council, I was receiving outraged and concerned messages from the relatives [of soldiers]. We have trained—I won’t say how many, but a decent quantity of the artillery battalions, but all of them were sent to the infantry. This is a huge number of people, we’ve been training them for three months, spending ammo, spending money to house them, great instructors from our military universities—including the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Military Academy—had given their time and knowledge to train them. With respect to our artillery, it’s a very sad story… we don’t have any artillery schools left! We used to have eleven and now only Mikhailovskaya remains.”

Solovyov remarked that he was aware of this problem because of his frontline visits. Kots added that the same issue is happening with the anti-tank divisions, describing them as “the very units that should have been the ones meeting this tank Armada, burning up those Abrams and Leopard tanks. Instead, for some reason, they’re also being transferred to the infantry. I can’t understand why this is happening… We professionally trained up specialists, trained them well, but they sit without being given appropriate tasks… While we’re facing a threat of these deliveries from the West to the frontlines by Spring, it’s very wasteful on our part.”

Solovyov chimed in: “I understand that you don’t fight tanks with tanks, you use other means. Our anti-tank fist should be ready.” Kots hit him over the head with more bad news: “The first line of defense that will be meeting these tanks will often be comprised of mobilized men. Our mobilized soldiers on the frontlines are armed solely with Kalashnikovs. Unfortunately, there are no anti-tank weapons on many stretches of the frontline.”

Solovyov reverted to his favorite topic, claiming that it’s only a matter of time before NATO gives the Ukrainians tactical nuclear weapons. He said, “I believe that the use of tactical nuclear weapons is unavoidable. The question is who will do it first: us or them.” Playing along, Kots pointed out: “The tanks that are being delivered contain depleted uranium.” After Solovyov noted that depleted uranium is not radioactive, Kots suggested: “It could still be used as the pretext, in order to use our tactical nuclear weapons.”

But even his trademark shtick of threatening Russia’s adversaries with nuclear mayhem failed to bring the bitter propagandist even a modicum of customary satisfaction. Introducing his next guest, Solovyov bitterly complained: “I’m sad. All of this is very sad.”

🐣 RT @stuartpstevens Republicans have appointed a woman who supports the overthrow of the US Government and genocide in Ukraine to Homeland Security. It’s a radical, anti-American act by a party that has become radical and anti-American. There is no saving this party. It must be defeated.
// @stuartpstevens was Romney’s campaign manager

🐣 📋 RT @JimPethokoukis GOLDMAN SACHS (Hatzius): All major economies (except the UK) now look likely to avoid recession this year.

🐣 RT @DenesTorteli 27.01.2023. Pr. Zelenskyy today: “Never again to – hatred. Never again to – indifference. The more nations of the world overcome indifference, the less space there will be in the world for hatred. Eternal memory to all victims of the Holocaust!”
💽 https://twitter.com/DenesTorteli/status/1618940752247283712?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @cepa “Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its troops have deported more than 2 million Ukrainians from the occupied territories, forcing them to adopt Russian citizenship.” @elina_beketova
⋙ CEPA: Behind the Lines: Russia Steps up Ukrainian Deportations https://tinyurl.com/2p8djm35
// While Russia offensives continue Donbas and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, more people were deported from Ukraine’s occupied territories.

KyivPost: Senators Call for U.S. to Give Ukraine F-16s and ATACMS https://tinyurl.com/3sbm3mt6 “Sens Sheldon Whitehouse, Lindsey Graham, and Richard Blumenthal said even more advanced weapons systems were still needed to ‘erode Russia’s capability to continue fighting in Ukraine’”
// One intelligence specialist says that besides their accuracy and range, the weapons are useful for the “abject fear it would project into the hearts of Russian battle commanders.”

A bipartisan trio of senators have called for the U.S. to bolster military support for Ukraine even more by sending ATCAMS long-range artillery systems and F-16 fighter jets. ¤ Welcoming President Biden’s recent announcement about the delivery of Abrams heavy tanks, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), Lindsey Graham (R-Tennessee), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said even more advanced weapons systems were still needed to “erode Russia’s capability to continue fighting in Ukraine.”

In a statement released on Friday Jan. 27, they said: “While the tanks represent a tremendous upgrade in Ukraine’s military, we urge the Biden Administration and our allies to send more long range artillery, such as ATACMS, and fighter aircraft such as F-16s and MiG-29s.

“The combination of tanks, fighter aircraft, and ATACMS will help Ukraine confront the upcoming Russian offensive and go on offense in both the East and the South in an attempt to further erode Russia’s capability to continue fighting in Ukraine. ¤ “Let’s give the Ukrainians everything they need to win – now.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SVATOVE AXIS /1410 UTC 29 JAN/ Intel reveals a significant & growing concentration of RU forces around Kreminna; an assembly of units and capabilities far in excess of the the defensive requirements of this sector of the front. A pending RU offensive cannot be ruled out.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1618973380061073409?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @dabeard How did Putin’s dictatorial predecessors hide their slaughter of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33? They destroyed local archives, altered death records, even census records—and barred discussion in schools and elsewhere. From “Red Famine,” by @anneapplebaum

⭕ 26 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @SenatorRomney History has taught us that when one country feels they can invade another country with little consequence, violence spreads and we become vulnerable to being pulled into a conflict. Supporting Ukraine is not just the right thing to do, it’s imperative for U.S. national security.
💽 https://twitter.com/SenatorRomney/status/1618682140887027725?s=20/photo/1

🐣 So, now the DOJ Inspecctor General and the Senate Intelligence Committee have to investigate the investigator who was investigating the investigation ~ while House Intelligence proceeds merrily on its way as if the original investigation was “weaponized” when it wasn’t @nytimes

🐣 If you do a simple (twitter) search on “Bakhmut,” it’s swarming with Ru trolls (40%?). A similar search on “Kreminna” ~ almost none. ¤ Why the difference? Prigozhin, who leads Wagner militia heavily engaged in Bakhmut, also runs Ru’s main troll farm

Pravda [UA]: Special operations forces of Azov regiment become separate assault brigade of Ground Forces and fight in Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/y5nmdy6m “The special operations forces of the Azov regiment are expanding and gaining even greater strength in the war of liberation”
// The Special Operations Forces of the Azov regiment became the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade as part of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and are already fighting on the Bakhmut front in Donetsk Oblast.

🐣 RT @carman_upshaw. Here is a conservative third party summary of russian equipment losses in Ukraine. After 11 months Russia has only been losing territory to Ukraine and can’t even take Bakhmut. So Ukraine is doing alright with what they have. New equipment will crush 🇷🇺
⋙ 📋 Oryx: Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
Ru losses: https://tinyurl.com/4pcz7675
Ukr losses: https://tinyurl.com/2z9vynh3

🐣 📋 RT @WhiteHouse Today’s economic report shows that our economy grew at 2.9% last quarter while annual inflation fell and unemployment hit record lows. ¤ President Biden’s first two years of economic growth were the strongest first two years since President Clinton.

🐣 RT @CAPAction MAGA Republicans are threatening to throw the economy into chaos to force cuts on Social Security and Medicare. @POTUS: “This nation has gone through too much…I will not let that happen.”
💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1618701743440920577?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Hey I found the “weaponization” of the federal government! Spoiler alert: It was Barr & Durham. I’m sure the House GOP will be investigating this. And guess what: The Russian investigation was no witch hunt. The effort to prove it was…was the witch hunt.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Durham – who is batting zero in his investigation of the Russia probe – LOBBIED THE DOJ IG HOROWITZ TO DROP HIS FINDING THAT THE RUSSIA PROBE WAS OPENED PROPERLY.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Jaw dropping reporting. Lots here including an explanation of why Durham’s colleague resigned: under pressure from Barr to release an “interim” report damaging Clinton & the FBI as the election drew near, Durham had a draft prepared that wasn’t factual.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Now THIS warrants a special counsel, AG Garland >> Trump was under **criminal investigation** while running for re-election in 2020 and Barr & Durham kept it secret
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ This is all about the Trump weaponization of the DOJ – but we know that the House Rs won’t give a damn about it. ¤ How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Barr Pressed Durham to Find Flaws in the Russia Investigation. It Didn’t Go Well https://tinyurl.com/fysfme8h How the Durham investigation, after insinuating much, went down in 🔥 #longread
// The review by John Durham at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr. …

Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.

● Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

● Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

● There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

Now, as Mr. Durham works on a final report, the interviews by The Times provide new details of how he and Mr. Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime. …

A month after Mr. Barr was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019, the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III ended the Russia investigation and turned in his report without charging any Trump associates with engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow over its covert operation to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump would repeatedly portray the Mueller report as having found “no collusion with Russia.” The reality was more complex. In fact, the report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Mr. Trump win and how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign interference. …

At the time Mr. Barr was confirmed, he told aides that he already suspected that intelligence abuses played a role in igniting the Russia investigation — and that unearthing any wrongdoing would be a priority. …

… Mr. Durham spent his first months looking for any evidence that the origin of the Russia investigation involved an intelligence operation targeting the Trump campaign. ¤ Mr. Durham’s team spent long hours combing the C.I.A.’s files but found no way to support the allegation. Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham traveled abroad together to press British and Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States, but both allied governments denied they had done any such thing. Top British intelligence officials expressed indignation to their U.S. counterparts about the accusation, three former U.S. officials said.

Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr had not yet given up when a new problem arose: In early December, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, completed his own report on the origins of the Russia investigation.

The inspector general revealed errors and omissions in wiretap applications targeting a former Trump campaign adviser and determined that an F.B.I. lawyer had doctored an email in a way that kept one of those problems from coming to light. (Mr. Durham’s team later negotiated a guilty plea by that lawyer.)

But the broader findings contradicted Mr. Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry. Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it. …

Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the F.B.I. opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “without any basis,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.

Mr. Trump also weighed in, telling reporters that the details of the inspector general’s report were “far worse than anything I would have even imagined,” adding: “I look forward to the Durham report, which is coming out in the not-too-distant future. It’s got its own information, which is this information plus, plus, plus.”

And the Justice Department sent reporters a statement from Mr. Durham that clashed with both Justice Department principles about not discussing ongoing investigations and his personal reputation as particularly tight-lipped. He said he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions about the Russia investigation’s origins, citing his own access to more information and “evidence collected to date.

But as Mr. Durham’s inquiry proceeded, he never presented any evidence contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s factual findings about the basis on which F.B.I. officials opened the investigation. ¤ By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Mr. Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane” after all. …

By the spring and summer of 2020, with Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign in full swing, the Durham investigation’s “failure to deliver scalps in time for the election” began to erode Mr. Barr’s relationship with Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr wrote in his memoir.

Mr. Trump was stoking a belief among his supporters that Mr. Durham might charge former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That proved too much for Mr. Barr, who in May 2020 clarified that “our concern of potential criminality is focused on others.”

Even so, in August, Mr. Trump lashed out in a Fox interview, asserting that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden, along with top F.B.I. and intelligence officials, had been caught in “the single biggest political crime in the history of our country” and the only thing stopping charges would be if Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham wanted to be “politically correct.”

Against that backdrop, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham did not shut down their inquiry when the search for intelligence abuses hit a dead end. With the inspector general’s inquiry complete, they turned to a new rationale: a hunt for a basis to accuse the Clinton campaign of conspiring to defraud the government by manufacturing the suspicions that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, along with scrutinizing what the F.B.I. and intelligence officials knew about the Clinton campaign’s actions.

Mr. Durham also developed an indirect method to impute political bias to law enforcement officials: comparing the Justice Department’s aggressive response to suspicions of links between Mr. Trump and Russia with its more cautious and skeptical reaction to various Clinton-related suspicions. … … …

As the focus of the Durham investigation shifted, cracks formed inside the team. Mr. Durham’s deputy, Ms. Dannehy, a longtime close colleague, increasingly argued with him in front of other prosecutors and F.B.I. agents about legal ethics. …

Now, Ms. Dannehy complained to Mr. Durham about how Mr. Barr kept hinting darkly in public about the direction of their investigation. In April 2020, for example, he suggested to Fox News that officials could be prosecuted, saying that “the evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here.” ¤ Ms. Dannehy urged Mr. Durham to ask the attorney general to adhere to Justice Department policy and not discuss the investigation publicly. But Mr. Durham proved unwilling to challenge him. …

By summer 2020, with Election Day approaching, Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Durham to draft a potential interim report centered on the Clinton campaign and F.B.I. gullibility or willful blindness. …

Ms. Dannehy erupted, according to people familiar with the matter. She told Mr. Durham that no report should be issued before the investigation was complete and especially not just before an election — and denounced the draft for taking disputed information at face value. She sent colleagues a memo detailing those concerns and resigned. …

In any case, in late September 2020, about two weeks after Ms. Dannehy quit, someone leaked to a Fox Business personality that Mr. Durham would not issue any interim report, disappointing Trump supporters hoping for a pre-Election Day bombshell. …

[On AlfaBank:] Trial testimony, however, showed that while Mrs. Clinton and her campaign manager hoped Mr. Sussmann would persuade reporters to write articles about Alfa Bank, they did not want him to take the information to the F.B.I. And prosecutors presented no evidence that he or campaign officials had believed the data scientists’ complex theory was false.

After Mr. Sussmann’s acquittal, Mr. Barr, by then out of office for more than a year, suggested that using the courts to advance a politically charged narrative was a goal in itself. Mr. Durham “accomplished something far more important” than a conviction, Mr. Barr told Fox News, asserting that the case had “crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching as a dirty trick the whole Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it.” ¤ And he predicted that a subsequent trial, concerning a Russia analyst who was a researcher for the Steele dossier, would also “get the story out” and “further amplify these themes and the role the F.B.I. leadership played in this, which is increasingly looking fishy and inexplicable.”

That case involved Igor Danchenko, who had told the F.B.I. that the dossier exaggerated the credibility of gossip and speculation. Mr. Durham charged him with lying about two sources. He was acquitted, too. ¤ The two failed cases are likely to be Mr. Durham’s last courtroom acts as a prosecutor. Bringing demonstrably weak cases stood in contrast to how he once talked about his prosecutorial philosophy.

James Farmer, a retired prosecutor who worked with Mr. Durham on several major investigations, recalled him as a neutral actor who said that if there were nothing to charge, they would not strain to prosecute. “That’s what I heard, time and again,” Mr. Farmer said.

Delivering the closing arguments in the Danchenko trial, Mr. Durham defended his investigation to the jury, denying that his appointment by Mr. Barr had been tainted by politics.

He asserted that Mr. Mueller had concluded “there’s no evidence of collusion here or conspiracy” — a formulation that echoed Mr. Trump’s distortion of the Russia investigation’s complex findings — and added: “Is it the wrong question to ask, well, then how did this get started? Respectfully, that’s not the case.” ¤ The judge interrupted him: “You should finish up, Mr. Durham.” [Ta dah‼️]

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Today Russia launched 55 cruise missiles at #Ukraine. Again targeted civilian “energy facilities,” some power substations hit. However another remarkable effort by 🇺🇦 air defences saw 47 of the missiles shot down, along with 24 Iran drones downed overnight [FB link]
◕ https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1618612498151936001?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 … and this is BEFORE a single Patriot air defense system has been set up: 4 are promised ~ and another 3 NASAMS

🐣 📋 RT @ byHeatherLong Sometimes you need to look at the big picture: It’s been an incredible rebound from the 2020 pandemic recession. ¤ The US has recovered all output lost in the crisis and gotten back on trend.
GDP
2022: +2.1%
2021: +5.9%
2020: -2.8%
https://tinyurl.com/bdh39cxd via @abhabhattarai
◕ https://twitter.com/byHeatherLong/status/1618606527606317058?s=20/photo/1
⋙ WaPo: U.S. economy grew 2.1 percent in 2022, but recession fears linger https://tinyurl.com/bdh39cxd
// GDP report shows six months of solid growth, including 2.9 percent expansion in the most recent quarter, though many economists say a slowdown may be near

NYT, Steve Erlanger: Ukraine War Accelerates Shift of Power in Europe to the East https://tinyurl.com/mtjhsc9p Central and Eastern Europe, “delivers a lot of attitude” … The war “has confirmed the reality that Europe can no longer be ruled from Paris and Berlin”
// The war has raised the influence of Central and Eastern European countries with negative views of Russia, amplified calls to expand the E.U. and NATO, and dimmed the power of France and Germany.

NYT, Mikhail Zygar: The Man Who May Challenge Putin for Power https://tinyurl.com/y9468ymj Prigozhin “appears to be the most important player in Russia. He is both the most popular political operator and the one who is feared by Russian high officials and businessmen”
// Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the mercenary group Wagner, may be Putin’s greatest threat to power.

[I]n recent years, Mr. [Yevgeny] Prigozhin has made a very unexpected career. At first, he was known as “Putin’s chef,” who managed to become a state contractor of school lunches for Russian children all across the country. Then he created the troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, and he was singled out in Robert Mueller’s investigation into interference in the 2016 election. Finally, Mr. Prigozhin became famous as the founder of the Wagner group, whose contractors fought in Africa, Syria and now Ukraine.

… [T]his year, Mr. Prigozhin moved into another league, surpassing all of Mr. Putin’s other friends in power. These include Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu; the Russian Security Council secretary, Nikolai Patrushev; the C.E.O. of Russia’s state-owned defense giant, Rostec, Sergei Chemezov; and Mr. Putin’s closest friend, Yury Kovalchuk. Mr. Prigozhin bypassed all of them and appears to be the most important player in Russia. He is both the most popular political operator and the one who is feared by Russian high officials and businessmen. …

On Jan. 10, Mr. Prigozhin reported on his company’s Telegram channel that Wagner militants had taken the Ukrainian city of Soledar. … The Ministry of Defense claimed that the seizure of Soledar was their achievement, which was immediately denied by Mr. Prigozhin and numerous military correspondents. [Neithee had]

It was presumably at this moment that Mr. Putin realized that Mr. Prigozhin might be a bit too popular. So he elevated Mr. Prigozhin’s main enemies — Generals Lapin and Valery Gerasimov, and appointed the latter as commander of the operation in Ukraine. This is Mr. Putin’s traditional bureaucratic game, which has been effective but may not work this time. …

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1330 UTC 26 JAN/ RU forces continue attempts to cut Bakhmut’s Lines of Communications and Supply (LOCS). RU forces at Soledar have reached positions near the T-05-13 HWY, other RU units have advanced northwest of Myika Pond in an attempt to sever the vital H-32 HWY
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1618600321823150084?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Biden to blast House GOP over economic agenda amid debt ceiling feud https://tinyurl.com/5hfzbwyt He “seeks to draw a contrast with Republicans, highlighting how some … have sought to ‘cut Social Security and Medicare’ and target other ‘programs Americans have earned’”
// The White House maintains it will not negotiate with the new GOP majority over its refusal to raise the debt ceiling

🐣 RT @mhmck Units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have advanced farther towards Russian-occupied Kreminna in Luhansk region. The Russian fascist invaders shelled positions of Ukrainian defenders in the Veryhins’ke Forest. ¤ –General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 06:00, 26 January 2023
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1618483959587037186?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 25 Jan 2023

WaPo, Benjamin Wittes:The Jan. 6 committee report footnotes: A treasure trove in fine print https://tinyurl.com/2s4avm5r ‘The Amazing Mr Klukowski’ and other tales the DOJ shouldn’t overlook

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Oleksandra @avalaina Matviichuk, head of the organization that received a Nobel Peace prize this year, called to give Ukraine all the weapons it needs at
@ksfopenukraine. She said values must be protected

YahooNews/NewVoiceUkraine: Ukrainian forces’ withdrawal from Bakhmut ‘out of question,’ says General Staff https://tinyurl.com/267p6hkb “As long as there are basements in Bakhmut and the ability to hold this territory, the fighters will stay there” ~ Ukrainian General Staff spokesman
// “[Ukrainian General Staff spokesman Andriy] Kovaliov said.”

TheDrive: M1 Abrams Tanks In U.S. Inventory Have Armor Too Secret To Send To Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/m963pmm3
// M1 tanks will be heading to Ukraine, but they can’t just be pulled from U.S. stocks due to their sensitive armor.

🐣 RT @CharlesPfarrer ARMORED EQUALIZER: The US has confirmed it will send M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) to Ukraine. The Abrams is the standard MBT used by the US Army. Its sensors, targeting computers and main gun will make it an exesential threat to RU armor.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1618312650177536002?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Hay69A It will take decades to rebuild Ukraine and clear munitions from the land – the environmental damage is severe
⋙ 🐣 I don’t understand why landmines at least aren’t designed to deactivate after a given period of time. I suppose the bad actors would not go along with it but there are other “rules” of armed conflict that we expect countries to follow or face war crimes tribunals

WaPo Editorial: McCarthy may regret kicking Schiff off House Intelligence Committee https://tinyurl.com/wr8bmhas “He might have laid the groundwork for Mr. Schiff to succeed Ms. Feinstein not only as a senator but also in a leading role on the Senate [‼️] Intelligence Committee”

NYT: How Biden Reluctantly Agreed to Send Tanks to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/msf22vbd ‘What the Pentagon was not taking into enough account was the intense fear among EU governments of doing anything to provoke Russia without having the cover of the US doing the same thing first’

🐣 RT @AaronBlake Freedom Caucus is a little over 20% of House GOP.
It will be:
-38% of Oversight Committee
-44% of Judiciary
-44% of select covid panel
-50% of panel on “weaponization” of gov’t
And that doesn’t include Rules, where 2 HFC members + Massie loom large.
⋙⋙ WaPo, Aaron Blake: GOP gives the Freedom Caucus the keys to the car https://tinyurl.com/3vy4r326
⋙ 🐣 RT @AaronBlake To be clear, these are percentages *of GOP members* on each committee.

🐣 RT @clashreport Danish-Swedish racist Rasmus Paludan says he received help for the idea to burn the Holy Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm from Swedish journalist Chang Frick, who collaborated with a subsidiary of the Russian propaganda channel RT. ¤ Frick made all the payments.
¤ https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1618267831379820545?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why. 0/20
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1618309363084718080?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/bjxvkjws

The person who led the relevant section, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged with taking money from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Follow this thread to see just how this connects to the victory of Trump, the Russian war in Ukraine, and U.S. national security. 1/20

The reason I was thinking about Trump & Putin in 2016 was a pattern. Russia had sought to control Ukraine, using social media, money, & a pliable head of state. Russia backed Trump the way that it had backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control 2/20

Trump & Yanukovych were similar figures: interested in money, & in power to make or shield money. And therefore vulnerable partners for Putin. They also shared a political advisor: Paul Manafort. He worked for Yanukovych from 2005-2015, taking over Trump’s campaign in 2016. 3/20

You might remember Manafort’s ties to Russia from 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the meeting called it, “the Russian government’s support for Trump” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 237). 4/20

Manafort had to resign as Trump’s campaign manager in August 2016 when news broke that he had received $12.7 million in cash from Yanukovych. But these details are just minor elements of Manafort’s dependence on Russia. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 235). 5/20

Manafort worked for Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch to whom McGonigal is linked, between 2006 and 2009. Manafort’s assignment was to soften up the U.S for Russian influence. He promised “a model that can greatly benefit the Putin government.” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 234). 6/20

While Manafort worked for Trump in 2016, though, Manafort’s dependence on Russia was deeper. He owed Deripaska money, not a position one would want to be in. Manafort offered Deripaska “private briefings” on the campaign. He was hoping “to get whole.” (#RoadToUnfreedom, 234) 7/20

Reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection in 2016. Trump and other Republicans screamed that the FBI had overreached. In retrospect, it seems the exact opposite took place. The issue of Russian influence was framed in a way convenient for Russia and Trump. 8/20

The FBI investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, focused on the narrow issue of personal connections between the Trump campaign and Russians. It missed Russia’s cyber attacks and the social media campaign, which, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, won the election for Trump. 9/20

Once the issue of Russian soft control was framed narrowly as personal contact, Obama missed the big picture, and Trump had an easy defense. Trump knew that Russia was working for him, but the standard of guilt was placed so high that he could defend himself. 10/20

It is entirely inconceivable that McGonigal was unaware of Russia’s 2016 cyber influence campaign on behalf of Trump. Even I was aware of it, and I had no expertise. It became one of the subjects of my book #RoadtoUnfreedom. 11/20

The FBI did investigate cyber later, and came to some correct conclusions. But this was after the election, and missed the Russian influence operations entirely. That was an obvious counterintelligence issue. Why did the FBI take so long, and miss the point? 12/20

I had no personal connection to this, but will just repeat what informed people said at the time: this sort of thing was supposed to go through the FBI counter-intelligence section in New York, where tips went to die. That is where McGonigal was in charge. 13/20

The cyber element is what McGonigal should have been making everyone aware of in 2016. In 2016, McGonigal was chief of the FBI’s Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section. That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s NY office. 14/20

We need to understand why the FBI failed in 2016 to address the essence of an ongoing Russian influence operation. The character of that operation suggests that it would have been the responsibility of an FBI section whose head is now accused of taking Russian money. 15/20

Right after the McGonigal story broke, Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee. Schiff is expert on Russian influence operations. It exhibits carelessness about national security to exclude him. It is downright suspicious to exclude him now. 16/20

Back in June 2016, Kevin McCarthy expressed his suspicion that Donald Trump was under Putin’s influence. He and other Republican members concluded that the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American security. #RoadToUnfreedom, p. 255. 17/20

The Russian influence operation to get Trump elected was real. It serves no one to pretend otherwise. We are still learning about it. Denying that it happened makes the United States vulnerable to ongoing Russian operations. 18/20

I remember a certain frivolity from 2016. Trump was a curiosity. Russia was irrelevant. Nothing to take seriously. Then Trump was elected, blocked weapon sales to Ukraine, and tried to stage a coup. Now Ukrainians are dying every day in the defining conflict of our time. 19/20

The McGonigal question goes even beyond these issues. He had authority in the most sensitive possible investigations within U.S. intelligence. Sorting this out will require a concern for the United States that goes beyond party loyalty. 20/20

CNN: High-ranking Russian officials are defecting. This man is aiding them https://tinyurl.com/3rp3rufu “Implicit in such officials’ escape from Russia through Osechkin’s network is an agreement to provide him with information about Moscow’s inner workings”

🐣 RT @NuggetMcBoom They’re pouring in combat aircraft to slow down or halt the advance. If Ukraine takes Kreminna it puts pressure on the Ruskie holdings around Rubizhne and Severodonetsk. The stakes are pretty high there and can potentially threaten to undo Russia’s big victory from last summer.

🐣 RT @Sky_Lee_1 “Today I’m announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion…the Abrams tanks are the most capable tanks in the world.”- @POTUS
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Biden: Putin expected Europe and the United States to weaken our resolve. He expected our support for Ukraine to crumble with time. He was wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong from the beginning and he continues to be wrong
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1618295823246233609?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Sky_Lee_1 “Today I’m announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion…the Abrams tanks are the most capable tanks in the world.”- @POTUS

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Russian propagandist demands Moscow nuke Berlin for sending tanks so Ukraine can defend itself from these genocidal maniacs
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “German tanks on Russian land – the reason to destroy Berlin!” ¤ Sign of a right decision – Solovyev’s tantrum.
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1618283796234932224?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Sensibleplease Happy Birthday!
🖼 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Sensibleplease/status/1618235325196931072?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 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

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian In the new package of military aid, the 🇺🇸USA will also transfer to 🇺🇦Ukraine 8 BREM ARV M88A2, intended for the repair, evacuation and emergency refueling of Abrams tanks

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Wishing President @ZelenskyyUa a happy birthday! ¤ Hoping to include a Victory announcement in the video for your next birthday.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1618273268854849536?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1350 UTC 25 JAN/ UKR forces are advancing NE of Dibrova. During 23-24 JAN, RU increased close air support / aviation strike missions. UKR reports that air defense downed a Su-25 strike aircraft, 3 Ka-52 attack helicopters, 4 recon UAVs, and 1 Lancet loitering munition.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1618242596270407681?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT / 1310 UTC 25 JAN / RU troops press offensive operations on the Bakhmut Area of Operation (AO). An increase in RU Close Air Support Sorties has resulted in a number of kills for UKR air deference. UKR shot down a Su-25 strike aircraft and 3 RU Ka-52 attack helicopters.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1618237222892998663?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @BeschlossDC “When the C.I.A. noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing…as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force….A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” reported @nytimes in 2018.
📌 https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1617673023053778945?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/ywhd49ft

🐣 RT @bpolitics Germany pledged to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 battle tanks, providing Kyiv’s forces with a significant upgrade against Russia. ¤ Chancellor Olaf Scholz says the decision was made following “intensive consultation” with allies (via @quicktake) https://trib.al/mfUUi2k
💽 https://twitter.com/bpolitics/status/1618255452625670146?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @AtlanticCouncil “The war in Ukraine will prove that tanks still matter—and Leopards will outclass their Russian counterparts,” the @AtlanticCouncil’s @John_T_Watts tells @CNBC. Read more:
⋙ CNBC: Germany announces it will send 14 of its Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/kt47jm3r
// Germany announced it is ready to send 14 its own tanks to Ukraine and to allow others to do so, in an U-turn from its previous position

🐣 RT @grahworin Well, Al-Jaz got access to a TOC drone room in Bakhmut direction
💽 https://twitter.com/grahworin/status/1618231520250171397?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @abel_riu “Ahead of what is expected to be a brutal spring of fighting, US & Western officials have begun suggesting that Ukrainian forces cut their losses in Bakhmut, which has little strategic significance, and focus instead on planning an offensive in the south”
⋙⋙ CNN: The US and its allies want Ukraine to change its battlefield tactics in the spring https://tinyurl.com/yxt744c9
⋙ 🐣 RT @ abel_riu “The US wants to help Ukraine shift away from the sort of pitched battle of attrition playing out in Bakhmut and focus instead on a style of mechanized maneuver warfare that uses rapid, unanticipated movements against Russia”

🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Fulton County DA Willis asked Court not to release the Special Grand Jury Report but,more importantly, said “decisions are imminent” about seeking criminal charges against figures involved in Mr Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election. That is big news. More than 1 defendant!

🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA I am often asked about how you have changed this year. And I always answer: “He haven’t changed. He is the same. The same guy I have met when we were seventeen.” ¤ But actually, something has changed: you smile much less now. For example, like on this photo… 1/2
🖼 https://twitter.com/ZelenskaUA/status/1618141304793485313?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA I wish you to have more reasons for smiling. And you know what it takes. We all do. ¤ You are stubborn enough. But the main thing is to have enough health. So please, be healthy! I want to smile near you forever. Give me this opportunity! 2/2
// Zelensky is 45 today 🎂

🐣 RT @leonidragozin Contours of settlement as per Blinken:
– Ukraine inside the EU but outside NATO and armed so as to be fully aggression-proof
– Demilitarised Crimea under Russian control; status issue deferred
– No word on Donbas (implicit hope of liberation)
⋙ WaPo, David Ignatius: Blinken ponders the post-Ukraine-war order https://tinyurl.com/mr28sdvt

… The administration’s standard formula is that all decisions must ultimately be made by Ukraine, and Blinken reiterated that line. He also backs Ukraine’s desire for significant battlefield gains this year. But the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are also thinking ahead.

Crimea is a particular point of discussion. There is a widespread view in Washington and Kyiv that regaining Crimea by military force may be impossible. Any Ukrainian military advances this year in Zaporizhzhia oblast, the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia, could threaten Russian control. But an all-out Ukrainian campaign to seize the Crimean Peninsula is unrealistic, many U.S. and Ukrainian officials believe. That’s partly because Putin has indicated that an assault on Crimea would be a tripwire for nuclear escalation.

The administration shares Ukraine’s insistence that Crimea, which was seized by Russia in 2014, must eventually be returned. But in the short run, what’s crucial for Kyiv is that Crimea no longer serve as a base for attacks against Ukraine. One formula that interests me would be a demilitarized status, with questions of final political control deferred. Ukrainian officials told me last year that they had discussed such possibilities with the administration. …

🐣 RT @UkrainianNews24 Ukrainian pilots have visited the U.S. and the specific type of aircraft to be provided to Ukraine has already been selected, the top spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force claimed on Tuesday. [link]

🐣 RT @NOELreports “Discussions about red lines are a thing of the past, the United States has unequivocally declared its desire to inflict a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation,” says the Russian Foreign Ministry.

🔄 🐣 Tanks Encyclopedia: World’s Main Battle Tanks (2017) https://tinyurl.com/3vxs7pby
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1618162674889805824?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua The US endorses Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s resolute action against corruption and irresponsibility, says a spokesman of the US State Department Ned Price.

⭕ 24 Jan 2023

AlJazeera, Botakoz Kassymbekova: How Western scholars overlooked Russian imperialism https://tinyurl.com/56tekavw “To understand former and current Russian colonies, one needs to listen to historians from these places and study their cultures, languages and histories”
// For far too long, Western academia has ignored the legacies of the Russian Empire and colonisation.

Russian imperial ambitions date back to the 16th century when the Grand Principality of Moscow, or Muscovy, proclaimed itself the third Rome, the successor of the Byzantine Empire and protector of all Orthodox Christians.

The Russian imperial army fought numerous wars in the east, west and south, and by the mid-19th century, Russia had become the largest land empire. Along with the British, Austro-Hungarian and French empires, it understood and presented itself as a European colonial power.

Following the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the end of the Russian monarchy and Russian imperialism, but they fought brutally to preserve the Russian imperial borders. They reconquered newly formed independent states, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, which emerged after the collapse of the Russian Empire.

In the early 1930s, Joseph Stalin embraced Russian nationalism based on the old imperial myth of the greatness of the Russian people. Bolshevik Moscow made ethnic Russians the most privileged group in the Soviet Union and sent Russian settlers to populate and control non-Russian regions.

Purging native leaders, forcefully resettling entire ethnic groups and creating conditions that led to mass deaths were all part of Soviet colonisation. Non-Russian people’s cultures, languages and histories were disparaged while Russification was presented as enlightenment.

At the same time, the Soviet Union adopted a progressive narrative of enfranchising nations conquered by the Russian Empire and giving them national rights within the Soviet Union. Many in Western academia bought into the anti-colonial narrative Moscow was trying to sell because they took official proclamations at face value and wanted to believe in the story of communist anti-imperialism.

Indeed, the Bolsheviks eliminated the tsarist aristocracy, and the people who took power were of diverse backgrounds. Stalin, for example, was an ethnic Georgian who spoke Russian with an accent.

For many Western scholars, that apparently meant that he was leading a post-colonial state. By focusing on individuals and official proclamations, Western academia too often overlooked the fact that Stalin was obsessed with maintaining Russian imperial borders and had adopted the same toolkit – ethnic cleansing, crushing dissent, destroying national movements, privileging Russian ethnicity and culture – that tsarist Russia used to maintain them.

Soviet coloniality was dismissed also because knowledge about the Soviet Union in the West was Russocentric. The Soviet Union was often referred to simply as Russia. There was little knowledge about non-Russian people. Non-Russian émigrés who fled to the West and wrote about Soviet coloniality with firsthand experience of Soviet imperialism were dismissed as anti-Soviet conservative ideologues.

Importantly, the Soviet Union also became a space of projections for those who looked for ways to criticise capitalism and Western imperialism. Those who blamed capitalism for oppression believed that eliminating capitalism would end all forms of oppression. For them, the Soviet Union was an internationalist project that brought equality and freedom to formerly subjugated peoples. ¤ Violence against various nations and ethnic groups was either ignored or treated as a necessary evil of the transition to communism.

Western scholarship also overwhelmingly focused on the Soviet metropoles – Moscow and Leningrad. They knew very little, if at all, about the Soviet peripheries, which meant that nobody really understood the uprisings in Central Asia, the Caucasus or the Baltics from the late 1980s onwards or the bloodshed in Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and later Chechnya.

As Ronald Gregor Suny, historian of Soviet imperial nation-building, noted in a 2017 interview, “Before the late 1980s, no one cared about non-Russians. Sovietology and Soviet studies [were] about the centre and the top – who was standing where on the Kremlin, on the mausoleum, and so forth.”

The generation of scholars who started studying the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s were also shaped by their firsthand experience of the country. When they travelled as foreign students to Moscow, they found impoverished people. Empty shelves and pervasive poverty made Russians look like victims of the Soviet regime, and financially, Soviet Moscow seemed more like a European periphery than an imperial metropole, which they associated with material affluence. …

In Russia itself, the dominant narrative was one of victimhood. Russians learned to see themselves as a special nation that sacrificed its own wellbeing for the sake of non-Russians in the Soviet Union. “Let us stop feeding them” was the slogan Russians used to explain Moscow’s decision to let the colonies go in 1991.

In the West, the collapse of the Soviet Union came as a shock. Many – both in academia and politics – liked Mikhail Gorbachev and saw him as a hero, a man of peace. They approved of his reforms, which spurred a new era of freedom of speech.

Gorbachev was soft, open and democratic in his communication and seemed like a good partner for the next few decades. The United States was even willing to offer him assistance to reform the country; US policy was against Soviet disintegration.

This is how late Professor Mark von Hagen recalled in 2016 the political atmosphere back then: “Again, George Bush … was defending Gorbachev until the very last possible moment because he and the United States government at that level, with a few dissenting voices, wanted to keep the Soviet Union together because they were so afraid of the kind of crazy, fascist nationalism that they thought the Ukrainians represented.”

Indeed, this Western fear of chaos, bloodshed and even nuclear incidents led to the perception of independence movements within the former Soviet space as expressions of destructive ethno-nationalism rather than a natural progression of an empire collapsing.

