#Moscow Education Show 2022

[mariacallous]

The Czech Republic threw open its doors to Ukrainians after Russia’s invasion and today hosts over 300,000 refugees. Yet attacks on Ukrainians are rising, encouraged by radical political forces, disinformation and, it’s claimed, Russian intelligence.

“Are you Ukrainian?” 48-year-old Zdenek H. asked as he stopped his car in front of Lilia Kostysyna and Tetana Tolsttihina in Plasy near the Czech city of Pilsen in August. When they nodded he leapt out and brutally beat them in front of their young children. Lilia spent three days in hospital.

In contrast to the mood of defiance towards Moscow and solidarity towards Ukraine that persists among the majority of the population, summer has been awash with incidents of intimidation and violence towards refugees from the war-torn state. An alarming report by the legal organisation In Iustitia highlighted how hate crimes directed at Ukrainians are continuing to “significantly increase”.

While Lilia Kostysyna was still recovering in hospital, a 35-year-old Ukrainian man died after being beaten outside a nightclub in Teplice. The Luna Club swiftly announced a ban on Ukrainians. Police charged a Czech man with the murder in mid-September.

Fertile ground

Since the end of COVID-19 restrictions, populist and radical political forces and peddlers of disinformation have been busy whipping up anger.

The fiscally conservative policies of the government, the war in Ukraine, the influx of refugees, and the cost-of-living crisis have provided fertile ground. Protests with a reactionary and nationalist flavour have punctuated the past 18 months or so.

Adding to the pressure, the populist political opposition, picking up where they left off during the 2015 migrant crisis, insists that the government’s enthusiastic support of Kyiv comes at the cost of neglecting citizens at home.

“The widespread aid to Ukrainians by the current government is disproportionate to the aid to our socially vulnerable citizens,” claims Tomio Okamura, leader of the radical-right Freedom and Direct Democracy, or SPD.

This narrative has helped drain support for hosting Ukrainian refugees across Czech society. Data from CVVM shows that 75 per cent of people were happy to accept people fleeing the war in spring 2022; a year later that number had fallen to 56 per cent.

The antipathy extends from parliament’s nationalist populists and radicals to the margins, where an array of extremist forces, sometimes operating as non-parliamentary political parties, preach a cocktail of authoritarian, anti-democratic and pro-Russian narratives.

The rise in violent attacks on Ukrainians “reflects the influence of critics of the involvement of the Czech state in supporting Ukrainian refugees and the Ukrainian government in defending its territory,” In Iustitia stated. “It is… violence intended to express intolerance towards refugees or support for Russian imperialism.”

The government’s vocal boasting of its generous donations of weapons and military equipment to Kyiv, and of hosting more Ukrainian refugees per capita than any other state, have offered these reactionary forces grist for their mill.

Disinformation networks pumping out fake news have run with such topics to rouse anger among poorer and less-educated Czechs, and to extend the series of increasingly pro-Russian “patriot” protests over the last year or so.

“Rallies are organised where Euroscepticism is propagated, calls for the current government’s change are made, and calls to withdraw the Czech Republic from NATO, along with protests against providing military aid to Ukraine and against support of Ukrainian refugees,” noted a report by the Ukrainian Support and Cooperation Centre (USCC).

Crime and punishment

Czech disinformation networks will tell you that Ukrainian refugees are stealing identity cards in order to access social services, or that shops are banning them to avert theft.

The In Iustitia report highlighted “misleading information disseminated about the newcomers, including references to their allegedly higher crime rates.”

The attack on Lilia and Tatiana did not come out of the blue. Days before, radicals had been busy rousing anti-Ukrainian feelings in Pilsen over the rape and attempted murder of a 15-year-old girl by an 18-year-old Ukrainian man.

Demonstrators, bedecked in Czech flags and chanting “My jsme doma!” (This is our home!), marched through the city in protest.

Reports that a 16-year-old Ukrainian was responsible for raping a woman in Prague compounded the situation, fuelling claims of rife criminality among Ukrainians.

Senior government officials leapt to try to quash the growing narrative. President Petr Pavel warned against those seeking to whip up fear for political ends.

Interior Minister Vit Rakusan pledged that the police would deliver justice in the cases regardless of nationality, while cautioning that hate speech would also be prosecuted.

“Czechia remains one of the safest countries in the world. The crime rate in this country is not growing with the growing number of foreigners,” he insisted at a press conference.

According to In Iustitia, 0.4 per cent of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic committed a crime in 2022. The figures for Slovaks and Poles run from 2-3 per cent. Ukrainians were, however, the target in 22 per cent of all hate crimes in the first half of 2023.

Strange bedfellows

Ironically, the extremist networks have had some of their biggest impact among the Roma, a minority, numbering around 250,000, that ordinarily is the most common victim of hate crime in the Czech Republic.

Anger against Ukrainians was sparked by the tragic death of a Roma man during a fight on a tram in the second city of Brno in June.

Despite efforts by community leaders to calm the situation, anger has sizzled throughout the summer with protests and marches, at times flavoured with intimidation of Ukrainians.

Extremists, including political figures more used to pumping out racist rhetoric against Roma, have encouraged the anger, while disinformation networks have made false claims of further Ukrainian crimes against this minority.

Roma social media influencers like David Mezei, who talks of knife-wielding Ukrainians who should “go back to where they came from”, have worked to deepen the antipathy.

“These figures have a huge impact among the most economically deprived sections of the Roma community, which, as in mainstream Czech society, is the most vulnerable to radicalisation,” explains Miroslav Broz, a veteran Roma rights campaigner from the Konexe NGO.

Income and education are the main factors that influence the perception of refugees, notes Martina Kavanova from PAQ Research. “The poorer population… has a less positive attitude towards accepting refugees,” she says. “This is related to the fear of a reduction in support from the state [and] competition on the labour market.”

This competition has pushed some Roma to adopt the symbols and language of Czech nationalists, points out Broz.

Weakness

Activists, government officials and the security services all note that the targets and tactics suggest Russian involvement. That the long history of discrimination afflicting the Roma is not only being exploited by nationalists, anti-system activists and conspiracy theorists, but by the Kremlin also.

“Russian intelligence knows that these social divisions are one of Czech society’s weaknesses,” asserts Marketa Kocmanova, a radicalisation expert at Charles University.

“Both the Roma and Ukrainian communities have experienced discrimination and unequal access to resources, contributing to feelings of frustration and resentment,” says Lucia Fukova, government commissioner for Roma affairs. “The influence of disinformation campaigns and foreign propaganda, particularly Russian narratives, has added a volatile dimension.”

The direct involvement of Russia in spreading disinformation in Czechia was confirmed in September by Security Information Service (BIS) chief Michal Koudelka. The head of the counterintelligence agency claimed that Moscow had sought contact with leading figures of the anti-government demonstrations and paid huge sums to Czech personalities to spread the Russian narrative.

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up May 4, 2023

Under the cut:

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that “a large number” of Ukrainian minors have been “displaced” to Russia and Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, and Moscow "manifestly violated" the interests of these children, according to its report released Thursday. The report looked into the alleged Russian deportation of Ukrainian children since the start of the war in February 2022.

Ukrainian air defense forces shot down a drone over Kyiv late on May 4, Kyiv City Military Administration reported. According to the administration, the drone remains fell in the Solomianskyi district on Kyiv’s right bank, causing a fire in a non-residential building.

Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces have launched up to 24 Shahed-136/131 attack drones from Bryansk region and the eastern coast of the Azov Sea in the early hours of May 4. Eighteen drones were downed by Ukraine's air defense in the northern, central, and southern parts of Ukraine. Anti-aircraft weapons, aircraft, and mobile fire groups were involved, according to the Air Force.

The casualty numbers in the May 3 Russian attack on Kherson Oblast have risen to 23 people killed and 46 injured, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on May 4.

Russian troops have placed military equipment, weapons, and explosives in the turbine department of the unit four of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to the information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Russia accused the United States on Thursday of being behind what it says was a drone attack on Moscow's Kremlin citadel intended to kill President Vladimir Putin. A day after blaming Ukraine for what it called a terrorist attack, the Kremlin administration shifted the focus onto the United States, but without providing evidence. The White House was quick to reject the charge. Ukraine has also denied involvement in the incident in the early hours of Wednesday, when video footage showed two flying objects approaching the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin walls and one exploding with a bright flash.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that “a large number” of Ukrainian minors have been “displaced” to Russia and Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, and Moscow "manifestly violated" the interests of these children, according to its report released Thursday.

The report looked into the alleged Russian deportation of Ukrainian children since the start of the war in February 2022.

Though the team of experts were not able to determine the exact number of children Russian forces deported, “the fact of a large-scale displacement of Ukrainian children does not seem disputed by either Ukraine or Russia,” the report said.

Ukrainian officials told OSCE experts they estimated the number of “kidnapped” children to be between 200,000 and 300,000.

“Numerous and overlapping violations of the rights of the children deported to the Russian Federation have taken place. Not only has the Russian Federation manifestly violated the best interests of these children repeatedly, it has also denied their right to identity, their right to family, their right to unite with their family as well as violated their rights to education, access to information, right to rest, leisure, play, recreation and participation in cultural life and arts as well as right to thought, conscience and religion, right to health, and the right to liberty and security,” the OSCE Moscow Mechanism mission of experts wrote to the OSCE Permanent Council in their report. The report also found that the three most common reasons for the organized displacement of children are, "the evacuation for security reasons, the transfer for the purpose of adoption or foster care, and temporary stays in the so-called recreation camps,”

The team of experts led by Professor Veronika Bílková, Dr. Cecilie Hellestveit and Dr. Elīna Šteinerte found that Ukrainian children taken by Russian forces “are exposed to pro-Russian information campaigns often amounting to targeted re-education.”

“The Russian Federation does not take any steps to actively promote the return of Ukrainian children. Rather, it creates various obstacles for families seeking to get their children back,” the experts added.

The report “further exposed the abhorrent actions carried out at the behest of the Russian leadership, said Deirdre Brown, UK Acting Ambassador to the OSCE. “The report indicates figures in the several thousands, with the true figure likely to be far higher."

