#russia bombs its own city

[tomorrowusa]

From @Ohra_aho – a retired Finnish general.

You can’t have a Victory Day parade in Moscow these days. It might just remind Russians that Putin is far from victory on Day 422 of his three-day “special operation” in Ukraine.

Not only does Russia look bad for its poor overall military performance in Ukraine, but it also just bombed one of its own cities, Belgorod, which was never part of Ukraine.

Russia’s air force accidentally bombs own city of Belgorod

Because of tight media censorship, tens of millions of Russians don’t understand what an international embarrassment Putin and his armed forces really are.

Russia is becoming the military equivalent of the Zune, the Edsel, and New Coke.

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Considering what NATO did (ot the lack of action), we have to give Ze credit for not screaming at them and calling them names five minutes straight in his latest nightly video.

[k-s-morgan]

Just wanted to show one recent example of what Russia has been doing to Ukraine. The city of Kharkiv, with over a million residents, is located close to Russian borders, meaning that it's difficult to defend it from air strikes. Russia has been systematically destroying it and killing its people, intensifying its attacks more and more, using the fact that most Ukrainian allies forbid us from launching our own attacks on Russian territory.

On May 25, Russian sent bombs to a hypermarket in Kharkiv. On a weekend, in the middle of the day.

That same day, it bombed the park. Before that, it hit the rest zone.

And a publishing house.

And the hotel.

And the television tower.

And so on and on. Russia specifically targets public places and areas of life to make Kharkiv a ghost city. To destroy the home of over a million people. Many, many residents are constantly dying from these attacks, including children, pregnant women, the elderly, and other most vulnerable population groups. And Ukraine is unable to hit the locations from which Russia bombs Kharkiv because it's forbidden by our own partners. It's a joke.

And it's just one city. Russian bombs and missiles are erasing towns and villages from existence entirely on a constant basis. I can't even imagine how many people and animals die as a result. It's impossible to comprehend it on a human level. Just like it's impossible to comprehend the world's indifference, where on the one hand, we have support, but on the other hand, this support is limited to not letting us lose quickly. We are under the most cruel restrictions and limitations. And as long as the greed controls the world, which is probably forever, and our partners keep having mutually beneficial relations with Russia, there is no way out of this. Just more deaths, suffering, and misery.

[sayruq]

Here's more of what's been happening on the ground. (Once again I'm not an expert in war).

Palestinian fighters are still waging war on the state of Israel

It is clear that Hamas and other groups have access to anti aircraft weaponry and long range missiles, partly from looting Israeli bases but partly from (and this is unconfirmed) from the Russia-Ukraine war. It's not unexpected for weapons to end up smuggled into other countries during a war.

On the other hand, Israel went from swearing it would invade Gaza on the ground to doing just about anything but that

It's understandable why Israel would hesitate even with its 300,000 strong army

IDF is made up of mostly conscripted soldiers who normally act as civilians once they've served their 2.5 year mandatory conscription. Not only that, IDF acts more like a police force than an army. Its soldiers simply don't have the training or mentality to fight militia groups in their home turf.

America itself doubts its capabilities no matter how it words it. This is a country that has yet to win against a guerilla army so it has experience when it comes to this

Edit:

Edit 2: above Hamas states the obvious

In my previous post I highlighted how disorganised the Israel military was in response to Operation Flood Al Aqsa.

This hasn't changed in the days. Israel is behaving more like a cornered animal lashing out than the so called 'strongest army in the Middle East.'

It has been dropping bombs on Syria, Lebanon and Egypt aimlessly, more out of anger than calculated strategy

Its efforts to pushing back against the Palestinian militia isn't going well either

in addition to naked, barbaric cruelty towards Gaza because it is not producing results elsewhere

The tweet below is important as Russia is an Israeli ally. The Israeli right wing has been very favourable towards Putin, even willing to disagree with the US and EU policies on Russia. However Israel repeatedly bombing Syria is quickly souring Russia on the country. While Putin doesn't want to go against Israel at this point, he has become increasingly critical of the country in the past couple of days.

Saudi went from making a half-hearted 'both sides need to stop statements to cutting ties with Israel (ties Israel and America have worked very hard to form) to outrightly condemning Israel's treatment of the people of Gaza.

Naturally, with all of this happening, Israel has responded, not with ceasing the bombardment of Gaza, but by killing and assaulting journalists covering the genocide.

so that it could committ war crimes without it being documented and seen by the world. War crimes such as announcing that they'd bomb a hospital in Gaza and giving doctors and nurses just hours to evacuate their patients.

This, btw, is part of the reason they cut electricity so that Palestinians can't post their own genocide on social media. Israel brutality is costing them allies but they have no intention of stopping.

Despite all of this, there has been a great deal of support for Palestinians globally

In short, this war is not going the way Israel thought it would. They didn't crush Hamas and the other Palestinian military groups immediately after the battle of Re'im. In fact, they're still struggling against those groups right now. They've been humiliated in front of the world after being revealed to be paper tigers and as such, they're going after Palestinian civilians in increasingly horrific ways.

The Palestinian resistance is still optimistic and they're still carrying out their plan. There's still hope for a future without apartheid.

[inbabylontheywept]

maybe a book idea in here or something i dunno

When South Africa requested that its nuclear weapons be disarmed, the response from the rest of the world was disbelief. The technology for isotopic separation was closely monitored, and South Africa had been very carefully blocked from obtaining it. No vendor would sell them centrifuges, nor anything necessary for gaseous diffusion, nor anything for the other half dozen novel ways of separating isotopes. 

But that didn't matter, because South Africa had simply invented an entirely new way of making a bomb.

It was a little more expensive than the centrifuge method, but actually cheaper than standard diffusion techniques. They'd run a stream of uraneous gas over an airfoil and apparently, there was a low pressure region that excelled in trapping the lighter isotopes. Pulled the U235 right out. No one else had considered the technology for it, and frankly, even attempting to ban it would have been difficult. Making a wing just isn't that hard. It seemed almost like a philosophical question right up until inspectors were shown the bombs. Then it was real. Then the world really believed. 

