#Crimea November

[mariacallous]

Ukraine faces a precarious future amid waning Western support. The immediate peril comes from the 2024 US presidential election, but the fundamental problem has been the failure of Europe to commit to the defeat of Putin’s invasion.

The new NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, lost no time in visiting Kyiv after he assumed office, where he ‘pledged continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia’. Doubtless his words were sincerely intended, but he knows there are serious political headwinds across Europe and the US.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky senses this too as he briefs his ‘Victory Plan’ around European capitals following a mixed reception in Washington.

The forthcoming presidential election in the US represents the point of maximum danger. A win by Donald Trump could see him placing a phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin as early as 6 November. Any such call would set expectations of a negotiated settlement, with discussions possibly beginning in the early months of 2025. 

Nobody should want this war of ‘meat grinder’ savagery to continue a day longer than necessary. However, Zelensky would have much to fear from a deal negotiated by Trump. The 2020 Doha Accords with the Afghan Taliban have been described as the worst diplomatic agreement since Munich in 1938. Fortunately, Trump was prevented from reaching a similarly disastrous deal with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. 

In any such deal, Zelensky would be unlikely to secure the recovery of Crimea and the Donbas, reparations for the massive damage to his country, war crimes trials or membership of NATO. He might be able to bargain the Kursk salient in return for control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. But, without NATO membership and its Article 5 guarantee, there would be nothing to stop Putin from continuing the war after a couple of years of recovery and rearmament. 

For Europe, too, there would be peril. Both Georgia and Moldova look particularly fragile and vulnerable to Russian active measures or hybrid warfare. Even the Baltics would be justifiably nervous, in spite of their NATO status.

However, it would be misleading to blame everything on Trump. There have been plenty of prior indications of trouble ahead.

US support has always been too little, too late. Given the sheer scale of Washington’s military support this might sound absurd, but President Joe Biden’s hesitancy in allowing Storm Shadow missiles to be used against targets inside Russia is indicative of a general trend. As the head of a global superpower, Biden has always had one eye on ensuring that the war does not get out of hand and become nuclear. The result has been that Ukraine feels it has been given enough not to lose but not enough to win. 

In Europe the support has been varied. Some countries, such as the Baltics, the Scandinavian states, the UK and Poland, have done better than others. Hungary has been hostile, and may soon be joined by Slovakia and Austria. Germany has provided the most weapons but has been politically unreliable. Its refusal to supply Taurus missiles and its public debate about reducing its defence budget have sent all the wrong messages. German companies continue to retain significant interests in Russia, and the advance of Alternative for Germany in elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg reminded Chancellor Olaf Scholz that there is little support for the war in Eastern Germany. President Emmanuel Macron of France, having been mercurial about Ukraine from the outset, received a similar jolt from the far left and far right in legislative elections in July. 

The most visible sign of a failure of collective determination to defeat Russia was the decision not to seize Russian financial assets frozen in Western banks, but instead to use them as collateral to raise a much smaller loan. Yes, there would have been a theoretical risk of undermining faith in the Western-dominated financial system, but few countries are yet ready to entrust their savings to Chinese or Indian banks. Furthermore, it would have sent a message to Putin not to invade other countries. 

Meanwhile, the crisis in the Middle East has diverted foreign policy and public attention. In Iraq and Afghanistan 20 years ago, the West demonstrated that it does not have the policy bandwidth to cope with two simultaneous campaigns. The events since 7 October 2023 have done untold damage to Ukraine’s prospects and to the West’s much-vaunted rules-based international order.

A newly elected President Trump would rightly claim that, once again, the US has shouldered the main burden of Western interests with inadequate support from its NATO allies. He would point (correctly again) to the mounting military pressure on Ukraine, its difficulties in replacing front-line soldiers, and the effects on global food and fuel prices. With the war raging in the Levant, he would refer to the US being over-extended once again in ‘forever wars’.

A newly elected President Kamala Harris could be expected to follow the path trodden by Biden. She would inherit his caution at unduly provoking Putin and his reticence about Ukraine joining NATO. Furthermore, her freedom to supply Ukraine with additional weaponry could be restricted by the make-up of the two houses of Congress. 

There could be a third outcome to the election: a Harris victory that is contested by Trump. In such circumstances, we could see an absence of US foreign policy for a period of weeks or months. 

Barring a mutiny by Russian forces or a crisis in Moscow, the prospects for Ukraine (and therefore Europe) look grim. The irony is that Putin would claim victory in spite of his campaign having been a costly disaster.

What would a betrayed Ukraine look like? At least it would retain some 82% of its territory. A guilty West would doubtless provide aid to rebuild infrastructure. It might be given a pathway to eventual EU membership (unless that option had been bargained away at the negotiating table), but joining the Western club may have lost its appeal at that point. Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs would re-emerge from hibernation. The old post-Soviet cynicism would replace the youthful enthusiasm of the Maidan generation. There would be antagonism towards those returning from abroad after avoiding the fight, and – of course – thousands of grieving families.

This should have been Europe’s war to manage. In spite of decades of discussion about European defence, it proved too convenient to rely on US largesse. This made Europe a prisoner of US electoral factors. It also caused Europe to shirk the difficult decisions that helping win the war entailed: the big increases in defence expenditure, the 24-hour working in ammunition factories, the hikes in food and energy costs and the political risks such as seizing frozen assets. What remains now for Europe is to secure a place at the negotiating table and to argue for NATO membership for Ukraine as part of any settlement.

Failing that, the West will have years to repent the betrayal of the courageous Ukrainians, whose only crime was their wish to join the Western democratic order.