At the same time, since the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was organised centrally by Moscow, it made the question of imperial oppression obsolete in the minds of Western observers. The idea that the Soviet Union was an internationalist experiment continued to stick, and its collapse was seen as this experiment simply expiring.

Many Western historians perceived it not as a regime that erased diverse polities and national movements, but as a political project that created and developed nations. This is highly problematic not only because it ignores the history of national movements that took place prior to the Bolshevik takeover but also goes contrary to the idea of a nation being formed on the basis of popular legitimacy.

Still there were exceptions. Influential works by historians like Ronald Grigor Suny (The Revenge of the Past) and Andreas Kappeler (Russia as a Multinational Empire) have pointed to the violent Bolshevik policies towards colonised nations and their resistance. Others like von Hagen (Does Ukraine Have a History?) and Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands) who have written from the point of view of the colonised were able to properly predict and warn of historical continuities and dangers still posed by Russia today for these nations.

What the myth of the Soviet Union as a nation-builder did was promote in the West the idea that Russia has a sphere of influence, a “backyard”, where it has the right to intervene.

That is why Western academia and political circles had little to say about the genocidal wars Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, led in Chechnya. Rather than seeing people claiming sovereignty and nationhood, the West readily bought into their portrayals of Chechens as bandits, nationalists and terrorists. That is why they also failed to see Russian imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe – the 2008 war on Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, etc – as such.

There has already been some recognition that mistakes were made. As Professor Susan Smith-Peter recently commented: “As scholars of Russia, we need to undertake a searching moral inventory to see the ways in which we have taken the Russian state’s point of view as a default. Have we in any way taken part in the glorification of the Russian state that Putin has taken to a pathological extreme? Has our field participated in casting Ukraine as a state without history in our own way?“ ¤ Indeed, it has. And it is time to correct that.

To understand Russia, one needs to listen to those who lived under Russian colonial rule. To understand former and current Russian colonies, one needs to listen to historians from these places and study their cultures, languages and histories, both written and unwritten. To appreciate the ways out of colonial dictatorships, one needs to study the successful transformations of states like Ukraine. This would require dismissing the myth of the “artificial nation” and finally seeing Russia as an empire.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Zelensky: Russia preparing new wave of aggression. ¤ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in his evening address that Russia is preparing for a new wave of aggression and is increasing military activity near Bakhmut and Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Kevin McCarthy just kicked me and @RepSwalwell off the Intelligence Committee. ¤ This is petty, political payback for investigating Donald Trump. ¤ If he thinks this will stop me, he will soon find out just how wrong he is. ¤ I will always defend our democracy.
⋙ 🐣 Trump hates you because you described him so perfectly in one of the best speeches ever given in the House (Impeachment #1 summary argument)

🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Ukraine’s Sacrifice Protects NATO, EU, and Democracy – CEPA
⋙ CEPA: Our Debt to Ukraine — Payback Time https://tinyurl.com/5cmvarky
// NATO and the EU are still standing and still viable, because of the heroism and sacrifice of the Ukrainians to stop Russian aggression.

🐣 RT @nicholadrummond Lots of people asking which tank is best. Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and M1A2 Abrams all have comparative advantages relative to each other, but all are quantifiably better than anything Russia has fielded, including T-90M.

🚫🐣 RT @RisingSC_taiwan The frigate of the #Russian Navy “Admiral #Gorshkov” with nuclear warheads on board is now moving towards the United States, – The Sun. ¤ The publication also claims that the Admiral Gorshkov is under close surveillance by the #NATO naval forces.
// messing around
🚫🐣 RT @TreasChest The frigate of the Russian Navy “Admiral Gorshkov” with nuclear warheads on board is now moving towards the USA, – The Sun.
¤ https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1617997111907454979?s=20
// ~Noon Central
🚫 ⋙ 🐣 RT @Quetzalcoatl_SF Eight (8) stratofortress B52 type bombers flying due East over Long Island , in formation, perhaps a meet and greet?
// ~4:30pm Central

🐣 RT @Artur_Micek [tr] In an optimistic scenario, the UA can receive the following amount of Leopard 2 tanks:
– Poland: 14
– Germany: 14 to 19
– Netherlands: 18
– Sweden: 10-12
– Norway: 8
– Finland: 10am to 2pm
– Portugal: 4-6
– Denmark: 10-14
– Spain: 6-12
Total: from 94 to 117. ¤ These are estimates!

🐣 RT @ IAPonomarenko If you want my honest opinion, 🇩🇪 Germany today has scored the very final victory over the shadow of its past. It’s been tempted by deceitful evil, yet it made the most crucial symbolic step. Not without pressure from its friends, but it made it.

🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Germany, in a painful moment of truth, said no to empowering a revanchist, hateful war of aggression, and opted to help the victim prevail and restore just peace. No more deals with the devil. ¤ So thank you 🇩🇪Germany for being on the right side of history with us. ¤ And goodnight.

WaPo, Michael McFaul: Are we seeing the beginning of the end of Putinism? https://tinyurl.com/2p9cmr4f “It is hard to escape the sense though that the best days for Putin and his ideas are behind him. Like Leonid Brezhnev in Afghanistan, Putin has overreached in Ukraine”

🐣 RT @ @nickschifrin US officials confirm to me the US will announce tomorrow sending approximately 30 M1 Abrams tanks, in coordination with Germany’s announcing Leopard 2’s can go to Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nickschifrin The Abrams will be sent using Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), NOT through Presidential Drawdown Authority, the officials confirmed. Which means when it comes to spring offensives, the focus will be on getting Ukrainians trained and operating the Leopard 2’s.

🐣 RT @ @nickschifrin US officials confirm to me the US will announce tomorrow sending approximately 30 M1 Abrams tanks, in coordination with Germany’s announcing Leopard 2’s can go to Ukraine.

🐣 RT @officejjsmart New Wagner cemetery in Russia . ¤ Of 50,000 prisoners taken into their ranks, only about 10,000 are left. ¤ Wagner admits that it does not keep stats on its soldiers, but the organization suffered from the desertion of many soldiers who returned home to Russia with their weapons

🐣 RT @ @Tendar Many see only the military aspect of the decisive step of sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, but far more important is the political framework around it. The West has made the irrevocable decision to enable Ukraine to defeat Russia and it will use all necessary tools to achieve.

🐣 RT @francis_scarr Solovyov reacts to media reports that Olaf Scholz has decided to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine ¤ He urges Russia to carry out strikes on Germany so that Germans “know which new Nazi leaders they’ve raised and brought to power” ¤ “You European Pharisees, you Nazi scumbags!”
💽 https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1618010872995270657?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @BalticSnowTiger 🇺🇦💪🇩🇪 The Dam has broken #FreeTheLeopards HQ @MriyaReport thanks 🇺🇸🇬🇧& 🇫🇮🇵🇱, the 🐆Coalition of the Willing🇪🇸🇳🇱🇸🇪🇩🇰🇵🇹🇬🇷🇳🇴and🇨🇿🇸🇰, the millions of supporters & friends. A Leap of Leopards @general_ben @WarintheFuture @YAmzallagh @AndriyYermak @Makeiev @VVoytsitska @noclador

🐣 RT @KremlinTrolls F16s
⋙ 🐣 RT @ bayraktar_1love “Our military pilots traveled to the US. The type of aircraft that will probably be provided to 🇺🇦 and the corresponding terms for pilot training have already been determined,” – Yuriy Ignat, speaker of the Ukrainian Air Force. https://tinyurl.com/2p9yfxe4

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en [Ru tv]”Berlin will be destroyed if Germany continues supplying weapons to Ukrainian Nazis”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1617901901986828289?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @sentdefender The Ukrainian Military is reportedly expecting a Large-Scale Russian Offensive across multiple Fronts sometime between February and March with Defenders in the North, East, and South continuing to make all preparations needed.

🐣 RT @STEMthebleeding DODM 5200.01 , Vol 2, change 4, page 40. ¤ Every declassified document must be reviewed by a board and annotated in the following manner prior to release, which is synonymous w/ declassification in this regard.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/STEMthebleeding/status/1617956109469503489?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @NOELreports An overview of the latest announced military equipment from Western countries to Ukraine which will be provided within short to mid term. ¤ Tomorrow, this graphic will probably be outdated :-)
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1616149484526010368?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1310 UTC 24 UTC/ N of Bakhmut, UKR troops are engaged within the urban limits of Krasna Hora, defending the T-05-13 HWY. In the eastern industrial districts of the Bakhmut, fighting continues along the Patrice Lumumba Blvd axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617870473442000903?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2000 UTC 24 JAN/ UKR forces are reported to be advancing NE of Dibrova, pushing the line of contact eastward. UKR air defense reports the downing of an Orlan-10 recon UAV as well as 2 Russian Su-25 aircraft and a Ka-52 attack helicopter.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617972021564157952?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Leopards freed! 🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆

NYT: Pentagon Will Increase Artillery Production Sixfold for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3jpfvbk7 “The effort, which will involve expanding factories and bringing in new producers, is part of ‘the most aggressive modernization effort in nearly 40 years’”
// The Army’s top acquisition official says production of the 155-millimeter shells badly needed by Kyiv will rise to 90,000 a month in two years.

The Pentagon is racing to boost its production of artillery shells by 500 percent within two years, pushing conventional ammunition production to levels not seen since the Korean War as it invests billions of dollars to make up for shortfalls caused by the war in Ukraine and to build up stockpiles for future conflicts. ¤ The effort, which will involve expanding factories and bringing in new producers, is part of “the most aggressive modernization effort in nearly 40 years” for the U.S. defense industrial base, according to an Army report

🐣 RT @stavridisj If true, this could be a true pivot point in the war. Well done, Germany, and “Danke Schoen”
⋙ Reuters: Germany to send Leopard tanks to Kyiv, allow others to do so – sources https://tinyurl.com/55hf6y24

😅 RT @Sputnik_Not BREAKING: Russia’s Ministry of Defence says today Russian forces in Ukraine have destroyed 200 Abrams M1 tanks, 150 Leopards, 15 HIMARS, four Swedish submarines, two Royal Navy aircraft carriers and a NATO mosquito training centre

🐣 RT @POLITICOEurope “Officials will no longer be able to travel abroad for vacation or for any other non-governmental purpose,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
⋙ Politico: Zelenskyy bans Ukrainian officials from traveling abroad https://tinyurl.com/2d2ubatw
// Kyiv is dealing with a major corruption probe involving government officials.

WaPo: Top Ukrainian officials ousted in anti-corruption sweep https://tinyurl.com/mr4xb8zu “Ukraine, under pressure from the US and especially the EU, has worked aggressively in recent years to root out corruption, which had long been pervasive across the government”

🧵 RT @Tatarigami_UA (12/3) Some people have been wondering why Russians have concentrated several brigades near a tiny town called Vuhledar, which approximately occupies only 5 square kilometers, and what makes Russians so obsessed with the idea to take it?
// 12/3/2022
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1599074248647057408?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/43bs87ju

To understand that, we need to look at the Russian military doctrine. Railroads are a core of Russian logistics and essential to supply entire armies. It allows Russia to move large numbers of supplies and reinforcements within a relatively short period. /photo/1 -4

After the destruction of the railroad section in the Crimean bridge, Russians are facing significant logistics issues and frantically looking at possible solutions to reinforce their Southern group.

The railroad pathway highlighted in red color would allow the Russian army to establish an important logistics route between Russia-Luhansk-Donetsk-Mariupol and possibly Crimea. 🌎

The proximity of the railroad to Vuhledar, Novomykhailivka, and Mar’inka makes this endeavor difficult, as the Ukrainian army has fire control over the railroad, making it impossible for Russians to use. I marked that small railroad section with the red line 🌎

This brings us back to the Vuhledar question. Despite the small size, Vuhledar is located at an important strategic point that allows the Ukrainian army to keep under control both the railway and railway stations, more importantly – Volnovakha 🌎

To get closer to the Vuhledar, the enemy made a series of attempts to take over Pavlivka in October and November, which resulted in the total loss of about 2000 people as KIA, MIA, POWs, or seriously crippled on the Russian side.

While the enemy was able to push out Ukrainian troops from Pavlivka, they couldn’t establish control over the settlement, as it’s located much lower than Vuhledar and gives Ukrainian troops great fire control over the area. 🌎

After suffering devastating losses during the Pavlivka offense, the enemy replenishes its forces with manpower and vehicles. It seems like the enemy is planning to utilize additional battalions which just underwent training and rotation.

The same units involved in Pavlivka will be used in Vuhledar – 40th Naval Infantry Brigade, 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, special task unit “Kaskad” and various volunteer battalions such as “Tigr” /photo/1

At this moment, the enemy focuses on Vuhledar’s defense suppression. To achieve that, the enemy uses regular and rocket artillery, direct and indirect tank fire, and occasional unguided rocket barrages from helicopters and jets. /photo/1

The morale remains low, and the regular army units perform fake offensives – they retreat under minimal fire and exaggerate combat reports to justify their retreats. To avoid stalling, the Russian command utilizes brutal tactics:

They use units consisting of BARS(Active Combat Military Reserve), volunteer battalions, and freshly mobilized, supported by armored units to perform assaults and to exhaust available Ukrainian material and human resources /photo/1

Another offensive operation will result in much worse losses than during the Pavlivka offense, but the threat to Vuhledar remains real and needs to be taken seriously – the Kremlin wants this task to be done, no matter the cost.

🐣 RT @ CaptFreneyNAFO Just to rub salt in his wounds after his failed business venture in Soledar Prigozhin is now expected to be called to the Kremlin for tea. On his way there he will have to avoid having a fatal car accident as well as potentially lethal ruzzian windows wherever he stays. 🤡💀☠️
⋙ 🐣 RT @EarthlyTweet The kremlin does not rule out that Kyiv may commit an assassination attempt on Yevgeny Prigozhin. ¤ This was stated by the press secretary of Khyla Dmytro Peskov in a comment to journalists on Tuesday, January 24. ¤ Sounds like someone needs to avoid windows & tea.

🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️The Biden administration provided the Chinese government with evidence that some Chinese state-owned companies are assisting russia in military operations in Ukraine — Bloomberg with reference to sources.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1617860314799955968?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @vmedick BIG NEWS: Germany sends heavy Leopard tanks to Ukraine, approves Polish request, forms new tank alliance with other partners. @ChHickmann with exclusive details of what could be military turning point @derspiegel
⋙ DerSpiegel (S+): Krieg in der Ukraine: Deutschland schickt Leopard-Panzer https://tinyurl.com/2nx65ehf
// Nach monatelanger Debatte hat sich Kanzler Scholz durchgerungen, Kampfpanzer an die Ukraine zu liefern. Auch die Verbündeten wollen …

🐣 RT @Ukrainene The U.S. is considering sending 30-50 Abrams tanks, sources from #Pentagon said. ¤ #US is weighing heavily sending #Abrams tanks to #Ukraine, thus unlocking the #German #LeopardsForUkraine from #Germany and other European capitals, thus settling a growing rift over tanks.

WSJ: U.S. Leans Toward Providing Abrams Tanks to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4w56ept6 “The deal would address a rift between the U.S. and the Germans and other Europeans over providing tanks for Ukraine during a pivotal phase of the war”
// Deliveries would be part of deal to enable provision of German-built Leopards

The shift in the U.S. position follows a call on Jan. 17 between President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in which Mr. Biden agreed to look into providing the Abrams tanks against the judgment of the Pentagon. A senior German official said that the issue had been the subject of intense negotiation between Washington and Berlin for more than a week and appeared to be on the way to resolution.

In a contentious meeting last week at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the U.S. and its allies failed to persuade Germany to allow other nations to send German-made tanks, exposing the first serious rift in the alliance that has supported Kyiv. ¤ Previously, the Pentagon had ruled out providing the tanks to Ukraine, saying they were too complicated for the Ukrainians to maintain and operate. But White House and State Department officials were described as being more open to providing Abrams to break the diplomatic logjam holding up Leopard deliveries.

German officials initially said that they wouldn’t be the first to send tanks to Ukraine and wouldn’t do so unless the U.S. provided its own Abrams tanks. Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told German television last week that German and U.S. tanks don’t need to be provided at the same time and indicated that his government was still weighing what to do.

Poland’s defense minister said Tuesday that Poland had asked Germany for permission to send some of its German-made tanks to Ukraine. ¤ “The Germans have already received our request for consent to transfer Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine,” Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said. “I also appeal to the German side to join the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks.”

Publicly, U.S. officials have praised Germany for weapons contributions it has made to Ukraine, including the IRIS-T air defense system and the promise to send a Patriot antimissile battery to supplement the ones pledged by the U.S. and the Netherlands, as well as Marder infantry-fighting vehicles.

Privately, U.S. officials were frustrated by Germany’s refusal to approve the provision of German-made tanks and have debated how to persuade Berlin to change its stance.

Some State Department and White House officials, however, have been open to meeting the German demands on the Abrams to avoid a deepening rift among Ukraine’s backers over aid to Ukraine and to expedite the delivery of more armor. ¤ The British promised earlier this month to send 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, but that wasn’t enough to persuade the Germans to release their hold on the Leopards.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress The Biden administration is leaning toward sending a significant number of Abrams M1 tanks to Ukraine and an announcement of the deliveries could come this week, US officials said – WSJ
⋙ .EuromaidanPress: US leaning toward sending a significant number of Abrams tanks to Ukraine – WSJ sources https://tinyurl.com/y6v8tnzz

The Biden administration is leaning toward sending a significant number of Abrams M1 tanks to Ukraine and an announcement of the deliveries could come this week, US officials said, The Wall Street Journal reports. ¤ According to WSJ, the announcement would be part of a broader diplomatic understanding with Germany in which Berlin would agree to send a smaller number of its own Leopard 2 tanks and would also approve the delivery of more of the German-made tanks by Poland and other nations.  The White House declined to comment.

🐣 RT @JChengWSJ The war in Ukraine has exposed widespread problems in the American armaments industry that may hobble the U.S. military’s ability to fight a protracted war against China, according to a new study. @glubold
⋙ WSJ: U.S. Weapons Industry Unprepared for a China Conflict, Report Says https://tinyurl.com/2m2runbh
// The war in Ukraine is highlighting the inability of U.S. arms companies to replenish the military’s stocks

But the protracted conflict has also exposed the strategic peril facing the U.S. as weapons inventories fall to a low level and defense companies aren’t equipped to replenish them rapidly, according to the study, written by Seth Jones, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

For more than the last 20 years, the U.S. fought insurgency warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a troop-intensive strategy, but the Ukraine conflict is a largely conventional war that relies more on heavy weaponry. A potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific would be different from the largely land war taking place in Ukraine, but would nonetheless need to draw deeply from U.S. arms stockpiles.

The problems with the industrial base, in part the result of outdated military contracting procedures and a sluggish bureaucracy, are now affecting the ability to create a credible deterrent in the Indo-Pacific region or face-off against China in a military conflict, according to the study’s finding. ¤ “These shortfalls would make it extremely difficult for the United States to sustain a protracted conflict,” the report said. “They also highlight that the U.S. defense industrial base lacks adequate surge capacity for a major war.”…

Mr. Jones recommends that the U.S. reassess its total munition requirements, urging Congress to hold hearings on the matter. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley said in November that such an effort is already under way. … The study also suggests reassessing American requirements for replenishing its stockpiles, creating a strategic munitions reserve and determining a sustainable munitions procurement plan to meet current and future requirements.

🐣 RT @maxseddon Blockbuster @MilesMJohnson investigation: how high-end lawyers in London and Moscow helped Wagner’s Yevgeny Prigozhin evade western sanctions for his role running paramilitary group Wagner – and helped him construct an elaborate lie to hide it
⋙ FT, Miles Johnson: Wagner Inc: a Russian warlord and his lawyers https://tinyurl.com/2va2m3ha
// Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the mercenary operation, has used prominent legal firms around the world to try to keep western governments

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SLENDER THREADS: General Ben Hodges @general_ben points out the vulnerabilities of RU’s ‘colony’ of Crimea. Only 2 Lines of Communication (LOC) connect Crimea Ukraine. Only one, the Kerch Bridge, connects it to Russia. UKR’s long-range precision weapons can hit them all.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617893809014345728?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @general_ben This is the so-called “land bridge”, one of only two Land Lines of Communication (LOC) connecting Crimea to Russia. The other is the Kerch Bridge. There’s a reason the Kremlin is upgrading that road. Send UKR the necessary long-range precision weapons to wreck this “land bridge”.

🔄 🐣 Feel free to follow my curated Lists on Ukraine and (more technical:) War in Ukraine
(Don’t tell Elmo, but there on no ads in Twitter Lists)
Ukraine: https://twitter.com/i/lists/157259218
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🧵 RT @RealCynicalFox Scholz und Panzers [thread]: ¤ Chancellor Scholz has once again prevaricated on the decision whether to authorize Leopard 2 transfers to Ukraine from Germany’s various client states. While there are likely several reasons for this, I’d like to briefly delve into one of them here. ¤ 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/RealCynicalFox/status/1617844201953329152?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/yc3fpuk8

My assessment of his behavior is that Scholz still harbors dreams of returning to something approaching a pre-war status quo between Russia & Germany. He’s caught between this desire, & growing internal/external pressure to provide increasing levels of aid to Ukraine.
2/
Therefore Scholz continually attempts to thread the needle between the two. Aid is forthcoming, but not in relatively large quantities for a nation like Germany, nor is it sent with great alacrity. Increases happen only under pressure, & when Germany can delay – she does.
3/
MBTs are a Rubicon, especially considering that Leopard 2s would be far easier to transfer & sustain in quantity than a like number of Abrams sent from the US. They & their entire support system are already in Europe. They’re also vastly superior to any Russian tank.
4/
So, Scholz can’t say “Yes” if he wishes a return to the post-war status quo w/ Russia. He also can’t give a definitive “No” given the mounting pressure from NATO allies & his own govt.’s previous statements on the issue. His solution is to say neither, to delay.
5/
Scholz hopes (IMO) that if he delays long enough the decision will be taken out of his hands. Either the US will step in with the Abrams, or German client states will violate their agreements & transfer Leopard 2’s w/o German consent. In his mind, this keeps his hands clean.
6/
This would give him cover to eventually agree to transfers or support assistance (if he has to), but allows him to make the argument post-war to Russia that he didn’t initiate the transfer & either his hand was forced or agreements were violated so it isn’t his fault.
7/
I’m admittedly ascribing some fairly cynical motivations to the German Chancellor. H/e given his statements & behavior to date, I do not think it an unfair assessment. ¤ 8/8.

🐣 RT @RenaEUNV Ukraine: Stoltenberg ‘confident’ solution on German tanks will be found soon video | Global #GermanNews #German #GlobalNews
⋙ EuropeNewsVideo[.]com: Ukraine: Stoltenberg ‘confident’ solution on German tanks will be found soon video | Global https://tinyurl.com/ycx5ewm8
// Nato’s secretary general told reporters that Ukraine needed heavier and more advanced weapons and it needed them quicker

🐣 RT @RFERL The departure of the deputy head of the presidential administration came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced he would make personnel changes at senior and lower levels following the most high-profile graft allegations since Russia’s invasion.
⋙ RFE/RL: Ukrainian Officials Out Amid Corruption Scandal As Poland Presses Germany On Tanks For Kyiv https://tinyurl.com/4v4nr6b7

🐣 RT @UFfrontline 🚨#Breaking, Reportedly 12 countries have agreed to supply 🇺🇦Ukraine with 100 Leopard 2 tanks if the 🇩🇪German government gives its approval, a senior Ukrainian official tells ABC News. ¤ #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #kreminna #Leopard2 #Leopard #Leopards #LeopardsForUkraine

WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: Tanks, but no tanks: What’s the matter with Germany? https://tinyurl.com/2mdrkuaa “‘[F]or domestic consumption, it is seen as a positive thing for a German chancellor not to lead on this, to be cautious, to be resistant, to have tried all other options’”
⋙ 🐣 It’s a feature (not a bug?) of the German language that you can structure a sentence so the verb comes at the end and even after the verb, you can play around with adverbs “I tomorrow to the store go maybe”

⭕ 23 Jan 2023

NBC: Jan. 6 rioter who put his feet on desk in Pelosi’s office is convicted on all eight counts https://tinyurl.com/ycxrssz8 “‘I made some bad mistakes and I regret them, but I don’t think I broke the law,’ Barnett said. ‘I feel like a f—— idiot’”
// Richard Barnett, of Arkansas, said on the witness stand last week that he regretted going to the Capitol the day of the riot.

🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT You can’t make this up. ¤ Republicans added $4 TRILLION to the debt with their tax cut for corporations and billionaires. ¤ Now, they are refusing allow Treasury to pay back the loans unless Congress agrees to cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

🐣 RT @BryanDawsonUSA BREAKING: Charles McGonigal. the FBI Special Agent in Charge who said he found no Trump-Russia collusion was arrested over Russian collusion, taking 250K & covering for sanctioned Deripaska implicated in Trump scandal. He worked at office that leaked Hillary emails investigation.
🔊 https://twitter.com/BryanDawsonUSA/status/1617672079008231426?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ While Republicans defend Trump’s theft of top secret documents, a reminder @GOP destroyed Hillary over nothing but lies.
🔹Emails FBI thought marked classified: 3 [Human error]
🔹Actual emails marked classified: 0
🔹# of 33,000 “missing” emails: 0

🧵 RT @ jimfitznews EXCLUSIVE INVESTIGATION – A vast cache of hacked material from Russia has shed new light on how the UK govt helped warlord Prigozhin mount a targeted legal attack on a journalist in London. This is #londongrad writ large.
📌 https://twitter.com/jimfitznews/status/1617580880935153666?s=20
// many addtl links in thread
⋙⋙ OpenDemocracy: Exclusive: Treasury helped Putin ally sue UK journalist https://tinyurl.com/yc6weky3
// UK Treasury, then under Rishi Sunak’s control, let Yevgeny Prigozhin circumvent sanctions to target Eliot Higgins

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 As I’m fond of saying, I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in the KGB!
‼️ 💙 ⋙ 🧵 RT @KaivanShroff Just to be clear, when the New York Times reported that the FBI saw “no link between Trump and Russia” — a week before the 2016 election — the FBI agent who was just arrested over ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska was heading up the investigation. ¤ Just an absolute scandal.
📌 [NYT TextLinks:] https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1617613877868662785?s=20/photo/1 -2
// see comments

TheDrive: Ukraine Situation Report: Why Capturing The Small Town Of Kreminna Matters https://tinyurl.com/2p8vazyf “‘Kreminna is a gateway to the north and central Luhansk region,’ a Ukrainian military advisor told The War Zone on Monday. ‘And it allows us to hit the flank of Bakhmut’”
// Taking Kreminna could bust open the lines in Luhansk and put pressure on Russian forces advancing on Bakhmut.

🐣 RT @ Azovsouth Private Group of terrorists and mercenaries Wagner boss #Prigozhin has been left abandoned by the Kremlin after him and his terror troops, failed to capture #Bakhmut. -ISW Reports

🐣 RT @ Historian_Matt How is Germany “coordinating internationally” when Czechia, France, Morocco, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovenia and UK are *already providing tanks*, while Denmark, Finland, Poland, and others have asked for Germany’s permission to export their Leopard 2s but Scholz prevents it?

🐣 RT @KvvKwiatkowski The head of the Ministry of National Defense @mblaszczak announced that Poland will transfer 100 T-72 main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine together with 14 Leopards #Ramstein #NATO #LloydAustin #FreeTheLeopards @SecBlinken @SecDef @jensstoltenberg

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent PM: Poland to apply for Germany’s approval to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine. ¤ “Even if we did not get this approval, we would still transfer our tanks together with others to Ukraine,” Mateusz Morawiecki said, adding that Germany’s consent is “of secondary importance.”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /2125 UTC 23 JAN/ RU has continued incremental advances in the Bakhmut Area of Operations. N of Bakhmut, UKR troops are contesting a RU attack on Krasna Hora. UKR air defense downed 2 Russian Su-25 strike aircraft, a Ka-52 attack helicopter and an Orlan-10 recon UAV.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617632291924369409?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @the_black_leaf Chuck I don’t see any evidence that the heights above Klischiivka have been taken. Not even Rybar claims those heights. I understand Ivanivske was included in a daily report, but I don’t think that’s enough to explicitly say that hill is now in Russian hands.

🐣 RT @UrmasReinsalu [Estonia] I will emphazise today @ #FAC in #Brussels 🇧🇪 that #Ukraine needs additonal defensive aid including heavy weaponry & oil🛢️price cap must be lowered. ¤ 🇪🇪 will contribute than 1% of our GDP to 🇺🇦 defensive aid & I call on other nations to do the same.

🧵 RT @SniperFella Stoltenberg: More main battle tanks for Ukraine. In the debate about the delivery of Western-style battle tanks to Ukraine, the NATO Secretary General emphasized NATO’s unity and again campaigned for more arms deliveries.
📌 https://twitter.com/SniperFella/status/1617620255194636288?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Since the war began almost a year ago, there has been “an unprecedented level of support” in the alliance, said Jens Stoltenberg on the TV station Welt when asked whether the alliance was divided in a crucial phase of the war. Asked if he would welcome German approval….
⋙ 🐣 RT @ …of Poland’s announced supply of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said: “My message is that the Allies have to supply more, have to supply heavier equipment, equipment, combat systems for Ukraine. And that is absolutely urgent.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ He welcomes all the announcements made by the Allies about battle tanks. “So if we really want to have a solution where Ukraine survives as a sovereign country and a free country, then it’s absolutely essential to act like that.”

🐣 RT @PLPermRepEU [Poland in the EU] FM @RauZbigniew 🇵🇱 after #FAC in Brussels: ¤ We are going to send #Leopard 2 tanks to 🇺🇦. We will be in touch with the 🇩🇪 government about it. But regardless of the decision of other countries, we are more determined to deliver these tanks as promised.

🐣 📋 RT @JaneotN When Clinton banned assault rifles in 1994, mass shootings dropped by 44%. When Republicans let this ban expire in 2004, mass shootings increased by 245%. ¤ Listen. It’s the guns.

WaPo: Former senior FBI official accused of working for Russian he investigated https://tinyurl.com/2fvcx24z “The former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York has been charged in two separate indictments that accuse him of taking secret cash payments of more than $225,000”
// Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief, is charged with money laundering and other counts connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1445 UTC 23 JAN/ UKR forces continue incremental advances within the urban area of Kreminna. Battle-space information on 23 JAN indicates that UKR forces have captured a sawmill and entered the campus of a boarding school in the western limits of Kreminna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617532063128911874?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @alextencate (1/22) Pistorius has already overruled her, by stating it’s the chancellor’s decision and by repeating that Germany isn’t the only country with doubts. It’s back to the reluctant follower position.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Who could have anticipated this? Germany is pathetic and doesn’t want to burn bridges w Russia for future relations
⋙ 🐣 RT @vonderburchard Seems like Baerbock did not represent an agreed government line when she said that Germany “would not stand in the way” of a Polish Leopard request. ¤ Gov spox told @grinaldi97 that such a request would have to be first discussed and decided in Germany’s Federal Security Council.
🚫⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @vonderburchard Germany “would not stand in the way” if Poland or other allies asked for permission to send their German-built Leopard tanks to Ukraine, said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. ¤ Her comments put pressure on Scholz and put the ball back in Poland’s court:
🚫⋙⋙⋙ Politico [EU] (1/22): Germany ready to let Poland send Leopard tanks to Ukraine: foreign minister https://tinyurl.com/2s49r7c8
// Warsaw still hasn’t requested permission from Berlin, but ‘if we were asked, we would not stand in the way,’ Annalena Baerbock said.

🐣 RT @sumlenny A wise move from Germany would be sharing the power and leading by example and by participation. Instead, the corrupt SPD elites have stupidly chosen the way of blockade and betrayal, heading Germany towards a huge fall, second only to our crash after we chose the NS deception.

🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Yeah, some of those not-my-problem people in the West need to sit down and watch Russian television with subtitles, for just one day. ¤ They’d be shocked.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated If only people could observe the rhetoric and the spiralling down to complete insanity by Russia over the past year. We’re so incredibly lucky there’s a nation sacrificing itself every day to stop it. But we’re arguing whether to give them tanks. Wake up, before it’s too late.

🐣 RT @andersostlund Soviet Union (Russia) committed genocide against Ukrainians in the 30s. ¤ Germany committed genocide against Ukrainians in the 40s, the massacre of Ukrainians at Babi-Yar was probably the worst atrocity of WWII when it happened. ¤ Russia is committing genocide against Ukrainians now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @andersostlund Ukraine has been the big prize for the aggressors in all the three major European wars the last 120 years, and millions of Ukrainians have died because of it.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “There is no time for bargaining, we need to survive” – @ZelenskyyUa in an interview to ARD about tanks for Ukraine.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1617465193046413312?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Careful we don’t confuse a political argument with a military view. The most effective, battle tested, lethal, and reliable main battle tank in the world is the US M1A2 upgrade. We have 1500. MULTI FUEL. Gas. Diesel. Jet fuel. 265 mile range. 45 MPH.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul If Abrams tanks work in Poland, why cant they work in Ukraine? I understand the jet fuel and high maintenance constraints. And Leopards are better. But there’s no military utility in deploying them in Ukraine? Really?
¤ https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1617379224691806208?s=20
// [Comments interesting]
⋙⋙⋙ AP (12/6/2022): US approves $4B sale of Abrams tanks to NATO ally Poland https://tinyurl.com/3vcjbz3m
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JoseonOne The M1 is a sophisticated platform that requires tons of maintenance. It takes 6 months or more to train to maintain, way longer than to operate. Weapon systems are more than capabilities. The logistics and maintenance goes hand in hand to be combat effective.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Yep. Just talked to a 3 star general who used to command them. But that was also exactly the same argument we heard about Patriots six months ago. And if they so damn hard to use, why are we selling them to Poland? Why do we like them?
⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 It has superb Indep Tank CDR Thermal Viewer. IVIS battle management. A radical upgrade redesign from the M1A2 tanks in my 24th ID that slaughtered Soviet era armor in Desert Storm. The M1 incredibly survivable when hit. Turbine engine SIMPLE in design.

NYT: Here’s a look at Stryker vehicles and why the Pentagon is sending them to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/5n8wc58m “[T]he U.S. is providing Ukraine with specific capabilities designed to enable Kyiv’s armed forces to break though Russian defenses”
// faulty link

⭕ 22 Jan 2023

‼️🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava Germany will not prevent Poland from transferring Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, – German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock
💽 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1617261601341448192?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @JayinKyiv US Army General Keith Kellogg visits Izyum to witness the destruction left by Russian barbarian trash that spent 5 months committing brutal atrocities here. ¤ Russians tortured, raped, buried residents alive, the whole laundry list of Russian activities went down in Izyum.
🖼 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1617183364280365058?s=20/photo/1 -4

🧵 RT @ TheStudyofWar Putin likely turned to Prigozhin & Prigozhin’s reported ally, Army Gen. Sergey Surovikin, to continue efforts to gain ground and break the will of #Ukraine and its Western backers to continue the war after the conventional military had culminated & suffered disastrous setbacks.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1617365586052534272?s=20/photo/1 -4
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/bdfv737t

2/ The Russian MoD and General Staff, headed by Sergey Shoigu and Army General Valeriy Gerasimov respectively, had turned their attention to mobilizing Russian reservists and conscripts and setting conditions for improved performance by the conventional Russian military… ¤ …but they had little hope of achieving anything decisive in the Fall and early Winter of 2022.

3/ Putin apparently decided to give Prigozhin and Surovikin a chance to show what they could do with mobilized prisoners, on the one hand, and a brutal air campaign targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on the other.

4/ Both efforts failed, as Prigozhin’s attempts to seize Bakhmut culminated and Surovikin’s air campaign accomplished little more than inflicting suffering on Ukrainian civilians while expending most of Russia’s remaining stocks of precision missiles.

5/ Prigozhin seems to have decided in this period that his star really was on the rise and that he could challenge Gerasimov and even Shoigu for preeminence in Russian military affairs. Those hopes now seem to have been delusional.

6/ Putin appears to have decided to turn away from relying on Prigozhin and his irregular forces and to put his trust instead in Gerasimov, Shoigu, and the conventional Russian military once more.
7/ Putin began to re-centralize control of the war effort under the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) in early December.

8/ Ukrainian and select Kremlin officials have also reported that Putin is preparing to launch a second wave of reserve mobilization to expand the Russian Armed Forces… ¤ … and ISW has reported that the Russian MoD has been attempting to improve the professionalism of its conventional forces and to test the effectiveness of its chains of command.

9/ Such reforms and appointments mark a significant inflection in the Kremlin’s efforts to reconstitute its conventional military and a deemphasis on short-term mitigation efforts such as using irregular formations on the frontlines.

10/ Putin’s decision to focus and rely on conventional Russian forces is marginalizing the Wagner Group and the faction that nevertheless continues to contribute to Russian war efforts in Ukraine.

11/ Putin likely turned to Prigozhin’s irregular forces to get through the period following the Russian conventional military’s culmination after the reckless and costly push to seize Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

12/ Prigozhin likely imagined that his efforts in Ukraine would continue to lend him military and political power in Russia.

13/ Prigozhin’s command over the Bakhmut direction and proximity to Putin likely gave him a false sense that he could use the victory in Bakhmut against the backdrop of Russian MoD’s military failures as a bargaining tool for his own commercial objectives… ¤ …such as the legalization of Wagner Group’s mercenary activity in Russia, expanding his political power within the Kremlin, or even displacing the authority of Shoigu.