The weapons were handed off to be voluntarily disarmed, and the rest of the world asked South Africa to please, pretty please, keep their technique secret. 

And thankfully, they have. 

---

I don't understand the mechanics of LIS, but I think that's the point. Their research was classified once it became clear that their technique was at least an order of magnitude cheaper than standard isotope separation techniques. All I know is that it involves Australians and lasers. 

Their work wasn't a huge breakthrough because fuel price has never been what held nuclear energy back - but it was interesting for other reasons. They remain, in theory, the cheapest method of isotope refinement.

---

There are more novel isotope separation techniques than just these two. But they work for my point. 

I think it's just going to get cheaper and easier to build nukes. Worse, the invasion of Ukraine has made two points absolutely crystal clear. 

First: If you have nuclear weapons, never, ever give them up. 

Second: If you don't have nuclear weapons, get them. You won't be safe until you do.

I actually see this as the start of a new wave of colonialism. We already determine if a country is first, second, or third world by who their nuclear allies are. Eventually, statehood itself will be determined by the presence of a nuclear arsenal. Anyone who has some gets a seat at the negotiation table. Anyone who doesn't is up for grabs.

Yoink.  

But even this is just one point in the journey towards nuclear proliferation. 

The worst is yet to come. 

---

Imagine that you live in a newly conquered satellite of the Neo-Russian Empire. No outside country is coming to save you. Their cities are just targets for nuclear bombs. They have far too much to lose by playing stupid games - so they don't. The peace between states is terrifying, but strong. 

But the peace between conquered peoples and their conquerors is not. 

How easy does it have to be, for one group to get a nuclear bomb? Would it be money? Would it be connections? Would it be their own internal skill sets? At what point do the fragments of some conquered nation cobble together a nuclear weapon? 

A nuclear bomb detonates in St. Petersberg. A resistance group/terror cell immediately takes credit. What does Russia do? How does it retaliate? It only takes one bomb to destroy a city. Millions of lives. Trillions of dollars. All gone. One bomb. And no enemy city to fire back on. 

Nuclear weapons do not favor states. States can be retaliated against at scale. Nuclear weapons favor anarchists and terrorists and revolutionaries - small groups that can hide safely inside their foes. And once that rubicon is crossed, something new happens: Society's fundamental benefit is suddenly gone. There is no more strength in numbers. For the first time in human history, it is more dangerous to be near people than it is to be alone. 

And what is an empire, if not millions of people, huddled close? 

---

I don't know what will happen after that. 

Maybe the world burns and everyone dies. Maybe states just fall apart, and people retreat to small communities, to live in anxious peace. Maybe it all turns into a feudal hell, where warlords wander in groups too large for passerby to defeat easily, but too small to be worth nuking.

Can you imagine that kind of perpetual fear? Keeping your group large enough to defend itself, but small enough to not be a target? That feeling of always being watched? Fermi imagined the Dark Forest as a solution to why we don't find aliens - maybe they're too busy hiding from us. But what if it happens sooner than that? What if the reason we don't find aliens is because they're hiding from themselves? What if every species winds up like this - sitting in the ashes of their once great cities, remembering how much easier it is to destroy than it is to build? What if that's just what Life always winds up doing?

I don't know. But I think about it a lot. 

[dontforgetukraine]

"I watched a film today at the Venice Film Festival titled "Russians at War." Since our film is in the same section as this one, I usually wouldn’t speak publicly about it. However, in this case, I cannot remain silent, because it’s not just about films and art, but about the lives of thousands of people who die in this war— a war that has instrumentalized propaganda as its weapon.

This film may mislead you into believing that it is an anti-war film, one that questions the current regime in Russia. However, what I witnessed is a prime example of pure Russian propaganda. Here’s why.

The filmmaker begins by expressing her surprise at the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In her film, she always uses the term “invasion” and never "full-scale invasion." She does not mention that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. These two events seem to not exist in the world of this film. The filmmaker also states that her country hasn’t participated in wars for many years and that she has only read about wars in books. Thus, the war in 2022 was a complete shock for her. It’s interesting how the filmmaker could overlook the fact that her country has been inherently involved in various wars and occupations for at least the last 30 years (1992-93 Transnistria, Abkhazian War, 1994-96 and 1999-2009 Chechen Wars, the 2008 war in Georgia, and the 2015-2022 invasion of Syria).

The filmmaker starts her narrative with a Ukrainian who now lives in Russia and fights on the Russian side. This is a very intriguing choice for the beginning of a story about Russians at war. Later, this character will claim that a CIVIL war began in Ukraine in 2014. He will also suggest that Ukrainians bombed the eastern parts of their own country (and this is why he moved to Russia). Another character will declare that Ukrainians are Nazis. We’ve heard these narratives before; they are (and apparently still are) widely and actively propagated by Russian media. One of those horns of propaganda is Russia Today channel, for which the director of "Russians at War" has previously made several documentary films.

Throughout the film, all characters express their confusion about their actions in Ukraine, stating they want the war to end and that most of them are fighting for money. In the final part of the film, the battalion is moved to Bakhmut, and most characters die in battle. We then see their comrades and relatives grieving at their graves. All of them repeat that they don’t understand why this war is happening and who needs it. In the end, the filmmaker concludes that these are poor, ordinary Russian people who are being manipulated into war by larger political games. I found this perspective amusing because the filmmaker—like putin and his regime—plays an interesting game with these people. They deny them the simple ability to possess dignity and to think and decide for themselves. To her, these people are merely powerless objects. If those engaged in a war that has lasted over 10 years were not powerless, it would imply that they, in the majority, actually support this war, wouldn’t it?