[panimoonchild]

Russian culture is ethnic cleansing and islamophobia

Today is an important day to qırımlılar but many of them will be celebrating it in Russian captivity.

Ruslan Mesutov was illegally sentenced by the occupiers to 18 years in prison on charges of alleged "terrorism".

Even though the 58-year-old man's health condition has deteriorated, he is not being provided with appropriate medical care. Ruslan Mesutov is forced to go on hunger strike, because, contrary to his religious beliefs, he is fed food with pork in it. The prison where he is being held is called a "criterion" because of its harshness. There are four people in a damp cell, who are taken for a walk on the roof of the prison once a day.

Life before detention: Ruslan Ametovich Mesutov was born in Uzbekistan, in 1988 he returned to Crimea and got a job as a turner at a factory in Alushta, where he was allocated a land plot.

Later, he brought his parents and sisters to the Crimea, married Elzara Hodzhenova, and had two sons. Ruslan was a member of the Crimean Tatar People's Movement. In the village of Malyi Mayak (Buyuk-Lambat), Ruslan organized the Muslim community "Avdet", which is part of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea, and became one of the founders of the religious community of Alushta. He was a security guard at the mosque, engaged in social activities, organized Muslim holidays, helped with funeral issues, took care of paperwork, and held prayers. Representatives of the occupation authorities detained the man on June 10, 2019, along with other Crimean Tatars. The occupation investigators charged Mesutov with violation of Part 1 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Organization of a terrorist organization"), which provides for imprisonment for a term of 15 to 20 years. And even Part 1 of Articles 30 and 278 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Preparation for the violent seizure of power by an organized group by prior conspiracy"), which provides for up to ten years in prison. In May 2020, Ruslan was transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation. An illegal sentence was handed down on August 16, 2021, and the man was sentenced to 18 years in a strict regime colony with a 1-year and 6-month restriction on his freedom after release. Mesutov was arrested two weeks before the court hearing, which was to consider the claim of the religious community of Alushta regarding the transfer of the city mosque by the occupation administration to the illegal formation of the "Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea". The main real reason for Ruslan Mesutov's detention is his religious and public activities, identity, and support for his people. The 58-year-old man is being held in a Russian prison in the Lipetsk region. According to his lawyer, Siyar Panich, his client's health condition has deteriorated and he is not being provided with medical care. Since November 2022, Ruslan has had difficulties with nutrition, as pork has been introduced into the main diet. According to his religious beliefs, Ruslan Mesutov does not eat such food. The Muslims serving their sentences in this institution wrote an appeal to the administration, but the problem has not yet been resolved.

The political prisoner's Quran was also taken away from him. "The Quran in Arabic was taken away from Mesutov to be examined by a specialist, who said it was a 'normal Quran' and not an 'extremist' one. Since then, since November, he hasn't been able to get it back, and it depresses him quite a bit," said lawyer Volodymyr Bilenko.

Info from @ ppu_gov_ua

That how our people look like and behave when they're finally free from Russian captivity.

[dontforgetukraine]

November 21st is the Day of Dignity and Freedom. On this day, Ukrainians ignited two revolutions against tyranny and injustice: The orange revolution in 2004 and the Euromaidan revolution in 2013-2014.

On 21 November, Ukraine commemorates the Day of Dignity and Freedom, honoring pivotal moments in its history that underscore the nation’s fight for independence, democracy, and the rule of law. This date marks the anniversary of the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013-14 Euromaidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, two popular uprisings that defined Ukraine’s resistance against Russian authoritarianism and its determination to embrace a pro-European future. Euromaidan began on 21 November 2013, when Ukrainians took to the streets to protest then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s abrupt decision to abandon a historic agreement with the European Union under pressure from Moscow. The peaceful demonstrations escalated into a nationwide movement demanding democracy and accountability. Yanukovych’s regime responded with brutal force, leading to the deaths of over 100 protesters, now remembered as the “Heavenly Hundred.” These revolutions were not just internal struggles but battles against Moscow’s endless efforts to maintain dominance over Ukraine. After Yanukovych fled in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and launched a war in eastern Ukraine, laying the groundwork for today’s full-scale invasion. Today, Ukraine’s resistance continues more fiercely than ever as it defends not just its sovereignty but also the principles of democracy and international law. The legacy of 21 November serves as a reminder that Ukraine’s fight is far from isolated—its outcome will shape global norms on freedom and the rule of law. —Euromaidan Press

[thesolyanka]

Holodomor

The 23rd of November, 2024 is The Memory Day of victims killed during the Holodomor - a genocide of Ukrainians organized during 1932-1933 by moscow, using artificially created famine.

At this time, Kharkiv was not only the capital of the Ukrainian cultural revival, but also the “capital” of the moscow (russian) occupation government. Kharkiv turned into the epicenter of the Holodomor. The “wounds” from this terrible crime committed by the moscow (russian) occupiers and their accomplices have not yet healed, both on Kharkiv’s body and in it’s soul.

Today, during the full-scale russian-Ukrainian war, moscow is trying to repeat this crime, arranging mass murders and rapes of Ukrainian women, children and men (Bucha, Irpin, Izium, Mariupol…), massive missiled attacks on the public objects (Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Kremenchug, Kramatorsk, Lviv, Odesa, Izmail…) and on objects of critical infrastructure all over Ukraine.

The occupiers from the moscow, which calls itself as “russian federation”, are robbing the civilians and taking away food from the occupied districts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, in exactly the same way as their “heroic grandfathers” did during the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

The occupiers are mass-deporting the civilians, including kids, from the occupied districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Ukrainian Crimea is still occupied by muskovites (russians).