“Russia’s intention is clear. It is attempting to forcibly and permanently alter the demographic makeup of Ukraine,” Brown added. In late March 2023, the United States and 44 other countries in the OSCE invoked a special mechanism to investigate alleged human rights violations by Russia during its war in Ukraine, “particularly with regard to the forced transfer and deportation of children by the Russian Federation.”

According to the US and several European governments, Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration has carried out a scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, often to a network of dozens of camps, where the minors undergo political reeducation.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier in March issued arrest warrants for Putin and another Russian officials related to this reported forced deportation.

The OSCE does not have the authority to legally punish Russia if it finds evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but their facts can be given to other bodies that do have that authority. Both Russia and Ukraine are members of the 57 nation OSCE.

Russia has previously denied it is doing anything illegal, claiming it is bringing Ukrainian children to safety.

-via CNN

~

Ukrainian air defense forces shot down a drone over Kyiv late on May 4, Kyiv City Military Administration reported.

According to the administration, the drone remains fell in the Solomianskyi district on Kyiv’s right bank, causing a fire in a non-residential building.

Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko later said that the first responders had extinguished the fire on the first floor of a four-story shopping center that covered an area of 50 square meters. There were no casualties, he added.

Earlier, during an air raid alert, explosions were reported in the Ukrainian capital.

-via Kyiv Independent

Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces have launched up to 24 Shahed-136/131 attack drones from Bryansk region and the eastern coast of the Azov Sea in the early hours of May 4.

Eighteen drones were downed by Ukraine's air defense in the northern, central, and southern parts of Ukraine. Anti-aircraft weapons, aircraft, and mobile fire groups were involved, according to the Air Force.

The air raid alert had been on in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia regions, and the city of Kyiv for a few hours.

Kyiv was under attack for the third time in the last four days, Kyiv City Military Administarion reported.

The Russian forces attacked Kyiv using Shahed drones and missiles, probably of the ballistic type. According to preliminary information, all aerial targets were destroyed in Kyiv airspace, according to the city administation.

Some drone debris was found in the streets and also in a residential building in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district. No casualties and no significant damage were reported.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

The casualty numbers in the May 3 Russian attack on Kherson Oblast have risen to 23 people killed and 46 injured, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on May 4.

According to Prokudin, Russian forces shelled Kherson Oblast 98 times over the past 24 hours, firing off 539 shells from heavy artillery, Grads, tanks, drones, and aviation.

The city of Kherson was shelled 16 times over the past 24 hours.

It was reported on May 3 that 21 people had been killed and 48 injured, indicating that the latest casualty numbers include two people who succumbed to their injuries.

The city of Kherson and surrounding settlements have been under consistent Russian artillery fire since they were liberated in November, with Russian forces retreating to the east bank of the Dnipro River.

Kherson authorities are preparing to evacuate residents if the region comes under even more intense shelling.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

Russian troops have placed military equipment, weapons, and explosives in the turbine department of the unit four of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to the information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Ukraine's State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate reported that IAEA has also received unofficial reports that Russian forces are storing similar materials in other areas of the plant. These actions pose a serious threat to the safety of both plant personnel and nearby residents.

The Inspectorate emphasizes that any potential release of radioactive substances could have cross-border consequences.

Zaporizhzhia is located in southern Ukraine and serves as Europe's largest nuclear power plant. The plant has a gross power production capacity of 6,000 megawatts.

Since it was seized by Russian military forces a year ago, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has lost external power six times. Following the latest outage, the director general of the IAEA Rafael Mariano Grossi, issued an emotional statement calling for a protection zone around the plant and saying he was "astonished by the complacency" around the issue.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

Russia accused the United States on Thursday of being behind what it says was a drone attack on Moscow's Kremlin citadel intended to kill President Vladimir Putin.

A day after blaming Ukraine for what it called a terrorist attack, the Kremlin administration shifted the focus onto the United States, but without providing evidence. The White House was quick to reject the charge.

Ukraine has also denied involvement in the incident in the early hours of Wednesday, when video footage showed two flying objects approaching the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin walls and one exploding with a bright flash.

"Attempts to disown this, both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington," said Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

He said the United States was "undoubtedly" behind the incident and added - again without stating evidence - that Washington often selected both the targets for Ukraine to attack, and the means to attack them.

"This is also often dictated from across the ocean … In Washington they must clearly understand that we know this," Peskov said.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC television the Russian claims were false, and that Washington does not encourage or enable Ukraine to strike outside its borders.

Russia has said with increasing frequency that it sees the United States as a direct participant in the war, intent on inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Moscow. The United States denies that, saying it is arming Ukraine to defend itself and retake territory that Moscow has seized illegally in more than 14 months of war.

However, Peskov's allegation went further than previous Kremlin accusations against Washington.

Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, and security analysts have poured scorn on the idea that the incident was a serious assassination attempt.

But Russia has said it reserves the right to retaliate, and hardliners including former president Dmitry Medvedev have said it should now "physically eliminate" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Peskov declined to say whether Moscow saw Zelenskiy as a legitimate target.

He said Russia had an array of options and the response would be carefully considered and balanced. He said an urgent investigation was under way.

Putin was in the Kremlin on Thursday and staff were working normally, he said.

The incident took place less than a week before Russia's May 9 Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two - an important public holiday and an opportunity for Putin to rally Russians behind what he calls Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Peskov said air defences would be tightened, and this was happening anyway for the military parade on Red Square, the centrepiece of the holiday, just over the Kremlin wall from the site of the alleged attack.

He said the parade would go ahead as normal, and include a speech from Putin.

-via Reuters

[beardedmrbean]

An attack before dawn Monday damaged a bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea that is a key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine, forcing the span's temporary closure for a second time in less than a year. Two people were killed and their daughter was injured.

Vehicle traffic on the Kerch Bridge came to a standstill, while rail traffic across the 19-kilometer (12-mile) span also was halted for about six hours.

The strike was carried out by two Ukrainian maritime drones, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said.

Ukrainian officials were coy about taking responsibility, as they have been in past strikes. But in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment, Ukrainian Security Service spokesman Artem Degtyarenko said in a statement that his agency would reveal details of how the “bang” was organized after Kyiv has won the war.

The bridge previously was attacked in October, when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repair. Moscow decried that assault as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, targeting the country's power grid over the winter.

In Monday's blast, the Ukrainian news portal RBK-Ukraina cited a security services source as saying it was carried out by what it called floating drones. A deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, later said on the Telegram messaging service that “today, the Crimea bridge was torn apart by sea drones,” but it was not clear if he was making an official confirmation or referring to earlier reports.

Hours after the attack, video from Russian authorities showed crews picking up debris from the deck of the bridge, a section of which appeared to be sloping to one side, and a damaged black sedan with its passenger door open.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said authorities were inspecting the damage before determining how long it will take to repair.

The Kerch Bridge is a conspicuous symbol of Moscow's claims on Crimea and an essential land link to the peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge is the longest in Europe and is crucial for Russia's military operations in southern Ukraine in the nearly 17-month-old war.

Russia has expanded its military forces in Crimea since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Occasional sabotage and other attacks against the Russian military and other facilities on the peninsula have occurred since, with the Kremlin blaming Ukraine.

Those attacks and acts of sabotage haven't discouraged Russians from spending their holidays in Crimea, and as car traffic on the bridge came to a halt, long lines formed at a ferry crossing the Kerch Strait, Russian media reported.

Traffic jams also clogged a highway in the Russian-held part of the Kherson region after Moscow-appointed authorities in Crimea redirected motorists to take the land route to Russia, through the partially occupied regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The bridge attack comes as Ukrainian forces are pressing a counteroffensive in several sections of the front line. It also happened hours before Russia announced, as expected, that it is halting a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that allows the export of Ukrainian grain during the war.

Russian media identified the dead as Alexei and Natalia Kulik, who were traveling to Crimea for a summer vacation. The 40-year-old Kulik was a truck driver and his 36-year-old wife was a municipal education worker. Their 14-year-old daughter suffered chest and brain injuries.

Kyiv didn’t initially acknowledge responsibility for October’s bridge attack either, but Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar acknowledged earlier this month that Ukraine struck it to derail Russian logistics.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, returned to that theme Monday, calling the Ukrainian government a “terrorist organization.”

"We must blow up their houses and houses of their relatives, search and eliminate their accomplices,” he said.

Russian authorities said the attack didn't affect the bridge's piers but damaged the deck on one of two road links. The damage appeared less serious than in October's attack.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence department, declined to comment but said: “The peninsula is used by the Russians as a large logistical hub for moving forces and assets deep into the territory of Ukraine. Of course, any logistical problems are additional complications for the occupiers.”

The Security Service of Ukraine posted a redacted version of a popular lullaby, tweaked to say that the bridge “went to sleep again.”

[lady-nightmare]

Google translation:

The expert talks about ordinary Russians. "They start behaving in a scary way"

The former Polish ambassador in Moscow told Wirtualna Polska about what ordinary Russians are like today. It turns out that we really don't know much about this nation yet. Włodzimierz Marciniak also talked about his vision of the future of Russia. The mood in this country is very worrying.

Russia has always based its policy on fear and threats. Many of us think that this country is remote and hostile. The success of Russian propaganda was to create a belief among others that they should be afraid of it. The situation changed in February 2022. After the invasion of Ukraine began, weaknesses came to light, gigantic corruption in the power structures, and above all, lies about its own military power.

Today in Russia, few people see the power, but it still inspires fear. Although we know quite a lot about this country, how well do we know the Russians themselves? Włodzimierz Marciniak, a sovietologist and former ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Moscow, talks about what the Russian nation really is like. As he claims, "in every stereotype we will find a particle of truth."

He knows Russian society inside out. "Programmed submission to expected terror"

Russians are educated but inhumane Russians are an uneducated, backward, cruel nation - we can meet such opinions about our neighbors very often. Negative sentiment is fueled by the fact that Russia has been conducting a brutal invasion of Ukraine for several months.

It is a country of highly educated people who look at social issues mainly from a technical nature - says Marciniak. - The phenomenon of the Soviet system was that a huge part of society was educated in conditions of lack of freedom of speech - he points out.