14/ Putin had never fully given in to Prigozhin’s recommendations or demands throughout this transitional period and had likely always planned to put Prigozhin back into his place once the Russian conventional military improved enough to bear the burden of continuing the war.

15/ Putin’s turn on Prigozhin has positive and negative implications for Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. He is now marginalizing & distancing himself from a hard-to-control mercenary group made predominantly of ill-disciplined convicts commanded in the most brutal manner.

16/ The marginalization of people like Prigozhin, who has had men executed with sledgehammers and hands out Wagner sledgehammers as gifts, is a good thing.

17/ The return to influence of more professional military officers likely suggests a reduced likelihood that Putin will give in to the crazier demands of the far-right pro-war faction, possibly in turn further reducing the already-low likelihood of irrational Russian escalations.

18/ But the re-emergence of the professional Russian military is also concerning, as Prigozhin could never have established a formidable and sustainable national military apparatus.

19/ It can never be good to have people like Prigozhin near the center of power, so any indication that he is receding from power is positive.

20/ Prigozhin is not yet gone and will not likely leave Putin’s circle permanently. And he could rise again if Gerasimov and his cronies fail Putin once more. But Prigozhin is, for now, apparently an increasingly spent force in the Kremlin’s inner circles, and that is good.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️ISW: Wagner boss rise in decline after failure to take Bakhmut. ¤. Private mercenary Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to be on the outs with the Kremlin after failing to capture Bakhmut with his troops, the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest update.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️US lawmakers call for giving Ukraine Abrams tanks. ¤ Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Jan. 22 called for giving Ukraine U.S.-made Abrams tanks as a way to push Germany to allow the delivery of German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

🐣 RT @andersostlund Good thread on German obstruction.
⋙ 🧵 RT @jgotkowska 1.🇵🇱 has been delivering huge amounts of heavy equipment to 🇺🇦: tanks (300+), infantry fighting vehicles (200+), self-propelled howitzers… 🇵🇱 doesn’t need to be frustrated because 🇩🇪 declared to deliver 40 Marders. Here is an overview
📌 https://twitter.com/jgotkowska/status/1617235688314867717?s=20

WaPo: Germany won’t object if Poland sends tanks to Ukraine, foreign minister says https://tinyurl.com/4xawzexj //➔ They have flip-flopped on this so many times, it’s hard to know what to believe […tbc…]

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “USA are going to help Ukraine strike Russian Crimea” – Skabeyeva [Ru tv]
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1617190424325623810?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 note: these warheads (GLSDB) have a range of 150km, twice the range of current HIMARS missiles (70-90km), but half of ATACMS (300km)

🐣 RT @KleineBrockhoff Here is an unlikely saviour for Olaf #Scholz: Mike McCaul, new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wants to send #Abrams to unblock 🇩🇪 policy
⋙ CNN: House Foreign Affairs chairman says some members don’t understand what’s at stake in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/485naztk

🐣 📋 RT @MacFarlaneNews About #DebtCeiling ¤ Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) tells CNN: “Almost 25% of the national debt accumulated over the history of the United States, 230 years, was accumulated during the four years of Donald Trump”.. says GOP leaders “need to face the responsibility to pay for it”

🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 [1/20] Astonishing nonsense about refusal to provide M1A1/A2 MBT’s to Ukraine. The Egyptians have 1100. The Saudis have 450. The Moroccans have 380. Its a multi-fuel engine of enormous speed and reliability. Incredible lethality. An experienced UKR tank crew could fight in 30 days.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 [1/20] Germany’s refusal to give tanks to Ukraine without a similar pledge from the U.S. has left Scholz isolated among allies—but so far aligned with public opinion at home
// 1/20/2023

EuromaidanPress: Germany could send 19 Leopard tanks to Ukraine from available 212 – Spiegel https://tinyurl.com/yb4r99mv “Since the summer of 2022, the German Ministry of Defense has had a list of Leopard tanks that could be used to identify vehicles [for] Ukraine”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1500 UTC 22 JAN/ Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) task elements attached to UKR recon teams continue render-safe operations in the the heavily mined areas surrounding Kreminna. UKR units enter W Kreminna urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617173380322725891?s=20/photo/1
// “Again today, on 22 JAN, RU conducted fire missions against the western urban areas of Kreminna, indicating that UKR troops have achieved a lodgment.”

🐣 I just noticed on the list of items from Ramstein that it does include Stryker armored vehicles and GLSDB which, while not ATACMS, seriously increases the missiles’ range to 150KM with very high precision:
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1617178255756238849?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1300 UTC 22 JAN/ In the E. industrial districts, fighting continues along Patrice Lumumba Blvd / H-32 HWY. RU forces have achieved a lodgment in the Bakhmutskty Building / ceramics factory complex & maintain positions in the furniture factory on the N side of the HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1617144376391516160?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin does not think highly of a successful Russian offensive in the coming future unless done by small motivated units such as Wagner on limited sectors of the frontline. He believes Russian forces have no superiority over Ukraine to achieve success anywhere due to low morale
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1617131387923873792?s=20/photo/1 -3

🐣 RT @thorstenbenner US administration sources make public via @sz that Llyod Austin had “fierce exchange of words” with head of chancellory @W_Schmidt_ & that Sullivan “read riot act” to Scholz’ national security advisor Plötner for putting conditions on Leopard transfer.
⋙ SuddeutscheZeitung: Die USA sind wütend [furious] auf Scholz https://tinyurl.com/4pvvnadh
⋙ 🐣 RT @thorstenbenner Sounds like Julie Smith called up Stefan Kornelius to write up story in deliberate effort to undercut narrative “Scholz & Biden are fully aligned on support for ” & to make it clear that Biden administration expects Scholz to move on US terms rather than him setting conditions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bjan9 So why doesn’t the US agree to send some tanks as Scholz requests?
⋙⋙ 🐣 it would look like egregiously wasteful spending at a sensitive time when the Republicans are trying to make deep budget cuts in order to go along with increasing the debt ceiling ~ the US says the Abrams don’t match what Ukr needs
🐣 RT @Winter_z123 Interesting, John Kirby & the Pentagon speaker had really nice compliments for Germany yesterday. May it be, that this is another propaganda campaign by US defense industry, now that journalists start to analyse the interests of defense industry? They don’t want to reveal that
🐣 RT @saabj35 So that’s why the rhetoric changed from “We can only release them if USA goes first” (excuse #134) to “Uhhm, I suddenly remembered, we still… eh… have to count them! Yes, that’s it, we haven’t counted them yet!” (excuse #135).
🐣 RT @Nickyschwenzer German opposition & even parts of the government (everyone except SPD) is absolutely appalled of what Scholz & the SPD does!💥💥💥
Love u Poland 🇵🇱 & 🇪🇪🇨🇿🇬🇧🇫🇮🇸🇪🇦🇹🇱🇹
Free the Leopards!💙💛🇪🇺🇺🇸👊 #UkraineWillWin
#GermanyHasNoBalls

🔄 🐣 You amaze me with your courage and bravery, bearing the entire fate of the West and our shared values on your shoulders. You are heroes indeed. Fight well and come home safe to your families. We will help you rebuild your beautiful country to be the moral beacon of Europe! Slava!

🐣 RT @thorstenbenner “US offers used tanks from its own stocks plus long term industrial partnership to every European country that can deliver Leopard 2 to “, defence industry circles claim. “Each country that accepts US offer is lost for defence industry”.
¤ https://twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/1617064545788522497?s=20
⋙ 🐣 my German is not good enough to understand fully the nzz article, but I find nothing in the US press about an offer by US to provide Leopards (if we even have them) and cut deals with EU countries to buy US arms; sounds implausible

🐣 RT @ukraine_map What Ukraine 🇺🇦 needs the most to help them win the war
1. ATACMS
2. Leopard 2 Tanks
3. More Patriot Batteries
4. Gray Eagle Combat Drones
5. Lots of 155mm Artillery Shells

🐣 RT @wartranslated Hilarious. Russian volunteer in “LPR” Murz explains how expensive Russian EW works. It’s put in the rears to avoid destruction by artillery and… you guessed it, it jams own Russian equipment. And no one does anything about it because “orders”. Waste of money, says Murz.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1617094220430610432?s=20A/photo/1 -3

🐣 RT @NOELreports State Duma speaker Volodin threatens the US and NATO with a “terrible war”. Putin’s associate said that the supply of offensive weapons to Ukraine would lead to a global catastrophe and to retaliatory measures using more powerful weapons.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports “Given the technological superiority of Russian weapons, foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries,” Volodin added.
⋙⋙ 🐣 such threats are exactly why Russia must be defeated; the idea that nuclear-armed countries can simply invade and take over their neighbors is a situation the world cannot accept ¤ Russian forces need to leave Ukraine

🐣 RT @Andrii2603 ISW explained why the months-long defense of Bakhmut is crucial ¤ Experts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) call the defense of Bakhmut, during which Ukraine suffers significant losses, “a strategically sound operation, despite its costs.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Andrii2603 Ukraine would pay a significant price if Russian troops could easily take Bakhmut, analysts are sure.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Andrii2603 “Ukrainian forces are effectively holding back Russian forces … hindering Russia’s ability to continue its offensive elsewhere,” ISW said.

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! Today I am very very excited, as I will be discussing my FAVOURITE topic in history. One which is of absolute monumental importance to Ukraine – The KOZAKY! This thread is dedicated to @PainfulFella – hope you are doing well my brother. 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1617055788111101952?s=20

Kozaky have their origins in 15th C. Ukraine in the wake of the Mongolian Invasion. Ukraine was raided by Tatars leading to thousands women and children were taken as slaves to the Ottoman Empire. The “lucky” ones became serfs under either Muscovite or Polish rule. 5/21

In response, groups of brave warriors began to form self-governing military communities in Ukraine to resist against oppression. Adapting the tactics and martial arts of the Tatars, these “free men” or “kazaks” in Turkish, would become the Kozaky. 6/21

Early Kozak rebellions against PLC [Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth] in the 17th focused on expanding the register and Kozak rights. But as the PLC began to impose serfdom and attack the rights of the Orthodox church – Kozaky would rebel against the PLC, championing the oppressed and the Orthodox faith. 14/21

This would culminate in 1648 with the Khmelnitsky Rebellion. This resulted in the liberation of Ukraine from the PLC and the creation of the first Kozak state known as the Hetmanate. This state included Sloboda Ukraine, the Zaporozhian lands and much of modern day Ukraine. 15/21

Kozaky were not just innovators on the battlefield. The Hetmanate had one of the highest literacy rates in Europe in the 18th century. Art and science flourished under the Kozak Baroque period of the 18th century. But democratic thought was truly a Kozak innovation. 16/21

From its birth the Sich was a democracy. The Otaman (later Hetman) was an elected position. In 1710, Pylyp Orlyk’s Constitution was the FIRST constitution to establish the separation of powers of state between judiciary, executive and legislative – well before Montesquieu. 17/21

This all ended in 1775 when Catherine II liquidated the Sich and slaughtered thousands of innocent Ukrainians. While Ukrainian Kozaky had periodic appearances in the Napoleonic wars, the Kuban Kozak Host, and the Kozak movement in 1918 – 1775 marks the death of Kozakdom. 18/21

The spiritual legacy of the Kozaky lives on in various aspects of Ukraine today – in our dance, song culture and especially in our armed forces defending against Russian oppression. 19/21

Many will ask what the difference between Russian Cossacks and Ukrainian Kozaks are. While this deserves a thread on its own, I will sumarize my thoughts here: ¤ Kozaky always fought in opposition to authority and fought for freedom for the oppressed. 20/21

Russian “Cossacks” on the other hand were always the enforcer of the Tsar’s will and oppression. So when you see a Russian “Cossack” – they are not real Kozaky or “free men”, but they are merely false pretenders and slaves to authority. Slava Ukraini! SLAVA KOZAKY! 21/21

PS – some additional personal details about Kozaks. They were very ritualistic. When a Hetman (leader) of the Kozaks was elected, he had to reject his election three times. Other traditions include my family tradtion in the thread below!
⋙ 🧵 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1597015084118601728?s=20

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! Today I am very very excited, as I will be discussing my FAVOURITE topic in history. One which is of absolute monumental importance to Ukraine – The KOZAKY! This thread is dedicated to @PainfulFella – hope you are doing well my brother. 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1617055788111101952?s=20

🐣 RT @igorsushko While we are still sitting on our hands and refusing to supply #ATACMS, #GreatBritain says so be it, we are going to send #Ukraine Storm Shadow cruise missiles (#SCALP). 250km – 560km range, 1000 lb warhead. 👏
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1617054808661188608?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 ◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1617056896346726400?s=20/photo/1

💙 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “President Vladimir Putin’s war in #Ukraine was meant to be his crowning achievement, a demonstration of how far Russia had come since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991. It hasn’t turned out that way.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage: Putin’s Last Stand https://tinyurl.com/3nfyymds
// Jan-Feb 2023; The promise and peril of Russian defeat.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /0030 UTC 22 JAN/ A RU probe crossed the rail line N of Blahodatne and was broken up by UKR forces. Efforts by RU to cut the T-05-13 HWY continued at Krasna Hora and Pidhorodne. UKR defends H-32 at Ivanivske.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616955233791365122?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 21 Jan 2023

WaPo Editorial: Germany is refusing to send tanks to Ukraine. Biden cannot let this stand https://tinyurl.com/3cb3ac6a ‘Scholz is sacrificing sound strategy on the altar of political calculation by wavering in the face of opposition from some political allies and a segment of Germans’

🧵 RT @DofConsequence 1/ I haven’t written about the Svatove-Kreminna axis because the fog of war is thick. Now that 🇺🇦 is knocking on Kreminna’s door, we’re getting clarity. Here’s a short [thread] explaining what’s going on, & why it’s a big deal. h/t @AndrewPerpetua @BruckenRuski @Suriyakmaps
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/DofConsequence/status/1616922342336110594?s=20/photo/1 -2

StudyofWar: The Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut is likely a strategically sound effort despite its costs for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yckw2zps ‘By “slow-rolling” weapons systems & supplies, the West has contributed to Ukraine’s inability to take advantage of pinning Russia at Bakhmut’’
// Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 21, 2023

The Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut is likely a strategically sound effort despite its costs for Ukraine. 
While the costs associated with Ukraine’s continued defense of Bakhmut are significant and likely include opportunity costs related to potential Ukrainian counter-offensive operations elsewhere, Ukraine would also have paid a significant price for allowing Russian troops to take Bakhmut easily. Bakhmut itself is not operationally or strategically significant but had Russian troops taken it relatively rapidly and cheaply they could have hoped to expand operations in ways that could have forced Ukraine to construct hasty defensive positions in less favorable terrain.  One must also not dismiss the seemingly “political” calculus of committing to the defense of Bakhmut lightly—Russian forces occupy more than 100,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory including multiple Ukrainian cities and are inflicting atrocities on Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas.  It is not unreasonable for political and military leaders to weigh these factors in determining whether to hold or cede particular population concentrations.  Americans have not had to make such choices since 1865 and should not be quick to scorn considerations that would be very real to them were American cities facing such threats.

Ukrainian forces have previously employed a similar gradual attrition model to compel Russian operations in certain areas to culminate after months of suffering high personnel and equipment losses in pursuit of marginal tactical gains. Russian troops spent months attempting to grind through effective Ukrainian defenses in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the early summer of 2022 and captured Lysychansk only after a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from the area.[1] The capture of Lysychansk and the Luhansk Oblast administrative border, however, quickly proved to be operationally insignificant for Russian forces, and the ultimate result of the Ukrainian defense of the area was the forced culmination of the Russian offensive in Luhansk Oblast, leading to the overall stagnation of Russian offensive operations in Donbas in the summer and fall of 2022. Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut will likely contribute to a similar result—Russian forces have been funneling manpower and equipment into the area since May 2022 and have yet to achieve any operationally significant advances that seriously threaten the Ukrainian defense of the area. ISW continues to re-evaluate its assessment that the Russian offensive on Bakhmut may be culminating but continues to assess that Ukrainian forces are effectively pinning Russian troops, equipment, and overall operational focus on Bakhmut, thus inhibiting Russia’s ability to pursue offensives elsewhere in the theater.

The West has contributed to Ukraine’s inability to take advantage of having pinned Russian forces in Bakhmut by slow-rolling or withholding weapons systems and supplies essential for large-scale counteroffensive operations.

🐣 RT @SofiOksanen This is what the leadership looks and sounds like. #Scholzing and sleepwalking is not leadership. #Estonia #Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @kajakallas There is war in #Ukraine because Russia started it, not because Ukraine is defending itself. Russia’s goals haven’t changed, it wants to continue its war of aggression. ¤ This means we all need to do more. Give many more weapons to Ukraine, faster. We’re in it for the long haul.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Pain is filling the heart. The indescribable sadness is covering the soul. Ukraine is losing its best sons and daughters every day. ¤ Thank you for your important and decent work for the benefit of Ukraine. You are forever in our hearts. Eternal memory! -@ZelenskyyUa
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1616788355987148800?s=20/photo/1
// Visitation for members of .Ukraine’s Department of .interior who died in helicopter crash

🐣 RT @W_W_3_2022 The USA will support the transfer of F-16 fighter jets by allies to Ukraine – the American ambassador to the OSCE.#UkraineRussianWar #Ukraine #UkraineUnderAttack #Kherson #Soledar #Wagner #ATACMS #Bakhmut #HIMARS #Kramatorsk #Luhansk #Ukraina #Zaporizhzhia #Moscow #Crimea
⋙ 🐣 RT @W_W_3_2022 The United States ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Carpenter, confirmed that Washington will agree with the idea of partners to transfer F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

🐣 📋 RT @m8rbnsn
_ Abrams M1A2 _
Fuel capacity: 1909l
Range: 426km
km/l: 0.223
_ Leopard 2 _
Fuel capacity: 1200l
Range: 340km
km/l: 0.283
A Leopard 2 can only go 27% farther on a litre of fuel than an M1A2. An M1A2 can drive round trip from Kharkiv to Bakhmut without refueling.

NYT: Amid Mounting Frustration With Germany, Ukraine Holds Out Hope It Will Get Tanks https://tinyurl.com/2s3tupx8 “Ukraine’s appeals for tanks and more weapons … have taken on greater urgency with the approach of spring, when both sides to the conflict are preparing offensives”
// While Germany has not yet made a decision on whether to send Leopard 2s to Ukraine, a Kyiv official said his country’s soldiers would begin training on them.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer COMPROMISED? This hirsute young politico is Olaf Scholz. In the 80’s, Scholz was a self-identified Marxist. The DDR (East Germany) then regarded him as an ‘important ally in the struggle against NATO’. Scholz is now the principal stumbling block to providing armor to Ukraine.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616800669121363971?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1410 UTC 21 JAN/ RU conducted fire missions against sections of the western urban areas of Kreminna, indicating that UKR troops have achieved a lodgment in the city. RU has deployed considerable reinforcements to the Kreminna axis as see-saw fighting continues.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616797931985686528?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Sen. Lindsey Graham in Kyiv yesterday: “I am tired of the s*** show surrounding who is going to send tanks and when are they going to send them. Putin is trying to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms. World order is at stake. To the Germans: Send tanks to Ukraine…”
⋙ 🐣 RT @LindseyGrahamSC All three of us, one Republican and two Democrats, share the same goal – for Ukraine to drive the Russians out of Ukraine. ¤ To achieve that goal, the Ukrainian military needs tanks.

🐣 RT @tashecon Germany has plenty of Ukrainian blood on its hands for WW2, and it will have more if it does not do more to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s Genocidal war against Ukraine.

🐣 RT @McFaul Ukraine is winning. Russia is losing, And Putin knows it.

🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en “Sanctions can bring Russia back into the previous century in just one moment” – Simonyan
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1616708425471217664?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @apmassaro3 US Senators in Kyiv: “If Putin gets away with this, there goes Taiwan. If Putin is successful in Ukraine and is not prosecuted under international law, everything we’ve said since WWII becomes a joke. He will continue beyond Ukraine” @LindseyGrahamSC @SenWhitehouse @SenBlumenthal
💽 https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1616753733735415808?s=20/photo/1

KyivPost, Timothy Ash: Outlook for the war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yrmkazfv “Russia has no path to victory, and the longer the war goes on the worse it gets for Russia, and Putin”
// Timothy Ash shares his frank thoughts on the state of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the West.

Russian conventional kit losses are just so huge now that they cannot be easily or quickly replaced – they are running short of key munitions and armaments. … ¤ … Putin has continuously set red lines when it has come to military supplies from the West, and NATO has continuously rolled through these, calling Putin’s bluff. ¤ What we have learned from red lines being set and rolled through is that Putin does not have escalation domination. He has limits. He is ultimately scared of NATO … If NATO deploys its own 4th and 5th generation kit against Russia it would be over in hours. Putin knows this. He faces total defeat if he escalates – and WMD are just not options …

Speaking to military types with firsthand experience now in Ukraine I asked them why the Russians have not really bombed NATO convoys supplying arms to the Ukrainians. They told me that the Russians don’t have full battlefield satellite coverage, which is key in modern warfare. And thru NATO, the Ukrainians do. …

[W]hile Russia might have lost 100k plus dead and injured and plenty of treasure for not very much, Putin dominates the information narrative at home, and can sell whatever narrative he wants. If people don’t agree they can leave,  or protest and end up with Navalny in the Gulag.

… Despite the shift from Russia to attacks on critical infrastructure I see zero change in the motivation of the Ukrainian government to fight on – opinion polls still show 90% support for continuing the war, and they think they are going to win (so do I). …

Talk I know of the West being soft on Ukraine and not willing to stay for the long haul. Add in there the GOP control of the House in Congress and concerns about the ability of Biden to fund the Ukrainian defence. ¤ Actually I think the West is remarkably unified, and they get that the future of European security depends on Putin being beaten. The Yanks, the Brits, the East Europeans, the Scandies, even the Dutch are absolutely on the same page. Germany is a joke, and will be pulled kicking and screaming along with the dominant Western view. Orban is largely seen as a traitor in the West now who will be dealt with after the war ends. Macron is just not relevant on Ukraine – the French are providing sufficient finance nor military kit as to be relevant in any way. The French, and Germans, have been totally and utterly wrong on Russia for the past decade and are not seen as having any useful perspective.

A large majority in Congress are still anti Putin, and pro Ukrainian. And in any event, Congress already signed off in the $38bn financing package for Ukraine in 2023 which will be front loaded. ¤ So, I see no change in prospects for US and indeed NATO/Western support for Ukraine. In fact, I think the realisation is dawning that the best way to avoid NATO having to fight Putin’s Russia at some point in the future, is actually to ensure the Ukrainians beat Russia now.

… I see a decent chance that we see the end of Putin and, while not my base case, I think it’s possible we see a collapse of the Federation into many new states – as with the USSR in 1991. Think here Tatarstan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Rump Russia, et al. The Federation is I think 89 regions and autonomous republics. We could see 20 new states.

And the irony herein that Putin started this war to create a Greater Russia, but the likely net effect will be a Lesser Russia.

🐣 RT @UkrainianNews24 US President Joe Biden has responded to a question about sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine by saying that Ukraine will receive “all the help” it needs to fight against Russian troops. ¤ Source: CNN
⋙ 🐣 This could mean the US will continue to pressure Germany to provide Leopard tanks or even that the US will provide Abrams tanks; but it could ALSO mean that the US believes the many lighter tanks that have been provided are adequate in the immediate timeframe

🐣 RT @OnePaul87 🇺🇲🇺🇦⚡— US advises Ukraine to withdraw troops from Bakhmut, – AFP publication, citing a senior US official ¤ Kiev’s heightened focus on holding the city is reportedly hindering preparations for the expected spring offensive.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /0340 UTC 21 JAN/ RU has poured reinforcements into the pocket west of Klischiivka and are attempting a northward advance. UKR forces are engaged south of Ivanivske; the vital H-32 HWY supply route is at risk.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616639238308519938?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 20 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @mbk_center If the West holds firm, Putin’s regime will likely collapse in the near future. Everything from ’s advances to the West’s unity & resolve in the face of Putin’s aggression points to 2023 being a decisive year @Kasparov63 & @mbk_center for @ForeignAffairs
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Garry Kasparov & Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Don’t Fear Putin’s Demise https://tinyurl.com/mscanmdb ‘Putin’s defeat would help catalyze a transformation in Russia, allowing those who seek a brighter future to dismantle the old regime & forge a new political reality’
// Victory for Ukraine, Democracy for Russia

🐣 📋 RT @LukeDCoffey The U.S. has provided $27.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. This equals 3.2 percent of the FY 2023 defense budget, about one-tenth of one percent of America’s GDP, or about $3.50 from each American taxpayer per week. A bargain!

📋 WSJ: China’s Global Mega-Projects Are Falling Apart https://tinyurl.com/2963rj5s “During the past decade, China handed out a trillion dollars in international loans as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, intended to develop economic trade and expand China’s influence”
// Many of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects are plagued with construction flaws, including a giant hydropower plant in Ecuador, adding more costs to a program criticized for leading countries deeper into debt

WaPo: U.S. to brand Russia’s Wagner Group a ‘transnational criminal’ entity https://tinyurl.com/374mp8vv “The designation will come alongside additional U.S. sanctions against Wagner and its support network, spanning multiple continents”
// Wagner has risen to international renown as a ruthless shadow instrument of Russian power, now using convicts to wage Putin’s war against Ukraine

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman: Hard to eject Russian forces from Ukraine this year. ¤ U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley said on Jan. 20 at the Ramstein-8 summit that Russia’s full-scale war will likely “end in a negotiation” and not on the battlefield.
⋙ 🐣 that is NOT the position articulated by Biden who says it’s the prerogative of Zelensky and the Ukr people how/when to end the conflict ¤ yes, many wars end in negotiation, but it’s not the place of the US to press for this (Milley speaks inappropriately on a regular basis)

🐣 RT @OSINTreporting Finally a Russian who is not on drugs
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en [‘]Starting a special military operation was a catastrophic mistake. ¤ I don’t know who told Putin that the Ukrainians would not resist.[‘] ¤ I highly recommend listening to it.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1616518635702419471?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Tank dispute splits Ukraine’s allies as Zelensky seeks more firepower https://tinyurl.com/bdd5eym2 “We need to keep our momentum and resolve,”US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the allies. “We need to dig even deeper”
// Germany has rebuffed requests for its Leopard tanks to be used against Russian forces, roiling a meeting of defense ministers from nations aiding Ukraine

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian 🇵🇱Poland plans to train a tank brigade of the Armed Forces of 🇺🇦Ukraine by March, – Polish Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak.

🐣 What’s at stake in Ukraine
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1616482338166145025?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] The group will remain united and continue to increase efforts to support Ukraine.

This is not only about the security of Ukraine. It is also about European security and global security. It is about the world we want to live in and the world we want our children and grandchildren to inherit.

— US Defense Secretary Austin

🐣 RT @ Flash_news_ua ⚡ The United States Department of Justice plans to begin the process of transferring some of the confiscated Russian assets to Ukraine in the coming weeks and months. The funds are to be transferred through the State Department in accordance with a recent law, says Andrew Adams.

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🇺🇦”As much as it takes. As long as it takes.”—General Milley in Germany stating allies’ collective commitment to help #Ukraine defeat #Russia
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1616469799999262720?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill says Russian defeat in Ukraine would mean the end of the world. Are they starting to get worried?

Reuters: UK, Poland, others pledge to pursue ‘unprecedented’ military support for Ukraine http://reut.rs/ b

A group of nine nations including Britain, Poland and the Netherlands on Thursday pledged to pursue providing an “unprecedented set of donations” including main battle tanks to help Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

“We commit to collectively pursuing delivery of an unprecedented set of donations including main battle tanks, heavy artillery, air defence, ammunition, and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine’s defence,” a joint statement said.

The statement, published on the British government website, was made by the defence ministers of Britain, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, and representatives from Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Slovakia following a meeting in Estonia.

🐣 I believe this meeting was in part to brief Zelensky on the nuances of US politics, esp the impact of the 2022 US elections, ie to not worry too much about the chaos in the House; that mil support for Ukr will in all likelihood not be significantly curtailed
// on CIA Director Burns’ “secret” meeting with Zelensky

🐣 RT @wartranslated As Wagner’s GREY ZONE comments, the infantry is advancing practically in an open field. No support with armoured vehicles was provided and the infantry was left to their own devices.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1616452867593994240?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Let’s not get hung up on leopards. Yes #Ukraine needs tanks to aid its offensives, but they’ll come eventually. Lets rejoice at the huge level of support out there for the Ukrainian people & the mass of military aid donated to the country.

WaPo, Iuliia Mendel: Ukrainians are bracing for the next Russian onslaught https://tinyurl.com/k3vk257b “Russia is now gathering forces for another escalation. Together with our partners, we must make it clear to the ‘owners’ of Russia that no escalation will help them” — Zelensky

Russian propaganda continues to insist on its own twisted version of events. Day in and day out, Russian media calls for the complete destruction of the Ukrainian state, vows war with NATO, or threatens the use of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Moscow presses ahead with covert and open mobilization, the training of soldiers, the accumulation of weaponry and the massing of troops along the border. All of this suggests that Russia, like a wounded beast, might be preparing for a new attack. …

“They don’t have good equipment, they just send in lots of people to die,” Maryna told me. “This is not a war with spears — the advantage belongs to those who have modern equipment. We have strengthened and fortified Kyiv, and we’re getting modern equipment from the West. We have no reason to panic.” I don’t believe that Maryna, the mother of a 3-month-old daughter, ever thought that she would one day be offering expertise on military matters. But circumstances have forced all Ukrainians to adapt.

Preparing to counter this possible aggression, Ukraine has been pleading for modern tanks and more weapons. At least three European Union countries have publicly declared their willingness to supply Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine – but they can’t do so without approval from Germany, which manufactures the tanks. Leaders in Kyiv worry that the resulting delays might not leave enough time to prepare for fresh Russian attacks. Though 74 percent of Europeans approve of E.U. support for Ukraine, some fear becoming directly involved in a military conflict. …

🐣 The one country that will take encouragement from Germany’s waffling is Russia ¤ #Ramstein

🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent ⚡️US Defense Secretary: Russia suffers significant battle losses, almost out of ammunition. ¤ The U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during the Defense Contact Group meeting that “Russia is running out of ammunition and is suffering significant battle losses,” CNN reports.

🐣 RT @ @wartranslated Kiyanyn – update from Bakhmut, 20 January. No major changes in the Soledar-Bakhmut area, the enemy is struggling to gain a foothold in Soledar as the city is destroyed. Do not listen to false claims by the enemies on their progress in Bakhmut.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1616386606075617280?s=20/photo/1
// daily [tr] video report from Bakhmut

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1320 UTC 20 JAN/ On 19 JAN, a RU Motor Rifle unit was repelled in a probe on the eastern suburbs of Bakhmut city. UKR conducted 21 aviation strike missions across all axes of contact, including 7 strikes on RU air defense sites. UKR missile forces hit 6 RU HQ elements.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616422499495063553?s=20/photo/1

🐣 Germany didn’t resist fascism in 1933 ¤ and they’re doing little to resist it now ¤¤ I hope something happens to change my mind ¤¤ Ramstein

🐣 RT @United24media Russia is RUNNING OUT OF AMMUNITION, it has suffered significant losses, according to the head of the Pentagon at the Ramstein meeting. ¤ News we LIKE to hear.

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone At #Ramstein, US Secretary of Defense said: This is a crucial moment. regrouping, recruiting & trying to re-equip. This isn’t a moment to slow down. It’s a time to dig deeper. people are watching us. Kremlin’s watching us. And history is watching us.
⋙ CNN: US will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” says @SecDef Austin https://tinyurl.com/muasr2ef “Russia’s attacks are designed to break the spirit of Ukraine. But they have failed. And the people of Ukraine have inspired the world,” he said.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1616422271781945344?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DefenceU .@oleksiireznikov There are three priorities of Ukraine at #Ramstein 8:
✅ More air defence systems;
✅ Weapons for the offensive operations (tanks, howitzers, ammo);
✅ Systematic ammo supplies +service&repair for armament and machinery.
We will win together!

🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Chevrons of 🇺🇦 military units at #Ramstein base displayed at the venue,which has become a symbol of international support for 🇺🇦 More proof of Ukraine’s strides towards integration into NATO. #Ramstein 8 is sure to bring great news for 🇺🇦 soldiers with these chevrons. Stay tuned! 🖼

🐣 RT @MelnykAndrij We appeal to the new German Minister of Defence to put an end to this crazy Punch & Judy show around Leopards today in Ramstein & clear the way for a global TANK COALITION to empower Ukraine to kick out russian troops.please stop hiding behind back [link SDZeitung]

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Addressing Ramstein meeting, @ZelenskyyUa called to speed up military support because time plays in Russia’s favor. ¤ We have very little time. Russia can throw millions of mobilized into war. Without sufficient & timely weapon supplies, war will go further.

🐣 RT @nexta_tv The meeting at #Ramstein Air Base has begun.#Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said the war was is a tipping point, noting that support for #Ukraine would continue as long as necessary.

🐣 RT @ WarMonitors⚡️The head of the Pentagon said during his speech at the Ramstein base that Ukraine’s support will continue as long as necessary.

TheGuardian: Trump and lawyer ordered to pay $1m for bringing ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton https://tinyurl.com/4fynds2e
// In scathing ruling, US district court judge writes, ‘misuse of the courts by Mr Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law’
[Court doc:] https://tinyurl.com/4csnnje3

In a scathing ruling, US district court judge Donald Middlebrooks castigated Trump and his lead attorney, Alina Habba, for abusing the legal system by advancing a lawsuit that furthered his political grievances over the 2017 Russia investigation using arguments replete with misinformation and errors.

“We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Middlebrooks wrote in the 46-page order imposing sanctions of $937,989.39 against Trump and Habba.

The lawsuit, originally filed by Trump in March 2022, alleged that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee conspired with senior FBI officials and others before the 2016 election to fabricate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in order to damage him politically.

But Middlebrooks dismissed the case after he found that Trump engaged in a scattershot pleading that amounted to an obstruction of justice, and which included allegations that were known to be false. His legal arguments, including racketeering and conspiracy, were found to be without foundation.

The judge noted for instance that Trump’s allegations that former FBI director James Comey conspired with Clinton to prosecute him was wrong – as Trump was never prosecuted – while such a conspiracy was implausible since Comey likely damaged Clinton’s 2016 campaign by reopening the investigation into her emails.

“I find that the pleadings here were abusive litigation tactics. The complaint and amended complaint were drafted to advance a political narrative; not to address legal harm caused by any defendant,” Middlebrooks wrote of Trump’s lawsuit.

The judge also found that Trump’s racketeering and conspiracy lawsuit appeared to be part of a pattern by the former president of misusing the courts by filing frivolous lawsuits in order to serve a political purpose. ¤ “Misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm” he wrote.

Middlebrooks examined other seemingly politically motivated lawsuits filed by Trump and wrote that they all followed a playbook of including provocative rhetoric, political language carried over from rallies, attacks on political opponents and, typically, a lack of legal analysis.

“Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process,” the judge wrote. “He knew full well the impact of his actions.”

The immediate fallout of the sanctions order was not clear. Trump had wanted to drop the lawsuit after the case was assigned to Middlebrooks, an appointee of Bill Clinton, but Habba told Fox News in a segment referenced in the ruling that she had advised him to press ahead.

Trump and Habba – as well as her law firm Habba, Madaio and Associates – are jointly liable for the $1m penalty, though the former president indicated to associates that he essentially believed it should be paid by his attorney instead of him, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The penalty handed down by the judge, designed to disincentive future frivolous lawsuits, is in addition to a $50,000 fine imposed in November and $16,000 in reimbursement of legal costs for Charles Dolan, a Democratic public relations executive, who filed the first sanctions request.

🐣 RT @washingtonpost Over the past few weeks, Western allies of Ukraine have committed massive packages of mechanized armor to break the stalemate with Russia. Here’s how it came together — and what they expect Kyiv to do with it.
⋙ WaPo: Inside the urgent push to arm Ukraine for a spring offensive https://tinyurl.com/yaxwmf36
// Over the past few weeks, Ukraine’s Western allies have committed massive packages of mechanized armor to break the stalemate with Russia. But is it enough to change the tide of the war?

⭕ 19 Jan 2023

Reuters: UK, Poland, others pledge to pursue ‘unprecedented’ military support for Ukraine http://reut.rs/ b

A group of nine nations including Britain, Poland and the Netherlands on Thursday pledged to pursue providing an “unprecedented set of donations” including main battle tanks to help Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

“We commit to collectively pursuing delivery of an unprecedented set of donations including main battle tanks, heavy artillery, air defence, ammunition, and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine’s defence,” a joint statement said.

The statement, published on the British government website, was made by the defence ministers of Britain, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, and representatives from Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Slovakia following a meeting in Estonia.