You will feel pity for the people depicted as dying in the film and for those we see crying for their loved ones. And you should—if you are a normal human being, you should feel pity, sadness, and emotion. However, it is also important to remember that these individuals joined the army that invaded an independent country, many of them willingly, as we learn from the film. You should also recall Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, and the civilians who were murdered there. Remember the thousands of children who were illegally transported from Ukraine to Russia. While I’m writing this and while you’re reading it, missiles are striking Ukrainian cities. The buttons are pushed by ordinary Russians. Are their crimes any less significant simply because they claim to be unaware of why they are involved in this war?

By the way, the director asks one of the characters if he thinks the Russian army commits any war crimes. He answers “no,” claiming he hasn’t witnessed any war crimes. Interestingly, the director echoes this in her interviews, stating she saw no signs of war crimes during her time near the front (https://www.reuters.com/.../russian-soldiers-given-their.../). We can only be happy for her that she was fortunate enough not to witness any war crimes. Unfortunately, thousands of Ukrainians have not been so lucky.

I could continue, but I believe it’s enough to understand that this film presents a very distorted picture of reality, spreading false narratives (calling the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea a civil war; suggesting that the Russian army does not commit any war crimes; presenting those who are part of the aggressors army as victims).

If you decide to watch it, I recommend following it with another documentary about Russian soldiers titled "Intercepted," directed by Oksana Karpovych. "Intercepted" also opens a door into the lives of ordinary Russians fighting in this war. You’ll be curious to explore it, as it will undoubtedly surprise you. You may also want to add "20 Days in Mariupol" to your viewing list, just to be able «to see through the fog of war," as the director of "Russians at War" so aptly put it."

—Darya Bassel, Ukrainian film producer of war documentary “Songs of Slow Burning Earth

[odinsblog]

Message to all alleged “anti-war tankies”

If you were truly anti-war, at worst you’d at least try to pretend to be neutral, and not support either side. At best, you would not be on the side of Russia, the aggressor that, unprovoked, invaded a smaller sovereign nation that was peacefully minding its own business, was not in NATO, and wasn’t even applying for NATO membership. NATO was not the cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As always, I remind people that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, including but not limited to: erasing all mentions of Ukraine from schoolbooks, murdering entire civilian populations of Ukrainian cities, and kidnapping thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children (some as young as 4 months old) and placing them into “re-education” centers where they are forced to learn how to become good little Russians. Russia is indiscriminately bombing civilian targets like funerals, churches, schools and hospitals, and the Russian army is using mass rape as a weapon of war.

(Remember, Ukraine has demonstrated that they have the capability to reach Russian held territory, but unlike Russia, the Ukrainian military has only targeted military installations.)

If you can just hand wave all of the Russian war crimes and atrocities away because “America bad,” then please spare everyone your anti-war concern trolling, and your faux worries about Ukrainians dying. Just admit that as long as, lol, “communist” Russia isn’t the one being invaded, you are morally indifferent to human suffering and you actually do not care about ending wars.

Russia can end the war instantly just by going home.

[mariacallous]

February 24th, 2025

Just writing that down feels weird. 

It feels impossible that it has been 3 years since I watched Putin announce Russia’s full scale invasion on TV, and saw the missiles starting to hit, as tanks and troops crossed the border.

On one hand, it feels like it’s been much, much longer and on the other hand, it feels like the blink of an eye. I remember that when this full scale invasion started, no one gave Ukraine a chance. Virtually everyone, especially the analysts, thought it was a foregone conclusion that Ukraine’s military would be defeated, and it would happen quickly.

And the early minutes, hours and days were pure chaos.

I remember the video from Hostomel, where the CNN reporter Matthew Chance found himself in the midst of a russian VDV assault on the airport.

I remember the stories of territorial defense units consisting of teachers, mechanics and other ordinary men taking on russia’s “best” soldiers and battling them out of their towns, like Voznesensk.

I remember seeing videos of Ukrainians courageously standing up to the invaders, throwing sunflowers at them, or literally standing in front of their tanks. 

Ukrainians did everything they could to keep the russians out. Those who could fight, they fought like hell, and those who couldn’t did everything else they could to stop the russian invasion like it was a cancer trying to take over their body.

And the world’s opinion quickly changed. The bravery of the Ukrainian people inspired leader after leader to shift their perspective, adjust their policy and start aggressively supporting Ukraine. Even countries like Germany, which was staunchly against providing weapons, opened their stocks and started to help the Ukrainian Army do the things they needed to do so that ordinary people could exist. 

Ukraine began to beat back the russians and even drove them out in some circumstances, like in Kyiv.

Of course, the russians could not acknowledge that they were losing, and made idiotic statements saying that they did not retreat from Kyiv, but it was a gesture of goodwill. Yes, a gesture of goodwill while they bombed children’s hospitals in other parts of Ukraine, and destroyed entire cities like Mariupol.

I remember thinking, you can see a pathway towards victory. I remember even thinking about how incredible it would be to see the streets across Ukraine filled with people, celebrating the total capitulation of the russian military as it moved back into its own borders.

But then, the pace of aid to Ukraine began stalling, and the russians took advantage of those delays. As Ukrainian troops waited for simple things like artillery shells, the russians used their overwhelming manpower and firepower advantage to make gains. 

They captured important cities like Avdiivka simply because the Ukrainian military did not have what it needed to hold them back. They tried to do it with whatever they had, and countless people gave their lives, but at some point, the sheer number of shells the russians had dictated the results. 

Still the Ukrainian troops fought on. They adapted. They introduced new systems like FPV’s that are now everywhere, bridging the gap, and slowing the pace of russian gains. 

Throughout this war, the Ukrainians have persisted for one reason.

There is no other choice. It’s either fight, or no longer exist. It is not a choice. They are relentless.

Unfortunately, despite all their superhuman work, the ebbs and flows of geopolitics are not on their side right now.

It is honestly unbelievable to write this, but the American President has shown himself to be nothing but pro-russian. His administration is openly working against Ukraine right now, and lying to the American people, as well as the whole world, about the facts of this war. For his part, Elon Musk has shown himself to be one of the worst promoters of fake news on the planet. Through his platform, he is engaging in an ongoing campaign of relentless attacks against Ukraine, galvanizing his followers to hate Ukrainians more everyday. 