"In Russia, a man is a wolf to man" Russia is a country with over 143 million citizens. Its area could accommodate almost two Europes, and the entire country stretches across nine time zones. Włodzimierz Marciniak points out that there is no way to define Russians as a unity. The same applies to support for the actions of the Kremlin.

Russian society is extremely stratified. The degree of polarization in terms of property is huge, the expert points out. - Various sociological studies show that support for the war was clearly related to material status. Well-to-do people were willing to accept government policies, he adds.

The former ambassador reminds that in Russia the power was always held by those who could show strength.

Beliefs have formed that only individual survival strategies are justified and proven. When all people follow their own selfish motives, the strongest will always win. It can be interpreted that they need it. If there is no order, someone will naturally impose this order by fist, subordinating everyone to their own interests - says Włodzimierz Marciniak.

Russia is an extremely atomized society, man is a wolf to man - he adds.

At the same time, Marciniak points out that it cannot be said that the invasion of Ukraine is only "Putin's war". According to his words, nothing happens without permission.

Wondering if this is Putin's or the Russians' war, it makes little sense. The society is ruled by a dictator, but there is some synergy and a kind of shaky harmony between these parties, the expert said.

"A Russian sees his flaws in Poles" Włodzimierz Marciniak also talks about the attitude of Russians towards Poles. As he claims, the Russians need approval and respect to consider others as allies.

This society is a collection of narcissists. They are delighted with each other. Others are good when they admire them, says the sovietologist.

The man addressed historical issues between our nations. As he claims, the Russians never treated us as "one of them" - even when for half a century Poland was forced to be a political ally of the USSR.

Poles are not a mirror for a Russian. A Russian sees his flaws in Poles - says Włodzimierz Marciniak. - The Russians have always known that Poland is something else, that we are different - he adds.

What is the future of Russia? "Each version is worse than the last" Nothing indicates that Russia will change its political course and cease to be the opposite pole for the West. There is more and more talk that we are entering the era of "Cold War 2.0". Sovietologist Włodzimierz Marciniak also told Wirtualna Polska about his vision of the future for Russia. She is quite disturbing.

I have a feeling that something will emerge from this war that hasn't been there yet and will not be a repeat of the totalitarian USSR and I do not rule out that something even worse - he says. - In successive versions of the Russian imperial entity, each successive one is worse than the previous one. The one that emerges now could be even worse, he adds.

Marciniak notes that Russian writers described the already existing and changing nightmarish reality of Russia. Over the centuries, the way regimes functioned evolved, but retained similarities. - This system of repression is getting tougher, but it is still not massive - assesses Włodzimierz Marciniak.

If you look at Putin's biography, without the element of a criminal past, we will not understand this system of government at all. Something like an organized crime group has been taken over by the state - informs the expert.

"Their goal is to get rich, like any mafia," he adds.

The future of Russia in black colors

"Once, people who seemed decent - including those I knew personally - start behaving in a terrifying way," Marciniak admits during the conversation. - My friends used to speak human language and were considered liberals, today they say terrible things - adds the former Polish ambassador in Moscow.

Everyone has an instinct for self-preservation, and today's system is heading towards a "digital gulag", where instead of guards, barbed wire and dogs, electronic systems will perform the same functions as they do - he says.

Everyone thinks to save their own skin, but historical experience should suggest that if this roller starts rolling, it will crush everyone - sums up the sovietologist Włodzimierz Marciniak for WP.

[tatyanabn]

CV

EXHIBITIONS (SOLO) 2022 “Dissociation”, Triangle gallery, Moscow

2023

"Frame of the present", Triangle gallery, Moscow

EXHIBITIONS(GROUP) 2018 “Graphics show”, Gallery Lega. Moscow, Russia 2019“Moscow – Olivier”, The Museum-Estate of M. S. Shchepkin. Moscow, Russia“HSE Art And Design Festival” The Museum of Moscow. Moscow, Russia

2021 “Healing chaos” LADIES DRAWING CLÜB online exhibition honorable mention “Invisible women”, Chetverg foundation, Moscow, Russia “Witness”,  The Foudation of V.Smirnov and K.Sorokin. Moscow, Russia

2022

"Honeymoon", Pop-up exhibition, Alania, Turkey

“New Lovers available", Arbuzz, Moscow

OTHER

Cosmoscow art fair 2022

EDUCATION 2017-2018 British Higher School of Art and Design (Basics of visual arts). Moscow, Russia2018-2019 HSE Art & Design School (Illustration). Moscow, Russia 2019 Pavel Grishin New Painting School

ВЫСТАВКИ(ПЕРСОНАЛЬНЫЕ)

2022 "Диссоциация", Галерея Треугольник, Москва 2023 "Кадр Настоящего", Галерея Треугольник, Москва

ВЫСТАВКИ(ГРУППОВЫЕ)

2018“Выставка графика”, Галерея Лега. Москва 2019“Москва-Оливье”, Дом-музей Михаила Щепкина. Москва “HSE Art And Design Festival” Музей Москвы. Москва 2021 “Healing chaos” LADIES DRAWING CLÜB онлайн выставка, почетное упоминание “Невидимые женщины”, фонд Четверг, Москва “Очевидец”, фонд «Артсфера», Москва. 2022 “Ханимун”, поп-ап выставка, Алания, Турция “Доступны новые любовники, галерея Arbuzz, Москва

ДРУГОЕ

Международная ярмарка современного искусства Cosmoscow, Москва - 2022

ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ 2017-2018 Британская Высшая школа дизайна (Основы ИЗО). Moscow, Russia

2018-2019 Школа Дизайна НИУ ВШЭ (Иллюстрация). Moscow, Russia

2019 Новая школа живописи Павла Гришина

[cyberbenb]

Lvova-Belova claims 700,000 children deported from Ukraine

Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova claimed that 700,000 Ukrainian children have been brought to Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion.

In total, she said about 4.8 million Ukrainians have been “accepted” into Russia and claimed most children arrived with relatives. The numbers include 1,500 children who lived in orphanages or state institutions.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova and Russian President Vladimir Putin for their involvement in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.

In February, Putin praised Lvova-Belova for her work overseeing the deportation of Ukrainian children, portraying it as a so-called “humanitarian effort” to “protect Russian citizens.”

Explainer: What we know about Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children

In March, the International Criminal Court made a historic ruling: It issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official overseeing the forced deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia. The statement by ICC says that Putin is “allegedly respo…

The Kyiv IndependentDaria Shulzhenko

In Russia, deported Ukrainian children are placed in hotels, summer camps, recreation centers, and shelters, where the conditions are often poor, according to the report by a coalition of Ukrainian NGOs that documents Russia’s war crimes.

A study by the Yale School of Public Health shows that Moscow has established a whole “network of re-education and adoption facilities” in Russia and occupied Crimea, with 43 camps where Ukrainian children have been held since Feb. 24, 2022, already identified.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan said he believes Russia is treating children like “spoils of war," and that the Kremlin does not seem to be denying the allegations against it but rather wearing it “like a badge of honor."

Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016 following its criticism of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.

More than 19,500 children have been identified by the Ukrainian government as having been deported. 385 of them have been returned to Ukraine.

[xtruss]

For Russians, Reading Is the New Resistance! What Bestselling Books Tell Us About How Russians Are Processing The War.

— MAY 14, 2023 | By Andrei Kolesnikov | Foreign Policy

Cathryn Virginia Illustration For Foreign Policy/Getty Images

When Russia launched the war that Russians must not call a war—the “Special Military Operation,” in the Kremlin’s parlance—many Russians immediately recognized the Orwellian reality in which they now lived. As forbidden language was replaced with official euphemisms and the authorities launched an increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent, many Russians felt a distinct sense of déjà vu. Suddenly, George Orwell’s 1984, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime in a state of perpetual war written in the 1940s, became the most popular fiction book. In 2022, it could be seen in the hands of people strolling on Moscow’s boulevards or lying next to vacationers sunbathing on Kaliningrad’s beaches.

1984 is not the only book on Russians’ wartime reading list, which offers a window into how the book-reading public is processing its country’s increasingly militarist and totalitarian turn. As the economy foundered, laws against opposition tightened, and news of Russia’s military failures in Ukraine began to trickle in, people started buying noticeably fewer business and self-improvement tomes and more fiction. Predictably, escapism was in high demand: Saples of romance, fantasy, science fiction, and detective books have grown especially strongly.

This year has seen a surge in the popularity of books, movies, and TV shows about spies and espionage. Cold War psychology is back as the Kremlin tells Russians they are fighting not Ukraine, but the “collective West.” The genre’s popularity also reflects a growing spy mania in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where paranoia reigns about internal enemies and foreign agents.

But the most intriguing part of the Russian reading list is on the nonfiction side. For about two months after the war began in February 2022, the bestseller on the Ozon online marketplace was the Russian translation of Man’s Search for Meaning, a book by the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. Originally published in 1946 under the German title, A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, Frankl explores ways to find strength and resilience in the midst of the worst possible adversity and oppression. The book’s revival is not exactly flattering to the Russian regime.

Indeed, if book sales are any guide, there has been a surge in interest in Nazi Germany among Russian readers—and that doesn’t mean the usual fare about Soviet heroism during the Great Patriotic War. Bestsellers among educated Russians include newly translated works, such as Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir, which depicts the transformations taking place in Germany in the 1930s through the eyes of a young lawyer. There is a whole bouquet of parallels that Russian readers will surely recognize as they experience the transformation of Putin’s authoritarian regime to a hybrid totalitarian one: the persecution of dissenters; the progressive Gleichschaltung, or total coordination of public life with the regime; the willingness of ordinary people to obey; the temptations of self-isolation as people attempt to live a parallel, unnoticed life against the background of the unfolding nightmare; the feeling of a wasted life, like Haffner’s father in the book.

Nicholas Stargardt’s book The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45—published in Russian as The Mobilized Nation—has also become a bestseller, perhaps because Russians have found themselves mobilized in every sense. The book explores mass behavior during war, including the emotional mobilization in support of state power. The book’s popularity is another suggestion that the experience of Nazi society strikes a chord with today’s Russians.