VOA (Dec): Republican, Democratic Senators Predict Continuing US Support for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/msc7k7hp Interview; “[T]here is strong, strong support in both houses and both parties. Are there a handful of people who are dissidents? Yes. … That’s the American way”
// 12/6/2022

AP (Nov): What US election results mean for the future of Ukraine aid https://tinyurl.com/h63khh9t “Despite the escalating opposition from the right, there is little risk of Congress ending America’s financial and military support for Ukraine anytime soon”
// 11/11/2022

🐣 RT @MSkrypchenko Preliminary list of all weapons and equipment that NATO countries are going to transfer to Ukraine in the nearest future #Ukraine️ #UkraineWar #russiaisateroriststate #Ramstein
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MSkrypchenko/status/1616149099514073088?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS / DELAYED POST 19 JAN/ RU forces, likely from the 4th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, have advanced in the forested area to the W of Kreminna. Presently, a salient extends from the western suburbs to a point 4 Km NW of Dibrova.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616222903829143552?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko America rocks again. ¤ Goodnight from Ukraine. There will be a new day and new hope for the best.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1616224945171734539?s=20/photo/1
// Defense Budget

• Additional munitions for NASAMS;
• 8 Avenger air defense systems;
• 59 Bradleys+590 TOW missiles+ammo;
• 90 Strykers + 20 mine rollers;
• 53 MRAPs;
• 350 HMMWVS;
• 20,000 155mm artillery rounds;
• 600 precision-guided 155mm rounds;
• 95,000 105mm artillery rounds;
• 11,800 120mm mortar rounds;
• Additional ammo for HIMARS;
• 12 ammunition support vehicles;
• 6 command post vehicles;
• 22 tactical vehicles to tow weapons;
• HARM missiles;
• Approx 2,000 anti-armor rockets;
• 3,000,000 rounds of small arms ammo;
• Demolition equipment for obstacle clearing;
• Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
• Night VIS devices,
• Spare parts and other field equipment.

WaPo: CIA director holds secret meeting with Zelensky on Russia’s next steps https://tinyurl.com/2b9cbm38
// High-level visit by Burns comes at critical juncture in war and as government in Kyiv airs concern about durability of U.S. support

CIA Director William J. Burns traveled in secret to Ukraine’s capital at the end of last week to brief President Volodymyr Zelensky on his expectations for what Russia is planning militarily in the coming weeks and months, said a U.S. official and other people familiar with the visit.

Top of mind for Zelensky and his senior intelligence officials during the meeting was how long Ukraine could expect U.S. and Western assistance to continue following Republicans’ takeover of the House and a drop-off in support of Ukraine aid among parts of the U.S. electorate, said people familiar with the meeting. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private high-level engagement.

Burns emphasized the urgency of the moment on the battlefield and acknowledged that at some point assistance would be harder to come by, the people said. ¤ Zelensky and his aides came away from last week’s meeting with the impression that the Biden administration’s support for Kyiv remains strong and the $45 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine passed by Congress in December would last at least through July or August, those familiar with the discussion said. Kyiv is less certain about the prospects of Congress passing another multibillion-dollar supplemental assistance package as it did last spring, they said. ¤ While hawkish Republicans in Congress continue to favor arming Ukraine, other conservatives have said they want to slash U.S. spending, in particular, the billions of dollars going to the war effort. …

At the moment, Ukrainian and Russian forces are locked in an intense war of attrition in eastern Ukraine around Bakhmut. The city has relatively little strategic value but it has taken on symbolic importance for both sides, in particular, Russia, which hasn’t captured a major Ukrainian city since last summer. ¤ Military analysts expect that an uptick in fighting this spring could determine the war’s trajectory. …

Moscow, which has recruited convicted felons in the war effort, has shown a willingness to endure heavy casualties. Last year, many of the recruits were highly inexperienced, given only two weeks of training before being sent to the front lines. But in recent months, Russia has improved its training, according to Western intelligence officials.

More recently, Burns has linked the Russian president’s decision to invade Ukraine as a key step in his goal of returning Moscow to its former glory. ¤ “He is convinced that his destiny as Russia’s leader is to restore Russia as a great power,” he told an audience at a security forum in Aspen in July. “He believes the key to doing that is to re-create a sphere of influence in Russia’s neighborhood and he does not believe you can do that without controlling Ukraine and its choices. And so that’s what produced, I think, this horrible war.” …

That same day, NATO defense ministers began a two-day meeting in Brussels where the topic of Leopard tanks divided allies, with Poland threatening to send 14 tanks regardless of whether Germany approves. Technically, Germany’s approval is required because it is the manufacturer of the Leopard 2. ¤ “Either we will obtain this consent, or we will do the right thing ourselves,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a local broadcaster.

🐣 RT @mbk_center [Mikhail Khodorkovsky] Acclaimed film director Martin Scorsese addressed the Ukrainians: ¤ “At this moment, your spirit, the strength of your spirit, is like light. It is the light of the whole world. And I pray that it will be bright enough to guide you through this darkness.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @olex_scherba Wow. The great Martin Scorsese. Thank you. #StandWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1616041914431684608?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar #Lavrov’s equations of the West with Nazi Germany and its support for #Ukraine with an effort to exterminate the Russian people are ludicrous and almost certainly aimed at a domestic Russian audience. http://isw.pub/UkrWar011823
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1616061373619834882?s=20

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/ 1300 UTC 19 JAN/ RU continues a series of platoon and company sized probes along the line of contact. On 18 JAN, UKR air defense downed a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter and a RU ‘Merlin’ recon UAV. UKR missiles strike RU Electronic Warfare site, troop assemblies & HQ.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1616057237419458561?s=20/photo/1

WaPo/AP: EU assembly wants special court for Russia’s war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2dx2ppnc

The nonbinding resolution was approved by a 472-19 vote with 33 abstentions in the European Parliament, and underscored the EU’s willingness to make sure Moscow should be brought to justice for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The legislature called on the EU “to work in close cooperation with Ukraine to seek and build political support in the U.N. General Assembly and other international forums … for creating the special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.”…

The Hague-based ICC has launched an investigation into war crimes in Ukraine but can’t prosecute the crime of aggression — the act of invading another country — because the Russian Federation is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the court.

The call came despite the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court saying his court was capable of effectively dealing with war crimes committed in Ukraine.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, his military forces have been accused of abuses ranging from killings in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha to deadly attacks on civilian facilities, including the March 16 bombing of a theater in Mariupol that an Associated Press investigation established likely killed close to 600 people.

Reuters: Putin ally Medvedev warns NATO of nuclear war if Russia is defeated in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yc4b4fex
⋙ It’s OKAY, Everyone gets a ⬇️ Partcipation Trophy! ⬇️
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1616045482631122944?s=20/photo/1

MOSCOW, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, warned NATO on Thursday that the defeat of Russia in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war.

Striking a similar tone at what he described as an anxious time for the country, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said trying to destroy Russia would mean the end of the world.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Medvedev has repeatedly raised the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, but his admission now of the possibility of Russia’s defeat indicates the level of Moscow’s concern over increased Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

“The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war,” Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Putin’s powerful security council, said in a post on Telegram.

“Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends,” said Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012.

Medvedev said NATO and other defence leaders, due to meet at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday to talk about strategy and support for the West’s attempt to defeat Russia in Ukraine, should think about the risks of their policy.

Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, hold around 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Putin is the ultimate decision maker on the use of nuclear weapons.

Asked if Medvedev’s remarks signified that Russia was escalating the crisis to a new level, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “No, it absolutely does not mean that.”

He said Medvedev’s remarks were in full accordance with Russia’s nuclear doctrine which allows for a nuclear strike after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”.

While NATO has conventional military superiority over Russia, when it comes to nuclear weapons, Russia has nuclear superiority over the alliance in Europe.

Putin casts Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West, and has said that Russia will use all available means to protect itself and its people.

“ALARMING TIME”
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The United States and its allies have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperial land grab, while Ukraine has vowed to fight until the last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in a sermon: “We pray to the Lord that he bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.”

“Today is an alarming time,” state news agency RIA quoted him as saying. “But we believe that the Lord will not leave Russian land.”

NOT BACKING DOWN
Since a grim New Year’s Eve message describing the West as Russia’s true enemy in the war on Ukraine, Putin has sent several signals that Russia will not back down. He has despatched hypersonic missiles to the Atlantic and appointed his top general to run the war.

Putin said on Wednesday that Russia’s powerful military-industrial complex was ramping up production and was one of the main reasons why his country would prevail in Ukraine.

Washington has not detailed in public what it would do if Putin ordered what would be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since the United States unleashed the first atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns cautioned Putin’s spy chief Sergei Naryshkin in November about the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, U.S. officials said at the time.

Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads while the United States has 5,428, China 350, France 290 and the United Kingdom 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Medvedev, 57, who once presented himself as a reformer who was ready to work with the United States to liberalise Russia, has recast himself since the war as the most publicly hawkish member of Putin’s circle.

He said that the nuclear risks of the Ukraine crisis should be obvious to any Western politicians who had “preserved at least some traces of intelligence.”

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “Russia must be brought to justice for every burnt Ukrainian city and village, for every destroyed life. We must punish evil. This terrorist war should become the last such war.” – @ZelenskyyUa during Russian War Crimes exhibition at @Davos
🌎 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1616033102958051329?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @carlbildt While much of the buzz in Davos is about 🇩🇪, Scholz and Leopard tanks 🇸🇪 announces a very solid military support package to 🇺🇦 with advanced artillery and 50 CV90 armored fighting vehicles.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Sincerely grateful to the Government of Sweden & @SwedishPM for the new military assistance package to 🇺🇦. CV90 IFVs, Archer self-propelled howitzers & NLAW ATGMs are powerful weapons that 🇺🇦 army needs to liberate our land from the Russian invader. Together to a common victory!

🐣 RT @ IAPonomarenko Just when you’re thinking Russia can’t fall even deeper, FM Lavrov crawls out of woods and draws parallels between the Western support of Ukraine and Hitler’s Holocaust. ¤ “The Final Solution for Russian people” is what’s happening, yeah.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Among the Kremlin’s key, long-lasting issues that will eventually bring it to its downfall is that it never knew when to stop in propaganda.

🐣 RT @saintjavelin 🐆Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that his government will either receive permission from Germany to give Ukraine Leopard 2 or will do it on its own.

WSJ: Berlin Won’t Allow Exports of German Tanks to Ukraine Unless U.S. Sends Its Own https://tinyurl.com/y8n5vnmt “By deferring to Washington, Mr. Scholz is now adding pressure on President Biden to authorize the export of Abrams tanks to Kyiv, the closest U.S. equivalent”
// North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have over 2,000 German-made Leopard tanks

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Scholz on Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine: ‘We must avoid Russia-NATO war.’ ¤ When asked about Berlin’s reluctance to provide Ukraine with German-built Leopard 2 tanks in Davos, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany has been “among the biggest supporters of Ukraine.”

🐣 RT @ryankakiuchan Joint statement by Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba and Minister of Defence of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov on German-made Leopard 2 tanks.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ryankakiuchan/status/1615984636576018433?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] We welcome the bold and very timely decision of the United Kingdom to transfer the first squadron of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. However, it is not sufficient to achieve operational goals. Therefore, we are addressing our appeal to the states that have Leopard 2 tanks in service, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. We guarantee that we will use these weapons responsibly and exclusively for the purposes of protecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders.

⭕ 18 Jan 2023

NatRev, Stanley Kurtz: AP African-American Studies Program, as Written, Violates Florida Law https://tinyurl.com/bdefzutj The curriculum “promotes leftist radicalism, with virtually no readings providing even a classically liberal point of view, much less some form of conservatism”

DeSantis’s refusal to approve APAAS is entirely justified. Although the College Board has pointedly declined to release the APAAS curriculum, I obtained a copy and wrote about it in September. There I argued that APAAS proselytizes for a socialist transformation of the United States, that it directly runs afoul of new state laws barring CRT, and that to approve APAAS would be to gut those laws.

Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, for example, bars any K–12 attempt to promote the idea that color blindness is racist. Yet most of the readings in the final quarter of APAAS (Unit 4: Movements and Debates) reject color blindness. … Overall, the readings in the final quarter of APAAS — the quarter chiefly devoted to ideological controversies rather than to history per se — are extraordinarily one-sided. They promote leftist radicalism, with virtually no readings providing even a classically liberal point of view, much less some form of conservatism. If DeSantis were to approve a course pushing the idea of “color-blind racism,” he would effectively be nullifying his own Stop WOKE Act.

In my earlier exploration of APAAS’s curriculum, I described the neo-Marxist thrust of the course. This is evident enough from the readings. On top of that, however, we know that Joshua M. Myers, the member of the APAAS curriculum-writing team whose expertise covers the final quarter of the course, is an acolyte of Cedric Robinson, author of Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Myers’s writings on African-American studies explicitly call for the field to reject traditional concepts of disciplinary neutrality and adopt openly anti-capitalist radical advocacy instead. In short, for DeSantis to approve the APAAS course as currently configured would be to repudiate everything he stands for. It would welcome woke, not stop it.

Again, for the College Board to keep the APAAS curriculum secret while simultaneously asking states to approve the course for high school and college credit is indefensible. This secrecy validates long-standing concerns about the College Board’s acting as a de facto unelected national school board. By filling APAAS with Marxism and critical race theory, while at the same time presenting the course as a harmless exercise in African-American history, the College Board is trying to fool the public. …

The larger danger here is that once APAAS is approved, we will see the College Board devise AP courses in women’s studies, gender studies, transgender studies, latino studies, environmental studies, the full panoply of politicized “studies” courses that have balkanized and politicized higher education.

That said, Florida has invited the College Board to revise its curriculum. A radically reconfigured APAAS still has a chance in Florida. A successful revision wouldn’t necessarily require the complete elimination of readings based in neo-Marxism and CRT. At minimum, however, it would call for such readings to be fully balanced by traditional liberal and conservative perspectives.

We shall see how it all plays out—and whether the College Board maintains its unjustified secrecy. At a minimum, no state should approve APAAS until the curriculum is released and there has been ample opportunity for the public to assess and debate it. In the meantime, all honor to DeSantis for being faithful to both his word and to the law. Truly, he is doing what it takes to stop woke.

🐣 RT @UFfrontline According to Politico, the US’s new package will contain GLSDB ammunition! ¤ These can be fired from, for example, HIMARS/M270 and have a range of 15 miles and a hit pattern of one meter☄️ #UkrainianArmy #kreminna #UkraineRussia
💽 https://twitter.com/UFfrontline/status/1615833075669245991?s=20/photo/1
// wow!

Politico [EU]: Tanks, no tanks: Scholz holds key to Leopards for Ukraine, but waits for Biden https://tinyurl.com/34jp8fje ‘Scholz has warned against going it alone with regards to arms deliveries to Ukraine. But now, by his hesitancy, he is doing exactly that’
// Several countries are goading the German chancellor ahead of a meeting of Western defense ministers on Friday.

🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who is thought to be one of the staunchest allies of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, said that Crimea and Donbas are Ukrainian territories and denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
⋙ NewVoiceUkraine: Serbian President Vucic denounces Russian occupation of Crimea and Donbas https://tinyurl.com/bdhc7scb

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Credit where due, impressive start from the new House Foreign Affairs Committee and its chairman McCaul. “Leopard 2 tanks, ATACMS, and other long-range precision munitions should be approved without delay.”
⋙ HouseForeignAffairs/Armed ServicesComms: McCaul (R), Rogers (R) Urge Admin and Allies to Swiftly Send Ukraine Weapons Needed to Win https://tinyurl.com/58tevhbs “Leopard 2 tanks, ATACMS, and other long-range precision munitions should be approved without delay”

Washington, D.C.– House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) released the following statement urging the administration and our allies to transfer to Ukraine urgently critical weapon systems they need to defeat Russia. 

“The current handwringing and hesitation by the Biden administration and some of our European allies in providing critical weapon systems to Ukraine stinks of the weak policies of 2021, such as not sanctioning Nord Stream 2 or providing U.S.-origin Stingers before the full-scale invasion. While those policies failed to deter this conflict, the current indecision and self-deterrence will prolong it – costing Ukrainian lives. Now is the time for the Biden and Scholz governments to follow the lead of our U.K. and Eastern European allies – Leopard 2 tanks, ATACMS, and other long-range precision munitions should be approved without delay.”

WaPo, George Will: Why Germany mustn’t hesitate sending tanks to Ukraine—lots of them https://tinyurl.com/y9temmtc “Why hoard these when Ukrainians are eager to use a small fraction of them in the fight against Russia, the only clear & present danger confronting Europe’s militaries?”
// 📋 “Astonishingly, some congressional Republicans, being parsimonious where this is least virtuous, profess alarm about the cost of aid to Ukraine. In 2022, this was 0.09 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product.”

WaPo, George Will: Why Germany mustn’t hesitate sending tanks to Ukraine—lots of them https://tinyurl.com/y9temmtc “Why hoard these when Ukrainians are eager to use a small fraction of them in the fight against Russia, the only clear & present danger confronting Europe’s militaries?”
// 📋 “Astonishingly, some congressional Republicans, being parsimonious where this is least virtuous, profess alarm about the cost of aid to Ukraine. In 2022, this was 0.09 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product.”

🐣 RT @GeoffStooke The desire from geopolitical strategists for a neutral Ukraine in a “Finland model” is now officially over.
🖼 https://twitter.com/GeoffStooke/status/1615675476122685441?s=20/photo/1
// “NATO membership for Ukraine is ‘appropriate,’ says Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger”

🐣 RT @LeaderMcConnell We stand with the people of Ukraine grieving the loss of their Interior Minister and all those killed in the tragic helicopter crash. I know their commitment to the defense of their country and its freedom and sovereignty will live on as Ukraine keeps up its brave fight.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin threw another hissy fit today, a long read: claims Russia needs to build up several armies, mass retraining asap to avoid (almost) inevitable defeat. Does not expect Ukraine to start an advance until April, by which time the West will send even more weapons
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1615859747772665856?s=20/photo/1 -3

[Text:] 1/3 They [Ukrainians] are unlikely to advance in the first half of April: rains and mudslides are possible until the middle of the month. In the second – it is already relatively warm at night, the roads and the ground will dry up, in the daytime it is warm like in summer, but not yet hot – the mercenaries (“foreign military specialists”) will not have to experience inconvenience from our Russian southern climate. Again, around 20 April in Novorossiya [Donbas] and Malorossiya [Ukraine] it is already “green” – it is easier to hide military equipment from our still relatively numerous aviation in preparation for an offensive and for organising breakthroughs. And for the enemy, whose infantry and armored forces are “packed” with thermal imaging equipment much more fully than the RF Armed Forces, the greenery is not a hindrance for searching and identifying targets. Plus, significantly (many times? By an order of magnitude?) better reconnaissance: air, space, undercover, radio-electronic. Plus, a much more adequate command, which managed to prove to its troops that it can successfully beat the enemy. Yes, the numbers of equipment calculated by respected oman “Donetsky” [blogger] is not enough to “defeat Russia”, of course. But for one serious attack, quite. And from there, depending on “how it plays out.” After all, it’s only January now, they will give a lot of things and promise even more until April (and they give EVERYTHING that they promise – there is no need for
illusions – our enemies don’t disagree with their deeds).

2/3
And our commander-in-chief is not talking about the defeat of the so-called. “Ukraine”, but boasts of the production of air defense missiles – i.e. purely defensive weapons, while to win this war you need offensive weapons, and a lot, and modern ones, and – these weapons must be in the hands of people trained to use them. We need ON THE FRONT several (in addition to the existing) armies, consisting of 3-5 full-fledged divisions (that is, each has 2 motorised rifle regiments, 1 tank regiment, 1 artillery regiment, sappers, reconnaissance and all other necessary units and subunits). They must be urgently formed now, by calling up the necessary contingent of reservists as part of mobilisation (at least as the necessary weapons and equipment are accumulated). So that in 3-4 months these divisions (at least to some extent) would be at least relatively trained, well-coordinated and combat ready. It is desperately necessary to urgently deploy training / retraining courses for junior and middle command personnel, sending there not “citizens” through through the military offices, but already experienced soldiers and front-line sergeants. And it is also necessary to deploy “from scratch” the training of masses of military specialists – signalmen, artillerymen, tankmen. All this was done by our grandfathers. Can we repeat??? That is, if they are not capable of inventing anything themselves, because what did they invent, it would look funny from the outside, if only we were not so offended, bitter and hurt.

3/3 And the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, headed by its chief, should be engaged in this most complex organisational work (the very fact of combination of position of Head of General Staff with the position of commander of a joint group is an example of exceptional cretinism. Even if Gerasimov was “a rocket scientist”, which is not the case, he would not be able to perform at the same time both functions well anyway. However, my opinion is unchanged – neither he nor his “boss” Shoigu are capable of fulfilling any duties assumed. On the creation of the State Defense Committee (of which many “dreamed wetly” on the eve of the next “bla-bla-bla” that sounded [from Putin] the other day), on the creation of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander- in-Chief and the mobilisation of the rears and industry, on the termination of gas and oil supplies to / through the so-called “Ukraine” and striking at the enemy’s strategic communications… I’m already tired of writing and talking
about this – it’s been almost a year already .. 1 remind you once again: if by the end of spring the above (and not only) measures are not taken, defeat in the war may become almost inevitable … In the meantime, as a result of a 3-month “freeze” of mobilisation measures, only new defeats of operational scale became invetiable. At what front and when, we will find out in due time (I hope to be mistaken).

⋙ 🐣 RT @amaurygaillard Anybody understands why this guy has never crossed a high-located window and fell ? Curious.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated He’s FSB
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @poli_pockette The FSB watches to see who dares agree with him, and I don’t doubt that he’s reported every sympathetic nod and social media follow of the last 12 months back to them.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @esq_mike Remember Chernobyl the HBO Series? ¤ “When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” ¤ Frankly, we’re lucky Russia lies to itself.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MikTukhachevsky Russia cannot build its way out of operational and strategic military defeat in this war. It lacks the natural resources, technology, productivity, and skill to out-perform Ukraine and its allies, because Russia is a thoroughly mismanaged, inept kleptocratic dystopia.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @wakeupjohnston Igor Girkin as usual is prescient. Russia is well on its way to losing.

🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald Abrams tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles seen transported by train in Poland. US has promised Bradleys to Ukraine, but has not said it will supply the advanced, modern Abrams main battle tanks. Ukraine urgently needs modern tanks to defeat Russian invasion forces.

🐣 RT @SecDef Wheels down in Berlin. I look forward to meeting with 🇩🇪 German Minister of Defense Pistorius and Federal Minister Schmidt, to discuss our shared defense priorities and enhanced cooperation among democracies.

🐣 RT @JulianRoepcke So Scholz is blackmailing the US government. Only if it allows #Abrams into Ukraine, Germany will allow #Leopard2 into the country. Scholz knows very well that this won’t make sense for the Americans, but I’m told “a symbolic amount” (5-10) would be enough [link]

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar #Prigozhin directly attacked Russian President Vladimir #Putin’s presidential administration and insinuated that some officials working there are traitors who want #Russia to lose the war in #Ukraine—one of his boldest attacks against the #Kremlin to date. http://isw.pub/UkrWar011823
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1615892834380398592?s=20

🐣 📋 RT @TristanSnell Donald Trump raised the debt ceiling 3 times — ballooning the national debt by 39% in just 4 years.

🐣 RT @GlasnostGone At the World Economic Forum @Davos, #Ukraine’s President Zelensky said “The tyranny is outpacing democracy. Russia needed less than one second to start the war. … The time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill.”
⋙ CNN: Zelensky urges allies to act fast against Russia’s aggression: “The world must not hesitate today and ever” https://tinyurl.com/yc58ahc5

YahooNews: Putin’s Chef Threatens Traitors With ‘Sledgehammer’ in Batshit Outburst https://tinyurl.com/34prdbsv Prigozhin “has taken aim at unnamed figures in the country’s presidential administration in a violent rant about traitors, YouTube, and punishment by ‘sledgehammer’”

… Bizarrely, his outburst was sparked by a seemingly innocuous question about why prosecutors have not yet followed up on his request and blocked YouTube throughout the country. ¤ Calling the video-sharing service the “information plague of our time,” Prigozhin claimed the “main reason” the site hasn’t yet been shut down is because of “a huge number of people on Staraya Square in the presidential administration” who “think about only one thing—the sooner Russia loses the war, the sooner the Americans will come and regulate us.”

“Because when we fall to our knees before Uncle Sam, he will forgive us for all sins: for supporting pro-Russian interests, for supporting Putin, and for the fact that we generally live on this earth. Lord, this won’t happen. Take note, it is not enough to humiliate yourself in front of the Americans. You have to do it in a way that makes them happy. But this will never happen. They won’t take you in. And then you will come to us, where Wagner’s sledgehammer will already be waiting for you,” he said through his press service.

Prigozhin also used the opportunity to rage against “the bastards” who he claimed “pretend to participate” in the war against Ukraine but actively work against it and “move their relatives abroad,” apparently referring to high-ranking officials. ¤ “Those who actively use YouTube will be identified and will suffer a well-deserved punishment after it is banned,” he said.

His rant appeared to shock even some pro-Kremlin pundits. ¤ “Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin is out of control,” wrote propagandist Sergei Mardan, noting that compared to Prigozhin, Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny seems like a “puppy.”

Prigozhin, once seen as a close ally of Vladimir Putin, has seemed to increasingly test the Kremlin in recent months by blasting top military brass and hijacking PR efforts for the war with a spotlight on his horde of freed prison inmates-turned-mercenaries. ¤ A day before his latest outburst, he released footage of himself sending off the latest group of inmates granted pardons in exchange for a turn on the battlefield. ¤ “I said I needed your criminal talents in order to kill the enemy in the war. Now your criminal talents aren’t needed, so try to remember that you don’t need to go back” to prison, he told the group.

WaPo: Thousands answered Ukraine’s call for volunteers. Here’s what motivated them https://tinyurl.com/4ccfajcr
// An estimated 1,000 to 3,000 such foreign fighters are believed to be active. Some went to defend democracy after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Others went to escape their own demons.

Politico: U.S. prepping major military package for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/584cafek
// Defense Budget; Friday’s announcement is expected to include Stryker vehicles, but not tanks.

While the next tranche will include additional artillery, ammunition and armor — likely Stryker armored combat vehicles — the U.S. is not expected to sign off on American M1 Abrams tanks, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks ahead of an announcement.

The Biden administration currently has no plans to send the Abrams, the Army’s 60-ton main battle tank, the people said. ¤ The reluctance is due to the logistical and maintenance challenges of the tanks, and not over concern that their transfer could escalate the conflict, one of the U.S. officials said. This person noted that the U.S. has helped Ukraine obtain Soviet-era tanks and supports the British decision to send around a dozen of its Challenger 2 tanks.

The package will likely include a number of Strykers, an eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicle built by General Dynamics Land Systems, as well as ground-launched Small Diameter Bombs, which have a range of roughly 100 miles, two of the people said. POLITICO first reported last week that the Pentagon was considering sending Strykers in the upcoming tranche of aid. Reuters first reported that Boeing-made Small Diameter Bombs were under discussion.

This package will not include the long-range Army Tactical Missile System that can reach Moscow, according to two of the people. The Biden administration has balked at sending long-range munitions, despite Kyiv’s pleas, for fear of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We believe the provision of modern tanks will significantly help and improve the Ukrainians’ ability to fight where they are fighting now and fight more effectively going forward,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday, referring to European tanks. He declined to comment on any upcoming aid package from the U.S.

The White House has not yet signed off on the package, which is still being finalized and could change this week. But officials expect an announcement around the regular Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, where Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley will meet with their counterparts to discuss new Ukraine aid.

The latest meeting comes as Kyiv raises alarms that Moscow is preparing to launch a major new offensive to take the capital city. Ukrainian intelligence officials have warned the Kremlin plans a new mobilization of up to 500,000 conscripts, while on Monday, Russia and Belarus began joint military exercises. …

Ukraine is still pleading for Western tanks on top of the U.K.’s Challengers. A handful of nations have signaled their willingness to send their German-made battle tanks, but are waiting on a decision from Berlin to greenlight the re-export. The Leopards are seen as a better option than the Abrams because of the sheer number in use already in Europe. Leopards are also considered easier to maintain and consume less fuel.

While German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who replaced Christine Lambrecht this week, is expected to meet on Thursday with Austin, it’s possible a decision has already been made higher up in the German government on whether to approve the transfers. …

This week’s Ramstein meeting promises to be one of the most significant of the monthly gatherings of defense ministers, as the 50 nations discuss how to prepare Ukraine for more hard months of fighting. In addition to the recent British announcement of Challenger tanks and the new American package, Finland is expected to unveil its largest Ukraine military aid shipment to date, according to one person familiar with the thinking in Helsinki. Finland doesn’t publicize its contributions, but has sent artillery, small arms and winter clothing in the past.

Western leaders have been cautious about publicly pushing Germany too hard on the tank issue. Support for Ukraine is “about making sure that each of us can do what we can do,” James Cleverly, the U.K.’s foreign secretary, told reporters in Washington on Tuesday. “And our ability to support is going to be different from one nation to another.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. kicked off new training programs for Ukraine this week: an expanded course to enhance Ukrainian forces’ fighting skills in Germany, and training on the Patriot missile system at Fort Sill, Okla. Ukraine is set to receive three Patriot batteries, a defensive system designed to shoot down missiles and aircraft: one from the U.S. and one each from Germany and the Netherlands. …

🐣 RT @theintercept A discharge petition to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling could avert a financial crisis threatened by Freedom Caucus members who opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid for House speaker. ¤ But Democrats would have to move fairly quickly.
⋙ TheIntercept, Ryan Grim (Jan 9): House Rules Package Gives Democrats a Path to Averting a Debt Ceiling Crisis https://tinyurl.com/ycxx2cr5
// 1/9/2023; Republicans preserved the discharge petition in the new rules package, allowing any bill with 218 votes to come to the floor — even one codifying Roe v. Wade.

House Republicans enacted new rules for the 118th Congress on Monday that preserve the traditional right of rank-and-file members of Congress to bypass House leadership and put legislation on the floor directly if they obtain the signatures of a majority of the chamber. This opens a handful of legislative opportunities for Democrats, despite Republican ideological cohesion.

The maneuver, known as a discharge petition, was famously deployed by President Lyndon Johnson and his House allies to pressure reluctant opponents of civil rights to allow a vote for the Civil Rights Act on the floor. Under standard rules, the majority leader sets the floor schedule, in collaboration with the House Rules Committee, but a discharge petition can automatically pull a bill from committee and move it to the floor. Once the logjam was broken, it passed with significant support.

A discharge petition to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling, on the other hand, could avert a financial crisis threatened by Freedom Caucus members who opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the speakership. In exchange for their votes, Freedom Caucus members won a commitment that McCarthy would hold U.S. debt payments hostage in exchange for significant spending cuts across the board. But if Democrats could find five Republicans unwilling to risk default, which would spark a global financial crisis, a discharge petition would give those Republicans a route around their own leadership. …

Democrats would have to move fairly quickly, however, to avert a financial crisis. First, a bill would have to be introduced and referred to committee, according to House rules and precedents. Then 30 legislative days would need to expire. Once 218 signatures are collected, another seven legislative days need to pass, at which point the motion would come to the floor on the second or fourth Monday after those seven legislative days are up. A legislative day is one in which the House is in session and then adjourns. A motion to discharge filed in February or March ought to be ripe by summer. The Treasury Department has not put a precise date at which default will occur, but the estimate is summer.

Using a discharge petition to avert default could, however, become a moot issue. Constitutional scholars have argued that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional: If Congress appropriates money, the executive is required to spend that money, not default because of a lack of borrowing authority when other avenues to fulfill the appropriations exist.

WaPo, Jeff Stein: Democracy defenders and Rambo wannabes: Ukraine’s volunteer foreign fighters https://tinyurl.com/4ccfajcr

🐣 RT @theintercept A discharge petition to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling could avert a financial crisis threatened by Freedom Caucus members who opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid for House speaker. ¤ But Democrats would have to move fairly quickly.
⋙ TheIntercept, Ryan Grim (Jan 9): House Rules Package Gives Democrats a Path to Averting a Debt Ceiling Crisis https://tinyurl.com/ycxx2cr5
// 1/9/2023; Republicans preserved the discharge petition in the new rules package, allowing any bill with 218 votes to come to the floor — even one codifying Roe v. Wade.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS / 1320 UTC 18 JAN/ RU units continue efforts to cut the T-05-13 HWY N of Bakhmut at Krasna & Podhorodne. While presently contained, the Kurdiumivka salient poses a significant threat to the vital H-32 HWY. UKR morale in the Bakhmut Area of Operations (AO) is high.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1615701478458417154?s=20 /photo/1

NYT: U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea https://tinyurl.com/v8fzwrrb “This week, top U.S. and Ukrainian commanders will hold a high-level planning meeting in Germany to game out the offensive planning”
// The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

🐣 RT @KEYCNewsNow A Russian national who founded a cryptocurrency exchange that evaded U.S. regulations and became a haven for the proceeds of criminal activity has been arrested, federal officials said Wednesday.
⋙ KEYCNews/AP: Justice Dept. charges Russian founder of cryptocurrency firm https://tinyurl.com/bd6mea36 “Prosecutors allege that Legkodymov’s cryptocurrency exchange, Bitzlato Ltd., of which he served as majority owner, did not implement required anti-money-laundering safeguards”

🧵 RT @wartranslated Terrorist Igor Girkin gave commentary to a Russian publication on the timelines of Russian progress in the Donbas, saying they are nowhere near approaching Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and Ukraine is holding back its strongest reserves. … [link] …
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1615712853612273664?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/4hx42yj9

We bring a translation of his statement below. As the interviewer questions how quickly the Russians will reach Kramatorsk and Sloviansk line of defence, Girkin rejects an idea that it will happen any time soon given that Bakhmut is still standing. ¤ According to him, Wagner will not be enough to occupy the rest of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. More on this below:

⚡️ SVPRESSA: Even in the summer, analysts voiced that “Russia will take several months to liberate the front lines of Seversk-Soledar-Bakhmut.” ¤ And now these months have passed, and the enemy’s line of defense is gradually shifting to the west. Sooner or later, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will roll back to the next line – Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka.

How do we break it? Do we continue going straight ahead, or around – maybe to the south, or maybe better to the north? What kind of scenarios can be there? The question of what will happen next is better to identify in advance, and it would be nice to find an answer to it in advance.

The space in front of the line of cities from Sloviansk in the north to Konstantinovka in the south can be occupied. All the way to Bakhmut, there are only fields and small villages. American military experts even say: “The left bank of the Dnieper is a desert.” ¤ That is, the Russians can get through this territory relatively easily. But how to take the one fortified area that is essentially elongated from north to south? Here, one city passes into another. ¤ Apparently, we will again have to gnaw through step by step, freeing the west of Donbas.

It would be necessary to act more cunningly, to maneuver, but is it possible? ¤ To answer this question, we turned to the ex-Minister of Defense of the [so-called] DPR, the head of the social movement “Novorossiya” Igor Strelkov, who believes that it is premature to talk about reaching the line between Sloviansk and Kramatorsk:

⚡️ Girkin: So far, there is no discussion even about the capture of Bakhmut, because the battles for this city continue. And it has been under siege for a long time. Therefore, to say that “we will soon go to Sloviansk” can only be corrected: “relatively soon.”

In general, my position on the operation, which is being carried out by the Russian military command in the Donbas, is quite well known and is defined by the words: “It is yet to be done.” ¤ All over the world, it has long been customary to bypass defense nodes, to force the enemy to leave them without a fight. And we decided to act according to the patterns of the First World War, and in its worst versions.

It’s hard for me to say when our troops will reach the line Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka. Maybe relatively soon, maybe not very soon. ¤ Maybe in the coming months, they won’t reach it at all, there is a fairly large foreground there and the “respectable Ukrainian partners” will not leave it without a fight.

But in any case, even if we reach this line, it will be a pity if these cities are also destroyed during offensive operations, as Bakhmut has now been destroyed. ¤ And it will be even more difficult to take them because they are much larger, much more strongly fortified.

If in Soledar before the start of the special operation, the population was just over ten thousand people, then Kramotorsk until 2014 was a city of 150 thousand people. No Wagner is enough to take the agglomeration by storm. This will require way more forces.

Frankly, I do not share the victorious, and, as they say, hurray-patriotic moods of our media after the capture of Soledar. After all, this victory means practically nothing compared to, just for example, the surrender of Kherson. ¤ And even the surrender of the much larger city of Izyum, which happened during the so-called regrouping, but in fact, it was a retreat of our troops from the Kharkiv region.

⚡️ SVPRESSA: But after all, the Armed Forces of Ukraine also suffer, in your words, “ultra-casualties.” But the leadership in Kyiv planned this – they are preparing reserves in the rear, but do not bring them into battle. ¤ This happened near Popasna (LPR), near Severodonetsk, near Lysychansk. And later they threw these forces into a counterattack on Kherson. Are we seeing the same picture now?

⚡️Girkin: The enemy still retain their reserves. Moreover, they create new ones. They do not bring them into battle, do not expose to our blows the most combat-ready units intended for offensive operations on their side. ¤ Instead of them, the territorial defense is fighting, various reserve units formed from “mobiks”. And they hold back the staff units, as they did last summer when our troops stormed positions in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and then in Pisky.

Where the enemy is going to strike, or whether he keeps these units in reserve to repel our offensive, I do not have this information, since the only source of information about the enemy’s forces for me is the Internet. And this source is very incomplete and unreliable. ¤ But I look at which parts of them are involved in Soledar in Bakhmut and state the fact that there are no shock units and formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the forefront.

⚡️SVPRESSA: What would you advise our chief commanders to do? Or is it not worth doing this at all, keeping a military secret?

⚡️Girkin: Our command does not need advice. It does not listen to them, and often acts illogically and completely opposite to what is required. ¤ They did not carry out an offensive operation on Dnipro to cut through the enemy’s communications between the Dnieper and Donbas. They won’t do it now. And in Mariupol, the enemy left the garrison just enough to order to divert our forces to it.

Now it has become more difficult for us. Everywhere, from the Kinburn Spit in the south, between the Dnieper and the Black Sea, to the border with Belarus in the north, the enemy has formed a continuous line of defense. ¤ I don’t know what our military leaders will do, and it’s useless to advise them anything…

According to the ex-Minister of Defense of the [so-called] DPR, now one can see a kind of repetition of the same picture that emerged in the spring and summer, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbas deliberately fought to deplete the potential of Russian troops in their… ¤…fortified positions.