Despite everything, Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to put up heroic resistance to the forces of evil, which call themselves “russians and the russian federation.”

[thelostdreamsthings]

‼️Sevastopol, Crimea, bombed by American missiles (ATACMS) coordinated by American drones, American satellites, and American experts.

Maybe Ukraine provided coffee and cake.

‼️US proxy war against Russia is dangerously escalating every day.

This is Lisa, one of the little girls that Joe Biden killed with US missiles on a beach in Crimea, Russia. American drones and satellites were used to target this sweetheart with cluster ammunitions.

Remember her when you vote in November.

‼️"We are coming closer to the nuclear abyss. It’s time to talk" – US economist and professor Jeffrey Sachs.

The problem is that this trivialization of history and of today’s conflicts is leading us to the brink of nuclear war. And the US has actually become the least diplomatic of all UN member states, comparing the states according to adherence to the UN Charter.

It has been the US and its allies that have broken agreements and refused diplomacy. The US violated its solemn pledges to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and to Russian President Boris Yeltsin that NATO would not move one inch eastward. The US cheated by supporting the violent coup in Kiev that toppled Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych. The US, Germany, France, and the UK, duplicitously refused to back the Minsk II agreement. The US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and from the Intermediate Force Agreement in 2019. The US refused to negotiate when Putin proposed a draft Russia-US Treaty on Security Guarantees on December 15, 2021.

There has in fact been no direct diplomacy between Biden and Putin since the beginning of 2022. And when Russia and Ukraine negotiated directly in March 2022, the UK and US stepped in to block an agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality. Putin reiterated Russia’s openness to negotiations in his interview with Tucker Carlson and did so again more recently.

‼️The war rages on, with hundreds of thousands dead and with hundreds of billions of dollars of destruction. We are coming closer to the nuclear abyss. It’s time to talk.

NATO expansion is the greatest risk of causing WW3

[darkmaga-returns]

Russian special forces have liberated scores of trafficked children from an Israeli-registered private jet, as President Putin’s war against the global adrenochrome industry shifts into overdrive.

The recent election of Donald Trump has sent shock waves through the international trafficking networks. With Trump poised to end the war in Ukraine by January, child traffickers and adrenochrome merchants are desperately scrambling to move as many victims as possible before their operations are shut down.

Putin understands the desperation of the adrenochrome merchants will lead to recklessness and mistakes, and he is using this moment to strike at the heart of the industry.

Before we dive in, subscribe to our Rumble channel if you haven’t already, and join the People’s Voice Locals Community to be part of our community of truth seekers determined to bring the criminal elite to justice.

Following the discovery of a vast factory farm operation in multiple regions of Ukraine, Putin established an “adrenochrome task force” of special agents and handpicked Spetznas to destroy the international network of child traffickers and their clients.

Ukraine has been a hotbed of corruption and pedophilia for decades and as former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told Judge Napolitano, the main globalist interest in Ukraine is child trafficking.

Johnson is a seasoned analyst who knows Ukraine better than anybody in the mainstream media and following Trump’s election victory, his expert analysis is playing out exactly as predicted.

According to reports, an Israeli-registered private jet was seized within Russian Crimea on November 17, with dozens of traumatized children being held captive in atrocious conditions.

Battle-hardened Russian soldiers, accustomed to the horrors of war, struggled to maintain their composure as they recounted the gut-wrenching discovery of malnourished children hooked to intravenous drips.

Their fragile bodies were systematically drained of blood and adrenal fluid—evidence of a chilling operation fueling the global adrenochrome trade, allegedly with a supply chain running through Israel to the Western world.

[alcestas-sloboda]

"Russia will fall when Ukrainian sun rises" said the first President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzhokhar Dudayev born on this day 79 years ago.

Ukraine became the first UN country to recognise the independence of Ichkeria on October 18 last year but the close relationship between the two peoples date back. There are stories of Ichkerians saving Ukrainian people from prosecution of the USSR government by hiding them in the mountains. Ukrainians were also one of the only nations to help Ichkerians in the two Chechen Wars waged by russia, reportedly operating one of the few tanks in disposal of the Ichkerian Armed Forced lead by Dudayev.

In 2014 after russia annexed Crimea and started active warfare in the East of Ukraine, the Free Caucasus organisation based in Denmark, where large numbers of Ichkerians have fled to after the Second Chechen War, formed the International Peacekeeping Battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev. Ichkerians have been at the frontlines of the russian-Ukrainian war ever since. From November 2022 they have been operating in Bakhmut, the deadliest battles now are happening there.

За нашу і вашу свободу | "For your and our freedom"

[yahoo201027]

Day in Fandom History: November 7…

The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan landed in Crimea in the mid-19th century at the height of the Crimean War to escape the Flux where the three get separated while dealing with a Sontaran invasion from the 1850s to the present. “Flux: War of the Sontarans��� premiered on this day, 3 Years Ago.

[unhonestlymirror]

*read from from bottom to top*

It reminds me of a Georgian journalist taking an interview from a russian refugee. (N.B. Georgia is partially occupied by russia.) They asked, "Whose Crimea is?" - and the guy answered "of people who live there." XD

It's such a simple question with only one correct answer. If a "good" russian can not answer "Ukraine" on it, they is very much not a good russian at all.

I kindly ask all "Kievan Rus" believers to go and read this article with translator

"Moscow as a settlement was founded in 1272. In the same year, the third population census of the Golden Horde was conducted. During the first census (1237–1238 pp.) and the second (1254–1259 pp.) settlement, Moscow is not mentioned," wrote historian Yaroslav Dashkevich. Which is the 13th century. According to other not very reliable sources, it's the 12th century. And even back then, there were no russians.