A man reads a Russian translation of George Orwell’s book “1984” in Moscow’s Pushkinskaya Square on April 28, 2021. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP Via Getty Images

In another parallel to the German experience, more Russians are now contemplating collective guilt and responsibility for their regime, the war, and the widespread atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. In this respect, the publication of The Question of German Guilt, a series of lectures given by the German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1945, has come at a very opportune moment.

The question of collective guilt or responsibility arose among the more reflective part of Russian society immediately after the invasion—so powerful was the shock. And these debates have not ceased. What is the difference between guilt and responsibility? Should liberal Russians who hold democratic views, take a pro-Western stance, and have opposed Putin all their lives, feel guilt or at least responsibility for what is happening? Should or could they have done more to oppose Putin? The German author Thomas Mann, taking offense at U.S. government restrictions on exiles like himself, once noted in one of his letters that he had begun to fight Adolf Hitler before the Americans did. The same is true of Russian society: Many people fought against Putin when, for example, European governments and companies were building good working relations with him.

Jaspers brings some clarity to this debate. There is a group of individuals legally guilty of Russia’s crimes, and there are other individuals bearing different degrees of moral responsibility. Ultimately, books like Jaspers’s help readers determine for themselves the extent to which they share responsibility. As the war goes on and Russia is increasingly isolated from the West, these reflections and debates are becoming more and more acute: Some Russians believe, as Haffner writes, that a dictator occupies his own nation before occupying another—while others reject the very idea that Russians are also victims. Russian civil society—split between those who left and those who stayed behind—is not as hopeless as some might believe if these discussions are taking place, and books like Jaspers’s and Haffner’s are being read.

With public protest of any kind now illegal and immediately broken up, reading has also become a form of resistance: By buying these books, Russians are comparing Putin’s regime with the worst examples of totalitarianism. Interestingly, they are looking to Nazi Germany, even though there are countless parallels between the Russian present and their own country’s past. The 1940s and early 1950s under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, in particular, were marked by paranoia and the persecution of perceived traitors, spies, and “rootless cosmopolitans,” in many ways analogous to how today’s dissenters are labeled “foreign agents,” “fifth columnists,” and “national traitors.”

One reason Russians are reading up on Hitler, not Stalin, may be that there is not much popular Russian literature about that era in the Soviet Union. Russia publishes many excellent academic books on the historical details of the Soviet period (as well as much pseudo-historical junk). But clever academic books are for a narrow, specialized readership, and the era when exposing Stalinism was popular among a larger public has long passed. Unlike in some other Soviet successor states—such as the Baltic countries and Ukraine—there is today no mass comprehension in Russia of the dark pages of the country’s own history, which is probably why the general public is more at ease with foreign experience. And it’s important to keep in mind that books on everyday life in Nazi Germany are bestsellers not among wide masses, but among a more or less intellectual segment of society.

Reading about past European dictatorships as a lens into the Russian present goes beyond the interest in Nazi Germany. Already in multiple printings is a new book by Alexander Baunov, my colleague at the newly inaugurated Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. Written for a Russian audience, The End of the Regime: How Three European Dictatorships Ended is devoted to the evolution and fall of the Franco dictatorship in Spain, the Salazar regime in Portugal, and the military junta in Greece. While the book makes no mention of Putin, Russian readers are good at sniffing out analogies. They dream of the Putin regime ending, too, or at least evolving into a less harsh form of governance. Naturally, therefore, they are interested in the process of how dictatorships fall and transition to another form of government. In Baunov’s book, readers are looking for examples—and for glimmers of hope.

Unwittingly, one of the Kremlin’s own policies may be boosting sales of books casting an unflattering light on the regime. A 2022 amendment to the law on the status of foreign agents requires that all books, articles, or other publications produced with the help of foreign funding to be prominently labeled as the work of a foreign agent. True to the dictum that forbidden fruit is always sweeter, that label will work like advertising to attract certain readers. The label has been slapped on many of the best and most popular Russian fiction and nonfiction authors, including Boris Akunin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Dmitry Glukhovsky, and Dmitry Bykov.

One crucial resemblance to Soviet times is the newly political role of reading. Unable to protest openly, people are expressing a different kind of resistance by reading literature that is banned, discouraged, or casts an unfavorable light on the regime—if only by comparison. At first glance, this kind of resistance might not seem like much, especially given the ongoing war, which a majority of Russians say they support. Yet the act of reading these books should not be dismissed lightly. It matters for the future of Russia which books its citizens are reading, and what kind of worldview they are forming as a result.

— Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

[alleventsalert]

Moscow Education Show 2022 - Educationshow.ru

Moscow Education Show 2022 – Educationshow.ru

Educationshow.ru – Moscow Education Show 2022 are organized by aiGroup Company. It will be held on 11 February 2022 – 12 February 2022 in Moscow, Russia. Educationshow.ru | Moscow Education Show 2022 You just need to follow the steps to participate in aiGroup Company. (Moscow Education Show). Open your default internet browser.Type www.educationshow.ru. it in your address bar. Fill in all the…

[kramlabs]

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/06/two-big-errors-about-russia-by-helmholtz-smith.html

Two Big Errors About Russia

by Helmholtz Smith

American and Western policy towards Russia is founded on two serious errors. (A considerable understatement, of course – the past thirty years show that conventional Western ideas of Russia are almost completely wrong.)

But these two are endlessly repeated and, no matter how many times they are proven wrong, they remain the foundational assumptions of the West's attempts to change or control Russia.

First is the idea that the Russian economy is feeble, unbalanced and dependent on income from the West. The second is that Putin is the chief of a band of thieves who, who if made to feel pain, will get rid of him. Sanctions will collapse the first and bring the pain to cause the second. (Another delusion is that once Putin goes, everything will be to the West's liking – but I did say there was a multitude of misconceptions.)

First let's consider Russia's economy. Op-eds that say that the Russian economy is the size of Texas or Belgium or Luxembourg or whatever simply translate rubles into dollars and gallop to their preassigned conclusion. They never ask how big the space program of the country Russia is compared to is, or how many nuclear submarines it makes, or new subway stations, airports or bridges it opens, or whether that country makes all kinds of airplanes and trucks, or how much food it grows and exports or anything else that actually measures a real economy.

As soon as they did, of course, they would see that the Russian economy is much bigger than the puerile ruble-dollar comparison suggests. And, a slightly closer look would reveal that Russia's economy is almost self-sufficient. But the West carries on confident that Russia is a "gas station with nuclear weapons" and its feeble economy can be easily collapsed. RAND based a whole strategy on "Russia’s greatest vulnerability... is its economy, which is comparatively small and highly dependent on energy exports

They persist in the face of all experience to the contrary. The EU cut food exports to Russia to, I suppose, bring people out into the streets protesting the disappearance of exotic cheese (remember Masha Gessen's heartbreak about my little cheese?) Russia responded intelligently and is now self-sufficient in food and Europe has lost that market. Biden was going to reduce the ruble to rubble but Moscow effortlessly countered him and the ruble is now tied to energy – one of the strongest foundations a currency can have.

And still the sanctions pile on. But it's educational – now we know a lot more about what potash is used for and where it comes from. And neon – who knew that was important? Rare earths! Beer bottles! Moscow is only just now starting to counter-sanction and the world is discovering that Russia is a major producer of a lot of important things and if you sanction them, you will find yourself running short of lots of things you'd never heard of. (You'd think anyone who owned an atlas would be able to figure out that a country as large as Russia must be a big producer of most resources).

Biden can blame Putin all he likes, but sanctioning energy and potash is a certain way to drive up prices all round. Biden used to think that Russia had "nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else". Maybe the people running Russia are better at thinking things out and seeing reality than we thought they were. (Yet another mistaken Western assumption – what is there in the last twenty years that suggests we're smarter than they are?)

The idea that Russia is a big criminal conspiracy and Putin is the Boss of Bosses is the foundation of the personal sanctions strategy. So-and-so is deemed "close to Putin", whatever that means, and he's prevented from going to Paris to buy cheese and his yacht is stolen confiscated. Angry, he sits down with the other capos and decides it's time the Boss was found face down in a bowl of kasha and blood. The think tankers tell us that Putin is the Chief Thief holding onto power by spreading the loot around, fake elections and making critics disappear. (By the way, wasn't he supposed to have tried to kill Navalny, where's the oped savant explaining why he's still alive?)

All elections in Russia are fake, all opinion polls are fake, all media is controlled by the Kremlin, the underbosses are hurting so why is Putin still there? It surely couldn't be that he is the very popular and respected elected head of state – to suggest that would be to call into question three decades of US and EU think tankery. Therefore he must be just one more sanction away from being whacked out. And so more names – all "close to Putin" – are added to more lists. But nothing changes.

These two errors run on and on. Russia is now the most sanctioned country ever and Western politicians still think another round of "tough sanctions" will do the job. But the more sanctions it survives, the more sanction-proof Russia becomes.

Wars are irruptions of brutal reality into fantasy and the Ukraine war is laying bare the empty complacency at the root of the West's view of Russia. It's going to be a cold hungry winter in Europe and in parts of America. Can't blame Putin forever.

But the depressing truth is that minds are rarely changed, you have to change the man. How much longer will the West's leaders outlast their repeated failures?

:::

[bopinion]

2022 / 06

Aperçu of the Week:

"The wise man learns from everything and from everyone, the normal man from his experiences, and the stupid man knows everything better."

(Socrates)

Bad News of the Week:

A war in Europe seems possible. A war! In Europe! Well over 100,000 Russian soldiers in more and more newly built camps near Donetsk and Luhansk. Another 35,000 are officially participating in a maneuver in Belarus. And then 30 ships from the Black Sea Fleet have also left their harbor. The case seems clear: Ukraine is surrounded by the Russian military in the north, east and south. An invasion is imminent. As we have already seen with the annexation of Crimea. Really?

The long-time Russia correspondent of ARD (public broadcaster in Germany) Ina Ruck no longer understands the world. On Twitter she writes that she thinks an invasion is unlikely: "Putin is by no means so stupid as to risk the excellent negotiating position he has built up." And what does the Kremlin say? "Alarmism," "Provocative speculation," "Groundless accusations," "Hysteria," "Propaganda campaign," etc. There is no invasion planned. One is not aggressive. On the contrary, the West threatens Russia's security with its constant eastward expansions. And then yesterday a US submarine was caught in Russian waters near the Kuril Islands. So it's all a misunderstanding. Really?