Yes, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fail, retreat, lose ground after fierce heavy fighting, but their failures are tactical. But they do not touch their strategic reserves. ¤ Perhaps they are preparing to repel our future offensive in other more promising areas. Or maybe they are planning a victory somewhere?

They are surrendering their positions on the fortified Soledar-Bakhmut line, not trying to make serious breakthroughs. ¤ They do not send their main forces there, if, of course, the Bandera regime still has them.

But, according to Strelkov, the management of the battle by our Western opponents “remains clear and thoughtful.” Although very bloody. ¤ End of translation.

🐣 RT @nytimesworld As Ukraine’s minister for internal affairs, Denys Monastyrsky oversaw the country’s police, its national guard and border patrol units including tens of thousands of combatants who have fought in the war.
⋙ NYT: Ukraine Minister Killed in Helicopter Crash Oversaw Some Security Forces https://tinyurl.com/sw4wrbkb
// Denys Monastyrsky was the highest-ranking Ukrainian government official to die since Russia’s invasion began in February last year.

TheAtlantic, David Brooks: Despite Everything You Think You Know, America Is on the Right Track https://tinyurl.com/2p8wyfeh
// Yes, America is a wounded giant—but it always has been, and the case for optimism is surprisingly strong.

… … Pessimism about our future is unwarranted. You may think that one major American political party has gone crazy, and I will agree with you. You can point to all of the ways in which life in America is infuriating and unjust, and I will agree with you there too. But the story of America is a story of convulsion and reinvention. We go through moments when the established order stops working. People and movements rise up, and things change. The culture is a collective response to the problems of the moment; as new problems become obvious, the culture shifts. We’ve been in the middle of one of those tumultuous transition periods since, I’d say, 2013. But 2022 evinced hopeful signs that we’re coming out of it.

If there is one lesson from the events of the past year, it is that open societies such as ours have an ability to adapt in a way that closed societies simply do not. Russia has turned violent and malevolent. China has grown more authoritarian and inept. Meanwhile, free democratic societies have united around the Ukrainians as they battle to preserve the liberal world order. And American voters seem to finally be adapting to the threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy, forming a robust anti-Trump coalition that will significantly lessen his chances of ever working in the White House again.

America is a wounded giant, and many of its wounds are self-inflicted. But America has always been a wounded giant. And it has always stumbled forward, driven by an inner turbine of ambition and aspiration that knows no rest.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SOLEDAR MINES /1250 UTC 19 JAN/ The main objective of the RU effort at Soledar was the cutting of the Bakhmut highway. This effort failed. UKR forces maintain control of the vital T-05-13 HWY West of Soledar and continue to hold RU forces short of the rail station at Blahodatne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1615693827351658497?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @New_Narrative More than 500 of Twitter’s advertisers have paused spending on the site since Elon Musk’s takeover last year. The social media company’s daily revenue on Jan. 17 was 40% lower than the same day a year ago
⋙ Reuters: Over 500 advertisers have paused spending on Twitter – The Information https://tinyurl.com/bdess87z
⋙⋙ 🐣 Musk has only himself to blame. His brashness, abrupt dismissal of content moderation staff, and declarations he was opening Twitter to accounts suspended for hate speech and incitement scared advertisers. ¤ Wasn’t he going to hire a new CEO, btw?

🐣 These are the budget deficits by president: See a pattern? (Source: OMB)
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1615684680346656768?s=20/photo/1
// Bush2 through Biden

🐣 Deficit down every year under Biden
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1615682463442812928?s=20/photo/1
// White House chart

🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel BREAKING and AWFUL ¤ Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, First Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lubkovych DIED in the HELICOPTER CATASTROPHE in the Kyiv region ¤ A total of 16 victims, including 2 children.

⭕ 17 Jan 2023

🧵 RT @igorsushko 🚨 My translation of Jan 17 2023 #FSBletters from #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Topics: #WagnerPMC commander Medvedev’s escape to Norway, Prigozhin & MoD, Soledar & mobilization, FSB readying to pounce on weakened Prigozhin. Please share far & wide.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1615314883868000256?s=20

🧵 RT @ WarintheFuture Over the northern hemisphere winter, eastern Ukraine has been the scene of bitter and intense combat. The offensives around #Bakhmut & #Kreminna highlight the different strategic & cultural approaches that Ukraine and Russia have applied in this war. 1/23 🇺🇦
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1615611175106146310?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/2p8prj6r

Over the northern hemisphere winter, eastern Ukraine has been the scene of bitter and intense combat. The offensives around #Bakhmut & #Kreminna highlight the different strategic & cultural approaches that Ukraine and Russia have applied in this war. 1/23

2/ Both offensives have featured trench and urban warfare, artillery duels, very short-range engagements between infantry and tanks, as well as long range strikes on supply and headquarters locations. But there are differences.
⋙ The tale of two battles in eastern Ukraine, and what they tell us about the direction of the war ¤ Over the northern hemisphere winter, eastern Ukraine has been the scene of bitter and intense combat. The two offensives highlight the different strategic and cultural approaches that Ukraine and Russ… [link]

3/ One of the key differences is an asymmetry between Russian and Ukrainian operational thinking. For this Russian offensive, there has been a focus on securing towns like #Bakhmut & #Soledar that have limited strategic utility.

4/ In the main, the massive Russian losses suffered for these towns are not justified by the minor gains they present.

5/ The fight in the north waged by the Ukrainians is quite different. The Kreminna-Svatove-Starbil’s’k region is important for its transportation hubs. If Russia loses these cities, it loses its key supply routes into Luhansk and many of the northern routes into Donetsk.

6/ The ultimate outcome of Ukrainian success in this may see it recapture its Luhansk oblast and compromise the Russian scheme of defence in northern Donetsk. This would mean the Russians may have to redeploy forces intended for 2023 offensives to defend the region.

7/ Related to this dissimilar operational thinking is that the Russians have chosen to attack an area where the Ukrainians are strongest. The Donbas is where Ukraine has had eight years to prepare multiple, reinforcing defensive lines.

8/ Attacking areas where the enemy is strongest and best prepared is generally not recommended in war.

9/ The Ukrainians, on the other hand, conducted a rapid advance through #Kharkiv and into Luhansk at the end of 2023 because they had identified an area where Russia was weak. They then postured themselves for the current, more methodical operations.

10/ Another important difference highlighted by these two offensives is the kinds of forces being used. For Ukraine, this is an operation being conducted by professional and territorial military personnel and overseen by a unified command.

11/ The Russians have taken a different approach.

12/ The battles around Bakhmut, Soledar and surrounding areas are being fought by a mix of competing Russian army forces and mercenaries. This is exemplified by Wagner claims of victory in Soledar, and their whining about Russia failing to recognise it.
⋙ Wagner Group boss hits out at failure to recognize role in Soledar fighting ¤ Claim is yet another sign of the growing tensions in the Russian military ranks. [link]

13/ It also says much about the two nations approach to this war. For Ukraine, its Army is reinforced by steady flow of volunteers that understand their purpose and have demonstrated for nearly eleven months the willingness to sacrifice themselves in the defence of their nation.

14/ Russia, on the other hand, has had to resort to using mercenaries – many of them pardoned convicts encouraged by men behind them with machine guns – for its most important campaign in Ukraine.

15/ Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote extensively on the topic of ‘will’ in conflict. These different approaches to their people highlight an asymmetry in motivation and national will in this war.

16/ Finally, these two offensives are indicative of the mindsets of the political leaders of Russia & Ukraine. Putin is desperate for a victory of any kind. His military has not been able to achieve Putin’s political objectives – securing the five oblasts annexed in 2022.

17/ Therefore, Putin needs something before the one-year anniversary of his Ukraine invasion that he can portray to the Russian people as worthy of its costs. Soledar and Bakhmut fit this bill.

18/ Zelensky has a different challenge. His forces ended 2022 in the ascendancy. They had achieved significant battlefield victories over the Russians in Kherson and Kharkiv. Coming into 2023, they have the momentum and morale that will underpin their 2023 offensives.

19/ Zelensky is not desperate for a victory at any cost. He can be more patient & allow his Commander in Chief the time to carefully plan 2023 military strategy. That said, he still needs many more battlefield victories – & western support – to recapture many regions of Ukraine.

20/ The approaches to these battles in the Donbas demonstrate the different national and military cultures and values of the two belligerents in this war.
⋙ The tale of two battles in eastern Ukraine, and what they tell us about the direction of the war ¤ Over the northern hemisphere winter, eastern Ukraine has been the scene of bitter and intense combat. The two offensives highlight the different strategic and cultural approaches that Ukraine and Russ… [link]

21/ And while both battles may be important to each side at present, they may pale into insignificance given the offensives to be launched in 2023.

22/ And therein lies the danger. Neither side can afford to commit too much to these battles. They must husband their resources for military campaigns in the east and in the south in 2023. There are many bloody and costly months ahead. End.

23/ Thank you to the following whose s and links were used in this thread: @TDF_UA @Militarylandnet @DefMon3 @abcnews @POLITICOEurope @UAWeapons @DefenceU

🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The upcoming Ramstein summit has all chances to end up being among pivotal historic events of our time. ¤ It’s all about managers making decision and thus becoming leaders and historic figures.

NYT: Pentagon Sends U.S. Arms Stored in Israel to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/ydszvt9j With stockpiles in the US strained and US arms makers not yet able to keep up with Ukraine’s needs, the Pentagon is drawing from US stockpiles of artillery shells stored in Israel and South Korea
// Israeli officials had initially expressed concerns that the move could damage its relations with Russia.

WaPo Editorial: Heavy tanks — and a push from the U.S. — are key to Ukraine’s success https://tinyurl.com/2s9yyn9p The war in Ukraine is approaching “what is likely to be its decisive moment.” @POTUS, your move.

🧵 RT @Tendar The murder of children is a deliberate Russian war tactic. In Syria we have seen this numerous times by both Assad terrorists and their Russian and Iranian helpers. The aim is to inflict desperation and emotional pain to the entire population so that impunity is dominant. [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1615363678299213824?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar Many in the West still cannot fathom the amount of ruthlessness the Russian regime possess, nor they can understand how rampant the amount of ignorance in the entire Russian society is. At this moment you cannot reason with them, nor you can have peace. You can only defeat them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar Half-measures will prolong the suffering. This is why the world community has to focus, unequivocally, to go all the way until Ukraine’s victory because this will be the only thing which will break the Russian delusions. Everything else is but a waste of life, time and resources.

🐣 RT @ukraine_map For the first time, the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Valeryi Zalushnyi, met face to face with USA’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in Poland ¤ Three days before Rammstein

🐣 RT @noclador The West must produce weapons in unlimited numbers so Ukraine gets the tools to defeat fascist russia. ¤ If russia wins, then putin will conclude brute force can resurrect the czarist empire & he will attack every nation from Warsaw to Lisbon. ¤ We must destroy russia’s army NOW!
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotACohen Language matters. It is not enough to say we want Ukraine to defend itself – we want it to win. It is not enough to say we want to stop Russia – we want to defeat it. And that means a lot more fighting and the liberation of occupied Ukrainian territories.
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: Western Aid to Ukraine Is Still Not Enough https://tinyurl.com/2fny75wv
// Any result other than a victory for Kyiv will make the world a more dangerous place for all of us.

… To finish liberating its territory, … and to decisively defeat Russia’s forces, Ukraine needs not only greater quantities but also different types of arms, including modern battle tanks, extensive air and antiballistic-missile defenses, and, above all, deep-attack systems such as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles. With such weapons, Ukraine can and will repeat and expand the disruption of Russian logistics that enabled its earlier counteroffensives.

Russia has been badly bloodied. Of its prewar army, perhaps a quarter of its troops were killed or wounded in its initial attacks on Ukraine. A hastily mobilized force of men swept up in a press-ganging effort is also suffering casualties at a horrific rate. But the losses have not yet broken the Russian army or the determination of the Putin regime in Moscow. Indeed, Ukrainian sources report that a new mobilization is being prepared with the aim of more than doubling the size of the Russian military to a total force of as many as 2 million personnel.

The Russian military is, by Western standards, poorly motivated, poorly trained, badly led, and inadequately supported. Its units have to be kept at the front by the fear of blocking units that will gun down soldiers fleeing the battlefield. Its maintenance practices are primitive, its rations outdated, its command unable to coordinate the combined-arms operations of modern war. But Russia retains three large advantages.

The first is, simply, size. With a population of 146 million, it still has plenty of bodies it can throw into the fight against Ukraine, a country of 43 million people, perhaps a third of whom have become refugees or have been internally displaced. Russia also retains vast stocks of military matériel accumulated during the Cold War—even if those have now been depleted. These are dwindling strengths, as skilled young men flee the country and sanctions retard and disrupt the war economy, but for now they matter.

Russia’s other advantages are less tangible. One of these is sheer ruthlessness. President Vladimir Putin and his generals simply do not care, from a human point of view, how many tens or even hundreds of thousands of their soldiers are killed or mutilated in war. They equally have no compunction about inflicting mayhem on Ukrainian civilians in apartment blocks, schools, or hospitals. They will feed soldiers and civilians alike into the furnace of war until such behavior threatens their own survival.

Russia has, in addition, the benefits of a homeland sanctuary. Ukraine has managed a few daring strikes into Russian territory, but it has not yet been able to inflict militarily significant damage there, much less to ruin the Russian economy.

Against these strengths, Ukraine has many and indeed more of its own. This war has reminded us of the transcendent importance of motivation. Ukrainians know what they are fighting for, and they will go on to the end. They have a growing edge in skill over their enemy, and all the creativity of a free society and an engaged civilian population that supports the front in many ways; this includes creating improvised drone squadrons and articles of war, and supplying food and tactical information to frontline units.

Wars are, in some measure, tests of a society’s will and resilience, and this one has shown just how different Russia and Ukraine are. Wars are also a test of vitality. Putin is 70; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is 44. Russia’s chief of the general staff (and now overall commander in Ukraine), Valery Gerasimov, is 67; Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valeriy Zaluzhny, is 49. Support for Russia’s war is strongest among those who remember the Soviet Union, and the war is being conducted by the aging men in Putin’s inner circle.

In contrast, support for Ukraine’s war is across the board, and the war is being led by a generation in its prime, no more than middle-aged. This is, in many ways, a war between a calcified society lost in its brutal past and a free society looking toward a decent future.

Behind Ukraine lie the powers of the West, understood in the old-fashioned sense of a free coalition of states led by the United States. Despite understandable fretting about the slowness of its military-industrial mobilization, the Western allies have enormous and growing capacity, and they have—too slowly, and at times even stingily—provided Ukraine with battlefield technology that outmatches that deployed by Russia. Over time, that disparity will grow, if the Western commitment matches even a fraction of that of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers.

“War weariness” in Western democracies is a tired trope. We in the West are sacrificing nothing beyond modest financial resources—no comparison to the blood tax paid by the people of Ukraine. As a number of analysts have noted, spending some tens of billions of dollars to shatter the land and air forces of one of our chief opponents, Russia, is a bargain. Spending some tens of billions of dollars more, for as long as it takes, is no less worth it. …

… Ukraine has shown remarkable restraint: The idea that long-range missile systems would be used to strike indiscriminately into Russia has no credible support. And fears of Russian escalation to the use of nuclear weapons have been discredited repeatedly, including in The Atlantic.

The real reasons for reluctance look to be timidity and a lack of imagination. So perhaps the best thing for Western leaders who cannot bring themselves to treat war as war is to clarify for them what they have to fear if they do not take the actions that both strategic calculations and moral imperatives demand.

Because Russia is big, ruthless, and counting on the sanctuary of its territory, the war can be concluded on reasonable terms only by the decisive defeat of its forces in Ukraine—their elimination by flight, capture, wounds, or death. Some 100,000 casualties have not been enough, but Russia’s will and resources are not infinite. If Moscow’s losses have to be several times that, the West has the ability to ensure such an outcome with little risk to itself. If Ukraine has heavy armor and long-range strike systems, the Russian position in occupied land can be rendered untenable. A defeat of that magnitude will likely bring about the internal changes that will deter Russia from pursuing its present path.

Should Western leaders, through their passivity or reluctance, bring about a cease-fire that leaves Russia with Ukrainian territory under its control, they would disgrace themselves as much the French and British leaders did at Munich in 1938—and with less excuse. They will lay the grounds for future wars because, after some period of recuperation, Russia will surely try again. Already, Russia does not recognize the legitimacy of Ukrainian independence; already, blood is on Western hands because of a failure to arm Ukraine and deter Russia on previous occasions. Next time will be even worse.

If fear is the only thing some Western leaders understand, they should consider this. For other nations, the lesson of a Ukraine that is not allowed to win this war is very simple: get yourself nuclear weapons. Finns, Poles, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, for that matter, and many others will conclude that conventional strength alone is not enough. That South Korea’s leadership has begun talking about the need to reintroduce nuclear weapons to the peninsula is not coincidental.

In a world where a large predatory state is stalled but not beaten decisively, the only resort for its smaller neighbors is to acquire weapons of cataclysmic power. Their leaders would be irresponsible if they did not consider that option. And the leaders of the major Western states are not just irresponsible but willfully negligent if they fail to take the measures—all well within their power—to avoid the world that this failure would bequeath to succeeding generations.

Eliot Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the Robert E. Osgood Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Politico [EU]: NATO membership for Ukraine would have prevented war, says Finland’s PM https://tinyurl.com/53dtt2z4
// ‘We want to become a member of NATO because we don’t ever again want war in Finland,’ says Sanna Marin.
⋙ 🐣 NATO is protecting Ukraine now, but without the full support of NATO troops and all its weapons, Ukraine bears the full weight of human suffering. ¤ I sincerely hope that Russia is defeated soundly and that 🇺🇦 will become a strong NATO partner soon.

🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “The entire world has been wronged by Putin’s war, and the entire world deserves to play a role in punishing the crimes committed in the initiation, planning, and prosecution of it.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs: Russia’s Crime and Punishment https://tinyurl.com/2sxszus5
// How to prosecute the illegal war in Ukraine.

🧵 RT @P_Kallioniemi In today’s #vatnik soup and another edition of “You pronounced this nonsense, not me”. Today we’re going to talk about the “genocide in Donbas” disinformation and propaganda trope, that’s been debunked many times but just refuses to die in the social media sphere. 1/12
📌 ◕ https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1611980244252258304?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @OxanaShevel Anyone who drunk “Crimea was always russian” coolaid should read this article by Rory Finnin. Historically, geographically & economically Crimea’s ties to 🇺🇦 are stronger than to 🇷🇺. Khrushchev’s transfer of Crimea to Ukrainian SSR was “neither gift nor mistake but a rescue.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @PopovaProf Anyone who believes Crimea somehow naturally belongs to Ru needs to read this piece. It argues Crimea fits better w Ukraine (historically and geographically) and needs to return to it, not as a matter of justice only, but to achieve stable peace. https://politi.co/3w0TdM8

🐣 RT @ @KyivIndependent ⚡️Dutch PM pledges to supply Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. ¤ During a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on Jan. 17, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the Netherlands would join the U.S. and Germany in sending Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 Eventually, Ukraine will have the best air defense in Europe. At this point 4 Patriot systems are promised, along with 9 NASAMS — 8 from US (2 delivered, 6 being built), 1 from Canada. Patriots’ detection range is ~150km; NASAMS is ~40km
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ukraine_map A map showing possible air defense coverage with all the systems that Ukraine 🇺🇦 is expected to receive
8 NASAMS 🔵
6 HAWK 🔴
4 IRIS-T 🟢
1 Patriot and 1 SAMP/T 🟠
🌎 https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1605212471853473793?s=20/photo/1
[entire w link: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1615509148979941378?s=20%5D
// 12/10/2022

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/ 2310 UTC 17 JAN/ RU forces attempting to reinforce, support, or resupply Andriivka salient remain under blistering UKR artillery and direct fire weapons. UKR sortied 10 aviation strike missions targeting troop concentrations. Air defense downed a RU Su-25 aircraft.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1615485476437364737?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1350 UTC 17 JAN/ RU units have renewed frontal attacks in Bakhmut’s Eastern suburbs. On 17 JAN, UKR forces were in contact on the H-32 HWY axis south of the Artyomovsk Winery. SW of the urban area, the Russian salient NW of Andriivka appears to have slowed its advance.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1615343718571073536?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report https://tinyurl.com/yeykmpuj “… Twitter was terrified of the backlash they would get if they followed their own rules and applied them to Donald Trump,” said one former employee
// The House committee investigating the riot avoided detailed discussion in its report for fear of offending Republicans and tech companies, sources say

TheBulwark: The McCarthy-Jordan Plan to Weaponize the House https://tinyurl.com/2s3jbkde 🤡 🤡 🤡
// A November report on Republican grievances provides a roadmap for years of hyperpartisan investigations.

🐣 RT @ RYP__ Join the 1% Club:”The pace at which wealth is being created has sped up, as the world’s richest 1% amassed around half of all new wealth over the past 10 years.”
⋙ CNBC: The richest 1% of people amassed almost two-thirds of new wealth created in the last two years, Oxfam says https://tinyurl.com/47bjzn7s
// Over the last two years, the richest 1% of people have accumulated close to two-thirds of all new wealth created around the world, a new report from Oxfam says.
⋙ 🐣 This is the biggest political issue we face, but since Sanders lost his bid to Clinton, both parties have spent too much energy on identity politics; fortunately, Biden has taken steps to increase income taxes on the wealthy, but without a wealth tax, the problem will get worse

🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar #Prigozhin is continuing to undermine faith in the Russian MoD and in Putin-aligned actors. ¤ Prigozhin directly responded to Peskov’s statement in an interview question about the MoD-Prigozhin conflict, stating that he has no reason to not trust Peskov. http://isw.pub/UkrWar011623
¤ https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1615194208364535808?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 10/ Peskov also continued Putin’s efforts to undermine Wagner’s narrative that only Wagner forces were responsible for capturing Soledar, noting that Russians will remember both Russian servicemembers and Wagner forces for their achievements. http://isw.pub/UkrWar011623

TheAtlantic, Brian Klaas: Conspiratorial Thinking Is an American Disease https://tinyurl.com/2p94f8fy “Within the modern GOP, conspiracy theories—about stolen elections, satanic cults, or ‘deep state’ cover-ups—have replaced policy ideas as a rallying cry for Trump’s MAGA base”
// In the past decade, conspiratorial thinking has shifted from a worrying factor in Republican politics to a defining feature.
.bq
But Britain’s and America’s democratic woes are not at all the same. The problems in American democracy are worse. That’s because a particularly insidious disease has infected the core of its political system, one that is not present to the same degree in other rich democracies: extreme conspiracism. Other countries, including the U.K., have polarization. America has irrational polarization, in which one political party has fallen under the spell of conspiratorial thinking. Polarization plus this conspiracist tendency risks turning run-of-the-mill democratic dysfunction into a democratic death spiral. The battle for American democracy will be a battle over reality.

Within the modern GOP, conspiracy theories—about stolen elections, satanic cults, or “deep state” cover-ups—have replaced policy ideas as a rallying cry for Trump’s MAGA base. Trump’s disciples have developed an encyclopedic knowledge of a dizzying cast of characters, along with a series of code words for alleged cover-ups. They rattle off their accepted wisdom about conspiracies that most people have never heard of, such as “Italygate,” the absurd notion that the U.S. embassy in Rome, in conjunction with the Vatican, used satellites to rig the 2020 presidential election. …

In the past decade, conspiratorial thinking has shifted from a worrying factor in Republican politics to a defining feature. This is partly because of Trump himself, who peddled countless debunked conspiracy theories, including that climate change is a hoax invented by China, and the lie that Ted Cruz’s father had links to the JFK assassination. As Trump took over the party, his conspiratorial lies became Republican orthodoxy. And that opened the door to conspiratorial influencers, who started inventing new lies. …

On January 6, 2021, thousands of deluded insurrectionists attacked the Capitol because of lies spread by Trump and his acolytes. But the bigger problem was inside the ranks of Congress itself, as most House Republicans voted not to certify the election based on those debunked theories. These were the conspiratorial insurrectionists in suits—and they’re now in charge of the House of Representatives. What will they do now that they’re in power? Launch countless investigations into COVID vaccines, deep-state cover-ups, and the elections that they wrongly claim were stolen. Governing will be put on hold for two years. …

Unfortunately, loosening the grip of conspiratorial thinking in politics is extremely difficult; it means trying to make the storytelling animal give up on one hell of a story. But here is one nugget of wisdom for how to start, drawn from H. L. Mencken: “The way to deal with superstition,” he wrote, “is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.”

QAnon is crazy. The notion that vaccines cause spoons to stick to you is moronic. Anyone who tells you that a best-selling historian is part of a secret plot to turn you into a cyborg is, with insincere apologies to Mike Flynn, a complete idiot. In the battle for reality, ridicule is a powerful weapon.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Germany names new defense minister amid pressure to provide Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Regional interior minister and Social Democratic Party member Boris Pistorius will replace Christine Lambrecht, who resigned on Monday, after her tenure was dogged by criticism of how she handled military aid to Ukraine as well as the project to improve the German military.

🐣 RT @NOELreports Poland has already handed over 260 T-72 [Russian] tanks of various modifications to Ukraine – the President of Poland Andrzej Duda said. “Five days ago, I announced our decision regarding Leopard tanks. One company of Leopard tanks is about 14 tanks…. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports We have indeed decided to send them to Ukraine. But we hope and try to organize more support for Ukraine,” Andrzej Duda said during speech at the economic forum in Davos

🐣 RT @NOELreports Polish President Andrzej Duda expects NATO countries to be able to form at least a brigade of Leopard tanks for Ukraine. In Ukraine a tank brigade (at the start of the war) consists of around 100 tanks.

🧵 RT @Rail_splitter1 The last few days, the overwhelming tragedy in Ukraine, the sight of the destroyed and broken families, seeing Russians on Telegram channels celebrate the deaths and call for more, has left me seething.
📌 https://twitter.com/Rail_splitter1/status/1615245060723060736?s=20

For decades now the terrorist, fascist Russian state and its millions of genuine supporters have gotten away with everything while being allowed to infiltrate and undermine our societies, to use our platforms to spread hate, supremacism and cynicism.

None of what they are doing would have been possible without the West: the colluders, the endlessly greedy, the corruptly bought ones, the indifferent, the cynical.

They kill with weapons built with Western technology. They spread malicious, toxic hate, lies and cynicism using Western platforms. They have bought influence and stakes everywhere. Sanctions have scant effect because their illicit channels are everywhere.

We have lost our way. Societies being open and democratic, having respect for freedom of speech and expression, were never meant to become enablers of this barbaric campaign or providers of handy tools that can be used against us.

Some will say: that’s exactly what they want, for us to overreact and close off our societies. Not at all. I believe this is a false dichotomy. There is a way to be democratic and open while never again becoming witting and unwitting enablers of a vast mafia network.

UkrInform: Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl: US acknowledges Ukraine’s need to strike beyond front line https://tinyurl.com/34d9xxz2 Abrams not a good fit, but acknowledged need for tanks; not focusing on specific type of long-range missile is “helpful”
// The US has “consulted with the Ukrainian leadership and the military at every stage of the war about the most urgent needs”

⭕ 16 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @Rail_splitter1 Viktor Medvedchuk, Ukrainian traitor, offered himself up to head a “new pro-Russian” Ukrainian government. The response of Russian state propagandists and Russians on social media: We won’t need a new Ukrainian regime because there won’t be a Ukraine.

🚫 🧵 RT @igorsushko 🚨 #Gerasimov’s Hail Mary Attack on #Lviv: The following is reported by Volya Media, allegedly from sources inside the General Staff of #Russia.
1) Russia has readied 700,000 soldiers, some already in West Belarus, & 200,000 waiting in reserves.
2) Attack may start in weeks.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1615220719293698048?s=20/photo/1
// not posted; seems like Ru misinfo

🐣 RT @ybarrap Trump is going to prison. ¤ #TrumpIsDone
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ybarrap/status/1615145157506043919?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] The FBI (Fake Bureau of Investigation) & the Department of Injustice, together with the Trump Hating Thug, Jack Smith, are interviewing, harassing, and subpoenaing people that work for me relative to the BOXES HOAX, & the “Peacefully & Patriotically” speech I made at the January 6th protest of the Rigged and Stollen Presidential Election, where so many have been treated horribly and Unconstitutionally. This is a Gestapo type operation! Are they doing this to the Biden people? I don’t think so!

🐣 📋 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Good news: in 2022, the deficit was sliced in half to $1.375 trillion, compared to the 2021 deficit of $2.776 trillion. ¤ This is the biggest drop in history.

🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 UK to transfer to Ukraine in new aid package
14 Challenger 2 tanks
8 SPG AS90 [self-propelled artillery] (22 come later)
100 armored vehicles

🐣 RT @igornovikov The shape of this war is the shape of future conflicts, whether they’re social, geopolitical, technological, or all of the above. Facing 🇷🇺, Ukrainians have gained knowledge that the entire world needs to learn, and urgently. We’re fighting this war so you won’t have to fight it

🐣 RT @mhmck Russia is invading Europe and at war with the collective West.
Ukrainians defend alone.
Scholz blocks tanks to Ukraine.
Biden blocks ATACMS to Ukraine.
The Swiss block arms to Ukraine.
Orbán blocks the NATO-Ukraine Commission.
Erdoğan blocks Finland and Sweden in NATO.
⋙ 🐣 why do these organizations allow one member to have a veto? it makes no sense: the more members they have, the harder it becomes to act to do what most members want. they need to lower the bar

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1320 UTC 16 JAN/ RU forces conducted fire missions on Kuzmyne, indicating the presence of UKR forces. The Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) is assessed to extend from the center of Kreminna in a southern direction to the banks of the Sievro-Donets River.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614974367049420801?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: New details link George Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch https://tinyurl.com/3v6p3vsz //➔ it never ceases to amaze me that there exists a whole class of people who can acrue millions of dollars by simply ‘dancing between the raindrops’
// The New York congressman once claimed Andrew Intrater’s company was his “client,” while another Intrater company allegedly made a deposit with a firm where Santos worked

NatuonalInterest (Sep): How Zelensky’s Leadership Saved Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mwc3dmet “‘I’m absolutely convinced, he wouldn’t come out in the top 8 percent, which are people with super strong leadership attributes, he would come out in the top 1 percent,’ Mears said”
// 9/12/2022; Zelensky has shown a remarkable ability to consistently inspire Ukrainians and maintain a strong emotional connection to the country and its people.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/ 0015 UTC 16 JAN/ A breakthrough at Kurdiumivka occurred on 12 JAN [?]: RU forces have consolidated gains and now menace the H-32 HWY. UKR UAV-directed artillery has taken advancing RU units under sustained fire.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614775522546036736?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 15 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @SaltyProfessor Democrats aren’t banning gas stoves. The government isn’t coming for your guns. The border isn’t wide open. The elections weren’t rigged. Schools aren’t grooming kids. @POTUS isn’t corrupt. Babies aren’t being murdered after they’re born. Why do Republicans lie so much?

🐣 RT @general_ben Sanctuary for Russian systems that are killing innocent Ukrainians is created by our unwillingness to provide weapons that have capability beyond the 90km of a GMLRS launched from HIMARS. ATACM’s (300km range), Gray Eagle drones, Small Diameter Bombs will deny Russia sanctuary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @M_S_Billingslea In response to today’s horrific attack on Ukraine’s civilians, @POTUS should announce that we will (finally) supply ATACMS munitions. ¤ Further, the Admin should just bite the bullet & issue both primary & secondary sanctions on all Russian energy transactions & all Russian banks.

🐣 RT @anders_aslund On Russia-US-Ukrainian comparisons: The oldest Ukrainian university, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, was founded in 1615. Harvard, the oldest US university, was founded in 1636. The oldest Russian university was founded in St. Petersburg in 1725 (Moscow only in 1755).
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund So why are so many unaware of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy? Because the Russian Empire conquered Ukraine and in 1817 Tsar Alexander I of Russia made the decision to close the academy. It was only Ukraine’s renewed independence in 1991 that facilitated the restart of the Kyiv-Mohyla.

🐣 📊 RT @accountable_us NEW POLL: Americans Already Disapprove of GOP Congress. ¤ By 26-pts, people already disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their jobs. via @NavigatorSurvey
◕ https://twitter.com/accountable_us/status/1614736684385505280?s=20/photo/1
// Navigator Poll: Approve 34%, Disapprove 60%
(Dems 14%/81%; Indies 21%/59%; GOP 59%/36%)

🐣 📋 RT @ tribelaw That’s a drop of 46% in the federal budget deficit in one year under Joe Biden. ¤ $1 TRILLION QUESTION: Who’s the last GOP president who came even close?
⋙ 🐣 RT @OccupyDemocrats BREAKING: Joe Biden scores a HUGE win as the Treasury Department announces that the U.S. federal budget deficit fell from $2.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion in 2022 — proving Democrats are far more fiscally responsible than Republicans with their rich tax cuts. RT TO THANK JOE BIDEN!
⋙⋙ 🐣 ◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1614825677840175106?s=20/photo/1
// “DEFICIT DOWN EVERY YEAR UNDER BIDEN AFTER UP EVERY YEAR UNDER TRUMP” (2020-2022)

🐣 RT @mhmck Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information as of 18:00 on 15 January 2023 regarding the Russian invasion ¤ Battle is engaged in Kreminna. Units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are in the southwest precinct of the town.

🐣 RT @NOELreports NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said that the normalization of relations between Western countries and Russia will not come even after the end of the conflict in Ukraine. ¤ Good.

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov says civil war is possible in Russia, with millions of casualties and full collapse.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1614590972666470401?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /1510 UTC 15 JAN/ UKR units are confirmed to be in contact within the city limits of Kreminna. Back and forth fighting continues in the south and central suburban areas as RU has conducted fire missions along the C-130514 road in the south liminal areas of the city.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614637895477862401?s=20/photo/1

📋 KyivPost, Ret. Col. Orio Giorgio Stirpe: Winter War in Ukraine: Russia’s Army Can No Longer Conduct a Large-Scale Offensive https://tinyurl.com/4meswatm “[T]he whole Russian army has reverted to what is effectively a mobilized conscript mob” //➔ very informative
// Italian Military Expert on Significant Limitations Facing Russia Army

[T]he whole notion of a Russian massive coming back at Kyiv is completely unrealistic. ¤ Most people giving credit to those ideas have little understanding of the changes that have affected the Russian army in the last ten months. It is not only a matter of combat losses and morale slippage due to military failure – the very nature of the ground force has altered, leaving Putin with a military instrument unfit for offensive operations.

This does NOT mean the Russian army has been defeated. It hasn’t. It means that it has no credible capability to mount serious operational assaults and capture large swaths of territory. It is limited to retaining what it holds and mounting local spoiling attacks – as can currently be witnessed.

Personnel issues

The Russian army which invaded Ukraine last February was made up of approximately 200,000 professional soldiers, supported by another 50,000 conscripts and a significant number of relatively modern combat vehicles. That essentially amounted to the whole operational capability the Russian Federation could afford to mass in a single campaign.

As such, the very presence of conscripts – which was initially forbidden not only by Putin’s direct orders, but by federal law – came because there were simply not enough contract infantrymen to man the maneuver units. For his part, Russian General Valery Gerasimov tried to make things work despite the various personnel problems.

Russia’s professional army, which was credited with a good level of combat training by most experts, simply doesn’t exist anymore.

There are no final confirmed numbers for Russian casualties, and the official Ukrainian tally exceeds 100,000 killed in action. This may well be an over-estimate, but we are probably not so far from it, especially if we consider the independently confirmed combat vehicle losses, which are staggering. The Russians have lost more tanks than the whole inventory of the active U.S. army.

Talking of personnel, we must remember that, for every soldier killed in action, there are at least two seriously wounded or otherwise missing due to capture, desertion or dismissal. This means that even if Ukrainian data on Russian losses are exaggerated, very few of those professional soldiers who invaded in February are still fighting today. Most have been killed or mauled in the ten months of fighting, and the remainder have probably been promoted to higher ranks to fill the positions of missing officers and/or taken command of mobilized recruits.

Perhaps some elite mechanized paratrooper battalions are still being manned by the bulk of contract soldiers, and of course mercenary groups like Wagner are “professional” in nature, but the whole Russian army has reverted to what is effectively a mobilized conscript mob. I use the term “mob” intentionally, because of the nature of the “partial mobilization” we have witnessed.

In order to perform a working mobilization, one requires a detailed plan (which Ukraine had); infrastructure involving trainers and a reserve of personnel equipment to receive the recalled men (which Ukraine had to an extent); time to train and heavy equipment to support newly raised Units (which Ukraine badly lacked but managed in a barely satisfactory way); and most of all cadres to lead these Units into actual combat (which Ukraine could somehow gather).

ALL those elements were lacking in Russia, simply because of no real idea how to perform any form of mobilization. Furthermore, corruption and lack of resources had vastly depleted stored reserve equipment, so Russian mobilized personnel went to the front lacking everything but their own mortal bodies.

Poor material resources

The situation is even more dire as we turn our attention to material resources. ¤ Large as it is, the Russian Federation has a GDP vastly inferior to Italy’s, and any military budget – however inflated – has to start from this fundamental basis.

Considering that Russia’s military expenses are similar to the U.K.’s, but that Russia’s army is 20 times larger and has a nuclear deterrent equal in numbers to that of the U.S., we can see that the money available is definitely insufficient to maintain such a large army. As soon as we add corruption into the mix, it becomes evident that available resources have been scarce from start.