"It all began on November 2, 1721, when Tsar Peter I proclaimed the Muscovite Kingdom, the "Russian Empire" and Muscovites "Russians." Tsar Peter decided to join Muscovy to the European cultural heritage, so he was not at all satisfied with the story of the origin of Muscovites from the great and proud Finnish tribes: Mokshi, Meri, Murom, Vesi, Pechora, Mesheri, Perm, Mari. He gave instructions to add the name Rus instead of the barbaric Moksel."

"This is how academician Hryhoriy Pivtorak explains it: "Catherine II tried to learn the history of her state on the basis of written sources provided to her - chronicles and other documents of Moscow's antiquity. The true history of Muscovy shocked her because it was lame and very poor. The tsaritsa was especially struck by the fact that the mighty state of Russia, whose glory thundered throughout the world for three centuries and whose princes considered it an honor to become relatives to the kings of France, Hungary, Sweden... as it turned out, had no relation to Muscovy."

On December 4, 1783, by order of Catherine, the "Commission for compiling notes on ancient history, mainly Russian" was created. The commission worked for 9 years and, by rewriting and distorting historical facts, created a new history of the Russian Empire, which traced its origins back to Kyivan Rus."

"A new version of Russian history was published in 1792.

It became a standard for future historians of the 19th century and formed the basis of "History of the Russian State" in 12 volumes by Karamzin, as well as the fundamental "History of Russia from Ancient Times" in 29 volumes by Solovyov"

P.S. My personal history is that russians left me and my family without home. russians killed my pets. russians killed my friends and my classmate. This is my personal history.

Never ever Ukraine called russia its sibling, and we never will.

I declare kvasgod an uneducated latent rashist.

[tomorrowusa]

One thing we have to admit about Putin's Russia, it treats its own citizens just as badly as it treats its neighbors.

In early November, 19-year-old Russian conscript Andrei Lazhyev died at a naval hospital in Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the illegally annexed territory of Crimea. The recent university graduate's death came just a little more than four months after he was drafted into the Russian military, and was officially determined to be the result of swelling and hemorrhage of the brain, according to documents reviewed by RFE/RL's North.Realities. His parents -- who were not allowed to see Andrei after he was hospitalized -- have never been told how or when he received the injuries that killed their son and have yet to receive his body. [ ... ] In late September, less than a month after Andrei informed his parents that he had completed his military training in Russia and was being transferred with other conscripts to Crimea, he called to tell them that he was in a field hospital. "He didn't know where exactly he was," Nikolai Lazhyev, Andrei's father, told RFE/RL. "He only said that everyone lived in tents in a field, and there were mountains around. He said that he felt very bad and complained of constant nausea."

Going directly from basic training to being in a field hospital is certainly not a good sign.

The parents eventually learned that Andrei was discharged from the hospital within a few days and was transferred two weeks later, on October 6, to Armyansk, a town in northern Crimea. From there the parents had no word of their son's situation until, on October 23, Nikolai was contacted on social media by a man who claimed to be Andrei's hospital roommate. The man told Nikolai that Andrei had been admitted to the naval hospital in Sevastopol around October 8 and was in grave condition -- unable to walk or see properly, and constantly vomiting. During a call, the roommate handed his phone to Andrei, who told his father that he had lost his phone and did not recall what happened to him or how he got to the hospital. When the roommate sent a photograph of Andrei, the young conscript's parents were shocked. "We didn't even recognize him at first. The sight was terrible," Nikolai said, saying that while his son weighed more than 100 kilograms when he was drafted he looked in the image like he weighed less than 60.

Losing 40% of one's weight is something we'd associate with a serious disease or injury. It's another sign of maltreatment.

Back to Andrei's parents.

"They told me that Andrei allegedly did not want to serve to such an extent that he had something like a nervous breakdown," Nikolai said. "They called it 'homesickness syndrome.'" But the psychiatrist also revealed that he had noticed obvious signs of beatings on Andrei's body," according to Nikolai. [ ... ] Nikolai managed to contact a medical worker who had treated his son and was told that Andrei suffered from cerebral edema and hemorrhage. Nevertheless, Nikolai recalled, he was told that while his son might "need some medicine" Andrei was in good hands because the naval hospital had "everything." In further conversations the hospital authorities, Andrei's parents were told they could not visit the facility because Sevastopol was located in the war zone amid Russia's ongoing war with Ukraine, but doctors promised he would be evacuated to safer ground. The evacuation never came -- the family was told that Andrei's condition was too serious. Finally, on November 1, Nikolai and his wife obtained the documents needed to visit the hospital, but it was too late. The next day, while at a Moscow airport en route to Crimea, they learned that Andrei had died.

The army there has had a long history of brutality dating back to Soviet times.

Some clarity came within a couple days. A man who introduced himself as a commander contacted Nikolai through Telegram. Without revealing his name or rank, the man sent a photo of Andrei's death certificate that showed he died from "cerebral edema, internal hemorrhage of the brain stem." "It was written there in black and white," Nikolai said, saying the document revealed the diagnosis had been known for a month before Andrei died. "Why this swelling happened is unknown," Nikolai said. "My son lay dying for a whole month, and they did not report anything. If he had been evacuated, I think he would be alive [today]." [ ... ]

Nikolai, a former military man himself, said that following Andrei's death, he simply cannot trust the authorities. "I can't believe them, I can't, that's all," Nikolai said. Nikolai has still not received any official documents from the Defense Ministry regarding his son's service and death, his requests for information have gone unanswered, and Andrei's body has yet to be returned home. These factors have led Nikolai to reach the conclusion that his son died after an attempt to force him to sign up for combat abroad.