But the truth is simple.

Ukraine did not want this war. 

Ukraine did not start this war. 

Ukraine is simply trying to exist, and Vladimir Putin hates that simple fact.

Trump has told us he will not be an ally to Ukraine, or NATO, or anyone that America has built long standing relationships with, even to countries like Canada. He is quickly shaping up to become a dictator, while shamelessly accusing President Zelenskyy of being one.

I don’t think we can underestimate how dangerous his administration’s overtures towards Putin can be for Ukraine (and for all of us eventually) but most importantly for Ukraine right now. 

In the face of this, I encourage you to let your leaders, whoever they may be, know that you are a concerned citizen. Let them know that Ukraine is important to you, and you want to support Ukraine. 

Your single letter, email or phone call may not seem like much, but when there are hundreds, or  thousands, or millions of you doing it together, they can’t ignore it. 

And if you feel discouraged, or you feel like it’s hopeless, I want to leave you with this.

I was messaging one Ukrainain soldier yesterday to ask how he is feeling in the face of all this…

And here was his message.

“I hope we can support those who have lost faith or feel disappointed because our motivation hasn’t changed. We’re fine and we absolutely don’t care. It’s all happened before, it won’t get worse, it’s a new challenge.”

These people will never give up, and neither should we. 

- Christian Borys Founder of Saint Javelin

[victusinveritas]

From Rebecca Solnit:

"My God. I was out all day today. Bashar Al Assad, the Butcher of Syria, has fled, his infamous prison/death camp/torture center has been freed, and rebels have taken Syria as far as I can tell. What a week. Insurrectionary Georgia. Coup-repelling South Korea. Now this.

The Guardian reports: When Islamist militants swept into her home town of Aleppo little over a week ago, Rama Alhalabi sheltered indoors as fear engulfed her. Forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, who had sought to reassure residents that nothing was happening, suddenly deserted the city. But as the insurgency pushed south, rapidly seizing control of the city of Hama on the road to Damascus, Alhalabi’s fears about life under militia rule have slowly ebbed. Instead they have been replaced by fears that her friends in the army will be abandoned by their commanding officers as Assad’s regime loses its grip.

“People in Aleppo are feeling more comfortable now we’re further from the areas under the regime’s control,” said the 29-year-old, while still using a pseudonym in fear Assad could retake the city.

“At the same time, I have many friends serving in the army and I don’t want them to get hurt. People with power inside the regime will protect themselves, and they will leave the poor fighters who were forced to join the army to face their awful fate alone.

“Things changed insanely fast,” she added. “We can barely believe what’s happening.”

As militants spearheaded by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) massed outside the city of Homs and rebel forces said they had entered the vast southern suburbs of the capital, rapid change swept across Syria. The Syrian army declared it had “redeployed,” its forces in two restive provinces south of Damascus in the latest thinly-veiled message of retreat, days after they withdrew from Hama. In under a week, five provincial capitals across the country were suddenly no longer under Assad’s control.

“We can hear the bombing nearby, and we are praying, hoping – and waiting,” said Um Ahmad, an elderly native of Homs, sheltering with her husband at home as the fighting drew close enough to be audible.

Assad loyalists fled the city, while people who stayed only have a couple of hours’ electricity each day and what goods are left in the shops are unaffordable. Those remaining in Homs waited to see if this might be the end of Assad’s rule, while an insurgent commander told his regime’s forces inside the city that this was their “last chance to defect before it’s too late”.

Um Ahmad was consumed by a single thought, that she might finally be able to see her sons again after a decade of separation and exile. “Most people are frightened but they fear the regime’s revenge more than anything else,” she said, as Russian and Syrian airstrikes pummelled the countryside around Homs and Hama.

When a popular uprising swept cities across Syria in 2011 calling for Assad to go, it initially looked as if demonstrations could topple another regional autocrat. But the Syrian leader swiftly turned the state’s weapons on his own people to crush dissent. As the uprising slowly morphed into a civil war, Assad freed jihadist prisoners from his fearsome detention system to alter the forces rising up against him, before relying heavily on his allies in Russia and Iran to provide the military muscle he used to reclaim control.

The civil war killed over 300,000 people in 10 years of fighting, with some estimates putting the true toll at twice that number. Tens of thousands remain in detention, including 100,000 believed missing or forcibly disappeared in Assad’s prisons since 2011, and subject to what United Nations monitors have described as systematic torture. Over 12 million people have been displaced.

Assad kept control of Syria’s major cities for years, as battle lines from the country’s years-long proxy war hardened. HTS ruled over a mountainous pocket in the northwest, cut off from the outside world. The group appeared a dim threat to Assad until they suddenly launched an offensive that saw them take control of Aleppo within days.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/07/syria-assad-damascus-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-insurgents

[historyofromanovs]

do you know where the first few of the romanovs resided before all of the palaces were built and if so, are any of them remaining? do we know what they look like?

I'm afraid very little from the earliest days of the Romanov dynasty had survived the ravages of time. By the time of Nicholas II, many early residences had already been either destroyed or replaced by the modern and elegant palaces we see today. Here's a few that survived.

The Cabin of Peter the Great May 1703

Built during the founding of the city of Saint Petersburg, the log cabin was the first St. Petersburg "palace" of Tsar Peter the Great. The small wooden house was constructed in just three days, by soldiers of the Semyonovskiy Regiment. 

At that time, the new St. Petersburg was described as "a heap of villages linked together, like some plantation in the West Indies".

The Cabin was boarded up and camouflaged during the Second World War. It was the first St. Petersburg museum to reopen in September 1944, after the end of the Siege of Leningrad. 

This cabin must have appeared as a huge downgrade after the wooden palace of Tsar Alexei!

The Wooden Palace of Tsar Alexei Romanov 1667

The recreation of an authentic mid-17th century Romanov residence was built recently in 2010. The Palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, also known as the Wooden Palace of Tsar Alexei, is a large wooden palace in Kolomenskoye, near Moscow, Russia.