Whatever was available initially, has been seriously hit by western sanctions, so military industrial production has drastically dropped, and reserves have proven largely unworthy.

Gradually, the professional and equipped army that Russia fielded last February, has morphed into a poorly equipped and badly trained horde of demoralized recruits, supported by insufficient, outdated combat vehicles, and led by disgruntled officers raised from the ranks and with little leadership training.

Such an army is simply unfit for offensive operations in hostile territory. Even less so, when its opponents happen to enjoy higher numbers, better training and leadership, and even more modern equipment. ¤ Added to that, there is the motivational issue I have discussed previously.

Logistical problems also tie the Russians to railway heads for any prolonged offensive effort, since they lack the wheeled assets to move supplies – chiefly artillery ammunitions – required. Ukrainian generals planned their operations carefully to deny them to the invaders, so that now the railway connecting Rostov to Donetsk is the only one capable of supporting offensive operations into Ukrainian territory.

Any offensive from Belarusian territory is reliant on a single Belarusian railway line, manned by Ukraine-friendly Belarusian personnel. And we saw, last March, how efficient that was.

The Russian army is still alive and kicking. It has numbers on its side, and the resilience of a large nation to support it. It can also hold its line effectively for many months to come. Western Governments and Ukrainian authorities may have a vested interest in depicting it to be on the verge of a new onslaught in order to support the provision of more western military supplies. ¤ But it is in no position to mount large offensive operations: neither today nor in a few months.

WaPo: When Russia bombs a building full of people, this is the aftermath https://tinyurl.com/5hb5s8hk “‘We don’t have any safe spaces in Ukraine anymore,’ said Maksym Chornyi, 32, who volunteered to help rescue people at the scene”

WaPo: Bloody Bakhmut siege poses risks for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2dwdehp8 “Bakhmut has become a brutal slog, as Russia dumps thousands of fighters on the front, testing Ukrainian forces with wave after wave of personnel”
// Kyiv must balance its defense of the city, weighted with symbolism, with preparations for a counteroffensive

WashingtonPress: LOSING IT: Trump posts disturbed Truth Social rant that has people worried https://tinyurl.com/bdev6mr3

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Page 1: What Biden did was wrong, but he was given a reasonable and stable Special Counsel who is sane, inclined not to make waves, friendly with RINOS, and is not known as a flame-throwing lunatic or a Biden hater. What I did was RIGHT, Secured documents in a secured place, lock on the doors, guards and Secret Service all around, security cameras working. Mar-a-Lago is essentially an armed fort, and was built that way in the 1920’s, with High Walls & structure to serve as the Southern W.H.

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Page 2: I was President of the U.S, and covered and protected by the Presidential Records Act, which is not criminal and allows and encourages you to talk to the NARA, which we were, very nicely, until the FBI, who it is now learned has been after me for years without pause or question, RAIDED Mar-a-Lago, a stupid and probably Illegal thing to do. As President, I have the right to declassify documents, Biden did not. Special “Prosecutor” Jack Smith, however, is a Trump Hating political Thug.

🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Page 3: The Boxes Hoax Case against me should be dropped immediately. I have done nothing wrong.

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump How come the Biden “Prosecutor” is a nice guy, very friendly with Democrats and RINOS alike, close to Christopher Wray, & pretty much liked & known by everybody, while my “Prosecutor” is a Radical Left Trump HATING Lunatic, whose wife & family get a perfect “10” for spewing Trump HATE, & whose “friends” are the most evil, angry, & disgusting Marxists & Communists in & around Government? They are GRILLING innocent people in Grand Juries for hours, all to “get Trump.” These are Sick Thugs!

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Page 1: Until now, I always thought that lawyers had a very special & revered place in our Country, but not anymore! It all began with the lawyer from hell, Michael Cohen, whose office was viciously RAIDED by the Fake Bureau of Investigation (FBI) early one morning, & whose files, & just about everything else, was taken from him on a case unrelated to me. Not too long thereafter, & being very brave, he screamed, I represent President Trump, I’ll tell you anything, but please leave me alone!

🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Page 2: Since then it has been open season on lawyers, their files, & their lives. They are attacked by the Radical Left Thugs at a level never seen before in our Country. Look at what they have done to Rudy Giuliani, who turned out to be right about so much, including the Laptop From Hell. So many others, also, all to try and “Get Trump,” due simply to Trump Derangement Syndrome. These Marxist Maniacs are improperly pushing City & State Prosecutors to do what they failed to do in Washington….

⭕ 14 Jan 2023

NYT: As Russians Steal Ukraine’s Art, They Attack Its Identity, Too https://tinyurl.com/yzxjhr5t “International art experts say the plundering may be the single biggest collective art heist since the Nazis pillaged Europe in World War II”

🐣 RT @ PhillipsPOBrien Latest piece just appeared in @TheAtlantic. Ukraine is going to win this war; the question is how long will it take? That depends on the support given. The better strategic and ethical choice is to give Ukraine what it needs to win the war more quickly.
⋙ Atlantic, Phillips O’Brien: Time Is on Ukraine’s Side, Not Russia’s https://tinyurl.com/4k9u22nr ‘The Biden administration must give Ukraine the final pieces of military technology it needs to force the Russians out. These include advanced vehicles, long-range artillery and ATACMS’
// With NATO’s help, the Ukrainians can outlast the invaders.

NYT, Daniel Bessner: The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession https://tinyurl.com/mukpx4xu “[A]s Americans fight over their history, the historical profession itself is in rapid — maybe even terminal — decline”

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /1110 UTC 14 JAN 2023/ UKR Partisans & SOF continue cross-river reconnaissance and targeting missions. On 12-13 JAN, UKR precision strikes were carried out a Russian S-300 air defense complex. RU Counter-Intelligence (CI) units have increased repressive measures.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614218994419961857?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DenesTorteli Clip of Comedian Zelenskyy, many years ago, saying: “One day we will have a president, about whom everyone in Ukraine will gather in their kitchens and say, ‘My God, how long have we been looking for you?”
💽 🎹 https://twitter.com/DenesTorteli/status/1614154394534281217?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /1145 UTC 14 JAN/ On 13 JAN, RU motor rifle troops mounted a defensive effort. UKR forces rallied & staged a counterattack, pushing RU units east, back into the W suburbs of Kreminna. On 14 JAN, UKR units are again confirmed to be in contact within the city limits. [‼️]
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614228326742200321?s=20/photo/1.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /0014 UTC 14 JAN/ A RU breakthrough at Kurdiumivka occurred on 12 JAN. RU forces advanced NW along the watercourse and were stopped on 13 JAN short of the vital H-32 HWY. RU attacks on Krasna Hora & Podhorodne were broken up east of the T-05-13 / M-03 road junction.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614050617701416962?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 13 Jan 2023

TheAtlantic, David Brooks: Despite Everything You Think You Know, America Is on the Right Track https://tinyurl.com/2p8wyfeh
// Yes, America is a wounded giant—but it always has been, and the case for optimism is surprisingly strong.

… … Pessimism about our future is unwarranted. You may think that one major American political party has gone crazy, and I will agree with you. You can point to all of the ways in which life in America is infuriating and unjust, and I will agree with you there too. But the story of America is a story of convulsion and reinvention. We go through moments when the established order stops working. People and movements rise up, and things change. The culture is a collective response to the problems of the moment; as new problems become obvious, the culture shifts. We’ve been in the middle of one of those tumultuous transition periods since, I’d say, 2013. But 2022 evinced hopeful signs that we’re coming out of it.

If there is one lesson from the events of the past year, it is that open societies such as ours have an ability to adapt in a way that closed societies simply do not. Russia has turned violent and malevolent. China has grown more authoritarian and inept. Meanwhile, free democratic societies have united around the Ukrainians as they battle to preserve the liberal world order. And American voters seem to finally be adapting to the threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy, forming a robust anti-Trump coalition that will significantly lessen his chances of ever working in the White House again.

America is a wounded giant, and many of its wounds are self-inflicted. But America has always been a wounded giant. And it has always stumbled forward, driven by an inner turbine of ambition and aspiration that knows no rest.

HillReporter: Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer Release Joint Statement Chiding MAGA Reps Over Debt Ceiling https://tinyurl.com/m57ps44m

Politico: House GOP tempts fall government shutdown with impossible spending demands https://tinyurl.com/yxvvx2ba “House Republicans are vowing to put Don Quixote to shame by tilting at a huge windmill: slashing federal spending by at least $130 billion without cutting defense”
// Conservatives pushed for severe cuts, more transparency and an amendment-free-for-all. A potential shutdown is months away, but lawmakers are already nervous.

🐣 RT @TheEconomist The rise of OSINT has transformed the way that people receive news about the war. It even predicted the onset of Russia’s invasion
⋙ TheEconomist: Open-source intelligence is piercing the fog of war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2p89ut52
// Social-media posts and satellite imagery provide a torrent of data, but can overwhelm and confuse

🧵 RT @generalsvr_en Dear subscribers and guests of the channel! Yesterday, #Russian President Vladimir #Putin, during a meeting via video call with representatives of the leadership of the military bloc, expressed claims about the uncertainty with the capture of #Soledar.1/10
📌 https://twitter.com/generalsvr_en/status/1613826406638653440?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/yfjuz9sa

The military reported that it could take from several days to several weeks to establish complete control over #Soledar. The military command recommended #Putin ignore #Prigozhin’s assurances about the exclusive role of PMCs in the operation to take this settlement. 2/10

The military described #Prigozhin as a “f..zdun” and focused the President’s attention on the disproportionately high expenditure of resources by PMCs to achieve dubious results. #Putin said that he would deal with this issue. 3/10

After the meeting with representatives of the leadership of the military bloc, #Putin spoke with #Patrushev, who also reported on the situation at the front. According to Patrushev, #Prigozhin’s PMC has suffered enormous losses over the past four weeks. 4/10

About a third of PMCs in a month are irretrievable losses. Without replenishment, at such a pace, in a month and a half, #Prigozhin’s PMC will simply cease to exist. #Putin was pleased with the report of the Secretary of the Security Council. 5/10

The decision of #Putin-Patrushev, adopted at a closed meeting in early December last year, not to completely destroy the #Prigozhin PMC group at the front but only significantly weaken it, has been successfully implemented. 6/10

According to #Putin and most of the President’s entourage, #Prigozhin “took a lot on himself”, and it was time to clip his wings. In the near future, Prigozhin will be asked to devote more time to projects in America, Asia and Latin America. 7/10

PMCs will remain at the front, but the #RussianArmy will have the initiative and full control. #Prigozhin will be allowed to continue recruiting prisoners, but only in the amount that will allow PMCs to exist at the front within “reasonable” limits. 8/10

In the event of a truce, a peace agreement, or defeat and exit from the occupied territories, the main part of the PMCs must be destroyed. 9/10

The command of the United Group of Forces at the front was transferred to #Gerasimov just before the exhaustion of resources and the weakening of #Prigozhin’s PMC. 10/10

🐣 RT @igorsushko #Kremlin’s new directive for Russian officials to cease any praise for #Prigozhin appears as planned. He’s lost tens of thousands of his mercenaries (most were prisoners) in #Ukraine and his position drastically weakened, to ensure he cannot challenge Putin, per #WindofChange [link]

🐣 RT @wartranslated I bet you’re jealous you can’t watch two hours of these sad fucks discussing how everything is lost with the Russian army in today’s livestream
// girkin/strelkov and someone else, looking dejected
⋙ 🐣 girkin actually predicted Ukr’s plan for Soledar in the last few days fairly accurately; it’s good the top brass are against him: he points out how antiquated RuAf entire operation is ¤ Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦

🐣 📋 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️Over 300,000 generators delivered to Ukraine in December. ¤ The generators were delivered to Ukraine in December 2023 to keep the country running amid Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the President’s Office, said.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA AXIS /2345 13 JAN / RU troops including elements of the 144th Guards Motor Rifle Division, mounted a strong counter-assault during the daylight hours of 13 JAN. The Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) is now assessed to be NE of Dibrova and slightly south of Kuzmyne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1614044280125018113?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Trevor38480792 Lol #Soledar never mattered to 🇺🇦. They killed thousands of 🇷🇺 in exchange for a destroyed town with no protection and retreated to highly fortified positions. Meanwhile near #Kreminna, 🇺🇦 is about to breakthrough thanks to dumb 🇷🇺 planning 😜

🐣 RT @iamsneaker1 Soledar is irrelevant. Population was 11k but no other significance. ¤ Kreminna however key garrison; controls supplies to Lysychansk & Sieverodonetsk; opens routes to Svatove, Starobilsk, Luhansk city & Alchevsk. Strategic gold. ¤ Ukraine is making Russia waste itself on nothing.

🐣 RT @HKallioGoblin Russia will push towards Siversk in north from here, and Ukraine needs to either stop that, or overtake Kreminna before it happens. Its a race, and Bakhmut might be only secondary idea from here. Ukrainians should push really hard now, before russians materialize their plan.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SOLEDAR MINES / 2015 UTC 12 JAN/ Wagner PMCs have advanced across the southern rail right-of-way into the vicinity of mine complexes 2, 3 and 4. Wagner elements that infiltrated the eastern residential areas are attempting consolidation of positions.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613627207204601856?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SOLEDAR /1330 UTC 13 JAN/ Wagner PMCs are reported to have expanded control over residential & industrial sections of the city. UKR forces have concentrated efforts to defend several key locations, notably the vicinity of the school, hospital and the access to mines 1 & 7.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613891264390250496?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT / 1410 UTC 13 JAN/ RU forces reported to have broken through at Kurdiumivka; enemy forces have advanced NW along the watercourse and are likely intent on cutting the vital H-32 HWY. UKR UAV directed artillery has taken advancing RU units under sustained fire.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613902044418408448?s=20/photo/1

CNN: “It is taking too long”: Putin berates industry and trade minister on delivering aircrafts https://tinyurl.com/bdd7u9mc Trade minister Denis Manturov replied with: “We will try to do our best.”

FT: Russia demotes ‘General Armageddon’ after battlefield failures https://tinyurl.com/5fm2fk9z
// Valery Gerasimov replaces Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed in October as head of Ukraine campaign

🐣 RT @general_ben War is a test of Will and a test of Logistics… ¤ How do Western weapons reach Ukraine? A visit to the site that coordinates deliveries
NZZ: How do Western weapons reach Ukraine? A visit to the secret site that coordinates deliveries https://tinyurl.com/y3cj3cra
// 1/2/2023; logistics; Without foreign military aid, Ukraine would be lost. Ensuring that hundreds of thousands of tons of war material is delivered where needed requires a logistical tour de force. The threads come together in an American base a thousand kilometers from Ukraine.
// Officially, this large-scale logistics center is called the International Donor Coordination Center (IDCC)

NYT: Ukraine says it still holds Soledar https://tinyurl.com/bddrbv82 “Ukraine said on Friday that fighting continued to rage in Soledar, despite claims by Russian mercenaries that they had taken control of the eastern salt-mining town”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his nightly address on Thursday, thanked the Ukrainian fighters who he said “hold their positions and inflict significant losses on the enemy.” On the same day, Ukraine’s 46th Airmobile Brigade said in a statement on Telegram that it was conducting counterattacks in Soledar and making progress after a few days in retreat. Ukraine still controls the town’s railway station and the mine, it said. …

xThe Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in its latest analysis that geolocated footage indicates Russian forces “likely control most if not all of Soledar, and have likely pushed Ukrainian forces out of the western outskirts of the settlement” where they had apparently been making a last stand. It called the capture “at best a Russian Pyrrhic tactical victory” after Moscow committed significant resources, adding that the battle will have contributed to “Russian forces’ degraded combat power and cumulative exhaustion.” …

🐣 RT @AustineDumas2 Russian sources say the rush to prematurely declare Soledar captured has resulted in horrific Russian casualties as literally everyone is now being pushed forward no matter what. They’re confident that Soledar will be seized, but say that it’s a “nightmare for such a small gain.”

🐣 🎹 Over there, over there

♫ Send the word, send the word over there
That the Tanks are coming
The Tanks are coming
The drums rum tumming everywhere
¤ https://youtu.be/B6hRDS3LvQQ

♫ So prepare, say a prayer
Send the word, send the word to beware
They’ll be over, they’re coming over
And they’ll bonk those orcs till it’s over, over there

⭕ 12 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @lbarronlopez Full statement from President Biden’s special counsel, Richard Sauber:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/lbarronlopez/status/1613563073268269060?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Statement of Richard Sauber, Special Counsel to the President

As we stated previously, we are fully cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archives.

Following the discovery of government documents at the Penn Biden Center in November 2022, and coordinating closely with the Department of Justice, the President’s lawyers have searched the President’s Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, residences – the other locations where files from his Vice-Presidential office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition. The lawyers completed that review last night.

During the review, the lawyers discovered among personal and political papers a small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings. All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage. One document consisting of one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room. No documents were found in the Rehoboth Beach residence.

As was done in the case of the Penn-Biden Center, the Department of Justice was immediately notified. and the lawyers arranged for the Department of Justice to take possession of these documents. The White House will continue to cooperate with the review by tge Department of Justice.

Politico [EU], Janusz Bugajski: The benefits of Russia’s coming disintegration https://tinyurl.com/3rtbx3st “Russia is a failed state. It’s been unable to transform itself into a nation-state, a civic state or even a stable imperial state. It is a federation in name only”
// The West made a grave mistake when it assumed the collapse of Soviet communism meant the end of Russian imperialism.

… Russia is a failed state. It’s been unable to transform itself into a nation-state, a civic state or even a stable imperial state. It is a federation in name only, as the central government pursues a policy of ethnic and linguistic homogenization and denies any powers to the country’s 83 republics and regions. However, hyper-centralization has exposed the country’s multiple weaknesses, including a contracting economy squeezed by international sanctions, military defeats in Ukraine that reveal the incompetence and corruption of its ruling elite, and disquiet in numerous regions over their shrinking budgets.

Moscow is finally being exposed as a rapacious imperial center that’s exhausting its capacities to hold the country together. Yet, most Western leaders still fail to see the benefits of Russia’s disintegration.

The rupture of the Russian Federation will be the third phase of imperial collapse after the unravelling of the Soviet bloc and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. It’s driven by elite power struggles and intensifying rivalries between the central government and disaffected regions, which in some parts of the country, could lead to civil wars and border disputes. However, it will also embolden the emergence of new states and inter-regional federations, which will control their own resources and no longer send their men to die for Moscow’s empire. …

[An] effective approach [to easing Russian transformation] would be to clearly specify what the West supports. Openly backing pluralism, democracy, federalism, civil rights and the autonomy of its republics and regions can help embolden Russia’s citizens by demonstrating they aren’t globally isolated. They will also need access to the information that Moscow suppresses, especially when it comes to providing security, economic development and cultivating peaceful, productive relations with neighbors. …

The West made a grave mistake when it assumed the collapse of Soviet communism meant the end of Russian imperialism. And as imperial states invariably collapse when they overreach and when centrifugal pressures are fueled by economic distress, regional resentments and national revivals, it must now avoid repeating that mistake — this time by wrongly presuming the current empire is permanent.

Reuters (~11:50pm): Ukraine says its forces hold out against Russia in battle for Soledar https://tinyurl.com/43bxz8pj “‘Even if both Bakhmut and Soledar fall to the Russians, it’s not going to have a strategic impact on the war itself,’ US NSC spokesman John Kirby told reporters”

🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Yevgeny Prigozhin’s apparently premature announcement of Soledar’s capture has reportedly led to a desperate push by Wagner to make it a reality. Wagner is fighting without regard for casualties, not just to gain Soledar, but for Prigozhin’s reputation.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1613671178563977217?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/u9amjzs6

2/ The Russian VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that a source (likely within Wagner) says of the situation at Soledar: ¤ “It’s a nightmare there now: the rush to announce a full takeover has led to the fact that one has to operate on the edge of what is possible.

3/ “The Wagnerites are literally being pushed from behind, everyone is being driven there – if Prigozhin personally has already announced a complete capture, then the price of the matter will no longer play a role. Losses for such a small section of the front are wild.

4/ “If something does not work out with Soledar now (the probability is minimal, but theoretically it’s there), the Ministry of Defence will use it against Prigozhin and the ‘Musicians’ personally – the supply of shells will not only not be improved, but reduced altogether…

5/ “I wouldn’t be surprised if those commanders who reported to Prigozhin yesterday that everything had already been taken and there were only a couple of hours [of fighting] left, these commanders might well have been reassigned to the assault troops.

6/ “Now the Wagnerites have to stretch out heavily and cross the river, at the same time the MLRS and artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have shot everything there – they hit like in a shooting gallery, and there are plenty of snipers there as well.

7/ “Drones are constantly circling above, watching and throwing VOG grenades. There is nowhere to take cover – everything is in open space.

8/ “And the weather is such that if you are wounded in these conditions, you have almost no chance of survival – even if you stop the blood loss, you will freeze. There is no way to evacuate from there. Everyone is dead [if they get hit].” /end
Sources: 🔹 t.me/vchkogpu/35898

🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar “#Russian forces are still far from being within striking distance of an operational encirclement of #Bakhmut,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, as they would have to reach two key highways kilometres behind #Ukrainian lines. @AJEnglish
⋙ AlJazeera: ‘Brutal, bloody battles’: Russia’s ‘insane’ fight for Soledar https://tinyurl.com/pebjpzv8
// Ukraine has been crying out for more heavy armour, longer range weapons, and air defence systems to end the war.

🐣 RT @NOELreports The Pentagon supports the decision of US allies to provide Western tanks to Ukraine. – US Department of Defense spokesman Pat Ryder. ¤ One week until Ramstein..
¤ https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1613673617396727808?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @davidgura “If you want to have a democracy, you have to say that it’s better, you have to believe that it’s better, and you can’t decide that other people, or other larger forces, are going to bring it to you.” ¤ @TimothyDSnyder on “The @ForeignAffairs Interview”:
⋙ 🔊ForeignAffairs: How Putin’s Lies Are Driving the War in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4bxnyp3p
// A Conversation With Timothy Snyder

💙🧵 RT @ james_rands […] Soledar is not strategically important. The phrase strategically vital will get bandied about a lot over the coming weeks. ¤¤ The nearest it has to importance is a salt mine (from which the town derives its name) which Prighozin seems quite excited about. However, if it falls Ukrainian forces will have to withdraw to the Western side of the river which runs to its West to adopt defensive positions.
📌 https://twitter.com/james_rands/status/1613460863687720960?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @james_rands This means ceding quite a bit of land but more importantly it allows Russian forces to interfere with the road network in the area and force resupply to Bakhmut to take a longer more complicated route to the South. It doesn’t stop Bakhmut being resupplied but it makes it trickier route. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @james_rands The situation is messy and it’s unclear but what looked like a Russian victory a few days ago now looks more like a temporary set-back for Ukraine at a high cost to Russia.

🐣 RT @igorsushko Russia reportedly lost over 10,000 troops in the offensive on #Soledar so far, on top of over 10,000 lost in the attempt to take #Bakhmut. ¤ 60% of killed and injured are from PMCs, especially #WagnerPMC, many of whom are recruited prisoners.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1613422520413335553?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SOLEDAR /0050 UTC 12 JAN/ In heavy fighting, UKR forces continue to hold key locations in the urban and industrial areas. During the day, Wagner PMC units infiltrated the eastern residential areas of Soledar but have yet to penetrate the central districts.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613334708414468098?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian defenders have advanced to Kreminna in Luhansk region. ¤ In the morning report for 12 January 2023, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports repelling an attack by the Russian occupiers in the area of Kreminna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1613407710019461120?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 11 Jan 2023

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar The #Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced today that Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery #Gerasimov will take over as theater commander as part of a major reshuffle of the Russian command structure for the war in #Ukraine. https://isw.pub/UkrWar011123
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1613367257089933312?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 3/ Gerasimov’s appointment over #Surovikin, a favorite of Russian milbloggers and #Wagner Group financier Yevgeny #Prigozhin, is also highly likely to have been in part a political decision to reassert the primacy of the Russian MoD in an internal Russian power struggle.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 4/ #Gerasimov will likely preside over a disorganized command structure plagued by endemic, persistent, and self-reinforcing failures that he largely set into motion in his initial role before the invasion of #Ukraine. [link]

🐣 RT @ KyivI🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent ⚡️ISW: Munitions shortage likely to hinder Russian offensives this year. ¤ Russia’s inability to address munitions shortages will likely frustrate Russian forces’ ability to sustain offensive operations in eastern Ukraine in 2023, the Institute for the Study of War said.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress NATO chief @jensstoltenberg said the fierce fighting around Bakhmut & Soledar showed the bravery of Ukrainian forces and the vital importance of stepping up military support to Ukraine ¤ “At this key juncture in the war, we must do even more, even faster” [link]
¤ https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1613129505341579266?s=20

🧵 RT @Rail_splitter1 We shouldn’t fall for the comforting notion that Russia is facing imminent defeat. It can and must be defeated but doing so requires action now, not next month – Western tanks and ATACMS above all. Three reasons why Russia can keep going even after catastrophic losses.
📌 https://twitter.com/Rail_splitter1/status/1613366821729755136?s=20

🐣 RT @Rail_splitter1 One. Russia’s nature as a compromised mafia state paradoxically gives it extra flexibility to survive. Despite the veneration of autocracy and invariable statism, Russia has always been a weak state starting with the earliest czarist times. […]
🐣 RT @Rail_splitter1 Two. Putin does not care in the least about the lives of his own people. Any number are easily made sacrificial. When Putin said, “We have incurred no losses”, I believe he was genuine. The deaths of even hundreds of thousands do not even enter his notion of “loss”. […]
🐣 RT @Rail_splitter1 Three and crucial: society is almost infinitely pliable, trained to follow orders even in the face of utter absurdity and the certainty of imminent doom. Thousands of men trudge to certain death rather than, say, refuse and serve a 2-year sentence. Or rise up in protest.

DefenseIntelligence [UK]: Intelligence Update on Ukraine
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1613317430411169795?s=20/photo/1

● On 11 January 2022, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the head of the Russian military, Chief of the General Staff (CGS) Valery Gerasimov is to take over as commander of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Gerasimov is to have three deputies in the role, including the previous incumbent, General Sergei Surovikin.

● This is a significant development in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approach to managing the war. The deployment of the CG as theatre commander is an indicator of the increasing seriousness of the situation Russia is facing, and a clear acknowledgement that the campaign is falling short of Russia’s strategic goals.

● The move is likely to be greeted with extreme displeasure by much of the Russian ultra-nationalist and military blogger community, who have increasingly blamed Gerasimov for the poor execution of the war. In contrast, Surovikin has been widely praised by this community for his championing of a more realistic approach. As a now deputy commander, his authority and influence is almost certainly hugely reduced.

🧵 RT @ WarintheFuture It is 322 days since the Russian invasion of #Ukraine began. Today, an examination of the announcement that Russian General #Gerasimov ‘is taking charge’ of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 1/25 🇺🇦
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1613330279825014784?s=20

🐣 RT @ThomasByrneTD Absolute – explains so much of current populist politics and how dangerous it really is
💽 https://twitter.com/ThomasByrneTD/status/1613097895573463040?s=20/photo/1
// Timothy Snyder
⋙ ★ 🐣 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 evolution

🐣 RT @Timodc Heck of a job Putey 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
⋙ 🐣 RT @JosephPolitano It’s official—For the first time ever, the European Union now imports more energy from the United States than from Russia!
◕ https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1613336359413981186?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag “General Armageddon” Sergei Surovikin has been removed as commander of Russian forces in Ukraine after less than 3 months. Surovikin was hailed as the man to rescue Putin’s failing invasion but his most notable achievement was the theft of a raccoon while retreating from Kherson
🖼 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1613241561957163013?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2240 UTC 11 JAN/ Sources indicate that UKR’s 140th Marine Recon. Battalion is attacking along the Vul Lymanska Rd (O-131306) east of Dibrova. UKR troops are also reported to have entered Kuzmyne, approximately 3 Km from the urban center of Kreminna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613302981423955970?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SOLEDAR /1300 UTC 11 JAN/ UKR artillery applied predictive and directed fires to prevent RU units from expanding control of prominent terrain N & S of the town. UKR’s 46th Air Mobile Brigade continued its strong defense overnight as RU failed to encircle the urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613157133549191170?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1350 UTC 11 JAN/ Overnight on 10-11 JAN, RU forces failed in an attempt to encircle Soledar. Despite repeated and costly attacks RU has failed to make any significant tactical progress against Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1613173348585902085?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @gr8musicvenues 🇷🇺 Strelkov/Girkin statement about #Soledar this morning
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gr8musicvenues/status/1613113117797392384?s=20/photo/1
[TextLink (full):] https://twitter.com/kampfhex/status/1613132507779579904?s=20/photo/1 -2

[Text:] However, the enemy’s front was NOT broken through; it was not possible to encircle the units and subunits defending the city. The enemy is creating a new line of defense on the western outskirts, relying on salt mines. The battles for the city are not over yet – the western outskirts and suburbs will have to be stormed. The enemy command definitely controls the situation, and although the retreat is accompanied by inevitable losses (including, probably, hundreds of garrison soldiers “forgotten” in the building), control is maintained and there is no talk of the enemy fleeing. […]

🐣 RT @DanReznikWSWS A portion of the units from the Armed Forces of Ukraine have retreated from the Soledar region, as reported by Presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovich.

🧵 RT @Tendar The Prigozhin pics in the salt mine in Soledar are totally in line what he has been doing the last weeks. Despite the fact that Russian paratroopers are involved in their grind in Soledar, Prigozhin puts himself front and center. It is only about optics and not substance.#Soledar
📌 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1613084175812235265?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar The social media Vatniks are also joining the band wagon by hailing Wagner, without realizing that they are just fueling the Russian infighting and weakening the Russian war effort. The strategic Ukrainian defense is unscathed. Even Strelkov noted that, but they are too drunk.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar From a strategic point of view I paraphrase what I have been saying before. Without Izyum/Lyman any advance (grind) in the Bakhmut/Soledar area is just a footnote, no matter how it will end. It is just a modern version of Verdun, while AFU prepares strategic counteroffensives.

🐣 RT @NOELreports Soledar is not under the control of Russia – the spokesman of the Defense Forces of Ukraine in the Eastern direction, Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty, denied to Suspilny the information spread that Soledar is under the control of the Russians.
🖼 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1613077811270393856?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 10 Jan 2023

NYT: How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation https://tinyurl.com/37np3txj “Finland, which shares an 833-mile border with Russia, developed its national goals for media education in 2013 and accelerated its campaign to teach students to spot misinformation”
// The Nordic country is testing new ways to teach students about propaganda. Here’s what other countries can learn from its success.

NYT: Hunter Biden’s Tangled Tale Comes Front and Center https://tinyurl.com/3hjhbrk9 “The real Hunter Biden story is complex and very different in important ways from the narrative promoted by Republicans — but troubling in its own way.” //➔ Pretty much a nothingburger
// Federal prosecutors could decide soon whether to indict the president’s son on tax and gun charges, and he faces a fresh round of hostile congressional hearings. But a close look at his story shows that it differs in important ways from the narrative promoted by Republicans.

🐣 RT @LindseyGrahamSC It is imperative that the Biden Administration supply Ukraine with modern heavy tanks from the United States, which will encourage other Western allies to send theirs too.
⋙ WaPo (Jan 5) After months of resisting Kyiv’s pleas for tanks to face increasingly dug-in Russian forces along the lengthy southern and eastern fronts, the United States and its allies are now poised to deliver a variety of armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine. https://wapo.st/3X5LxDv

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar Russian forces have not captured the entirety of #Soledar despite false Russian claims that the city has fallen and that #Bakhmut risks imminent encirclement. Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group forces advanced into the west of Soledar on January 10. http://isw.pub/UkrWar011023
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1613006510229164033?s=20/photo/1 -5

🧵 RT @atrupar Kevin McCarthy during interview with Hannity compares Congress to children who max out a credit card and need to have their behavior changed
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1612996858569269249?s=20/photo/1
// Bring in the clowns 🤡 Sean Hannity, Kevin McCarthy, Gym Jordan and James Comer

🧵 RT @Mariia_Zolkina #Soledar. City which name is in all news now because of new #Russia’s attack. Some points important for foreign audience to understand the overall situation. FYI ¤ @dem_initiatives @LSEIRDep @lseideas 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/Mariia_Zolkina/status/1613076122698403841?s=20

🐣 RT @MoscowTimes Anonymous Chinese officials told the Financial Times they believed the Kremlin’s goals in Ukraine were doomed to failure and that Russia would emerge from the conflict as a “minor power.”
⋙ MoscowTimes/FT: Beijing Fears Russia Becoming ‘Minor Power’ Under ‘Crazy’ Putin https://tinyurl.com/2bemvs58 “China is also hoping to profit from the post-war reconstruction boom in Ukraine, officials said”

Beijing is planning to reorient its foreign policy away from Moscow fearing a decline in Russia’s economic and political clout as a direct result of its disastrous invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s eventual downfall, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous Chinese officials and regional experts.

Though Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged to strengthen bilateral ties during a video conference in late December, sources told the FT that mistrust towards the Russian leader is growing among the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party.

“The invasion decision was made by a very small group of people. China shouldn’t simply follow Russia,” the FT quoted one anonymous Chinese official as saying. “Putin is crazy.”

China, according to the outlet’s sources and contrary to the widely accepted version of events, was not aware of the Kremlin’s plan to launch a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine last year and expected a limited military operation at most.

During a meeting on Feb. 4, Putin reportedly informed Xi that Russia “would not rule out taking whatever measures possible if eastern Ukrainian separatists attack Russian territory and cause humanitarian disasters.”

Beijing’s failure to obtain accurate intelligence on Putin’s plans left it unprepared for the invasion and resulted in the demotion of China’s then-vice-minister of foreign affairs and top Russia expert Le Yucheng, according to the FT.

Anonymous Chinese officials told the outlet they believed the Kremlin’s goals in Ukraine were doomed to failure and that Russia would emerge from the conflict as a “minor power.”

However, Beijing still has much to gain from its relationship with the Kremlin in the short term, seeing its closeness to Putin as a useful bargaining chip in its relationship with Europe, the FT sources said. ¤ China is also hoping to profit from the post-war reconstruction boom in Ukraine, officials said.

🐣 RT @QwertyDude14 Reminder, Russia should have honored its obligations to respect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty per the 1994 Budapest memorandum. But it breached the agreement and invaded Donbas and Crimea Ukraine in 2014.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/QwertyDude14/status/1613009090317516807?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Rail_splitter1 Many excitedly predicted that the campaign Prigozhin and Kadyrov mounted against Lapin would tear the regime apart. That betrays a lack of understanding of this mafia state. Now Lapin, who they viciously attacked (and who is as incompetent as all others), has been promoted.

🐣 📋 RT @NatashaBertrand “Out of its force of nearly 50,000 mercenaries— including 40,000 convicts—[Wagner Group] has sustained over 4,100 killed and 10,000 wounded, including over 1,000 killed between late November and early December near Bakhmut,” a senior admin official said.
⋙ CNN: Russian artillery fire down nearly 75%, US officials say, in latest sign of struggles for Moscow https://tinyurl.com/vhd76anf

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar Igor Girkin, former commander of Russian militants in Donbas and a prominent milblogger, heavily implied that he would support the removal of Russian President Vladimir #Putin from office, his most direct criticism of Putin to date. http://isw.pub/UkrWar011023
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1613018841281429505?s=20/photo/1 -4

🐣 RT @NOELreports Over to the maps. If you want to see a full overview of the front in Ukraine check out my interactive map:
🌎 ⋙ GoogleMyMaps: Ukraine-Russia Operational Situation https://tinyurl.com/5emkkv7r
// Overview of the situation on the ground in Ukraine in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Daily updated by @NOELreports.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports #Soledar-#Bakhmut
➡️ AFU soldiers did not receive an order to retreat.
➡️ The latest info i have is that AFU soldiers are still present in Soledar (this info is from noon).
➡️ In Bakhmut the Russians are pressuring east of Pidhorodne, of which i got confirmed is under 🇷🇺 control

NYT (2020): Who Signs Up to Fight? Makeup of U.S. Recruits Shows Glaring Disparity https://tinyurl.com/2p8kamyz //➔plus, when jobs are plentiful and more youth (64%) choose college, recruitment falls; 75% don’t qualify for health, competency or drug/criminal history
// 1/10/2020; More and more, new recruits come from the same small number of counties and are the children of old recruits.
(1 college-bound) 2021 HeritageFound: https://tinyurl.com/y45frjc4
(2 not qualified) 2018 HeritageFound: https://tinyurl.com/yvksrrap

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ It’s not a crime to accidentally take and retain govt docs. If upon learning that you have docs, you return them, there is no crime. That is not what Trump did. If he had simply returned everything this wd have been a nonstory.

🐣 RT @RCdeWinter I’ve said it for years & I’ll say it again:
We’re living a mashup of
Rollerball
Minority Report
The Manchurian Candidate
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Twilight Zone
Outer Limits
1984
Animal Farm
Catch-22
Brave New World
Never thought I’d be an extra in an extravaganza from hell.