As we all know, hindsight is always the wiser. And history books have always had more authenticity than any crystal ball. But can one simply remain inactive because of this? One nation after another is calling off its embassy staff and asking its citizens to leave Ukraine. But in Kiev, everyday life prevails. Ukrainians are surprisingly calm about the threat. Have they simply become jaded after eight years? Or is the West really sounding the alarm? After all, even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj has now called for no panic.

The dilemma can be described quite well by the personal experience of a friend of ours. She comes from Ukraine, has lived in Germany for about 25 years, so she left the country before its democratization. But her whole family is still there. What should she advise them now? Should they now ignore their work contracts and compulsory education and leave the country "just" because there is a threat situation? But if they wait and war does break out, Kiev airport will be one of the first targets for air strikes and the borders to Poland or Romania - both NATO members - will be closed in no time. And even if not, would they even be able to cross the border without visas? As is well known, the handling of refugees at the EU's external border has been anything but welcoming lately.

After all, diplomatic contacts are active at full speed. Including at the highest level: Macron has just returned from Moscow, and Scholz will be with Putin the day after tomorrow. Who spoke with Biden on the phone for an hour yesterday. Perhaps it is not for nothing that they say "As long as there is talk, there is no shooting".

Maybe it would be a start not to think in black and white out of reflex. It seems so simple: on the one hand a geopolitical aggressor, on the other an emerging democracy seeking to join the West. On the other hand, Ukraine has adhered to the Minsk Agreement less than Russia in recent years. The official justification: after all, they were taken advantage of.

But no matter who did what wrong and when. The crucial thing is and remains: Saving human lives. And every armed conflict, for whichever side one shows understanding for whatever reason, costs human lives. For the civilian population and for the soldiers who, after all, were not asked whether they wanted to stick their necks out for political power games. As a child of the Cold War, I hope in principle for understanding. And for peace. For the good of all. Even, or especially, when it is not easy.

Good News of the Week:

Even if the Federal Chancellor in Germany has the most exposed position, he is actually in our political system the No. 3. Before him still comes the president of the parliament and at the top is the Federal President. This was elected today by the Federal Assembly - consisting of the Bundestag and representatives of all state parliaments. In this case re-elected. Because the Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier has already been in office since March 2017 and now begins his second term.

The office of the Federal President is always supposed to represent a certain neutrality - after all, he stands for the entire people. Which is not so easy when the incumbent is a member of a party. Or was even a professional politician before taking office - in Steinmeier's case he was foreign minister and vice chancellor, among other things. And yet he has proven that "non-partisanship" is not just a label for him. Time and again, he has succeeded in building bridges and promoting understanding across any aisles.

This is also perceived by the parties. Because what is really remarkable is that, as a Social Democrat, he was also proposed and elected for the first time by the conservatives who held the majority at the time. And today even by Social Democrats, Conservatives, Greens and Liberals. The fact that the highest office in the state is not instrumentalized by party-political games is, in my opinion, a highly democratic value. Which is respected and cultivated by all parties except the extremes of the right. Nice.

Personal happy moment of the week:

My 13-year-old son got his booster shot today. Not only because it makes sense in my opinion, but also and especially because he finds it meaningful himself. For his own health and out of solidarity with vulnerable groups. Not a given for a kid his age. Especially not when contrarians stand in front of the school with posters to - I'll put it neutrally - "point out the risks of vaccination." And what does he do? He shouts out of the car window that their posters contain not only nonsense, but also spelling mistakes. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I couldn't care less...

...that more and more people are hoping for an end to the Corona restrictions soon. And more and more politicians are promising this - specifically and with a date. As if the virus would stick to that. And the deniers rejoice in their supposed victory. Why do so many see only the annoying ban and its effect on their way of life? And not the meaning behind it? The vulnerable groups can only shake their heads in depression. And the shadow families have to retreat further again. Sigh.

As I write this...

...the thermometer shows 9 degrees Celsius. Plus. Middle of February. At the Bavarian edge of the Alps. And the sun is melting away the last little piles of snow. So that's it for winter this year? That would be a pity.

Post Scriptum:

Volvo invented the three-point seat belt. And released the patent - to save lives. Wow.

[mariacallous]

I can clearly remember the shock I felt in the mid-1960s when I started meeting “first wave” emigrants in Moscow — people who fled Russia during the Civil War or in the first years after the revolution. They spoke much more quietly but with a kind of theatrical accent, carefully articulating every word and often inserting foreign words into their speech, pronouncing them in the same excellent English or French. These people spent 45–50 years in isolation from their native metropolis, maturing and integrating in another world. And the Soviet Russian language had become the moon to them.

But little by little, especially amid the “thaw” after Stalin’s death, the “old” language started returning gradually. Bit by bit, Soviet language made room in both its main dimensions: in official ideological speech (“wooden language,” as it was called) and in the speech of people who didn’t quite fit in. These castaways experienced the same disgust for both the language of the official ideology (which claimed to be prescriptive) and the language of high culture. Pretty much every person lived at the intersection of these three fields. No matter which field dominated, the other two were always there, as well.

The novelty of the Putin era, which will soon have lasted more than a quarter of a century, is twofold. First, Putin, the late firebrand politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and their ideological environment managed to unite two language fields: ideological language (despite the regime’s lack of a specific ideology) and the vile, rude, and hateful language of violence. In Putin’s speech cloaca, there’s simply no place for the language of culture, science, knowledge, and education.

An analysis of public speeches made by Putin or Zhirinovsky set against concrete actions taken by these Russian state figures (and many others) shows that these orators have relied on two basic discursive points: constant lies and constant threats. Both of these rhetorical components have broken through into real policies on several occasions: notably, during the last war in Chechnya at the start of the century and in the attacks on Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and especially after February 24, 2022.

Over the past 20-odd years, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed out the Russian Federation. Of course, not everyone is consciously “fleeing Putin’s language,” but numerous in-depth interviews show that a leading cause for unhappiness among these people is the intolerance of the established public discourse of fear and threats.

Many prominent writers and scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, artists and students, teachers, and also people without any specific profession have recently moved from Russia to other partially or completely non-Russian-speaking republics of the former USSR — from Latvia to Ukraine, from Kazakhstan to Georgia, and much farther abroad, too. One of the main impressions new arrivals in these countries have described is that the Russian language they encounter is different generally, not just in the tone and style of conversation. The same people who looked down on migrant workers not long ago for speaking Russian poorly now find themselves in an unfamiliar role. Emigrants have also adjusted to the fact that Russia’s state media is silent when it comes to things the rest of the world would have been screaming about for ages, though it’s just a conversation, not shouting, in a democratic society.

Since the February invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s public dialogue has drowned completely in lies and aggression. Millions of people somehow adapted to this and even began following the authorities’ orders. For example, instead of “explosions” they say “pops,” instead of “killed” they say “cargo 200” (using the military jargon for coffins in transport), and instead of “war” they say “special military operation” or just “SVO” (spetsialnaya voennaya operatsiya) for short.

This consent by tens of millions to repeat their masters’ lies has also forced hundreds of thousands of other people (maybe the number will actually reach the millions, with time) to leave their old community and appeal to the world with their own message: “We’re different Russians!”

Ukrainians make up an even larger cohort of Russian-speaking immigrants around the world. They’ve fled mostly to Europe (especially Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic) and not western Ukraine, much like the Russian-speakers from the country’s easternmost regions, where the Russian army invaded under the pretext of protecting these “Russians” from “Ukrainian Nazis” who were supposedly “banning the Russian language.”

At the same time, policies toward the Russian language are changing in Ukraine. Russian-language mass media is now broadcasting around the clock. The audience for several channels (for example, FREEDOM) is both the public inside the Russian Federation and Ukraine’s own Russian-speaking diaspora. The talking heads invited to appear on these stations are frequently bilingual (fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian), but even more often they’re Russian-speaking figures in the anti-Kremlin opposition.

Though the hosts and guests on these programs sometimes repeat elements of propaganda and military censorship, the material differs radically from Russia’s own censored media in terms of literacy, content, and logic: it’s the Russian political language that disappeared long ago from Russia’s mass media. You can find critical Russian-language political analysis in Kazakhstan and Georgia, where the media landscape is gradually adapting to the growing Russian diaspora. (According to my own observations, there are two countries whose artistic and scholarly elite fundamentally oppose the revival of Russian speech: Ukraine after 2014 and Georgia since 2008.)

Vladimir Putin is sometimes accused of wanting to restore the USSR, no longer based on internationalist ideology but as a Russian nation-state that subjugates its minorities. To some extent, this plan (if it ever existed) is now being implemented by the diaspora settling in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, as well as in the Baltic states. Unlike the former Soviet Union, however, the new Russian diaspora isn’t tasked with the function of “keeping watch” over the “national periphery.” Moscow professors, as was the case during the Second World War, have already started teaching in the universities of Tashkent, Almaty, Bishkek, and even Tbilisi, where apprehensions about Russians are strong, albeit tempered by local hospitality.

The Russian language also remains a lingua franca for many people from the Tuva, Buryatia, or Volga regions when they find themselves abroad. The concept of “Russian as a language of intercultural interaction” allows members of ethnic minorities to broaden their usage of Russian in parallel with the development of their own languages. This happens even when they face discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. In parallel, Russia’s official narrative predominantly presents the former Soviet republics as bent on persecuting and even exacting revenge against Russians for the USSR’s “historical transgressions.”

But what makes today’s cohort of Russian-speakers leaving the country distinct from the refugees who escaped between 1918 and 1921 during the Civil War or in the 1940s after the Second World War? How are they different from the “third wave” emigrants who fled during the Cold War? The answer has to do with both the new technologies that have emerged and the new awareness among these people of their potentially low status abroad. For many, the Russian language is still of paramount importance — more meaningful than material wealth or spiritual bonds. Even many immigrants from Ukraine who end up in places like Germany are committed to preserving the Russian language.