The original was built in 1667 without using any fasten materials, nails or hooks. The wooden palace, famed for its fanciful, fairytale roofs, was a summer residence for Russian tsars before St. Petersburg was constructed. 

The palace was divided into male and female halves, with the Tsar and Tsarevitches towers and chambers in the male half and the Tsarina's towers in the female half. 

The palace's interior featured rich decorations, including carving, painting, gilding, and ceramic tiles, as well as rectangular and round stoves, weathercocks, and windows and porches. 

Foreigners referred to this huge maze of intricate corridors and 250 rooms, as 'an Eighth Wonder of the World'. Although basically only a summer palace, it was the favorite residence of Tsar Alexei I.

The future Empress Elizabeth Petrovna was born in the palace in 1709, and Tsar Peter the Great spent part of his youth here.

Upon the departure of the court for the swamps of St. Petersburg, the palace fell into disrepair, so that Catherine the Great refused to make it her Moscow residence. On her orders the wooden palace was demolished in 1768, but thankfully, the detailed plans of the palace had survived.

Summer Palace of Peter the Great

1714

One of the earliest imperial residences I can think of that still exists today is the modest Summer Palace of Peter the Great, which is located on an island near the Peter and Paul Fortress, the burial place of the Romanovs.

The palace was built between 1710 and 1714, a few years before the proclamation of the Russian Empire. By the time of Tsar Nicholas II's reign at the end of the 19th century, it became vacant.

During the Second World War, both the Summer Palace and Summer Gardens were badly damaged by a German bombing raid. The building was repaired, however, and the layout remains unchanged from the original.

Above: The palace as depicted in 1809. Below: The residence today.

Monplaisir Palace in Peterhof 1714-1716

There is another residence owned by Peter the Great that is still standing today. And that is the Monplaisir Palace in Peterhof.

The following painting depicts the formidable Tsar and his son and heir Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, who has been accused of preparing to seize power, in the interior of the Monplaisir Palace. Before pronouncing sentence, Peter I gazes into his son's eyes, still hoping to discern signs of remorse.

Above: The Parade Hall of Monplaisir Palace today.

[nicklloydnow]

“The escalating tension between the Trump administration and Ukraine in recent weeks has been accompanied by an alarming surge of extreme anti-Ukraine rhetoric in pro-Trump quarters. Some of this rhetoric has even implied that Ukraine is America’s enemy. On Monday, Trump administration official Elon Musk called Arizona’s Democratic senator Mark Kelly a “traitor” for travelling to Ukraine in support of that country’s defensive war effort.

Hostility to Ukraine is becoming a party line on the MAGA Right. The issue isn’t just the cost to American taxpayers. The US$128 billion that the US has given Ukraine over the past three years amounts to less than US$120 per year per American. And as a recent article on the Council of Foreign Relations website noted:

A large share of the money in the aid bills has been spent in the United States, paying for American factories and workers to produce the various weapons that are either shipped to Ukraine or that replenish the U.S. weapons stocks the Pentagon has drawn on during the war. One analysis by the American Enterprise Institute found that Ukraine aid is funding defense manufacturing in more than seventy U.S. cities.

Nor is antipathy to Ukraine simply about bringing an end to the bloodletting, notwithstanding the Right’s professed disdain for “warmongers” eager to “fight to the last Ukrainian” and Trump’s own claim that he wants to “stop the death.” When Trump suspended air-defence supplies and intelligence-sharing to Ukraine earlier this month in an attempt to pressure the country into “settling,” Russia began bombing Ukrainian cities with renewed vigour. Asked during a press conference on 7 March if Vladimir Putin was “taking advantage of the US pause right now on intelligence and military aid,” Trump was phlegmatic about the loss of life: “I actually think [Putin’s] doing what anybody else would do. I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he’s hitting them harder than he’s been hitting them. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.”

The party line is now strong enough that even some “heterodox” pundits and publications with large right-wing audiences have pivoted away from their initial support for Ukraine. In the first two years of the conflict, coverage at the Free Press was firmly pro-Ukraine. But since the reelection of Donald Trump last November, the publication’s position has become more sympathetic to “right-wing peaceniks” (once described by Free Press contributor Eli Lake as “Code Pink Republicans”) and correspondingly unsympathetic to Ukraine’s cause. Some of this commentary has been shoddy and even dishonest.

(…)

Much of this hatred for a country valiantly resisting a war of aggression reflects Trump’s own prejudices and sense of personal grievance. The “Russiagate” investigation that dominated his first administration perversely fortified his preexisting sympathy for Vladimir Putin, while his antipathy to Ukraine increased following his 2019 impeachment for pressuring Zelensky to provide dirt on Biden in return for US armaments. (Conservative writer Jeff Blehar thinks these grievances are justified. I do not.) And because the MAGA movement is cultish, its leader’s likes and dislikes are automatically adopted by many of his supporters.

But some of the reasons given for the anti-Ukraine stance are transparently bogus. In a 2023 speech at the Heritage Foundation, then-Senator JD Vance—one of the staunchest opponents of aid to Ukraine since the start of the war—paid lip service to the courage of Ukrainian troops before asserting that “they have the most corrupt leadership and government in Europe and maybe the most corrupt leadership anywhere in the world.” Like all formerly communist countries, Ukraine does have a serious corruption problem, but Vance’s statement is blatantly untrue.

According to Transparency International, the leading global anti-corruption watchdog, Ukraine currently ranks 105th in public-sector corruption out of 180 countries with a score of 35 out of 100, while Russia ranks 154th with a score of 22 out of 100 (the lower the score, the more prevalent the corruption). Before the 2014 popular revolution that toppled the pro-Kremlin regime of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine was plagued by Russian levels of corruption and a score of 25, but Ukraine’s record on corruption has been improving ever since. It is also worth noting that Vance is inconsistently bothered by corruption: Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is only slightly less corrupt than Ukraine (and its corruption score is moving in the opposite direction) and the most corrupt country in the European Union, but Vance believes that American conservatives ought to emulate Orbán’s illiberal democratic model.