🐣 RT @SteveRattner You all know I like charts, so if you’re ever unsure as to what the @HouseGOP is up to, just refer to this one: ¤ (Right now, they’re on Step 3)
◕ https://twitter.com/SteveRattner/status/1612853547464364050?s=20/photo/1
// The GOP Cycle:
1. Campaign on crime, fiscal responsibility, “family values”
2. Win elections, gain power
3. Forget promises, cut taxes for the rich. slash the safety net, blow up the deficit
4. Lose elections, return to Step 1

WaPo, Mark Thiessen: Don’t cut defense or aid to Ukraine, Mr. Speaker. The Gipper is watching https://tinyurl.com/24j8ybfn “Reagan’s policy of ‘peace through strength’ brought us victory in the Cold War w/o firing a shot. … [We] should be pushing to increase, not cut, defense spending”

… McCarthy reportedly agreed to hold discretionary spending to fiscal 2022 levels, which would mean $75 billion being cut in defense spending. And Gaetz tweeted that in his fight to stop McCarthy, “Biggest loser: Zelensky. Biggest winner: US Taxpayers.”

Reagan would be appalled by this. His defense buildup — the largest peacetime military expansion in history — was one of the great achievements of his presidency. Reagan’s policy of “peace through strength” brought us victory in the Cold War without firing a shot. Today, as China and Russia have locked arms to wage a new Cold War against the West, conservatives should be pushing to increase, not cut, defense spending.,

🐣 RT @wartranslated Ukrainian reporter states there is no “encirclement” of the Ukrainian forces in Soledar: ¤ “Russian channels are spreading misinformation about the situation on the front. There is no encirclement of our troops.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @noclador 1) Even if Soledar falls. Taking 0,000001% of Ukraine for 5,000 KIA is only a disaster for russia. ¤ 2) Looks like putin is trying to draw Ukrainian troops away from Ukraine’s upcoming southern offensive (the same might be the purpose of a new push towards Kyiv).

🐣 RT @StateOfUkraine The West slowly budging on supplying Ukraine with limited amounts of long-requested heavier offensive weapons after 11 months of war has given Putin the time & breathing room to try everything possible in Ukraine. He will fail, but history will not be kind to those who dithered.

🐣 RT @AustineDumas2 Ukraine’s security service exposes over 600 Russian agents and spies since start of invasion ¤ They include a group of Russian military intelligence who were planning to assassinate Ukraine’s Minister of Defense and intelligence chief
¤ https://twitter.com/AustineDumas2/status/1612940162820104193?s=20

🐣 RT @AustineDumas2 Ukraine’s security service exposes over 600 Russian agents and spies since start of invasion ¤ They include a group of Russian military intelligence who were planning to assassinate Ukraine’s Minister of Defense and intelligence chief

🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent ⚡️Zelensky strips 4 Russia-affiliated former politicians, among them Putin ally Medvedchuk, of Ukrainian citizenship.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent “If MPs choose to serve not the people of Ukraine but the murderers who came to Ukraine, our actions will be appropriate, and these are not the last such decisions,” Zelensky said, adding that the decision was based on material gathered by the Security Service of Ukraine.

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian ⚡️🇺🇲 Ukraine will receive two batteries of Patriot air defense systems with 8 launchers from the USA in mid-spring 2023 – Podolyak Office of the President of Ukraine

@ChuckPfarrer KREMINNA /2110 UTC 10 JAN/ UKR forces have consolidated gains to the east of Dibrova and are in contact with RU troops at Kuzmyne. A RU attack on Chervonopopivka is reported to have been repelled with heavy casualties suffered by RU forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1612918331585232896?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @igornovikov The “gentleman” on the left, Andriy Derkach has been stripped of his 🇺🇦 citizenship by President Zelensky. Before that he had been designated a 🇷🇺 agent by both 🇺🇲 and 🇺🇦 intelligence. ¤ That’s all you need to know about Giuliani’s “investigations” and the sh*t I had to deal with.
🖼 https://twitter.com/igornovikov/status/1612907664446464009?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @mhmck There were indeed over 600 militants of the Russian terrorist state packed into the school in Makiyivka on New Year’s Eve. Incompetence by Russian commanders led to them all being killed or wounded when artillery of Ukrainian defenders struck the troop concentration.

Pravda [UA]: Ukraine’s Armed Forces working to exhaust Russians as much as possible on Soledar front https://tinyurl.com/8xhhwaf3 “… so that even some of their minor tactical successes lead [only] to a major ‘Pyrrhic’ victory” ~ Serhii Chrevatyi, Eastern Armed Forces of Ukraine

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are focusing on maximum exhaustion of the Russian troops near Soledar on the Bakhmut front, so that even the minimal successes of the Russians will result in their defeat.

Source: Serhii Chrevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the national joint 24/7 newscast

Quote: “The defenders of Soledar are now doing everything they can to exhaust the enemy, to reduce their potential as much as possible, so that even some of their minor tactical successes [obtained by superior forces and heavy losses – ed.] lead to a major ‘Pyrrhic’ victory.”

Background: In the last 24 hours the Russians have carried out 86 artillery attacks using various systems on Soledar, Donetsk Oblast, and its outskirts.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SOLEDAR MINES /1345 UT 10 JAN/ RU Wagner PMCs and RU units made a significant gain capturing the high ground to the south rail right of way. UKR artillery is reported to have demolished much of the above ground structures in the vicinity of the industrial areas.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1612804970536992768?s=20/photo/1

KyivIndependent: Russian troops hit Soledar in Donetsk Oblast 86 times over the past day https://tinyurl.com/9s3usrzm “‘This is one of the bloodiest places on the front,’ Zelensky said”

🐣 RT @FernandoJneiva :: SOLEDAR AND BAKHMUT :: ¤ Prigozhin will continue to use both confirmed and fabricated Wagner success in Soledar and Bakhmut to promote the Wagner as the only Russian force in Ukraine capable of securing tangible gains, as ISW has previously reported.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent The ministry said capturing Soledar is an attempt by Russia to take control of Bakhmut from the north and disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication. However, Russian forces are unlikely to “envelop the town imminently” due to stable Ukrainian defensive lines and supply routes.

🐣 RT @wartranslated Update from Bakhmut and Soledar by Kiyanyn, 10 January (about 3 hours ago).
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1612761463550103555?s=20/photo/1
// upbeat message from the front

🐣 RT @JulianRoepcke Russian warlord and PMC Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said this today …
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/1612743679470407687?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] “The Ukrainian army is fighting bravely for Bakhmut and Soledar. The most difficult bloody battles are taking place on the western outskirts of Soledar. The Armed Forces of Ukraine defend the territory of Soledar with honor.”

WaPo: Brutal fighting as Russia focuses on seizing salt mining town near Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/yc253h8t “This is what madness looks like,” Zelensky said of Soledar, which is divided between Russian & Ukrainian forces. “Everything is completely destroyed, there is almost no life”

⭕ 9 Jan 2023

TheIntercept, Ryan Grim (Jan 9): House Rules Package Gives Democrats a Path to Averting a Debt Ceiling Crisis https://tinyurl.com/ycxx2cr5
// 1/9/2023; Republicans preserved the discharge petition in the new rules package, allowing any bill with 218 votes to come to the floor — even one codifying Roe v. Wade.

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR The US Ambassador to Hungary in a speech called the Fuhrer [Putin] a “small man” who could not move on from the authoritarian mentality of the past. And of course, this caused Pootie’s enablers to go ballistic. If the shoe fits, wear it.
⋙ DailyBeast, Noor Ibrahim: Russian Officials Throw a Tantrum After U.S. Diplomat Calls Putin ‘Small Man’ https://tinyurl.com/ytpbfd7a
// Russians officials descended into a petty meltdown over the “outrageous” remarks from a U.S. ambassador.

🐣 RT @igornovikov Tucker Carlson’s “interview” with a Ukrainian goes horribly wrong 😂😂😂 ¤ Watch till the end 😉 ¤ Stay tuned for the full version! ¤ Feel free to share 🇺🇦🫡
💽 https://twitter.com/igornovikov/status/1612515958618210304?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ IlvesToomas Russian soldier brags how his unit raped and killed every young Ukrainian woman. ¤ Every one. None left. ¤ He laughs.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated In this intercepted call published by the SBU, a Russian soldier admits to crimes against civilians during the retreat from Lyman. Answering his friend’s question about the presence of young women, he says there are none since all were killed by retreating Rus. army.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1612543588314783751?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @PresidentStas Colonel Yuriy Yurchik, the chief of staff of the special forces unit of the border service of Ukraine, who was liquidated in Soledar, was buried the day after. He died as a result of artillery shelling from the Wagner.

🧵 RT @ Krma4Karma ⚡️🇺🇦⚡️The main thing from Zelensky’s evening address.
▪️Bakhmut and Soledar, Kreminna and Svatove, general prospects in Donbas for the coming weeks. The battle for Donbas continues.
▪️And although the occupiers have now concentrated their greatest efforts on Soledar, the
📌 https://twitter.com/Krma4Karma/status/1612681941911740416?s=20

⋙ 🐣 RT @ result of this difficult and long battle will be the liberation of our entire Donbas.
▪️I thank all our soldiers who defend our Bakhmut and Soledar. There are almost no walls left in Soledar. Thanks to the resilience of our soldiers there, we have won additional time and
⋙ 🐣 RT @ additional forces for Ukraine.
▪️The whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the blows. This is what madness looks like.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ISW: Wagner boss using gains in Soledar to boost reputation. ¤ Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is using reports of the mercenary group’s gains in Soledar, Donetsk Oblast to promote its reputation as an effective fighting force, the Institute for the Study of War said.

🐣 RT @JacquesFrre2 [Ru] ⚠️ #Donbass – North Front: Soledar
▶️ Effort Wagner groups 🇷🇺 downtown ¤ Fight all night ¤ Sanatorium & school n°14 under control 🇷🇺
▶️ 46th Air Assault Brigade 🇺🇦 non-operational due to casualties
▶️ Remnants of 61st Brigade 🇺🇦 withdrawn due to losses
🌎 https://twitter.com/JacquesFrre2/status/1612679745946415104?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @chaledelazem [tr] The #Brigadekommandeur of the #Ukraine ‘s 61st Separate Mechanized Brigade is said to have ordered the subordinate battalion commanders to organize the withdrawal of its remaining and surviving units from the #Soledar city.

🐣 RT @BonettSol❗️[tr] The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 🇺🇦 , Valery Zaluzhny, proposed to withdraw troops from Soledar, which is now in a tactical encirclement, but was rejected.
🌎 https://twitter.com/BonettSol/status/1612675367071784960?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @inquirerdotnet Russia has stepped up a powerful assault on Soledar in eastern Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said, forcing Ukrainian troops to repel waves of attacks led by the Wagner contract militia around the salt mining town and nearby fronts. | @Reuters [link]

🐣 RT @TWMCLtd Everyone in #Ukraine is awaiting news from #Soledar on the eastern front. It’s not looking good with supply lines possibly having been effectively cut – #Russia has fire control over the main route in to the town in #Donetsk oblast. ¤ Russians are sacrificing 1000s but may succeed

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Experts advising the DoJ have been preparing for over a year for the antics of the house GOP’s obstruction. The most brilliant minds have been working on it. Just thought you should know.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /0150 UTC 10 JAN/ Heavy fighting continues around Soledar. A consensus of reports indicate that UKR troops occupy the N and W portions of the mine complex. RU staged an attack west of Pidhorodne in an attempt to cross and cut the M-03 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1612627811788881922?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Justice Dept. reviewing classified documents found in Biden’s post-VP office https://tinyurl.com/yyae2jd8 “Garland has tapped U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John R. Lausch Jr., who was nominated by Trump, to oversee the review of the Biden documents”
// The case echoes the investigation into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents, but details provided by Biden’s lawyer suggest key differences

🐣 RT @INTobservers The final update from Soledar tonight comes from Butusov as of 2 hours ago. It gives a general idea of how things are but the guys don’t give up and fight for every building. Will have an update from the 46th in the morning 🙏 ¤ Glory to the heroes 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/INTobservers/status/1612590187439071232?s=20/photo/1 -2

🧵 RT @UA_patriot_news Information from our military about #Soledar. The 46th Airmobile Brigade, as well as units of the DSPU, the SBU and the 17th Tank Brigade are inside the city, fighting for every house.#1 #Ukraine #Ukraina #Donetsk #Donbass #Соледар #ЗСУ
📌 https://twitter.com/UA_patriot_news/status/1612578792345686016?s=20

🐣 .@JakeSullivan46, the National Security Advisor, is the single person most responsible for the US slow walking military weapons to Ukraine ¤ He should be replaced
@WHCOS @SECDEF @ABlinken @POTUS

🐣 RT @olex_scherba Dear West, don’t you understand that history is being made in #Ukraine now? You’ll be either a winner or a loser for generations. The same for tyranny. So why do you hesitate whether to give Ukraine tanks & fighter jets? What’s the downside of it? ¤ #StandWithUkraine

🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ And the odds that a Grand Jury won’t recommend charges is slim. So this feels like an incoming rocket set to go off quite soon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman Special purpose grand jury in Fulton county [GA] has finished its work and reported to the court. It wants to make the report public. Hearing on that in a couple weeks. Remember – they make recommendation to Fulton county DA Fanni Willis. Big step forward.

🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost I do realize he is a deranged illiterate imbecile, but does anyone know what “China flagrant boss” means?!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1612488650234941440?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump Great job Kevin! We must now stop Mitch McConnell and his China flagrant boss, Coco Chow. It’s as though he just doesn’t care anymore, he pushes through anything the Democrats want. The $1.7 TRILLION quickly approved Bill of the week before was HORRIBLE. Zero for USA Border Security. If he waited just ten days, the now “United Republican Congress” could have made it MUCH BETTER, or KILLED IT. Something is wrong with McConnell, and those Republican Senators that Vote with him. PRIMARY THEM ALL!!!

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1310 UTC 9 JAN/ In heavy combat, UKR forces continue counter-attacks against RU Wagner PMCs and RU units around Soledar. RU forces were driven back from Yokolivka. UKR’s 46th Air Mobile Brigade is reported to be advancing SE, in the vicinity of the mine complex.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1612434921271791623?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 8 Jan 2023

AtlanticCouncil, Stephen Blank: Rebuilding Ukraine the right way https://tinyurl.com/4f4xcdz8 “[T]he international community must … ensure the process actually strengthens Ukraine by revitalizing both its democratic and economic vibrancy”

🐣 RT @JakeSullivan46 The United States condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil. President Biden is following the situation closely and our support for Brazil’s democratic institutions is unwavering. Brazil’s democracy will not be shaken by violence.

WaPo, Liz Sly: Ukraine sees ‘year of victory,’ but decisive defeat of Russia won’t be easy https://tinyurl.com/mu7n874x “As long as Western support remains strong, [Ret Lt Gen Ben] Hodges said he is confident that Ukraine can retake all or most Russian-occupied territory this year”

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Can’t wait for the Musk fanboys to set Gen. McCaffrey straight about the role of armor
⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Very strange viewpoint by Musk. The key is the integration of combined arms warfare with AirPower, electronic warfare, deception, speed, maneuver, concentration of power. The M1 tank and M2 Inf Fighting Vehicle are the central killing tools in the battle.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger Really one of the more nonsensical takes on war. Tanks are essential for counteroffensives and a game changer for Ukraine.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1612223297822855171?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @elonmusk Tanks are a deathtrap now. With neither side having air superiority, you’re left with infantry & artillery essentially WW1.

🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Zelensky: Bakhmut and Soledar ‘hold on in spite of everything,’ more units to be sent to defense of key cities.

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! For today we are going to educate some vatniks on proper history! I’d like to thank the vatnik below in particular for inspiring this historical bitch slap on the origins of Ukrainian cities! 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1612136292573413377?s=20
// history of Ukrainian cities

🧵 RT @yazavtra please read about the Executed Renaissance in Ukraine in the 30s—those artists, poets, writers who protested Holodomor as genocide by starvation orchestrated by soviet regime and who even then advocated for unity with the West (and were harshly silenced for it).
📌 https://twitter.com/yazavtra/status/1590925307355463680?s=20
// resistance to the Holodomor

💙 🧵 RT @bctallis [Benjamin Tallis] 1. What is Neo-Idealism? (seeing as many of you have asked) ¤ It’s a new approach to Grand Strategy & International Relations that I think we can see emerging in responses to #Russia’s war & from #Ukraine’s brave resistance. 1st [thread] in a series on #NeoIdealism 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/bctallis/status/1612105940441915395?s=20

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Only the strengthening of Ukraine, only the successes of Ukraine, only the restoration of territorial integrity of Ukraine, only the return of all our people from Russian captivity are the guarantees of peace. We are bringing it closer every day – @ZelenskyyUa
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1612203875406340096?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1400 UTC 8 JAN/ UKR troops have advanced across the rail right-of-way and are engaging RU units in the west of Soledar’s urban area. UKR reports 21 aviation strikes missions were flown, including SEAD sorties that interdicted 3 RU surface to air missile complexes.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1612083212154556417?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 1420 UTC 8 JAN / RU conducted two small scale attacks across the H-26 HWY in the last 24 hours. NW of Svatove UKR forces broke up an attack on Stelmakhivka. Yesterday UKR Khartia Battalion is reported to have defeated the 22nd Guard Spetsnaz Brig near Kryvoshyivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1612087282206490624?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 7 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @ general_ben Nonsense! Of course time is on Ukraine‘s side. They have no manpower issues and their logistics situation gets better every week. Not one single Russian Soldier actually wants to be there and sanctions are hurting. Ukraine liberates Crimea by end of August.
⋙ WaPo, Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates: Time is not on Ukraine’s side https://tinyurl.com/2a2sdjv2 “[T]he United States and its allies [must] urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive”
// The way to avoid confrontation with Russia in the future is to help Ukraine push back the invader now.

🧵 RT @RuthJorgenson “Over the past 24 hours, the Armed Forces of Ukraine repelled enemy attacks in the area of 14 settlements in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where offensive attempts continue. ¤ ‘Over the past 24 hours, units of the Defense Forces repelled attacks by the occupiers in the areas of…”
📌 https://twitter.com/RuthJorgenson/status/1611598051055120385?s=20
⋙ RT @ “the settlements of Stelmakhovka, Makeyevka, Dibrova and Belogorovka, Luhansk region and Ozaryanovka, Soledar, Krasnaya Gora, Podgorodnoye, Bakhmut, Kleshchi.’ …

🐣 RT @SpeakerMcCarthy [12/30] This will be part of our investigation into the origins of covid. […]
⋙ 🐣 you’ll create doubt among those who don‘t understand science (your hs-educated “base”); this will fuel their suspicions and skepticism; the death rate from COVID-19 will keep being higher among unvaxxed MAGA and they‘ll die, while YOU are vaccinated ¤ endangering your own voters

🐣 RT @Las4Liberty “⚔️ Soledar and Bakhmut 🇺🇦 remain under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Cherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern Group of Forces, said. ¤ Today, fierce battles are being fought for the cities. The statements of the Russians about the capture of Soledar are false.”

🧵 RT @ MargoGontar [10/21/2022] Just 20 minutes drive from #Bakhmut in Donetsk region of Ukraine there is a real jewel: Soledar salt mines. The 2nd deepest in Europe (after Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland ): almost 300 m deep! Gives some Moria of LOTR vibes, right?
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/MargoGontar/status/1583479108545105920?s=20/photo/1
// beautiful

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1950 UTC 7 JAN/ Despite a unilateral ‘Christmas’ cease fire’ RU’s 6th Separate Cossack Motor Rifle Reg. & Wagner PMCs attacked UKR troops in the vicinity of the salt mine complex at Soledar. RU units have gained control of the urban area east of the rail right-of-way.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1611809896315461633?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @Krma4Karma ❌🤡Prigozhyn explained why Russia needs #Bakhmut
⁉️The head of PMC “Wagner” Yevheniy Prigozhyn explained the desire of the Russian Federation to capture Bakhmut in Donetsk region by the fact that this city is a serious logistics center and has a system of Soledar and
⋙ 🐣 RT @Krma4Karma Bakhmut mines.
⁉️”In fact, it is a network of underground cities. In which there is not only a crowd of people at a depth of 80-100 meters, but also tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are moved.
⁉️And stocks of weapons have been stored since the First World War,”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Krma4Karma⚡️Prigozhyn’s press service quoted his words in Telegram.

🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian forces are taking huge losses in Bakhmut and Soledar area due to their frontal assaults attempts at fortified positions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LDas10514553 Ukr has caused significant losses of forces & weapons of Rus in the past few days, & now Rus is giving its heart & soul to conquer Bakhmut and Soledar to revive the spirit of not just its demoralized forces but the nation. But a Rus defeat here’ll sound the death-knell for Putin.

RT @Tendar If you are wondering how Russian “advance” In Bakhmut, Soledar or elsewhere then check this out. I have seen pictures like this several times. ¤ This is not sustainable, no matter if those are regulars, mobilized, mercenaries or convicts. This is the recipe of doom. #Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @666_mancer Бахмутское направление, наши дни: это пиздец, конечно #роа #Вагнер #потерьнет #RussianUkrainianWar
🖼 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1611713677782093825?s=20/photo/1 -2
// dead Ru

🧵 RT @RuthJorgenson “Over the past 24 hours, the Armed Forces of Ukraine repelled enemy attacks in the area of 14 settlements in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where offensive attempts continue. ¤ ‘Over the past 24 hours, units of the Defense Forces repelled attacks by the occupiers in the areas of…”
📌 https://twitter.com/RuthJorgenson/status/1611598051055120385?s=20
⋙ RT @RuthJorgenson “the settlements of Stelmakhovka, Makeyevka, Dibrova and Belogorovka, Luhansk region and Ozaryanovka, Soledar, Krasnaya Gora, Podgorodnoye, Bakhmut, Kleshchi.’ …

🐣 To compare: Jeffries rousing speech was both electric and specific, celebrating Dems’ values and successes and offering hope amid the chaos. ¤ McCarthy’s speech was vacuous and boring. It misapplied history, laid claim to values the GOP rejects, and skirted the ugliness of his party’s governing plans.

UkrInform: Russian fleet loses another two flagships – intelligence source https://tinyurl.com/27k2488y “[T]he heavy nuclear cruiser Admiral Nakhimov and heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral  Kuznetsov of the Soviet Union Fleet – are deemed inoperable”

The intelligence source also reported that another ship of the Southern Fleet, the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov of the Soviet Union Fleet, is also in critical disrepair.

“In preparation for transferring the aircraft carrier from the dock to the factory for further repairs, it was discovered that the ship could not move on its own. It was decided to tow the ship, but it was found that the survivability standard could not be maintained due to deep corrosion of the decks below the third, outer hull of the vessel, as well as the presence of water in the holds. Accordingly, there is a risk that the ship will capsize to one side or sink during towing, so the process was postponed indefinitely,” the source informed.

At the same time, the report says the crews of both ships have been formed anyway. The size of the crew of the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov of the Soviet Union Fleet was brought to wartime alert. The crew of the heavy nuclear cruiser Admiral Nakhimov has also been formed and is preparing to arrive on board.

It should be noted that the Admiral Kuznetsov is the only aircraft-carrying cruiser of the Northern Fleet, while the Admiral Nakhimov is one of the three missile cruisers of the Northern Fleet.

⭕ 6 Jan 2023

WSJ, Adrian Karatnycky: Putin’s American Cheerleaders https://tinyurl.com/5yu6b88e ‘Every US citizen has a right to express an opinion about the issues of the day. But cooperation w official propagandists who beat the drum for a state perpetrating massive atrocities is another matter’
// How Jeffrey Sachs, Mark Episkopos and Dimitri Simes contribute to the Russian propaganda effort.
// Full: “Every U.S. citizen has a right to express an opinion about the issues of the day. And experts are free to challenge the pro-Ukraine views held by the vast majority of Americans. But cooperation with official propagandists who beat the drum for a state perpetrating massive war crimes and atrocities is another matter. Messrs. Sachs, Episkopos and Simes should know better.”

MSN/Mediaite: Hakeem Jeffries Tells New Congress That Democrats Will Put ‘Maturity Over Mar-a-Lago’ in Rousing Speech as GOP Sits Quietly https://tinyurl.com/yc83vb3u

Before giving the reins to the next speaker, Jeffries delivered a rousing speech that took several not-so-veiled shots at Republicans as they sat and listened.

“We do extend our hand of partnership to you and want to make clear that we extend and intend to try to find common ground whenever and wherever possible on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said to applause. “Not as Democrats, not as Republicans, not as independents, but as Americans. But I also want to make clear that we will never compromise our principles.”

Jeffries then threw shade at Republicans by rattling off a series of contrasts, one of which was putting “maturity over Mar-a-Lago,” where former President Donald Trump resides in Palm Beach, Florida:mHouse Democrats will always put …

American values over autocracy,
benevolence over bigotry, the
Constitution over the cult,
democracy over demagogues,
economic opportunity over extremism,
freedom over fascism,
governing over gaslighting,
hopefulness over hatred,
inclusion over isolation,
justice over judicial overreach,
knowledge over kangaroo courts,
liberty over limitation,
maturity over Mar-a-Lago,
normalcy over negativity,
opportunity over obstruction,
people over politics,
quality of life issues over QAnon,
reason over racism,
substance over slander,
triumph over tyranny,
understanding over ugliness,
voting rights over voter suppression,
working families over the well-connected,
xenial over xenophobia,
“Yes we can” over “You can do it,” and
zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.

We will always do the right thing by the American people, so ‘let us not grow weary of doing good for the American people who will reap the benefit of the harvest if we do not give up.’ God bless you, God Bless the house, and God bless the United States of America.

💙 YouTube/MSNBC: Jeffries thanks Pelosi before handing gavel to McCarthy
💽 https://youtu.be/-1It5Z7dfMY
// 16.36m; Amazing speech with alphabetical list of Democratic values

💙 🐣 RT @StandForBetter 🇺🇸FULL SPEECH:
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries opens the 118th Congress of The United States with one of the most amazing speeches I’ve ever heard.
💽 CLICK 👉 https://youtu.be/sfgek7nshkE

🐣 RT @ PaulaChertok Hakeem Jeffries ended his phenomenal speech by reciting Democratic principles in alliterative couplets in alphabetic order, literally going from A all the way to Z. What a star.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Pretty good finish
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1611608545115480064?s=20/photo/1

Galatians 6:9, ESV: And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (quoted by House Dem Leader Hakeem Jeffries after loss to McCarthy 2016/2012)

🐣 RT @mkraju McCarthy denies offering Matt Gaetz lchairmanship of a subcommittee in exchange for his ‘present‘ vote on Speaker. He said it would be up to the steering cmte to decide those appointments. ¤ “No one is promised anything,” McCarthy said. ¤ “Whatever happens in steering.”

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: The Republican leader claws his way to Speaker in a dramatic late-night vote. https://tinyurl.com/4mm77e9r ‘Rep Kevin McCarthy won election early Saturday as House speaker in a historic five-day, 15-ballot floor fight, after giving major concessions to right-wing holdouts’

🐣 RT @JaxAlemany Mike Rogers’ anger at Matt Gaetz likely stems from a potential offer, floated by Republican leadership, that would give Gaetz the gavel of a subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee, 2 ppl familiar tell me & @MariannaReports: [link]

🐣 RT @therecount Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) as he nominates Hakeem Jeffries [for 15th vote] for House Speaker: ¤ “Madame Clerk, I rise to say, ‘Wow.’”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1611588752098623488?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ MarkHertling As @POTUS mentioned in emotional remarks earlier this week, our allies around the world are not yet convinced we’re back. ¤ Tonight isn’t going to help further burnish our improving credentials on the world stage.

🐣 RT @RepSwalwell Two years ago insurrectionists failed to take over the Capitol. Tonight Kevin McCarthy let them take over the Republican Party.

🐣 RT @PreetBharara When McCarthy becomes the Speaker, who is really the Speaker
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance A head of lettuce

🐣 RT @djrothkopf The worst speaker elected by the worst people in the worst possible way.

🐣 RT @therecount Here’s a wild closeup of Rogers having to be held back as he confronted Gaetz:
⋙ 🐣 RT @andyharnik Rep. Hudson, R-N.C., left, pulls Rep. Rogers, R-Ala., as he confronts Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., during the 14th round of voting for speaker as the House meets for the fourth day to try and elect a speaker in Washington, Friday, Jan. 6, 2023. (@AP Photo/@andyharnik)
🖼 https://twitter.com/andyharnik/status/1611582256660758528?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 Jason Crowe [sp?] of Mil Personnel Subc on @msnbc worried Gaetz may have been given chairmanship of that subcommittee ¤ but ~ who knows?
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @bensiegel Looks like Gaetz and McCarthy just reached a deal to stay and vote. ¤ On CSPAN looked like McCarthy said “thank you” and Gaetz appeared to mouth the word “committee.” ¤ (He currents sits on Armed Services. The chairman of that committee, Mike Rogers, just lunged at him.)

🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar Russian and Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near #Kreminna & #Svatove. ¤ Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made gains in #Soledar as Russian offensive operations continued around #Bakhmut and the #Avdiivka-#Donetsk City area. http://isw.pub/UkrWar010623
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1611552422899466241?s=20/photo/1 -2

🐣 RT @fritzinmo JACK SMITH has added two longtime associates of the Justice Department to his team; Raymond Hulser, former chief of the DOJ’s public integrity section & David Harbach. ¤ Each specialize in public corruption and together they will lead the DOJ investigation of congressional members.

🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Discussed details of the new US package of security assistance for 🇺🇦 and next #Ramstein meeting with Lloyd J. Austin III. ¤ Largest 🇺🇸 aid package gives us new capabilities to liberate our territory in the East and South. Thank you to @POTUS @SecDef and the 🇺🇸 people. 🇺🇦 will win.
// Defense Budget ⇊
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1611477690460131363?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @apmassaro3 More than $3 billion in Russia-wrecking weapons for Ukraine. Merry Christmas from the USA
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1611461624417906688?s=20/photo/1
// Defense Budget

● 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles with 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and 250,000
rounds of 25mm ammunition;
● 100 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
● 55 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs);
● 138 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs);
● 18 155mm self-propelled Howitzers and 18 ammunition support vehicles;
● 70,000 155mm artillery rounds;
● 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
● 1.200 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems;
● 36 105mm towed Howitzers and 95,000 105mm artillery rounds;
● 10,000 120mm mortar rounds;
● Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
● RIM-7 missiles for air defense;
● 4,000 Zuni aircraft rockets:
● Approximately 2,000 anti-armor rockets;
● Sniper rifles, machine guns, and ammunition for grenade launchers and small arms;
● Claymore antipersonnel munitions;
● Night vision devices and optics;
● Spare parts and other field equipment.

📔 WaPo: Investigation shows the Jan. 6 attack was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event: Before, During, After [Interactive] https://tinyurl.com/4wrrkwkb

🖼 WaPo: ‘No pictures, no pictures’: The enduring images from Jan. 6 https://tinyurl.com/5t559w65 “These images — quickly transmitted on screens across the world — have come to define that day.”

🐣 RT @kenvogel It’s not just about personality: ¤ The emerging deal KEVIN McCARTHY is considering includes capping 2024 government spending at 2022 levels, which would mean a $75B cut in defense spending. ¤ The stock prices of defense contractors declined on the news.
⋙ Bloomberg: McCarthy’s Emerging Speaker Deal Tees Up $75 Billion Defense Cut https://tinyurl.com/298vnbxv

McCarthy’s idea won’t sit well with most GOP defense hawks on the armed services and appropriations panels, who for years have pushed for major increases in national security. Those lawmakers such as Michael McCaul and Mike Gallagher have so far backed McCarthy. It would also need to get signoff from Democrats and the Senate.

Indeed, one person familiar with the matter said the issue came up on a call McCarthy had with Republicans Friday and that defense hawks were concerned about it.

The 2023 spending boost underscored bipartisan concerns about rising inflation, strategic competition with China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was also the only way to receive Republican support for the annual defense authorization bill and the omnibus spending bill containing the Pentagon’s budget as well.

WaPo: Review of Jan. 6 cases finds judges give harsh lectures, lighter sentences https://tinyurl.com/2p8wtv4c //➔ I suppose it’s irrelevant to mention that 99% of the defendants are White Males, many middle-aged
// Judges have gone below prosecutors’ recommendations three-quarters of time, and below federal sentencing guidelines a little less than 40 percent

WaPo: Supporters raise millions to rebrand Jan. 6 rioters as ‘patriots’ https://tinyurl.com/8umycxrh “Right-wing supporters of the ‘Jan. Sixers’ have formed prayer chains, instigated letter writing campaigns, organized vigils and raised millions for their legal defense”

📋 January6thstats: 950 arrests; 284 assault charges, 99 weapons charges; 484 guilty pleas; 40 found guilty; police still looking for 350
// tags: Jan 6 stats January 6 stats; source: Twitter

🐣 📊 RT @YouGovAmerica On the second anniversary of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, our latest survey finds that the share of Americans who approve of the events of that day has increased by 11 points over the last two years. https://tinyurl.com/2p8ukub6
◕ https://twitter.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1611368237383536642?s=20/photo/1
// from 9% ➔ 20%

TheBulwark, Mark Hertling: What Bradley Fighting Vehicles Will Mean for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/33d5rvan “Giving Ukrainians Bradleys and other armored vehicles will transform the tactical capability of a technologically advanced maneuver force”; they’re a better fit now than the Abrams …
// The Bradley has the speed, range, and firepower to help Ukraine retake its territory.
⋙ 🐣 Hertling views the Bradleys as a transitional step to getting Abrams tanks in the future: “[L]ogistics networks don’t emerge overnight; they have to be designed, developed, tested, and optimized. Giving the Ukrainians Bradleys will begin the process of developing those logistics”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1611317508404822023?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] Yes, the Abrams would be even more of a boon to the Ukrainians than the Bradley. But the Abrams is a more complicated machine. Each Bradley needs not only soldiers to operate it, but soldiers to repair it, fuel it, and deliver spare parts and tools and ammunition and fuel to where the Bradleys are, which, hopefully, is constantly moving. For the Abrams, the fuel requirements are greater, the ammunition is heavier, there are more parts, and the turbine engine is more complicated than the Bradley’s diesel. Moreover, at up to 74 tons, the thing itself is harder to transport.

⭕ 5 Jan 2023

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Germany now says it will soon be independent of Russian energy. It’s taken a year, while Merkel had 16 years and said it was impossible! As welcome as all these moves are to finally stand up to Russia, they expose the appeasement of previous admins.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: What the heck does ‘weaponizing the federal government’ even mean? https://tinyurl.com/4mkad4wk “Their party of nihilists insists that legitimate functions of government amount to tyranny, while their own abuse of power represents the will of ‘real Americans’”

🐣 RT @MaxKennerly If this deal goes through it’s a reminder that there are no “moderate” Republicans. It’d just take a few voting for Jeffries to maintain sanity, but they—every single Republican—would rather put MAGA extremists in charge than moderate Democrats.
⋙ 🐣 RT @costareports If this deal goes thru and McCarthy become speaker, you’re looking at a House where McCarthy is speaker and/but the Freedom Caucus is at the table on all big things: rules for floor, standoffs on budgets, and spreading HFC moves to key fiscal committees (approps, budget, etc.)…
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @costareports It’s comparable as one person puts it to Boehner welcoming the Tea Party into the leadership in 2011 and making the RSC’s right wing a powerful force on all tricky fiscal and spending items… others say it could tie McCarthy’s hands in terms of any deals with President Biden…

🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar 🎄FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! Tomorrow is Sviatyi Vechir (Holy Evening) and Saturday is Christmas day for many Ukrainians including myself! In this thread I will share our Christmas traditions! 1/14
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1611219861362954242?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @WarintheFuture The announcements in the past day of infantry fighting vehicles being sent to #Ukraine represent an increase in capability for Ukraine’s soldiers, and a change in mindset in the Western leaders. What does this mean for 2023? 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1611118392299393024?s=20
⋙ WaPo: U.S. and Germany will send armored combat vehicles to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yeyt554m
// France has also pledged light tanks, as the West marks another major shift in military equipment for Kyiv

🐣 RT @tribelaw Oath-Keeper Caleb “Berry testified this week that the extremists hatched an explicit plan to enter the Capitol and stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.” ¤ No riot gone awry but a premeditated plot — a seditious conspiracy.
⋙ WaPo: At trial, Oath Keeper alleges specific plan to stop vote count https://tinyurl.com/2yrbm5rc Caleb Berry, 21, “testified this week that the extremists hatched an explicit plan to enter the Capitol and stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory”

🐣 RT @WhiteHouse President Biden announced new actions today to limit illegal immigration, expand legal pathways to enter the U.S., and increase border security.
⋙ WhiteHouse: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Border Enforcement Actions https://tinyurl.com/dsvvbk28

🐣 RT @Acyn Tucker: Every one of them wants to win elections. By that measure, Kevin McCarthy has underwhelmed, the red wave that we were all promised, remember that? It didn’t materialize. The midterms were a crushing disappointment.
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1611168531487330304?s=20/photo/1

Politico: Biden to mark Jan. 6 anniversary by warning the Big Lie remains https://tinyurl.com/yth856np
// The president is planning a solemn address to mark the events of two years ago.

🐣 RT @djrothkopf McCsrthy is not a man, he’s a mouse. He folds whenever challenged. If somehow he ekes out a win he will have won nothing at all. He won’t be Speaker. He’ll be the Squeaker of the House.