At the very start of the conflict, many in Ukraine, as well as Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the diaspora, extended the discourse of the war with Russia to relations between the two languages. The intelligentsia of largely Russian-speaking cities like Odesa began not only studying Ukrainian but also using it in conversations on social media. As the war expanded and the Russian army seized territories in Ukraine’s predominantly Russian-speaking east, however, the fight against the invasion became (for some) a war against the Russian Federation for the right to the Russian language itself.

Thanks to the expansion of Russian-language broadcasting from the Ukrainian side, it’s become clear that Ukraine’s resistance is devoted not just to upholding Ukrainians’ right to their own language but also to denying Putin’s Russia the right to its cynical abuse of the Russian language.

This is where the direction of Ukraine’s future language policies coincides with the vector of language policies adopted spontaneously by minorities in Russia, who were legally deprived in 2018 of the capacity to develop their own languages. Over the past quarter of a century, the Putin regime and its supporters have transformed public communication in Russian into a cesspool. This is why any attempt to describe clearly what is happening now in Russia simultaneously exposes all the ways in which the language is abused, from the criminal slang that animates politics to countless conspiracy theories and the Russian Orthodox Church’s ecclesiastical rhetoric.

Less than a year has passed since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and hundreds of thousands of refugees from Russia have been learning to use Russian as a language of resistance against the Putin regime. In Russian, Ukrainian refugees and mass media report on the Russian army’s crimes in Ukraine. Speaking this same language, Russian citizens use the Internet to report the authorities’ crimes inside Russia itself.

These events caught the Slavic community in the West by surprise. Traditional interactions with Russia’s scientific and academic institutes have ceased, and those in Europe and the United States who adhere to Putin’s “Russkiy Mir” revanchism have been thrown into some confusion. Meanwhile, in Russia’s former colonies (in Central Asia, the South Caucasus, the Balkans, and the nations of the Baltics and Eastern Europe), universities and schools are already receiving an influx of refugees from Russia. The growth of online education also keeps the Russian language from becoming obsolete.

Russian-speakers — especially young ones — are developing a taste for language resistance, and they’re getting support in this from the new media, whether it’s NEXTA in Poland, Priamyi and Current Time in Ukraine, Dozhd and Meduza in Latvia, or others elsewhere. Of course, there are pockets of cultural resistance still inside Russia, but the state media does everything possible to isolate the diaspora as an “insignificant minority of misfits” from the “true-to-itself majority” in the metropolis. In other words, the Russian authorities are well aware of the threat they face from free speech, wherever it is practiced.

[aftaabmagazine]

"Young Afghans" A Film Review

"Young Afghans" A Film Review

By Farhad Azad

Filmed in the middle of the twenty-year US-led “war on terrorism,” three dynamic Afghans, in their mid-20s and final year at Kabul University, are the center of UK-based director Makez Rikweda's conscientious documentary "Young Afghans."

Rikweda mindfully takes the viewer into the public and private lives of the main characters. They are a part of a generation positioned to propel Afghanistan into a more hopeful tomorrow; in the film, a foreign personality states an arduous task, "This conflict will not end because of foreign intervention, meddling, but because of you."

Farzana, a psychology major, is autonomous and set to confront society's patriarchal norms and questions the continued interference of foreign powers: “Just once, let’s look at ourselves and ask why it is that foreigners have dared to interfere in this country.”

Sabawoon, an engineering student, aspires to apply his technical skills to reconstruct Afghanistan. “I want Afghanistan to be the most developed country.”

And Mauj, a self-appointed leader, is determined to change Afghanistan's trajectory by growing the leaders of the future. "We need leaders raised from within the nation."

On the surface, the three characters show immense optimism and want normal lives in the "Kabul bubble," a spiteful term dubbed by some residing outside the city, but are mindful of significant barriers: suicide bombings, traditionalistic society, government dishonesty, and the ongoing three decades of conflict. Sabawoon overlooking Kabul says, “I can’t see a picture of the future because it’s dark.”

In the 2000s, the Afghanistan narrative was often told by non-natives. Rikweda wanted to challenge that, "I think the key thing that inspired this film was a desire to hear Afghans speak and to show them as powerful, intelligent, capable people who were entirely dedicated to their country while at the same time being human and going through youth's milestones in the same way we all do."

Rikweda offers a rare, intimate look into the post 9/11 progressive Kabuli generation. The background landscape is a city juxtaposed between 1990s war ruins and new developments.

It is disheartening to see the film after the Taliban coup d’etat, particularly the collapse of the liberal outpost Kabul University, the banning of women from work and education, and the economic downfall.

This generation's experience echos the youth of the 1960-the 70s, who set upon a similar path but were short-handed by a calamity.

The poet Layla Sarahat Rushani (1958-2004) penned, "a hand clasped my wings of hope." Her generation never recovered.

Rikweda's film is a critical historical account of the youth that could have steered Afghanistan towards modernity. However, their wings were literally and figuratively clipped. The majority are stranded and desperate, first on the tarmac of Kabul Airport and now in hiding, because of the latest manmade catastrophe.

“Young Afghans” is available for streaming in November 2021 at Docunight.com.

My wish is to see Afghanistan peaceful and prosperous.

– Farzana

We need leaders raised from within the nation.

—Mauj

I want Afghanistan to be the most developed country.

– Sabawoon

About the Makez Rikweda

Makez Rikweda is an Afghan writer and filmmaker based in London. She was born in Kabul and lived in New Delhi and Moscow before settling in the UK at the age of 7.

Her films include Fat Girl (2022), Sound of the Birds (2021), Only Voice Remains (2019), and Young Afghans (2010).

Alongside her filmmaking career, Makez has spent the past decade producing shows and content for high-profile clients including Al Jazeera English, France 24, China Global Television, Associated Press, Adobe, Teen Vogue, ITN Productions, and the BBC.

Website: www.makezrikweda.com

[sainthockey]

Evgeni Malkin + Anna Kasterova: SNC Russia (May 2018)

Evgeni Malkin is the most titled Russian hockey player in the NHL; he has superb stats and three Stanley Cups. Right now, while you read this issue, he is fighting for his fourth Cup: the playoffs begin in May and the final round ends in June. If the powerful Pittsburgh loses quickly -- though there's almost no chance of that -- we may see Zhenya participate in the IIHF World Championship, which is also running in May.  SNC couldn't ignore the month of hockey -- or the fact that Malkin is married to one of the biggest sex symbols in sports journalism, TV presenter Anna Kasterova.  For both of them, this is their first cover photoshoot and interview, taken by Ruben Zarbabyan in Miami.

August 7th 2006, Magnitogorsk. Evgeni Malkin wakes up after a night that would later be called “the worst of my life.”  Discussions with Metallurg Magnitogorsk regarding Zhenya’s new contract were delayed late into the night.  What was the argument? It was obvious to everyone that Zhenya was ripe with hope that he would soon transfer to the NHL -- Pittsburgh, his draft team, was already waiting for him.  But the leaders of Metallurg insisted that it was necessary that he stay with them for one more year.  Once they reached the eleventh hour of negotiations, they finally found Malkin to be persuadable -- and he signed the year’s contract and went to sleep.

But when he awoke in the morning, he realized that he made a mistake, and made a crucial decision -- he would call his North American agency, find a way to refuse the contract, and make it to the United States.  “You can’t do that to people -- force them to sign these contracts at three in the morning,” Zhenya would later say in an interview.    

Despite accusations about his lack of patriotism and the skepticism of “well-wishers” about his future in hockey overseas, he soon made his debut -- in September 2006 with the Penguins.  

Around the same time -- in Moscow -- a Psychology student from Zelenograd -- Anna Kasterova -- was on the cusp of making a major decision. Her head throbbed -- the program she was in felt too managed and didn’t get into the heart of the work she wanted to do.  It was time to instead turn to her childhood dream -- becoming a TV presenter.  She quickly began to send her resume out to many companies, and heard back finally from “Russia 24.”  However, without any experience or education in this field, they only offered her an internship where she would go to shoots with the channel’s star correspondents, hold their microphones, perform menial tasks, watch how they worked, and twiddle her thumbs.  In this role, she would have to stay for two years -- all of this after a quiet office position for a financial company.

“Yes, before television, I tried out a number of different spheres.  But everything seemed to be taken, as it turned out, and I’m an intelligent woman.” Slim, tall, and tanned, Kasterova has both the laughter of a contralto and some healthy self irony.  But thanks to this, she still got her chance to get some time in front of the camera -- and took full advantage.

There was TNT, VGTRK, “Headbutt,”, “Central Television,” NTV and a bunch more.  Twelve years later, the two of them are together in Pittsburgh.  He is a three-time Stanley Cup winner.  She is the the face of Russia 2, and now mother and wife.  It seems that maybe the time of heavy career decisions is behind them, but even if not, they won’t have to endure them alone.

“We met in 2011,” recalls Kasterova.  “More precisely, Evgeni saw me on TV.  He found my number through some friends and sent me a message.  I’m trying to remember what kind of friends they were…”

“Well, FSB, maybe…” Malkin loves to communicate with short, ironic punchlines -- which when paired with the unique timbre of his voice and his expressive accent (if spoken in English) usually brings forth the laughter of others. (translator’s note: here is an article about FSB, Russian state security/spy group since 1995)

“So, FSB, right?” Anna fixes her husband with a faux-angry look -- the style of communication of all happy couples -- and a moment later the both of them erupt with laughter.  Through the laughing, Kasterova recounts the original text message that he sent.  “It was something like this: Hello, Anya – This is Zhenya Malkin here. Here, I wanted to say, I liked you. If you'd like, can we be friends?  And here, I’ll write to you sometimes.” Whether the insidious use of the word “here” worked on her -- or simply that she was that day in a good mood -- she agreed.  Although, it isn’t possible to imagine how many of these types of messages she must have received -- a girl who, at the time, had the status of a sex symbol.

The storyline of their communications was revealed almost immediately: Evgeni’s feelings were revealed on the other side of the screen -- he did not hide them and constantly tried to initiate a full-fledged date. But Anya was not in a hurry to let this ardent center forward cross the blue line.  And it didn’t help that Malkin lived and worked an entire hemisphere away.