Claims that Ukraine is “not a true democracy” because it persecutes Christian churches, or controls the media, or forcibly mobilises men are usually made in equally bad faith. Ukraine is a country fighting a defensive war on its own territory, a situation in which restrictions on civil liberties are not remotely unusual. The United States instituted a draft and suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, and it introduced forced conscription and censorship during World War II when it was not fighting an invasion. While there have been reports of forcible conscription in Ukraine, which is deplorable, the number of such conscripts is dwarfed by the number of Ukrainian soldiers who either comply with draft orders or volunteer at recruitment centres.

(…)

In a bizarre segment on the Free Press podcast, the publication’s regular contributor Batya Ungar-Sargon argued that support for Ukraine is related to an “elite” tendency to “villainise” Putin because the chattering classes hold him responsible for helping Trump win the 2016 election. But the late Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen was already complaining about the “relentless demonisation of Putin” by the American media in February 2014, and lamenting that not even Stalin’s Soviet successors were “so personally villainised.” This was before Putin’s seizure of Crimea the following month, and over a year before Trump announced his first run for president. It does not appear to have occurred to Ungar-Sargon that Westerners dislike Putin’s destruction of Russia’s fledgling democratic freedoms, his habit of jailing and murdering journalists and political opponents, his brutal wars against Chechen separatists in the 2000s, and his invasion of Georgia in 2008.

Ungar-Sargon is correct that Trump’s 2016 candidacy had a partisan effect on American views of Putin, but she has misidentified the party most affected. Polling indicates that Republicans had a slightly more negative opinion of Putin than Democrats in 2014. Around the time of the 2016 presidential election, Democrats’ approval of Putin fell by eight percentage points, from -54 to -62. Republican approval of the Russian dictator, on the other hand, rose by 46 points, from -66 to -10. The number who regarded him “very unfavourably” dropped from 51 percent in July 2014 to fourteen percent in December 2016, while the overall “favourables” jumped from ten percent to 37 percent.

As I wrote in the early days of the war, growing sympathy for Putin on the US Right is partly explained by a shift towards the populism and “anti-globalism” of which he is seen as a champion—and by the implausible belief, cultivated by Putin and his propaganda machine, that the Kremlin stands for traditional religious and sexual values in opposition to an increasingly godless, “woke,” and pathological West. The corollary is that Ukraine is suspect because it wants to leave the Russian orbit and join Western liberal degeneracy—specifically, the European Union, which the Right believes is a cesspit of progressive authoritarianism and creeping Islamisation.

(…)

Attention inevitably turned to USAID’s assistance for Ukraine. Altogether, Ukraine-related projects received about US$5 billion in US funds between 1991, when Ukraine became independent, and 2014—mostly through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, a formally private nonprofit that received an annual appropriation from the US State Department as part of the USAID budget. While most of this money was spent on nonpolitical projects like healthcare and environmental protection, a portion of it also went to various anti-corruption, election-integrity, and civic-education NGOs involved in the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

(…)

The idea that the Ukrainian state is a stronghold of “the woke Left” is as detached from reality as the idea that Ukraine is a Nazi regime. Indeed, as a number of people have pointed out, Ukrainian patriotism and military valour are precisely the sort of virtues that one would expect national conservatives to applaud—unless, of course, national conservatism is less about conservatism or national sovereignty than it is about the appeal of authoritarianism.

(…)

Likewise, those on the Right who see Putin’s post-communist Russia as a conservative-friendly state ignore the degree to which his regime valorises Russia’s Soviet past. Ukraine’s post-2014 “decommunisation” drive has been a sore point for the Kremlin. Putin may have blamed Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks for creating the modern Ukrainian state and giving it historically Russian lands—but in the areas of Ukraine under Russian control, the authorities have been restoring previously demolished Lenin monuments as well as Soviet-era street names honouring Lenin, Karl Marx, and other communist heroes. Conquered and devastated Bakhmut has had its name changed back to the Soviet Artemovsk—after “Comrade Artyom” (Fyodor Sergeyev), a Bolshevik revolutionary and close friend of Stalin’s. In a particularly cruel mockery of their victims, Russian occupiers recently opened a museum honouring Stalin’s henchman Andrei Zhdanov in his native Mariupol, a city taken in spring 2022 after a particularly horrific siege.

This “recommunisation” in the occupied areas of Ukraine isn’t about communist ideology per se; it’s about imposing Russia’s imperial will on Ukrainians and suppressing their cultural legacy. Even so, it honours an unspeakably evil left-wing totalitarian regime. Unfortunately, many people on the modern US Right seem to despise liberalism more than communism.”

[ohsalome]

In 2015, Russia officially entered Syria an ally of Assad in order to kill Syrians and commit the most heinous massacres, such as bombing markets, hospitals, residential neighborhoods, city centers, and health centers. Until now, Russia and the Assad regime and its ally, Iran, are killing civilians in a semi-formal manner. daily. They committed thousands of massacres against the Syrians in many areas in Syria. As for the United States, unfortunately, it did not have a word in order to stop the criminals from killing the Syrians. The United States policy was weak in Syria and did not properly care about the civilians being killed by the Assad regime and Russia. In 2020, the Assad regime, Russia and Iran expelled me from my city of Maarat al-Numan and occupied it. They destroyed my memories, took my house and my father's shop, and stole everything we owned. Because of these criminals (the Assad regime, Russia and Iran), I became an internally displaced person without anything. I lost my memories, my city, my home, and literally everything.

To all foreign journalists interested in the Syrian issue, please be honest and forthright in everything you write about Syria. Don't forget the Syrian Revolution. Do not write “civil war.” It is not a Syrian civil war, it is a Syrian popular revolution that arose for the sake of demanding freedom and democracy. Please follow those who live on the ground (inside Syria) and take the news from them, do not trust any other source. Those who live inside Syria know all the truth and everything that is happening. Do not forget the detainees in the prisons of the Assad regime, who are subjected daily to the worst forms of torture. Research the Caesar Files [in August 2013, a military defector code-named Caesar smuggled 53,275 photographs out of Syria showing at least 6,786 detainees who died in detention or after being transferred from detention to a military hospital.] And also follow the organization I work with, Syrian Emergency Task Force, in order to know a lot of things about Syria.