😅 RT @Havoc_Six Ukraine officially responds to Putin’s request for a Christmas “ceasefire” (2023, colorized)
🖼 https://twitter.com/Havoc_Six/status/1611101735212154880?s=20/photo/1
// “Crossing the Delaware” with Zelensky as Washington

🐣 RT @wartranslated Igor Girkin is in shock over Putin’s “ceasefire” decision, wonders if the Russian Armed Forces will like it, says Putin’s path to Hague just got much shorter due to Ukraine being able to strengthen its positions in those 36 hours.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1611134795299389440?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @MichaelPascoe01 “The Republican Party isn’t really a governing party anymore. It’s an incubator for right-wing celebrities.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ AlfredSpellman “Republicans created a cult of personality around Trump. And now that Trump is off the main stage, the cult no longer has a personality. It’s just a cult with lots of zealotry but no actual tenets or beliefs.” — @MollyJongFast [link]

DailyMail [UK]: The race to overthrow Putin and take his Kremlin crown has begun, says former Russian defence minister who warned Russia is facing ‘military catastrophe’ https://tinyurl.com/3p3x96cx ‘The fight for the political Olympus has begun,’ former loyalist Igor Strelkov said
● Former loyalist Igor Strelkov said ‘the fight for the political Olympus has begun’
● He said various figures in the regime are already tussling for the top job
● Wagner private army head Yevgeny Prigozhin is one of those involved, he said

🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “We now have a united Ukraine. We will build a new state, a dream country” – President @ZelenskyyUa
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1610903927838445568?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @k_sonin A new dispatch by @KyivIndependent’s war reporter @IAPonomarenko from Bakhmut[.] I thought that the epoch of reporters-soldiers – think Churchill in India and South Africa in late 19th century – has been long gone, yet here is a fine example that it hasn’t.
⋙ KyivIndependent, Illia Ponomarenko: As the Battle of Bakhmut nears culmination, Ukraine’s artillery gasps for more ammo https://tinyurl.com/58wt63ht “The apocalyptic streets are empty and silent, except for the roar of artillery guns and the buzz of drones high above”

⭕ 4 Jan 2023

NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Leopards Eat Kevin McCarthy’s Face https://tinyurl.com/mpj6nm7n “As we approach the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, it’s been grimly amusing to see that the party of insurrection can’t even manage the orderly transfer of power to itself.”

WSJ: Ukraine Sees Signs of Russia Shifting Front-Line Firepower Away From Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/yt7bjr95 “The Ukrainian commanders say Russia has instead repositioned armored vehicles and artillery fire toward the nearby town of Soledar”
// Resistance has forced Moscow to temper its assault on the eastern city and shift to surrounding areas, Ukrainian officers say

🧵 RT @Rail_splitter1 I want to make a point about something that is a bit subtle and not often well understood. It’s said that Putin is after resurrecting the Soviet Union. That isn’t the case. It’s actually worse than that.
📌 https://twitter.com/Rail_splitter1/status/1610648402882334720?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/mbdh426p
⋙ 🐣 RT @Rail_splitter1 […] So this is why Putin hates the Soviet Union. He loves the dominance of the “Great Russian bullies” but he thinks it did not go nearly far enough. His vision is a profound danger to the world. He and those who this vision animates and inspires must be stopped. [End]

😅 RT @pourmecoffee
– Sculpture of Hunter Biden’s laptop in rotunda
– Kanye. Elon. Trump. to replace E Pluribus Unum on Great Seal
– Mandatory Measles and Whooping Cough parties
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkrajuNews: McCarthy proposes key concessions.
– allow just one member to call for a vote to oust a speaker, per two sources
– more members of Freedom Caucus to serve on powerful House Rules Committee
– Promises to vote on some bills like term limits and border security
w/ @MZanona

🐣 RT @McFaul Agreed. Time for Putin and the world to take @ZelenskyyUa’s peace formula seriously. ¤ The longer people wait, the more people will die.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndriyYermak .@ZelenskyyUa’s peace formula is the way to end the war. It provides for 🇺🇦 victory, the return of 🇺🇦 territories, restoring justice and rules-based world order.

💙😅😜 RT @ryanjreilly Once described #SeditionHunters work as an interactive, high-stakes and soul-crushing version of Where’s Waldo, and now there’s this. ¤ The details! The research! Impressive.
🖼 https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1610757611317780483?s=20/photo/1
⋙ BrianMichaelWeaver[.]com: Sedition Hunters https://tinyurl.com/59m7965w
// tags: game puzzle poster: Where’s Waldo-like matching game about January 6th
[ See comments‼️]

This is a meticulously researched illustration/puzzle of the violence, ridiculousness, weapons, and people that took part in the January 6th Insurrection. Almost EVERYTHING you see here actually happened! EVERYONE you see here is an actual person that took part! See it BIG here! And see the Checklist BIG here!

It took me months not just because of the amount of drawing, but more so because I wanted to make sure that I got ALL the important facts, and people, right.

I’m revealing it just ahead of the two-year anniversary. And I’ll be releasing it as a poster and a jigsaw puzzle very soon, for purchase. Stay tuned for that!

And don’t forget to do the checklist! Tag me @brianmichaelweaver when you’re done! #insurrectionchecklist

⋙ 🐣 RT @capitolhunters It’s actually not bad! As long as you accept the creative license that the top half and bottom half of the picture are offset. They have several recognizable figures in more or less the right places and doing more or less what they did on Jan 6.

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA /2110 UTC 4 JAN/ N of Kremenna, the UKR Army’s 518th Field Batt is reported to be advancing on Pischane. S. of Kremenna, following heavy fighting near Bilohorvika yesterday, UKR’s 81st Air Mobile Brig. counter-attacked Wagner group units in the vicinity of Shypylivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1610743754519887873?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1510 UTC 4 JAN/ Heavy fighting is reported as RU forces have continue a series of company / platoon-sized engagements during the last 36 hours. N of the urban area, RU troops are assaulting Bakhmutse. RU units also attacked across the T-13-02 HWY toward Podhorodne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1610653467344764930?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: As McCarthy struggles in House, McConnell to appear with Biden in Kentucky https://tinyurl.com/49dwxme3 ‘While McCarthy struggles to build support from hard-right members, McConnell is trying to promote bipartisanship and show that Republicans can govern’
// Allies see the Senate GOP leader showing a different vision for his party

⭕ 3 Jan 2023

Politico Mag, John Harris: After Another Failed Vote, McCarthy’s Speaker Bid Is Starting to Look Pathetic https://tinyurl.com/5c2dwazv “By any historical standard, … vivid evidence that one chamber of the national legislature is essentially ungovernable is a high-water moment.”
// A purely transactional approach to politics can only get you so far, especially in today’s Republican Party.

Politico: Biden world both humored and terrified by McCarthy meltdown https://tinyurl.com/43n3tuhu “[L]ast month’s passage of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package [was] an achievement propelled in large part by Senate Republicans who foresaw the coming chaos”
// The president’s aides saw the failed House speaker votes as a political opportunity for them, but also as an ominous sign of battles to come.
✛ “Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the hard-liners refusing to back McCarthy … belittled the coming GOP investigations of Hunter Biden and other matters as ‘theater pretending to be oversight’”

… For whatever headaches a Republican-controlled House will create for President Joe Biden through investigations and its ability to control the floor, the disorder and rancor likely to characterize the new GOP majority, administration aides believe, will benefit the president politically. …

Biden’s first big event of the year Wednesday, a trip to Kentucky to highlight a long-sought bridge repair alongside Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, will typify his approach over the year ahead: focusing on the increasingly tangible benefits from the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure overhaul and last year’s bills to boost semiconductor manufacturing, lower drug costs and hasten the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. Two border-state governors, Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear and Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, will also attend the event, allowing Biden to underline the bipartisan nature of the law responsible for fixing the Brent Spence Bridge.

And on Friday, the president will mark the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection with a speech at the White House. The occasion will provide another chance to articulate a view about the sanctity of American democracy — while reminding the country which party was responsible.

Staffers who spoke more candidly, on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that bipartisan legislation will be more difficult with Republicans controlling the House, however narrow and fractious their majority. Debt ceiling fights become even trickier when there is no order at all.

That said, some aides remain cautiously optimistic that some GOP lawmakers from more competitive districts will be incentivized to work across the aisle. Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a post-election bulletin to reporters that the House Republicans who voted for the president’s infrastructure law in 2021 all won reelection in November. …

If House Republicans follow through on promises to roll-back elements of the Inflation Reduction Act and weaken remaining abortion protections, the White House is confident that those efforts will benefit Democrats politically, not to mention be blocked by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the hard-liners refusing to back McCarthy, dismissed such actions as “messaging bills” during a press conference Tuesday. And, in a comment sure to be clipped and saved by the White House press shop, belittled the coming GOP investigations of Hunter Biden and other matters as “theater pretending to be oversight.”

And there is no immediate threat of a government shutdown after last month’s passage of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, an achievement propelled in large part by Senate Republicans who foresaw the coming chaos of a GOP-controlled House. In fact, as McCarthy struggled to secure the speaker’s gavel Tuesday, some Senate Republicans expressed vindication about having passed the bipartisan legislation last year, spiking the football on House Republicans harder than anyone at the White House did.

“I’ve been told you shouldn’t vote for the $1.7 trillion spending bill because the House is Republican, they’ll make it better,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I don’t think that theory is holding up too well.”

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress More than a million Russians have called, texted or visited the website of a Ukrainian hotline that allows them to surrender, with many seeking a way to avoid going to war, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, according to the hotline.
⋙ ABCNews: Ukraine offers Russian soldiers a hotline to surrender https://tinyurl.com/mr38d8fr
// Ukrainian drones greet Russian defectors as they cross into enemy lines.

NYT, Carl Hulse: Speaker Fight Reveals a Divided and Disoriented House Majority https://tinyurl.com/3y7b4b7d “[W]hoever emerges [as Speaker] will face deep-seated resistance when trying to shepherd spending bills and other measures that are fundamental to governance”
// In failing to coalesce around Kevin McCarthy for speaker, Republicans showcased divisions that portend real difficulties in governing.

🐣 RT @fasc1nate How Europe’s borders have changed over time
💽 🌎 🌀https://twitter.com/fasc1nate/status/1610481381770989570?s=20/photo/1
// timelapse map of Europe

🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar Russian Mobilization & Force Generation Update: Systemic failures in #Russia’s force generation apparatus continue to plague personnel capabilities to the detriment of Russian operational capacity in #Ukraine. http://isw.pub/UkrWar010323
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1610471606442147841?s=20/photo/1
// Ru training failures, lack of ammo, equipment

WSJ: Ukraine Has Digitized Its Fighting Forces on a Shoestring https://tinyurl.com/3cu3c98c “Ukraine’s success cobbling together a virtual command-and-control system on the fly offers valuable lessons … , particularly about the need to experiment and include nonmilitary experts”
// Kyiv’s forces networked under Russian attack, achieving a cut-priced ‘MacGyver’ version of systems the Pentagon has spent decades developing

😅 RT @leahmcelrath “Are you not entertained?”
💽 https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1610398010864799744?s=20/photo/1
// meme from Gladiator

💙 KyivIndependent: Hell in high definition: Inside front-line aerial unit surveilling battle of Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/y5bd5vzs ‘As Russia continues to assault Bakhmut, the site of some of the heaviest hostilities along the entire front line, drone teams are not short of work’

🐣 RT @grahworin Extremely insightful Bakhmut update from “Witch” 03-01-23. ¤ She tells us that Ukrainian positions are holding against the suicidal attacks of the invaders but it’s difficult. She also explains the reason behind such suicidal attacks and how the invaders have no other choice. 😳1/2
💽 https://twitter.com/grahworin/status/1610333385838182403?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @grahworin part 2
💽 https://twitter.com/grahworin/status/1610334185297674244?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @auto_glam Bakhmut. Few people know that Bakhmut is a very old town and it was (AND IT IS) a fortress.
🌎 https://twitter.com/auto_glam/status/1610429972295946242?s=20/photo/1 -2

HuffPo: A Far-Right Gang Of House Members Will Hold Power Over Their Caucus — With A Megaphone https://tinyurl.com/2s4jh3f3
// The GOP lawmakers, who have spent years becoming far-right influencers, are poised to hold a concerning amount of control over the new Congress.

🔆 This❗️⋙ Reuters: Special Report: Pro-Putin operatives in Germany work to turn Berlin against Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/ycyutv5d “Reuters has established the identities of key figures involved in pushing a pro-Moscow stance inside Germany”
// In Germany some are clamouring for a change in course on Ukraine. Key figures in the campaign have links to the Russian state or far right, a Reuters investigation has found.

🐣 RT @BBCWorld Russia points fingers after deadliest Ukraine attack ¤ Participants lay flowers near the Eternal Flame memorial in Samara, Russia, January 3, 2023
⋙ BBC: Makiivka: Russia points fingers after deadliest Ukraine attack https://tinyurl.com/466xjm5d
// The deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers at Makiivka in Ukraine prompt recriminations in Russia.

🐣 RT @Bear_Faced Having just lost 600 of his soldiers billeted conveniently compactly altogether at a college in #Makiivka you wouldn’t think Sergui Shoigu would have much to sing about let alone be out of uniform. #Himars #SlavaUkraini

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA AXIS /1515 UTC 3 JAN/ West of the P-66 HWY, RU forces have attempted to stage attacks at Ploschanka. Shelling continues along the line of contact, following heavy fighting near Dibrova on 1-2 JAN. FEBA assessed to be E of Dibrova.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1610293123564838912?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS /1630 UTC 3 JAN/ RU has renewed a series attacks across the H-26 HWY NW of Svatove. The UKR Khartia Battalion is engaged heavily with 22nd Guard Spetsnaz Brigade in the vicinity of Kryvoshyivka. UKR UAV destroys RU ammo dump near Svatove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1610308850468388864?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS / 1450 UTC 3 JAN/ On 2 JAN, RU forces staged an attack across the T-13-02 toward Krasna Hora. UKR troops were also reported in contact at Podhorodne. South of the H-32 HWY, RU forces continue attempts to register an advance in the western industrial area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1610271273719943168?s=20/photo/1

TheGuardian: ‘Every house a fortress’: Wagner leader counts cost as Russia stalls in Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/2em9k4pb “Yevgeny Prigozhin has said his fighters have sometimes spent weeks attempting to capture a single house in the key contested Donbas city”
// Grim footage shows Yevgeny Prigozhin visiting basement filled with dead fighters near Ukraine’s eastern front

🐣 RT @ NTenzer The litmus test for the US and the EU is now, not tomorrow: ¤ either we provide #Ukraine with all the military means to swiftly defeat #Russia, or we will be held guilty before history and humanity. ¤ We cannot remain halfway neither morally nor—maybe more importantly—strategically.

🐣 RT @ DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 03 January 2023 ¤ Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/s5V050MgXZK 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1610156607773544451?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] INTELLIGENCE UPDATE
● In mid-December, Russian military and Wagner proxy forces likely increased the frequency of their infantry assaults around the Donetsk Oblast town of Bakhmut. However, many of these operations were poorly supported.

● Over the last ten days, Ukraine has committed significant reinforcements to defend the sector and the frequency of Russian assaults have likely reduced from the peak in mid December. Both sides have suffered high casualties.

● Russian offensive operations in the area are now likely being conducted at only platoon or section level. It is unlikely Russia will achieve a significant breakthrough near Bakhmut in the coming weeks.

🐣 RT @gchahal JUST IN: #BNNRussia Reports. ¤ The Russian military is experiencing difficulties with the capture of Bakhmut because of the “500 lines of defense” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said Yevgeny Prigozhin. ¤ #Russia #War #RussiaUkraineWar
🖼 https://twitter.com/gchahal/status/1610208546263822336?s=20/photo/1

‼️ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Prigozhin tells why they can’t take Bakhmut. “We storm every house for several days or even weeks, and there are 500+ of them. We don’t have the equipment and even hundreds of shells won’t make us move faster.” ¤ 👍
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1610209327851229186?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Prigozhin has no clue how well Bakhmut is defended and how many soldiers are literally everywhere.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ danielberk10 “linia abarone” –> defensive line. ¤ I am so involved in this war that I am starting to understand Russian 🤔 ¤ Remarkable how honest Prigozhin is. Means he has no other option, because honesty is usually the very last path Russian leaders choose. So, this is good news!

🐣 RT @general_ben A reason I’m sure Ukraine will win…the Russian military is not a learning organization. Failing to ensure field discipline and force protection in the combat zone after ten months of heavy losses is evidence they have no good Sergeants or the culture to learn from mistakes.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Ukrainian HIMARS continue to conduct strikes on large bases of Russian forces many kilometres behind the frontline. ¤ These bases often have large amounts of soldiers and equipment stationed at them with little regard for camouflage or dispersing sleeping quarters
⋙ 🐣 RT @general_ben Another reason Ukraine will win. Some fit-looking, military-age males there singing along with Minister Shoigu. Russians have no stomach for this fight; they lack the Will and are content to send plenty of men from areas far away from Moscow and St Petersburg to the meatgrinder.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JayinKyiv As Russia spent $1,000,000,000 on a 2 day missle/drone barrage across Ukraine, and had 400 Russians soldiers HIMARS’d in Makiivka, billionaire Russian Defense Minister Shoigu was partying, nostalgic barbarian style at a Moscow restaraunt that only Putin cronies can afford.
💽 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1609976577764515842?s=20/photo/1

⭕ 2 Jan 2023

(📊) ForeignPolicy, Raphael Cohen: The Myth of America’s Ukraine Fatigue https://tinyurl.com/2h6zrhjt “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was more than just a dispute of borders and political allegiances: It was an attack on the liberal international order itself”
// No, the U.S. public isn’t giving up on Ukraine.

Much of the concern about the United States suffering from war fatigue stems from a series of polls of the American electorate that found popular support for Ukraine slipping. Separate surveys from the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute found that, while an overwhelming majority of Americans still backed Ukraine and believed Russia was the aggressor, a growing minority—particularly among Republicans—believed the United States was providing too much aid and that the war was costing the United States too much.

These numbers need to be taken in context. First, in absolute terms, support for Ukraine among Americans remains relatively robust—hovering at 57 percent or more, depending on the poll. This is a remarkable fact, particularly now that the war is nearly a year old. Nor is it unusual for there to be a partisan skew in opinion on a war. Conflicts—including in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—often begin with support from both sides of the aisle. But as wars draw on, and as the original motive for the intervention begins to fade from collective memory, partisan divides creep in.

Yet U.S. political support for Ukraine remains bipartisan. Congress passed multiple aid packages for Ukraine by bipartisan majorities multiple times this year, including another $45 billion as part of a broader government funding bill last week. And although there have been calls by some on the right for more scrutiny of Ukraine aid, Zelensky received a warm welcome from both sides of the aisle when he addressed a joint meeting of Congress.

Political support for Ukraine will in all likelihood continue. True, the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in November, and likely Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy promised that Ukraine would no longer receive a “blank check.” And yes, some of Ukraine’s staunchest legislative supporters will not return for the next congressional session. But at the same time, some of the candidates from the Republican Party’s isolationist wing lost their bids in November. And plenty of Republican leaders still support more Ukraine military aid, even if they want increased oversight about how that money is spent.

What’s more, U.S. foreign policy has rarely perfectly followed the polls. Although successive presidential administrations have complained about the “blob” or “deep state” that blocks their foreign-policy agendas, the fact remains that Americans, for the most part, have allowed their leaders more latitude on foreign than domestic matters. That’s partly because Americans tend to care less about foreign-policy issues than they do about domestic ones—particularly those that directly impact their pocketbooks. …

Another thing worth remembering is that Americans hate to lose. Case in point: Americans overwhelmingly approved then-President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq in 2011—only to slam his handling of Iraq when the Islamic State nearly overran the country in 2014. President Joe Biden’s own tenure follows a similar course: Americans supported withdrawing from Afghanistan, but they blamed him for the debacle that followed. In war, from a purely political perspective, it’s usually safer for politicians to stay the course. …

Finally, the most important reason to be skeptical of Americans’ supposed Ukraine fatigue is, quite simply, that there is no such thing. Americans are not, in literal fact, exhausted by this war. With the possible exception of the handful of U.S. policymakers directly engaged in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, as well as those U.S. forces elsewhere in Europe providing security assistance and humanitarian relief, few Americans are actively engaged in the conflict. The United States is not suffering losses on the battlefield, nor is it enduring energy shortages. For most Americans, gas prices today average a few cents less than a year ago. And Americans aren’t paying higher taxes due to the war, either. Since Congress does not need to balance the federal budget, aid for Ukraine is not coming at the expense of domestic spending, at least for the moment. …

In other words, the United States’ Ukraine fatigue is more myth than reality. This has important implications for the war itself. Right now, Russia’s strategy seems to be largely based on protraction: Let the war grind on, and eventually the United States and its allies will lose interest, and the Ukrainians will cave. In all likelihood, this strategy will not work. If past is precedent, and present trends continue, it could be years before any of the declines in the American public’s support actually result in a change of policy.

At the same time, these polls should be a clarion call for U.S. leaders and the United States’ allies and partners all over the world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was more than just a dispute of borders and political allegiances: It was an attack on the liberal international order itself. To their great credit, democracies all over the world responded appropriately. As the war drags on, the leaders of the free world need to remind their publics what is at stake in Ukraine—not just for European and global security, but for democracy at large.

Zelensky’s visit to Washington was one important step in reminding Americans what is at stake, but it was only a beginning. The war in Ukraine, unfortunately, does not seem likely to end soon. As long as the fight continues on the battlefield, the battle for Western opinion must go on as well.

🐣 RT @igorsushko As always, retired 3-star General Ben Hodges @general_ben, who commanded US Army Europe until 2017, knocked it out of the park. Fantastic and succinct assessment of the situation in #Ukraine, and what must be done.
💽 [12.24m] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1610173194077630464?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 it seems like the retired military leadership (at least those on Twitter and @msnbc), agree w @general_ben on most of these points: it’s the current leadership and the NSCouncil that I worry about, particularly @JakeSullivan46 and @thejointstaff #MarkMilley ¤ #SupportUkraine

🐣 RT @igorsushko As always, retired 3-star General Ben Hodges @general_ben, who commanded US Army Europe until 2017, knocked it out of the park. Fantastic and succinct assessment of the situation in #Ukraine, and what must be done.
💽 [12.24m] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1610173194077630464?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChristopherJM .@FT editorial board: “The goal for 2023 must be to give Kyiv all the aid it needs to bring the conflict to an end—on its terms.” ¤ “Ukraine’s people were in 2022 an example to the world of fortitude and resilience. They deserve redoubled support in 2023.”
⋙ FT Editorial: Turning the tide in Russia’s war on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/sspm3889
// Goal for 2023 must be to give Kyiv the means to end the conflict on its terms

NYT: Deadly Strike on Russians in Ukraine Exposes Moscow’s Military Failings https://tinyurl.com/ykphtv8b “Pro-war Russian bloggers and some government officials said the debacle was caused by the military’s own repeated and costly mistakes”
// A Ukrainian attack with U.S.-made rockets may have left hundreds of casualties, and pro-war Russians accused their military commanders of repeating fatal errors.

The strike by the HIMARS rockets killed 63 Russian soldiers in a building housing them in the occupied city of Makiivka, in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday — an unusual admission for a military that has often refused to acknowledge serious losses. A former Russian paramilitary commander in Ukraine, Igor Girkin, wrote on the Telegram app that “many hundreds” were dead and wounded and that many “remained under the rubble.”

Ukrainian military officials said it appeared that “about 400” Russian troops had been killed, though they did not explicitly say that Kyiv was behind the attack. ¤ None of the claims could be independently verified, but even the lowest number would represent one of the worst Russian losses in a single episode in the war, and an embarrassment for President Vladimir V. Putin. He has vowed repeatedly to correct the glaring errors and weaknesses in his armed forces that the war has exposed, and in a New Year’s Eve speech filmed at a military base, Mr. Putin told the families of soldiers killed in the fighting, “I share your pain with all my heart.”

Pro-war Russian bloggers and some government officials said the debacle was caused by the military’s own repeated and costly mistakes, like garrisoning troops in a dense concentration within range of Ukrainian artillery, placing them in the same building as an ammunition depot, and allowing them to use cellphones, whose signals the Ukrainians can use to zero in on their target. ¤ “Our generals are untrainable in principle,” wrote Mr. Girkin, who has used the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov.

The deadly attack on Russian forces in Makiivka used the HIMARS rocket artillery to hit a vocational school where troops were housed, Moscow said. The Russian Defense Ministry said that four HIMARS rockets had hit the building, and that two others had been shot down by Russian air defenses. …

As pro-war bloggers and officials reacted with fury, video posted on social media showed firefighters amid the ruins of the structure, reduced to smoking piles of rubble. The bloggers have become influential opinion-makers in Russia amid the censorship of mainstream media. ¤ Mr. Girkin, the blogger and former paramilitary commander, wrote that the vocational school in Makiivka had been “almost completely destroyed” because “ammunition stored in the same building” detonated in the strike. …

The HIMARS system is most effective when used against stationary targets that can be identified in advance and pinpointed, such as ammunition dumps, infrastructure or troop concentrations. The United States has so far supplied Ukraine with at least 20 HIMARS systems, which are made by Lockheed Martin. …

⋙ 😅 a #NAFO fella made this (two step 2s prove it’s not CIA, (which doesn’t exist))
// “How to Build Your Own Russian Barracks”
🖼 ◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1610172638692786176?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @nexta_tv 🤡”Life is vastly overrated” ¤ The propagandists continue to carry Putin’s philosophy that Russians have only one way – to the grave. ¤ But it is unclear why, if Solovyov thinks his life is overrated, he continues to sit in the studio instead of fertilizing the Ukrainian soil?
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1609946945014874112?s=20/photo/1

😅 RT @visegrad24 Zelensky cracking some jokes after Putin stated that “Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities”. ¤ This was after Russia’s annexation of Crimea
💽 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1610060458941190146?s=20/photo/1

WaPo: Dozens of Russian soldiers killed in massive Donetsk missile strike https://tinyurl.com/3wkexsws “Without claiming responsibility for the attack, Kyiv’s military command said that at least 400 soldiers were killed in the attack in Makiivka”; most were fresh conscripts

🧵 RT @TrentTelenko This is going to be an extended [thread] on consequences of Russian casualty rates on its culture and what it means for Russo-Ukrainian War termination. ¤ What was notable about the 2014-to-2015 Donbass War/ATO was that more Russian troops were killed than the total number of…1/22
📌 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1610024657364598785?s=20

🐣 RT @MikeSington 2023 is going to be an amazing and historic year. Expect a former president of the United States to be arrested, put on trial, convicted, and incarcerated for the rest of his life.

🐣 RT @ Ukrainene Russian Rybar report At the moment, the most likely offensive site is the direction of #Kreminna. Now #UkrainianArmy is conducting an active counter-battery fight and searching for artillery firing points and air defense position areas. ¤ He believes that will soon begin 🇺🇦💪 ¤ ⌛⌛
🌎 https://twitter.com/Ukrainene/status/1609993823387783169?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @DancehallHeat BREAKING NEWS…. FREEDOM 🇺🇦🤘¤ Velikiy Potemkinsky Island, south of Kherson, returned to the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. From there, the city was bombarded with mortars. ¤ Today, Zelensky also signed a decree on the creation of the Oleshkiv city military administration

🐣 RT @MikeSington Hope Hicks’ post Jan 6 texts revealed: ¤ “All of us who didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed.” “I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “This made us unemployable, untouchable. God, I’m so fucking mad.”

🐣 RT @front_ukrainian Strelkov-Girkin [@girkingirkin] reports hundreds of deaths as a result of a strike on the location of Russian Chmobiks in Makeevka # Complains that the orcs thought of placing the BC in the same building, so the New Year’s fireworks were only brighter
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1609852300951953408?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] According to Makiivka, briefly: ¤ I received information about the defeat of the object around 01.12.2023 at one in the morning. ¤ The facility, which housed the N-th division, consisting mainly of mobilized citizens of the Russian Federation, was almost completely destroyed as a result of the detonation of the BC [ammunition] stored in the same building. Almost all the military equipment that stood right next to the building without the slightest sign of disguise was also destroyed.

In terms of the number of victims, there are still no final figures, since many people are listed as missing (remained under the rubble). In any case, the number of dead and wounded goes to many hundreds (approximate numbers of “200s are available, but I will not
voice them).

I was WARNED that this could happen again AT ANY TIME, since this is not the only such (extremely dense) deployment of personnel and equipment in the zone of destruction of Hymers missiles. And – yes – this is not the first such case – last year there were also quite a few of them. Although, as a rule, still with fewer victims. But our generals are untrainable in principle, although they themselves – after the summer “pogroms of headquarters” – prefer to stay away from the location of entrusted troops – outside the radius of destruction of enemy
missiles.

⭕ 1 Jan 2023

DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Why Trump’s Reign of Republican Terror Is Really Ending https://tinyurl.com/564n3847 “The midterms turned out to be a repudiation of Trumpism, and the absence of a red wave was a breaking point for many Republicans … [L]osing elections was a bridge too far”
// He always seems to prove the haters wrong. Don’t count on that this time.

🐣 RT @Tendar The Russian base in Makiivka is but dust. HIMARS have delivered absolute carnage. An expected response for the Russian Shahed terror attacks on New Years Eve and the newest reminder that no matter where Russians position themselves, they are not safe. #Ukraine #Donetsk #Makiivka

🧵 RT @igorsushko Armed Forces of #Ukraine struck a large Russian base in #Makeevka in occupied #Donetsk, reporting that up to 400 Russian soldiers have been killed and another 300 injured. ¤ Excellent use of Precision Guided Munitions, probably #HIMARS or #M270.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1609688836967378950?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko UPDATE: Russian Army Command was stupid enough to gather countless hundreds of soldiers for the #NewYear celebration at School #19 in Makeevka in Donetsk. City occupied by #Russia since 2014. #Ukraine leveled the entire structure with multiple GMLRS strikes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko UPDATE 2: It appears an entire Russian battalion based out of #Saratov was annihilated with this precision strike. ¤ Rumors non-dead Russian military commanders involved in planning the party are intending to commit suicide. ¤ Location only 12 miles from Ukrainian military positions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko UPDATE 3: The precision strike took place at exactly 00:01 on January 1st completely leveling the 3-story building which sat on 12,750 ft2 (1,185 m2), with an entire Russian battalion from #Saratov gathered inside for a #NewYear party, just 12 miles away from the front.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko UPDATE 4: Of course there’s video of the #HIMARS launch that annihilated hundreds of Russian soldiers partying on #NewYear in occupied #Makeevka. Incredible.
// 💽 HIMARS with Christmas lights; soldier in Santa hat

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote WOW: A John McEntee hand-written note shows donald threatened to FIRE the secretary of the army if he made anymore statements saying the military doesn’t have a role in elections. I’m threading about this now and will release more shortly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Here’s the thread.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote McEntees OWN NOTE said “Chris Miller spoke to McCarthy and anticipates no more statements coming out. If another happens, he will FIRE THEM”. McEntee doesn’t recall, but confirms it’s his handwriting. THE NOTE HAD BEEN TORN UP AND TAPED BACK TOGETHER BY ARCHIVES. 19/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1608922431024140289?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @viccan1 [Reply To:] @MuellerSheWrote ‘Connect the dots’.. ¤ Christopher Miller, Trumps ‘acting’ SoD sent this memorandum to the SoA on..Jan 4th. ¤ He hobbled any possible National Guard response to the riot ¤ Miller is…COMPLICIT
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/viccan1/status/1608974143466405892?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @viccan1 [To:] @MuellerSheWrote ‘Connect the dots’.. ¤ Christopher Miller, Trumps ‘acting’ SoD sent this memorandum to the SoA on..Jan 4th. ¤ He hobbled any possible National Guard response to the riot ¤ Miller is…COMPLICIT
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/viccan1/status/1608974143466405892?s=20/photo/1

[Text:] MEMORANDUM FOR SECRETARY OF THE ARMY
SUBJECT: Employment Guidance for the District of Columbia National Guard
This memorandum responds to your January 4, 2021 memorandum regarding the District
of Columbia request for District of Columbia National Guard (DCNG) support in response to
planned demonstrations from January 5-6, 2021. You are authorized to approve the requested
support, subject to my guidance below and subject to consultation with the Attorney General, as
required by Executive Order 11485.
Without my subsequent, personal authorization, the DCNG is not authorized the following:
• To be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, or ballistic protection equipment
such as helmets and body armor.
• To interact physically with protestors, except when necessary in self-defense or
defense of others, consistent with the DCNG Rules for the Use of Force.
• To employ any riot control agents.
• To share equipment with law enforcement agencies.
• To use Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets or to conduct ISR
or Incident, Awareness, and Assessment activities.
To employ helicopters or any other air assets.
• To conduct searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.
• To seek support from any non-DCNG National Guard units.
At all times, the DCNG will remain under the operational and administrative command
and control of the Commanding General of the DCNG, who reports to the Secretary of Defense
through the Secretary of the Army.
You may employ the DCNG Quick Reaction Force (QRF) only as a last resort and in
response to a request from an appropriate civil authority. If the QRF is so employed, DCNG
personnel will be clearly marked and/or distinguished from civilian law enforcement personnel,
and you will notify me immediately upon your authorization.
[Signed:] Christopher C. Miller

Politico: Conservatives’ latest McCarthy ask: A broad Biden admin investigation https://tinyurl.com/5xme2ndu //➔The rightwing extremists w control over McCarthy need to look around & see that the country as a whole did not produce a “Red Wave” & rejected MAGAism: this will backfire
// Opponents and on-the-fence Republicans want him to set up a select committee that would probe what they term “weaponized government.”

Conservatives say they want to model the panel off the 1970s Church Committee, which conducted a landmark investigation that uncovered significant surveillance abuses among the intelligence community and the IRS, leading to the formation of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But it’s a high bar that’s almost certain to fall short. While the Church Committee was a bipartisan operation, Democrats have frequently criticized the GOP’s targeting of the FBI, and their party is highly unlikely to help fuel probes they’ve already derided as political sideshows.

And Democrats are already gearing up to rebut GOP investigations next year. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who will be on the frontlines as the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, summed up how he views his party’s responsibilities as it deals with Republican probes: “a truth squad in the sense that we will have to debunk conspiracy theories.”

And a former senior aide to the Democratic senator who chaired the Church Committee has also criticized Republicans for trying to make the Church comparison specifically, accusing them of wanting to invoke “Church’s legacy not to push for real solutions … but to obtain impunity for themselves and punish their enemies.” …

🐣 RT @ RReverser This is so cringeworthy 😬 ¤ And, of course, on the very same New Year Eve, while everyone’s celebrating, they continued bomb attacks against civilians in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews During Russia’s New Year special on state TV, they openly addressed the West to say, “Like it or not, Russia is enlarging!” The rest of the clip should give you a general idea as to the mood in the studio.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1609719192596381696?s=20/photo/1

🧵 RT @MaryLTrump At the end of every year since 2017, I’ve thought that the next year couldn’t possibly be worse. Obviously, after the 2016 election, we knew with crushing certainty that 2017 was going to be terrible. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MaryLTrump/status/1609732583151075328?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaryLTrump […] For the seventh year in a row I’m relieved to turn the page but this time it’s not because I believe that 2023 is going to be less awful, it’s because I honestly believe it’s going to be 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙. 8/

🐣 RT @RMCFigueiredo Glória a Ukraine 🇺🇦 paz 💝
🖼 https://twitter.com/RMCFigueiredo/status/1609294823902662656?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 I love this Annie Leibovitz photo … Z’s protectiveness toward Olena becomes a metaphor for protectiveness toward Ukraine; plus the fierceness of resolve in the eyes of both ¤ brilliant photo ♡

🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked every Ukrainian for their contribution to future victory over Russia in his New Year’s address to the nation, which was broadcast in the last minutes of the war-torn year of 2022.
⋙ NewVoiceUkr: In historic New Year’s address, President Zelenskyy thanks Ukrainians for their courage https://tinyurl.com/2p88vsas
// tags: Zelensky New Year’s Speech Zelensky

💙 🐣 RT @kmathernova The New Year greetings of @ZelenskyyUa will surely be remembered as one of the greatest speeches in history! Slava Ukraïni! @MattiMaasikas @EUDelegationUA @MFA_Ukraine @eu_near @MaijaCelmina
💽 https://twitter.com/kmathernova/status/1609580161497792513?s=20/photo/1
// youtube Zelensky New Year’s speech

During a New Year's special on Russian state TV, they had the audacity to appropriate a Ukrainian song, "Chervona Ruta." The singer performing it was dressed as some kind of a madam. Backup dancers, unsuccessfully pretending to dance like Ukrainians, were grotesquely ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/0SK1PvUmYz

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) January 2, 2023

🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukrainian troops battling in the eastern Luhansk Oblast are focusing on Kreminna and nearby settlements. Seizing control of these key logistics points would solidify advances that began in the fall in Kharkiv. – by @rferl
🔊 [tr] https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1609662749373603840?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews New Year’s special on Russian state TV was creepy and surreal. Top pro-Kremlin propagandists were seated alongside military guests, whose presence was sure to remind the audience that at that very moment, Russia is bombing Ukrainian cities and slaughtering civilians next door.
💽 🎹 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1609578087007621122?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1620 UTC 1 JAN/ RU has temporarily throttled back operations near Bakhmut. UKR forces drove away RU attacks at Bakhmutse, Podhorodne and east of the O-0507 cut-off in the industrial area. Early reports suggest Kurdiumivka has been liberated.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1609585672716689414?s=20/photo/1

TheTelegraph, Daniel Johnson: How Putin’s dream of a new Russian empire was destroyed on the fields of Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2pvr6vwb “On paper Putin’s big battalions may outnumber Zelensky’s, but they are being outgunned, outfought and outthought”
// Far from restoring Russia’s greatness, the president’s war has reduced it to a third-rate power