Putin wants Ukraine at all costs and it doesn't matter to him how many Russians he needs to kill to achieve his goal. Human wave attacks have been used against Ukraine. Essentially, Putin regards his troops as disposable.

Putin is tolerating losses like these just so he can think of himself as the 21st century version of Peter the Great. He's clearly a sociopathic megalomaniac.

Vladimir Putin 'stepping up invasion' in Ukraine as Russia sees almost 1,000 casualties a day

If you are a male in Russia who's in danger of conscription, your only sane option is to leave the country.

[mariacallous]

Six months into the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian city of Kherson, in September 2022, the director of Liza Batsura’s college arrived at the dormitory where Batsura lived and told the students to pack up their things: They were going to Crimea. If the students refused, they would be put in the basement, Batsura said, speaking through a translator. The director gave no further explanation.

The next evening, they were taken to a camp called “Friendship” in Crimea, which was occupied by Russia in 2014. Although she couldn’t have known it at the time, Batsura—now 16 years old—was one of almost 20,000 children the Ukrainian government estimates have been deported or forcibly displaced to Russia. Only 388 have been returned.

Initially, the prospect of a couple of weeks by the sea didn’t sound so bad. But Batsura quickly began to realize that that wouldn’t be the case. The food was terrible, the days were long, and the children were pressured to sing Russian songs, including the national anthem, which made her very uncomfortable.

Foreign Policy is unable to independently verify Batsura’s account, but her experience closely tracks with the findings of investigations by the United Nations as well as researchers at Yale School of Public Health and other human rights groups who have documented a “systematic” effort to relocate and reeducate thousands of Ukrainian children over the course of the war. She also recounted her story to Reuters as part of an extensive investigation into the deportations.

Batsura was one of five Ukrainian teenagers who visited Washington last month with representatives of Save Ukraine, a Ukraine-based nonprofit that helps to rescue Ukrainian children from Russia and the territories it occupies. They stoically recounted the stories of their abductions again and again for journalists, members of Congress, and attendees at public events.

It was the group’s first visit to Washington. Batsura felt like she was in a movie, she said.

With long limbs and round cheeks, the teenagers filed into the conference room of a Washington-based nonprofit with their minders from Save Ukraine for an interview with Foreign Policy. Once the Wi-Fi password had been secured and the bathroom located, they began to tell their stories.

They were teenagers like any other you’d see hanging out with friends at a cafe or shopping mall. Yet they were also victims of Moscow’s large-scale deportation of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime and the reason that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, in March 2023.

Like Batsura, they all hail from regions of eastern Ukraine that were quickly occupied by Russian forces in the early days of the war. They recount being coerced or forced, sometimes at gunpoint, to go with Russian forces, and they were taken to schools and summer camps where they were held for several months and faced pressure to accept Russian citizenship.

In many instances, Ukraine’s most vulnerable children have borne the brunt of Russian deportation. Before the war, Ukraine had one of the highest rates of child institutionalization in Europe, with more than 100,000 children living in residential institutions. The vast majority have living parents but were placed in institutions because of poverty, difficult family circumstances, or because the child had a disability, according to Human Rights Watch.

The deportations have been carried out in plain sight. Early in the war, Putin signed a decree making it easier for Ukrainian children to be adopted and to be given Russian citizenship. Lvova-Belova herself claims to have adopted a teenager from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and she has spoken publicly about her efforts to Russify him. In November, a BBC investigation found that a 2-year old girl who went missing from a children’s home in Kherson when she was just 10 months old had been adopted by 70-year-old member of the Russian parliament, Sergey Mironov.

Lvova-Belova has made a number of visits to institutions holding Ukrainian children, including to a college in the occupied Ukrainian city of Henichesk, where Batsura had been transferred from Crimea and placed in a culinary arts program.

The dormitory where Batsura was placed was freezing cold at night, she said, and the teenagers were forbidden to close the doors to their rooms. Russian troops patrolled the halls.

Lvova-Belova offered the children 100,000 rubles, roughly $1,000, and the opportunity to study at a college in Russia on the condition that they remain there. Batsura refused. Officials tried to find her a foster family, and she feared she would be sent to a remote region of Russia and would never be able to return to Ukraine.

For eight months while she was in Russian custody, Batsura had been unable to contact her mother, but she learned through a friend that her mother was working with Save Ukraine and applying for a passport so that she could travel to Russia and collect her.

With the border to Russia closed since the invasion, families face a daunting overland journey through wartime Ukraine, traveling into Poland, Belarus, and then Russia and—in Batsura’s case—down into occupied Ukrainian territory.

In some instances, children are turned over to their relatives without too much difficulty once the family members arrive to collect them, but the Russian authorities have also been known to present obstacles, said Olha Yerokhina, a spokesperson for Save Ukraine. The organization has helped families retrieve 240 children to date.

Officials at the school told Batsura that the journey was too arduous and that her friend was giving her false hope that her mother would ever arrive. “I didn’t believe them, and I kept telling myself that ‘No, my mom can do it, my mom will come,’” she said.

In May 2023, Batsura was rescued by her mother and now lives with her in Kyiv, where she is working with psychologists to process her experience. She is back in school and describes her hobbies as writing poems and making TikTok videos.

I asked her, given the atrocities that Putin has been accused of committing in Ukraine and during his presidency, how she felt about the fact that it was experiences like hers that had led the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for the Russian leader.