[bunchacrunchcake]

Hot take: Call them a colonizer.

Some people are that, 3rd 4th 5th generation colonists. They say "Speak English." "This is a Christian nation." "We are just following the law." "You have to earn what you work for." "Stop being angry. It's making me uncomfortable."

People on all sides of the spectrum can act like colonizers. It's not just "the other side" that's doing it.

Here's why it's okay. This country wasn't empty when Europeans landed here. It was full, coast to coast, of Native people. Algonquin, Navajo, Cree, Comanche, Kiowa.

Natives aren't perfect magical people that do no wrong. But they were here first. The rules and laws, the money, the highways, the religion was all forced on people that already lived here after a genocide. Over 200+ years, it's estimated that colonizers "reduced" the Native population from 10,000,000 to 300,000. 9.7m people "reduced." Is how it is described today. In minutes the US nuked ~200,000 civilians in cities that were non-military targets and agreed on by officials were unnecessary to bomb to end the war. The Holocaust is estimated between 6 - 11 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Death_toll I'm not making the point that these are equivalent. Or that they are not. Arguing which was worse, erasing two cities or erasing entire populations is idiotic. They are both reprehensible. And it takes a certain kind of person, a certain kind of system, a certain kind of outlook on human life in order to do something like that. European culture, oddly, wipes people off of the map, plants a flag, and says "We were here first." The people that came before are erased. And the people that come after are second class. The history of how we built the first railroads by using Chinese immigrants as dynamite fodder is horrifying.

The European culture has whiteness hidden in a lot of it, and deeper underneath the skin tone is a large set of values that are ultimately predatory, and absolutely awful for most people that don't own businesses. Europe was a country of Kings. A lot of the values from that culture are about justifying the existence of a king:

Top down authority, rules set by leaders, asking leaders to increase pay or change governing laws, people are entitled to what they earn therefore someone who has billions must have worked for it and must be entitled to it, everything is for sale even the land you are currently living on, you have to pay tax or you will lose your home, you have to pay for everything you want because it is a way of showing you earned it, causing loud head on conflict is worse than causing quiet conflict that undermines people, if you agreed to it you agreed to it forever.

Its a system that convinces people their rulers are better than them, makes it hard for them to resist, and entraps them within the system.

In the US, most peoples history goes back 100-200 years, however humans have been around for 10-30,000 years. Native people are in almost every country, Japan, China, Russia, the Americas, the list goes on and on. In almost every country there was a process of erasing them so another culture could dominate.

And the end result of those cultures globally are taxes that only the middle class and the poor pay, payday loans, overpriced foods, homes that you do not truly own.

When you see someone defending the legitimacy of this system, through racism, or just through moralizing and logic justifying it, they are participating in hundreds of years of colonialism.

[tomorrowusa]

It's not certain whether there will be any war crimes trials after the war, so Ukraine is going after war criminals on its own.

A senior Russian naval officer was killed in a car bombing in Crimea on Wednesday, the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel and pro-Kremlin figures in occupied Ukrainian territories as well as inside Russia. An official in Ukraine’s security services told the Ukrainian Pravda outlet that the agency had orchestrated the car bomb attack in the Russian-controlled port city of Sevastopol that killed Valery Trankovsky, the chief of staff of the 41st Missile Brigade of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. The official said Trankovsky was “a war criminal” who had ordered missile strikes from the Black Sea at civilian targets in Ukraine. Russia has used warships from its Black Sea fleet, as well as strategic bombers, to conduct missile strikes on targets across Ukraine that have led to hundreds of civilian casualties.

Nice of Russia to keep its war criminals nearby so Ukraine can find them. 🙂 But the reach of Ukraine goes well beyond Russian-occupied parts of the country.

Ukraine has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials whom Kyiv has accused of committing war crimes in the country. Little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells involved in assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure in Russian-controlled areas. In October, a high-ranking officer in the GRU military intelligence service who had recently returned from fighting in Ukraine was assassinated outside his house in a village in the Moscow region. The same month, Ukraine claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed an official at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv is also believed to have been behind the killing of a former Russian submarine captain who was shot dead while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and may have been tracked through his profile on the fitness app Strava.

[darkmaga-returns]

The disaster in Aleppo was avoidable and is just as bad as it looks.

The Turkish-backed terrorists’/“rebels’” advance on Aleppo, which was analyzed here, came as a shock to most observers. There was almost half a decade of peace between the March 2020 ceasefire and now, yet practically nothing was done to prepare for this possibility. This was in spite of the front line remaining roughly two dozen kilometers away from Aleppo, which should have reminded Assad of how vulnerable his country’s second city is. Here are the five reasons why Syria was caught by surprise:

----------

1. Complacency & Corruption

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) rested on its laurels because it took the Russian-brokered ceasefire for granted, after which the country’s infamous corruption kicked in to degrade its capabilities. There’s no excuse for why even basic drones weren’t used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to detect the buildup that preceded this advance. A large part of why the SAA didn’t do anything is likely because it assumed that its Russian and Iranian allies would shoulder these responsibilities for them.

2. The Russian-Iranian Rivalry

Russia and Iran fought together against terrorism in Syria, but they’re also rivals who are competing with each other for premier influence over Damascus. So intense is their competition that Russia always does nothing other than occasionally complain whenever Israel bombs the IRGC there, never once giving Syria the means to intercept these attacks or retaliate afterwards. Had they not been rivals, then Russia and Iran could have jointly strengthened the SAA, carried out ISR in Idlib, and bolstered Aleppo’s defenses.