Therefore, for three long years, Malkin and Kasterova were stuck in the stage of semi-friendly correspondence and the rare phone call.  There were occasional “hellos” said on Fight Nights and in various Moscow restaurants, but nothing more.  

“Of course, I understood that there is little chance for friendship between a man and a woman,” recalls Anna, “that once you write there is some interest there, but for some reason I was determined to to continue drawing it out.”

“There was interest,” recognizes Malkin, “but in the conversation I was being quite forward, as is typical of men.  First of all, I wanted to get to know each other and that would show.  It was extremely annoying that it took so long.”  That fateful meeting, after which -- in the words of Malkin -- everything became quite serious, took place where hockey players and TV journalists collide as if they were all quantum particles in the Big Bang -- during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, or more precisely, immediately following. Malkin’s first date, in fact, he begged and persuaded Kasterova to have lunch with him as a small comfort after his unfortunate defeat against the Finns in the quarterfinals.

“Without a second thought, I agreed,” says Anya, “and we met.  It immediately became clear that this brutal hockey player -- with a romantic and vulnerable nature -- has a hard time getting over defeat.”

It’s funny that the Big Bang that brought Kasterova and Malkin together could not have happened if the current ban on NHL participation in the Olympics had been in place back then.  Malkin is certainly upset about the situation -- that he could not play for Russia during their first Olympic victory in many decades -- but he is happy for his colleagues and hopes to be able to attend the Winter Games in 2022.

“We are just pawns in this situation,” he says, from his heart, “the decisions are made by billionaires.  The league considered their options and decided not to let us go -- it’s a shame, but that’s it.  But of course I am very happy for our team.”

“Of course I understand how it important it would be to Zhenya to win this medal,” says Kasterova. “And I would love to go along with him and cheer -- especially since I have not been to Korea.”

“Nevermind that -- you would go to the North!” says Malkin -- a little family trolling.  

“To what North, Zhenya?” Again, Anya fixes him an imaginary stern look and then they both burst out in more than one peal of laughter.  Evgeni’s sense of humor was forged in difficult conditions: numerous press conferences and scrums with such questions as ‘when did you know you needed to add to the offense?’ (indeed, being shut out 2-0, clearly he would realize it was time for some offense? Did he feel they were getting shots off in attempt to get a goal?).  Malkin crafted the perfect recipe for combatting such questions: blurt something out -- some simple, paradoxical thought from his head.  In combination with his heavy accent, that certainly is enough to make the Americans roll with laughter.  

From this, you might perceive Malkin as some kind of bumpkin -- one shirt, simple as five cents, with a strange, slightly clumsy demeanor. But you’ll only believe this until you see how he spins himself full round two defenders, all while sliding the puck past the opposition’s goalie.  Then it becomes clear that Malkin is far from that simple guy.  

His whole family, both mother’s and father’s, worked at the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant.  The family of Kasterova, too, comes from the field of science and industry.  Anya’s first TV program on Russia-2 network dealt with topics of science, technology, and the internet -- but it was not by chance!  Her grandfather was one of the lead engineers at the Zelenograd factory of Angstrem.  Remember those vintage Soviet handheld games where the wolf catches eggs in a basket? As well as Mysteries of the Ocean and Autoslalom? These games were developed from the efforts of our heroine’s grandfather -- and Anya was one of the first informal beta-testers!

“I was even given models that did not end up in mass production!” she states proudly.  

Today, their family life is clearly divided between days on which Zhenya has a game and days on which he does not.  On game days, they wake up, Anya sees Zhenya off to the rink, and then after she begins to cook him his game day meal according to the rules of hockey nutrition -- though fortunately they are not so complex. When Malkin returns, he eats, sleeps about an hour, and then leaves once more to prepare for the game.  If Anya is attending, she will head to the rink a little later on.  

On days with no game, Zhenya will return from practice in the afternoon and they spend the rest of the day with their son Nikita.  Off days are mostly spent driving to meet friends for lunch or dinner -- either one of their friends from the large Russian-speaking community in Pittsburgh, team captain Sidney Crosby, Malkin’s linemate Phil Kessel, or Swedish teammates Patric Hornqvist and Carl Hagelin.  

“Kris Letang is also a good friend -- sometimes you can hang out with him,” adds Evgeni.  

But in general, Pittsburgh is a small town with a population of only three hundred thousand.  It used to be the center of the American steel industry, but those jobs have mostly moved to other countries and the city is trying to move more into technology and environmental fields.  The time spent here is fairly calm, nothing like the nearest metropolis -- New York -- which is seven hours away by car, too much for Zhenya’s schedule to handle during the season when he has a maximum of one and half days off at any one time.

What about Las Vegas? “Well, I wasn’t there, but Evgeni?” Kasterova looks at her husband, questioning.  

“Evgeni loves Vegas!” Malkin says, referring to himself in the third person, though the statement is clearly made with false bravado.  He was only in Vegas a couple of times, and only for work -- to play against the local hockey team.  “It’s probably cool to go there on vacation -- go to concerts, play in the casino, but in the offseason we spend much of our time by the ocean, and this year Nikita’s great-grandmother is eager to spend time with him, so we will try somehow later.”

Homesickness, of course, arises in their situation.  They fight it as they can: sometimes by watching Russian channels (his favorite film is “Operation Y” and hers is “A Cruel Romance”).  More often, they drive to Russian shops in the area to get baraniki.  At the peak of his nostalgia, Malkin bought a Russian billiards table -- he loved to play in Magnitogorsk and has now seriously improved his skills!  These kinds of sports, focused on scoring, are definitely his thing.  (translator’s note: baranki is a russian bagel eaten with tea-- the smaller form is called sushki.  thanks to emalkin71 for the help with this-- i had always used the term sushki instead!)

And they don’t lack for friends in Pittsburgh -- close and loved -- as well as some urban infrastructure.  “I knew what I was going for,” Anya said that she consciously made a choice -- in favor of her future husband, their family, and his career. “But this decision was not easy for me, nor without tears.  Entertainment is not the main thing in life, and for an athlete, of course, Pittsburgh is quite ideal -- there is nothing to distract you from your sport.”

Indeed, Malkin does not seem to be distracted.  For the Penguins, Geno (his American nickname, a derivative of his name) is a leader in the broadest sense of the word: he has the most goals and points on the team, and the best “ratio of usefulness.”

A Siberian Hulk, moving across the ice at supersonic speed, the archetypal Russian, a hero who will come and say just two simple words in a distinctive accent and solve all of your problems -- that’s how people in the States think of Malkin.  And the fans of the Penguins also see in him the reincarnation of Mario Lemieux, the legendary #66, who brought their then second-rate team to two Stanley Cups in the early nineties.  In one way, Malkin has even bypassed Lemieux: he has three cups (in 2009, 2016, and 2017).  And even this year, they have a serious chance to nab a fourth!

But in the regular season, Pittsburgh played just ‘okay’ -- why? “After winning two cups in a row, most opponents play against us very hard,” says Malkin. “On one hand, they are afraid of us, but they also would like to beat us at any cost.”  For Zhenya, this means the increased attentions of the defense -- and not always within the rules.  

Hockey offers a lot of space for aggression: 26 specific penalties exist for which you would receive a two-minute removal, and another 15 that warrant a full five minutes.  Games in which Malkin doesn’t draw a single penalty due to the aggressive attention of the opposition just don’t happen.

This, of course, is not the story of Pavel Bure -- the main Russian star of the previous generation.  He was nicknamed “Russian Rocket,” and in his case, his bodyguards Brasher and Odjick would stop anyone from even coming after him by smearing opponents to the ice.  

For the 6’3” and nearly 198 lb Zhenya, this method won’t fly. Opponents know he isn’t all talk -- he does take penalties and even fights sometimes! But the straightforward and benevolent Malkin doesn’t know how to beat them with their own tricks and hates the dirty game they play.  When he is provoked to fight, he doesn’t hesitate to punch first -- Magnitogorsk-style!  If he were a character in a combat video game, maybe this would be beneficial, but it’s a disastrous strategy on the ice.  Geno could easily be taken out of the rest of the game and then Pittsburgh would be without its main sniper.  

The team traded for Ryan Reaves in the offseason to help solve this problem, and Reaves racked up six fights in half a season’s time -- a more than satisfactory result! Reaves’ presence allowed Malkin to cut the number of penalties he took in half.  But in February, the team traded Reaves in favor of strengthening their third line.  It seem that in the playoffs, points will be more valuable than fists.

However, it seems that Evgeni has his own personal Ryan Reaves at home.  When she once again directs us all to move on with more of the interview questions, I notice that Anna is not at all relaxed.  “This is my usual state,” Kasterova states quietly.  But Malkin is quite relaxed -- joking and laughing.  Thanks to his wife’s tireless efforts, all of his worries begin and end on the ice.  And all this at a time when their son, Nikita, is nearly two years old (very soon they will have to tend to his cries and end the interview) -- a difficult time in the life of any young family!

It is not surprising that under such conditions, Geno recently passed the 900 point mark in the NHL.  Fans expect that he might reasonably finish with one and a half or even two thousand points before he’s done.  The question before them now is whether they are going to return to Russia after he retires.  Malkin pipes up immediately in favor of this, but Kasterova speaks over him with a more considered opinion: the two are still in constant communication about this topic.  Much of this will of course depend on their children.  

At this point, it becomes clear that with Anya by his side, Zhenya would never be forced to agree to anything, no matter how much pressure was put on him.  Not at three, or even five o’clock in the morning -- he’s a happy man.  

(translation by: saintroux)

[sageglobalresponse]

Liz Truss named as UK’s third woman prime minister

New Conservative Party leader and Britain’s Prime Minister-elect Liz Truss delivers a speech at an event to announce the winner of the Conservative Party leadership contest in central London on September 5, 2022. – Truss is the UK’s third female prime minister following Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher. The 47-year-old has consistently enjoyed overwhelming support over 42-year-old Sunak in polling of the estimated 200,000 Tory members who were eligible to vote.

Britain’s Conservative party Monday announced Liz Truss as its new leader to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson and confront Britain’s deepest economic crisis in decades.