Yerokhina, who acted as our translator, interrupted to say that because she was rescued after the court order was issued, Batsura had likely missed the news about the ICC arrest warrant.

After Yerokhina explained the court’s decision, Batsura said, “It’s just.”

[sensitiveuser]

Sofia Perovskaia (1853-1881).

Member of Narodnaïa Volia. Regicide of Tsar Alexander II (1881).

Warning:

My day (not very good day) will end with the publication of a short post dedicated to one of the historical heroines for whom I have a lot of sympathy: Sofia Perovskaia. I had mentioned her only once in this post : https://www.tumblr.com/sensitiveuser/766870279166279680/letter-from-emma-goldman-1923-about-louise?source=share.

I am currently preparing others for you, which I will publish tomorrow and this weekend. Little secret : I didn't think I'd be here tonight (not just on Tumblr)...

I haven't finished introducing the characters mentioned in Emma Goldman's letter. I will also introduce Maria Spiridonova, I promise you...

Sofia Perovskaia (1853-1881) came from an aristocratic family. Her father was the governor of Saint Petersburg. Young woman abhorring the aristocratic society in which she grew up, she decided to betray her family and her social class, and join the camp of the revolutionaries. Fleeing her family, she settled in a modest apartment.

When it was founded (1879), the Narodnaia Volia organization defined the assassination of Tsar Alexander II as its primary objective. Armed struggle and terrorist actions (propaganda by deed) are the foundation of the organization. However, Narodnaia Volia does not intend to take power after the fall of the Russian Empire. Its only aim is to destroy tsarism, form a provisional government and elect a constituent assembly.

The members of the Executive Committee (including Andrei Jeliabov, Sofia's companion), in order to succeed in killing the tsar, decide to resort to the bomb. In September 1879, the Executive Committee proclaims itself "a secret society completely autonomous in its actions". The revolutionaries of Narodnaia Volia attempt five times to assassinate Alexander II, between November 1879 and August 1880. The first attack was prepared by Vera Figner, Alexander Kvyatkovsky and Nikolai Kibalchitch (one of the accused in the trial of the 193). The second attack was planned by Andrei Jeliabov, on the railway line linking Crimea to Kharkov.

Following the failed attempts, the comrades of Narodnaya Volya prepare a new attack… hoping, this time, not to miss their shot !

Sofia Perovskaïa, Andrei Jeliabov, Nicolas Kibaltchich, Nicolas Kletochnikov, Alexander Mikhailov, form a real club of five, five brave militants determined to meticulously plan a new attack. It is a question of succeeding in the attack by all means ! The five comrades begin by observing the movements of the tsar. The observation reveals two obligatory passage points, whatever the route taken by the tsar.

The executive committee decides to attack these two locations simultaneously, and meticulously prepares the attack. The five comrades dig an underground tunnel from a small house to Nevsky Prospect. They buried a mine there that would explode when the Tsar passed by. If this failed, Andrei Jeliabov would intervene, aided by a dagger and a revolver !

Unfortunately, on February 27, 1881, Andrei Jeliabov was arrested and sent to Nevsky Prospect. Sofia was now placed in charge of organizing the attack. She continued the plan for the attack. She was joined by Nikolai Ivanov Rysakov (who would throw the first bomb), Ignati Joakimovich Grineviski (who would throw the second), Timofei Mikhailovich Mikhailov (third bomb), Ivan Panteleimonovich Emelianov (fourth bomb). The bombs were prepared in Vera Figner's apartment.

On March 1, 1881, Alexander II took his usual route, between the Makhaylovski riding school and the Catherine Canal. Sofia Perovskaya gave the signal for the attack (using a handkerchief). The first bomb did not hit the Tsar, but there were a few injuries, and Rysakov was arrested. The second explosion, this time, resulted in a success: Alexander II died. But the explosion also cost Grineviski's life.

A few weeks after the assassination attempt, Sofia was arrested. On April 3, 1881, she was hanged together with Andrei Jeliabov on Semyonovsky Square.

[miffy-junot]

Felix Yusupov on his escape from Russia

According to the terms of the Armistice signed on November 11, 1918, the Germans were to evacuate the Crimea and all the other parts of Russia they had occupied during the previous spring. Several hundred Russian officers who had succeeded in making their way to the Crimea with the object of protecting the remaining members of the Imperial family now announced their intention of joining the White Army. My brothers-in-law Andrei, Fyodor and Nikita and I decided to do likewise, and we wrote to General Denikin, the commander-in-chief, asking him to enrol us. He replied that, for political reasons, members or connections of the Romanov family were undesirable in the ranks of the White Army. This was a great disappointment, for it was our earnest wish to take part in the unequal struggle against the destructive forces which had taken possession of our country. A great wave of patriotism swept over those parts of Russia in which the new army was being raised under the leadership of some of Russia's best soldiers. The names of Generals Alexeev, Kornilov, Denikin, Kaledin, Youdenich and of Admiral Kolchak will go down in Russian history as those of great national heroes.

Toward the end of 1918, the Allied Fleet arrived in the Crimea. My father-in-law [Grand Duke Alexander] left Russia on a British ship, accompanied by his son Andrei and Andrei's wife. His object was to see the heads of the Allied governments and explain to them the situation in Russia, as they were apparently far from realising its gravity. Clemenceau could not receive him, but his secretary was most charming and very polite. The Grand Duke met with no better response elsewhere, and was even refused a visa for England. We are now facing the consequences of the tragic lack of foresight of the politicians who then governed Europe.