3. Distracted & Crippled Allies

To make matters even worse for Syria, the terrorists’/“rebels’” advance on Aleppo came precisely at the moment when Russia is distracted with the special military operation (SMO) and Iran has been crippled by its West Asian Wars with Israel. Without sufficient Russian airpower and Iranian manpower, including that which the latter could have called upon from Hezbollah, it’ll be extremely difficult for the SAA to push the attackers away from Aleppo. This factor, more than any other, might have even sealed its fate.

4. Ignoring The SMO’s Lessons

Even amidst the Russian-Iranian rivalry and its allies’ aforesaid problems, the SAA could have learned the SMO’s lessons on its own and correspondingly prepared much better for what ultimately came to pass. Masterful drone tactics and strategically dispersed units have characterized the attack thus far, both of which are hallmarks of the SMO, yet the SAA was totally unprepared for this. It must therefore take final responsibility for failing to do its duty in learning from that conflict and adapting its defenses accordingly.

5. Not Compromising For Peace

The last reason why Syria was caught by surprise is because it didn’t compromise for peace by accepting 2017’s Russian-written “draft constitution”, which was constructively critiqued in detail here. It’s chock-full of concessions so one can sympathize with Syria for rejecting it, but in hindsight, this could have finally resolved the conflict and thus averted the ongoing fiasco in Aleppo. For this reason, it could be revived during these desperate times, but the “opposition” might now demand even more concessions.

[mariacallous]

I recently watched a YouTube video of a Ukrainian performance on “America’s Got Talent.” A friend sent me the link, promising it would amaze me – and it did. You can find the video by searching “Amazing holographic 4D cube show AGT.” However, when the show’s host, Howie Mandel, said, “America’s got love for the Ukraine,” I cringed. The phrase “the Ukraine” implies it’s a territory, not a sovereign country. It’s just Ukraine – the largest country in Europe, an important nation in its own right, and sadly, a place the world still knows too little about.

Ukraine is often branded as a place of corruption and gangsters, and Hollywood doesn’t help when it makes the villains Ukrainian. After living in Kyiv for years, I’ve experienced something very different. The country I know is filled with talented, hardworking, and warm people who possess an incredible sense of humor. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, too many people think Ukraine is nothing but a war zone.

I recently heard Mstyslav Chernov, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” say that Americans often ask, “Is there more to Ukraine than the war?” I’ve had similar frustrating conversations abroad, with people asking, “Is that war still going on?”

Before the pandemic, I hosted many foreigners visiting Kyiv, often to explore IT opportunities. Questions like “Is it safe there?” or “Do they have the internet?” were common. Even more surprising are comments from the Ukrainian diaspora. In Canada, home to the largest Ukrainian community outside of Ukraine, some people who left decades ago have no idea how their country has advanced. “They have shopping malls in Kyiv?” or “Do they have electric cars?”

Yes, Ukraine faces challenges, and many people live on modest salaries. But there is a growing middle class, and the big cities capture imaginations. Every guest I hosted in Kyiv was blown away.

One misconception that always made me giggle is when people ask, “What will we eat there?” The food scene in Kyiv is incredible. There’s been an explosion of amazing restaurants, and dining out here can compete with New York or London any day. Even during the war, new places are opening, and the food is phenomenal. If you want to have a laugh,  stand-up comedy clubs are popular – even in English. Where there’s laughter, there’s hope.

I had a friend from California visit twice, and when he returned to Los Angeles, people teased him, asking if he’d visited the land of Borat. He said Ukrainians are just like people in California – trying to build businesses, raise families, and live their lives. That’s the thing: Ukraine is not some backward nation that craves war.

Before the full-scale invasion, Kyiv was on track to become Europe’s next hotspot, and I’d have bet anything on that happening. This brutal war has set everything back. Ukraine is not about war. It’s about modernity, freedom, and new culture. It’s a country brimming with energy.

Ukraine has suffered from a poor reputation for as long as I can remember. I first discovered Kyiv nearly 17 years ago, and I’ve been saying ever since that Ukraine needs to work on its brand. Of course, now that we’re in the third year of the full-scale invasion, things are different. Air raid sirens can go off at any time, and it can be scary when Ukrainian air defenses shoot down drones and missiles. During those moments, you head to the bomb shelter. But life continues.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Ukraine is that everyone here is poor and miserable. Most people don’t have easy lives, and yes, poverty exists, but that’s true in many places. I’m originally from South Africa, where poverty exists on a different scale. In Ukraine, no one lives in shantytowns. When millions of Ukrainians fled across the borders, the European host nations were often surprised to see modern cars, fashionable clothes, and the latest smartphones. It’s a high-tech nation, and the level of online convenience here would surprise any foreigner.

There’s also a wave of innovation happening. Ukraine is poised to become a global leader in military drone technology. Artists are creating, entrepreneurs are developing cool tech, new restaurants are opening, and foreign investors are exploring opportunities. Ukraine is a miracle. Even as hypersonic missiles and kamikaze drones rain down across the country, many have decided to stay, continuing their lives, albeit in a very different way. The economy needs to keep running. Life needs to go on to keep the wheels turning.

Many passionate, dedicated people are working on projects to benefit and support Ukraine. Some have been involved long before the full-scale invasion, driven by a deep belief in the country and its people. Since 2018, I’ve been part of a team of artists — Ukrainian and international — creating a storytelling film project that captures life in modern Kyiv. “We Are Ukraine” is a story about extraordinary people in an extraordinary time — people who have chosen to continue to work, live, get married, have children, and laugh, against all odds. It’s not a war story, a story about death and demise. It’s a story about life, a love letter to Kyiv, which shows us what the world would miss out on if Kyiv would cease to exist.

Freedom, independence, and identity are the culmination of modern humanity, forged over centuries through struggle, creativity, and resilience. Everything else in civil society flows from these values. Russia’s war in Ukraine is a global wake-up call – a reminder that these values must be nurtured and protected. Ukrainians are showing that not only can they defend these values, but by continuing to live, laugh, and love, they are defying those who seek to destroy them.