The foreign secretary comfortably beat her rival, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, by about 57 to 43 percent after a gruelling summer-long contest decided by just over 170,000 Conservative members — a tiny sliver of Britain’s electorate.

In a short victory speech at the announcement in a central London convention hall, Truss said it was an “honour” to be elected after undergoing “one of the longest job interviews in history”.

“I campaigned as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative,” she said, touting Tory values of low taxes and personal responsibility.

Truss vowed a “bold plan” to address tax cuts and the energy crisis.

Details are expected in the coming days.

Truss, 47, will be only the UK’s third female prime minister following Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher.

She will formally take office on Tuesday after Johnson tenders his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II.

The leadership contest began in July after Johnson announced his departure following a slew of scandals and resignations from his government, including Sunak’s.

Truss reserved a portion of her short speech to praising Johnson’s record, including on Brexit and the Covid pandemic, and said he was “admired from Kyiv to Carlisle”.

That won warm applause from the Tory faithful present. However, the right-wing ideologue faces a tough task in winning over public opinion.

A YouGov poll in late August found 52 percent thought Truss would make a “poor” or “terrible” prime minister.

Forty-three percent said they did not trust her “at all” to deal with the burning issue of the rise in the cost of living, as energy prices and inflation generally rocket amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

‘Worst in-tray’

The Tory winner faces “the worst in-tray for a new prime minister since Thatcher”, The Sunday Times wrote.

Millions say that with energy bills set to rise by 80 percent from October — and even higher from January — they face a painful choice between eating and heating this winter, according to surveys.

The Times and Daily Telegraph newspapers reported Monday that Truss was considering freezing energy bills for consumers, with the government reimbursing suppliers.

But polls show public support for an early general election, and the Conservatives face a growing challenge to retain their 12-year grip on power with the opposition Labour party riding high.

Truss became foreign minister a year ago after holding a series of ministerial posts in departments including education, international trade and justice.

She began her political journey as a teenage member of the centrist Liberal Democrats before switching to the Conservatives.

In 2016, she campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union but switched allegiance when Britons backed Brexit.

Her love of photo opportunities and style of dress — posing in a tank in Estonia and wearing a fur hat in Moscow — have earned her comparisons to Tory icon Thatcher.

Her sometimes stiff style has become visibly more relaxed and allies have sought to soften her image, revealing her love of karaoke and socialising.

Storm clouds

The announcement Monday by Conservative officials set in motion a chain of events.

For the first time in her 70-year reign, the 96-year-old monarch will appoint the prime minister at her Scottish retreat, Balmoral, rather than at Buckingham Palace in London.

The queen has been suffering mobility problems and has cancelled a number of public engagements.

On Tuesday morning, Johnson will deliver a farewell speech at Downing Street before flying to Scotland — where heavy rain is forecast — to hand his resignation to the queen.

Truss is expected to fly separately to accept the queen’s invitation to form a new government, to ensure continuity of government in case of any mishaps.

On her return to Downing Street, the new prime minister will then give a short address to the nation. By tradition, that happens on the steps of Number 10.

But it may have to be moved indoors with forecasts for thundery downpours, matching Britain’s dismal outlook as the Truss government starts life.

[serhatgumrukcu]

Dr. Serhat Gumrukcu – Inventor of RNA Hijacking Treatment Strategy

Dr. Serhat Gumrukcu, Executive Director and Director of Translational Research at Seraph Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, is known for his breakthrough work on viral diseases like SARS-CoV-2, HIV, HBV, Influenza and many others.

His life-changing research work in infectious and terminal diseases focuses on creating new approaches and mechanisms of action in antiviral therapies for notorious diseases like Ebola and solid tumour cancers.

Life-Changing Works

As a pioneer scientific researcher, Dr. Gumrukcu’s most recent breakthrough is potential prevention and treatment for COVID-19 and influenza using his signature Hijack RNA treatment strategy. The Hijack RNA strategy is a novel mechanism of action, initially invented by Dr. Gumrukcu in 2018 to target dozens of different viruses.

Hijack RNA was shown to be effective against HBV, multiple strains of influenza viruses, and SARS-CoV-2 as well as other coronaviruses, with findings presented at several scientific conferences, including the 2021 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI)

What is RNA Hijacking?

A virus cannot reproduce without the help of a host cell. However, when the virus finds a host, it can multiply and spread rapidly. The virus replicates and spreads to other cells only after attaching to the host cell and injecting its RNA.

RNA Hijacking tricks the virus into using its machinery to trigger its cells to commit suicide instead of becoming a virus-making factory. These platforms can treat an acute infection or wait in ambush for a cell to be preventing future infections.

After Covid, we have realised the importance of the health care system in the life of human mankind. Researchers like Dr. Gumrukcu have been contributing to human health for a long time and keep doing it now. Breakthrough research like RNA Hijacking is doing us a great favour by showing us light in human health.

Early life

Dr. Serhat Gumrukcu completed his medical study at Dokuz Eylul University in 2004 in Izmir, Turkey. Later, he received his master's degree (M.D.) from I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy/First Moscow State Medical University.

Then, he did his mandatory two-year residency in Genetics at the same Institution, receiving the Russian equivalent of a PhD (formally recognized as such by the Turkish health and education ministries) for his residency training in genetics. He received another PhD in psychology (unrelated to his former medical practice overseas) from Ankara University in Turkey in 2010 while working on his medical research.

Present Designations

At present, Dr. Serhat Gumrukcu is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), International AIDS Society (IAS), HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), The European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), and the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) – where he serves on the Cancer Cell & Gene Therapy Committee and the Infectious Diseases and Vaccines Committee. He is also a guest lecturer at UCLA and was recently selected to join the upcoming 2022 JP Morgan Founders Forum bringing together influential leaders worldwide.

[opedguy]

Putin Walks Back Lavrov’s Remarks

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), May 6, 2022.--Russian President Vladimir Putin, 69, made an overture to Israel for the May 2 off-the-wall remarks of his 72-year-old Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, saying that Adolf Hitler was reportedly part Jewish, disputing the ancestry of Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky.  Lavrov’s comments about Jewish anti-Semitism irked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Lair Lapid, both said it disgraces the memory of the Holocaust.where some 6 million Jews were marched to deaths in Nazi concentration camps where they were starved and gassed.  Putin pointed out to Bennett that no one lost more at the hands of the Nazis than the Soviet Union with some 27 million killed in WW II.  Lavrov’s ignorant remarks stem for generations of misinformation about Jews epitomized in the 1902 fake history book, “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.”

“Protocols” spread pernicious propaganda about Jews, related to an international conspiracy to take over the world.  Lavrov should know better buts shows he’s a product to Russia’s anti-Semitic history.  No educated diplomat could believe such rubbish about Nazis and the Jews.  Putin was forced to clean up Lavrov’s mess.  “The President of Russia recalled that of the 6 million Jews tortured in ghettos and concentration camps, killed by the Nazis during punitive operation, 40% were citizens of the USSR, and asked to convey wishes of health and well-being to the veterans living in Israel,” Putin said, setting the record straight that Russia is a friend of Israel.  Putin and Lavrov called the “Special Operation” to de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine.  Ukraine rejected the word de-Nazify because Zelensky has Jewish ancestry, rejecting the idea there are still neo-Nazis in Ukraine.  

Mending fences with Israel showed that Putin has a diplomatic side, appreciating the kind of cooperation he’s received from Israel especially in the Syrian War. Lavrov infuriated Israeli officials with some old common anti-Semitic tropes.  “For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest anti-Semites were Jewish,” Lavrov said April 2.  “When they say, ‘How can Nazification exist if we’re Jewish?’  In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean absolutely anything,” Lavrov said.  Lavrov got caught in his own illogical, circular reasoning, about the motive for the Ukraine War, giving too many explanations making zero sense.  Putin set the record straight that he doesn’t hold Lavrov’s views but wants to acknowledge the historical record about the Holocaust, but also the USSR’s staggering losses from the Nazi’s in WW II.

When it comes to the Ukraine War, Russia views Ukraine’s fighters as neo-Nazis largely because they’re battling the Russian Federation. Ukraine portrays itself as the victim of Kremlin aggression, when, Moscow sees Zelensky’s regime as a puppet U.S. state.  Putin made it clear for months before the Feb. 24 invasion that the new security arrangement must be reached in Ukraine in Eastern Europe or he would be forced to take “military-technical measures” to protect Russian national security.  President Joe Biden, 79, ignored Putin’s security requests for months before the Feb. 24 invasion, telling Putin that all of his requests were “non-starters.”  So when the war started, Biden called the Ukraine war “unprovoked and unjustified,” knowing he was arming Ukraine to the hilt over the Kremlin’s objections.  Even Pope Francis acknowledged May 3 that NATO probably caused Russia’s invasion.

Whatever the flap over Lavrov’s comments, they amount to nothing in Israel because they’re so off-the-wall. Putin’s message to Bennett sets the record straight that Russia and Israel have a good working relationship.  Biden wants Israel to stop interacting with Russia, as long as he runs a proxy war against the Russian Federation out of the White House.  Whatever destruction and carnage happens in Ukraine, it could be stopped in a heartbeat if both sides went to Instanbul to negotiate an acceptable ceasefire.  Ukraine has lost so much territory at this point they’re in a full-on war mentality with the U.S. supplying endless amounts of cash and weapons.  But Biden and Zelensky have not concluded that they’ve been beaten by the Russian Federation and now must go to Istanbul as the vanquished.  Zelesnsky tells Biden that only one more weapon system will turn the war around.

Biden’s proxy war against the Russian Federation has harmed Ukraine, continuing to bomb Ukraine into the Stone Age.  Everyday that goes on, Ukraine has that much less infrastructure to govern an orderly society.  If the U.S. didn’t pay for Zelensky’s government, Ukraine would be bankrupt.  Biden doesn’t level with the American public about why he’s willing to risk WW III to defend Ukraine, when it’s been one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Just ask Joe’s 52-year-old son Hunter Biden who worked at a corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, for nearly five years making him millions.  No coincidence at the time that Joe was former President Barack Obama’s Vice President.  So when it comes to corruption, no one does it better than Ukraine.  Zelensky talks a good game but none’s audited the billions he received in taxpayer dollars.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.