When the Red Army approached the Crimea, we realized that as far as we were concerned the end had come. On the morning of April 7, the commander of the British Naval forces at Sebastopol called at Harax, where the Dowager Empress lived. King George V had placed the dreadnought Marlborough at her disposal, as he considered that events called for her immediate departure from Russia, The British commander insisted that she should go aboard that very evening. At first she flatly refused, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he finally persuaded her to go. As it happened, we were all at Harax at the time of his visit, for it was the Grand Duchess Xenia's birthday. The Empress gave me a letter for the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich, in which she told him of her decision to leave, and asked him and his family to come with her. The news that the Dowager Empress and the Grand Duke Nikolai were on the verge of departure spread through the town like wildfire and caused a panic. Requests poured in from thousands of refugees, begging to be evacuated. But one warship could not take off all those whose lives would be endangered by the arrival of the Bolsheviks. Irina and I went on board the Marlborough after the Empress, the Grand Duchess Xenia and my brothers-in-law had embarked. When Irina told the Empress that nothing had been organized or provided for the evacuation of all these poor people, Her Majesty told the Allied authorities that she refused to leave unless immediate steps were taken to rescue them. As a result of her firmness, a number of allied warships steamed into Yalta to fetch away the refugees. Next day, together with my parents, we joined the Empress on the Marlborough.

Another ship left Yalta just before we did; on board her were the Crimean officers, en route to join the White Army. The Marlborough had not yet weighed anchor; standing in the bow, the Empress watched the ship pass by. Tears streamed down her cheeks as these young men, going to certain death, saluted her. Behind their Empress, they could discern the tall figure of their former commander-in-chief, the Grand Duke Nikolai.

On leaving our country with heavy hearts, that 13th day of April 1919 we knew that we were going into exile; but how long it would last, none of us could tell. Who could have dreamed that thirty-three years later it would still be impossible to foresee the end?

.

source: Lost Splendour by Felix Yusupov, chapter 27

[nicklloydnow]

“Months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the United States had intelligence pointing to “highly sensitive, credible conversations inside the Kremlin” that President Vladimir Putin was seriously considering using nuclear weapons to avoid major battlefield losses, journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War.”

The U.S. intelligence pointed to a 50% chance that Putin would use tactical nukes if Ukrainian forces surrounded 30,000 Russian troops in the southern city of Kherson, the book says. Just months before, in the far northeast, Ukrainian troops had stunned the Russians by recapturing Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and were pivoting to liberate Kherson, strategically located on the Dnieper River not far from the Black Sea.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan stared “with dread” at the intelligence assessment — described as coming from the best sources and methods — in late September 2022, seven months after Russia’s invasion, the book says. It caused alarm across the Biden administration, moving the chance of Russia using nukes up from 5% to 10% to now 50%.

According to Woodward’s account, President Joe Biden told Sullivan to “get on the line with the Russians. Tell them what we will do in response.”

He said to use language that was threatening but not too strong, the book says. Biden also reached out to Putin directly in a message, warning of the “catastrophic consequences” if Russia used nuclear weapons.

(…)

In another heated conversation laid out in Woodward’s book, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confronted his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, in October 2022.

“We know you are contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” Austin said, according to Woodward. “Any use of nuclear weapons on any scale against anybody would be seen by the United States and the world as a world-changing event. There is no scale of nuclear weapons that we could overlook or that the world could overlook.”

As Shoigu listened, Austin pressed on, noting that the U.S. had not given Ukraine certain weapons and had restricted the use of some of those it had provided. He warned that those constraints would be reconsidered. He also noted that China, India, Turkey and Israel would isolate Russia if it used nuclear weapons.

“I don’t take kindly to being threatened,” Shoigu responded, the book says.

“Mr. Minister,” Austin said. “I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don’t make threats.”

According to a U.S. official, Austin’s Oct. 21, 2022, call to Shoigu was indeed to warn Russia against any use of nuclear weapons. The official said the call was contentious. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, confirmed there were intelligence reports at the time that referred to increased indications of Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons and they triggered growing concerns within the administration. The official said leaders across the government were instructed to call their counterparts to deliver the same message.

U.S. intelligence officials saw China as having the most influence over Russia, and Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping about the need for deterrence, Woodward wrote.

Xi agreed to warn Putin, according to the book. Biden and Xi met and agreed in November 2022 that “a nuclear war should never be fought” and noted their opposition to the use or threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine, a White House statement said at the time.

In terms of the war starting at all, the book details Biden’s criticism late last year of President Barack Obama’s handling of Russia seizing Crimea and a section of the Donbas in 2014, at a time when Biden was serving as the Democrat’s vice president.

“They f----- up in 2014,” Woodward wrote that Biden said to a close friend in December, blaming the lack of action for Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. “Barack never took Putin seriously.”

Biden was angry while speaking to the friend and said they “never should have let Putin just walk in there” in 2014 and that the U.S. “did nothing.””

“Ex-PM Liz Truss spent her final days in office studying weather maps and preparing for UK radiation cases after American spies feared the Kremlin tyrant was hours from pressing the button.

Whitehall disaster planners feared radioactive material hurled into the atmosphere could have travelled the 1,700 miles across Europe from any blast zone.

Based on “exquisite” intelligence, the US concluded there was a 50 per cent chance Russia could deploy a tactical nuke on the Ukrainian battlefields or test a larger bomb over the Black Sea.

The horrifying details of how close the war came to a massive escalation are revealed in Out of the Blue, an updated biography of the short-lived PM.

It reports Ms Truss spent “numerous hours studying satellite weather data and wind directions” over fears the “wrong weather patterns” could have a “direct fall-out effect on Britain”.

Separately, a new book, War, by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward also reports the White House believed there was a 50 per cent chance Russia would use a battlefield weapon based on “exquisite” human intelligence received in autumn 2022.”

[notwiselybuttoowell]

On an unseasonably warm day in October, the silence outside broken by birdsong and artillery fire, Olga Goncharova sat in her office on the ground floor of the Kherson Regional Museum, a bulletproof vest wrapped around the back of her chair, the windows covered with plywood, and cursed the Russians. “They’re vandals, the people who did this,” she said.

Ms Goncharova escaped from Kherson, in southern Ukraine, in the spring of 2022, shortly after Russian troops poured into the city. By the time she returned, in November that year, Kherson had been liberated. The Russians had evacuated to the other bank of the Dnieper river, from which they have been bombing the city ever since. Ms Goncharova wept when she entered the museum where she had worked for over two decades. “There was broken glass everywhere,” she says. “They had torn some of the exhibits out.”

In fact Russian officials, assisted by local collaborators and the museum’s then-director, had removed more than 28,000 artefacts, loaded them onto lorries and shipped them to Crimea, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Gone were the ancient coins, the Greek sculptures, the Scythian jewellery, a precious Bukhara sabre—and even the hard drives containing the museum’s catalogue. Three decades ago, Ms Goncharova says, the museum recovered a collection of Gothic bronzes looted by German occupiers during the second world war. Now the Russians have stolen them.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the loss of life and suffering in Ukraine has been great. Many of its museums have been plundered, too. The country’s ministry of culture estimates that over 480,000 artworks have fallen into Russian hands. At least 38 museums, home to nearly 1.5m works, have been damaged or destroyed.

Ukrainian officials have also sent a number of collections to other parts of Europe to protect them from Russian bombs. These include dozens of Ukrainian paintings from the early 20th century, on display at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels before travelling to Vienna and London. When the evacuated treasures will return to Ukraine is unclear.

Artists have not been spared either. Ms Goncharova points to a painting of dried flowers and pottery that hangs opposite her desk. The artist, Vyacheslav Mashnytskyi, from Kherson, went missing after Russian troops turned up at his riverside dacha and requisitioned his boat. Friends who stopped by the house days later found traces of blood. Mr Mashnytskyi has not been heard from since.

Putting a price on the stolen works is nearly impossible, since only a fraction had been appraised for insurance purposes. Last April the un estimated that the war had caused $2.6bn-worth of damage to Ukraine’s cultural heritage. That now seems to be a conservative figure. Tracking what the Russians have looted is also a headache. Many Ukrainian museums, especially smaller regional ones, had relied on paper catalogues, often outdated or incomplete, says Mariana Tomyn, an official at the culture ministry. Some of those catalogues have now gone. Efforts to digitise inventories, which began only three years ago, have taken on a new urgency.

Ukraine will seek redress. Prosecutors in Kyiv are investigating Russian officials and Ukrainians involved in the plunder. Mrs Tomyn is working on a new restitution law and the overhaul of an outdated one on the protection of cultural heritage. And since late October a special army unit has begun to monitor damage to cultural sites. But there is little hope of recovering what the occupiers have stolen. Russian officials will ship Ukrainian collections stored in Crimea to Russia if Ukraine retakes the peninsula, says Vyacheslav Baranov, an archaeologist at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences.

There have been some breakthroughs. On November 26th, after a long court battle, hundreds of historical treasures from Crimea were returned to Ukraine from the Netherlands. The collection, which includes Scythian gold carvings from the fourth century bc, had been on display at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam in 2014. Russia demanded the return of the objects to the Crimean museums which had loaned them. The Dutch supreme court ruled in 2021 that they belonged in Ukraine.

They are not the only ones to make their way back. At the Lavra museum complex in Kyiv, Maksym Ostapenko slowly unwraps a bundle of white packing paper. Out of it emerges a Bronze Age battle-axe. Another bundle yields a sixth-century Khazar sword. In the summer of 2022 the weapons, plus a few other objects probably destined for America’s antiquities market, surfaced at John F. Kennedy airport. The American authorities sent them back to Ukraine a year later. Most were probably excavated illegally in southern Ukraine, near Crimea, says Mr Ostapenko, the museum’s director, or discovered by Russian troops digging trenches. Such archaeological looting has thrived in the occupied territories, he adds. “The damage done to cultural heritage is immeasurable"

[darkmaga-returns]

By Jerome R. Corsi

On November 18, 2024, Politico reported that London and Paris had given Ukraine their Storm Shadow/SCALP long-range missiles to Ukraine. As of this writing (Wednesday, November 20, 2024), Reuters reported that Ukraine fired a volley of up to twelve Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles into Russia’s Kursk region, a day after Ukraine fired six U.S.-manufactured ATACMS missiles into Russia’s Bryansk region.

That Ukraine fired a UK missile today makes evident that Biden must have permitted Kyiv to launch NATO long-range missiles into Russia. The redefinition of Russia’s policy on nuclear deterrence that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed this week, makes clear that Russia now considers the United States, the UK, and NATO at war with Russia.

Lobbing a few NATO-manufacture long-range missiles into Russia is unlikely to make any tactical or strategic difference in the war, not when Russia controls much of the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, including the Crimea as well as Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine. As I wrote in a previous essay, the Biden decision is best explained by what appears to be a preemptive military coup in which U.S. generals fearing prison terms and possible convictions for treason prefer the risk of triggering a global thermonuclear war rather than allowing Donald Trump to take office on January 20, 2024.