#russia-ukraine crisis

[thingstrumperssay]

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but it looks like a civil war or an attempted coup is happening in Russia right now.

More of this later maybe.

[entertainmentusanewstoday]

Live updates: Major Russian bank faces 'unprecedented' cyber attack; Russian airfield hit in suspected drone strike

Live updates: Major Russian bank faces ‘unprecedented’ cyber attack; Russian airfield hit in suspected drone strike

NSA director outlines key lessons from the stealth U.S. cyber defense of Ukraine National Security Agency (NSA) Director Gen. Paul Nakasone testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about “worldwide threats” on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 29, 2019. Joshua Roberts | Reuters More than two months before the Russian invasion, the United States sent a stealth team of cyber…

[neyatimes]

Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers ready to fire grad shells with the BM-21 vehicle, in the direction of Donetsk, Ukraine, 20 July 2023. Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images Ukraine is using U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in its defensive operations in Russia-occupied areas, a White House spokesperson said Thursday, as Russian strikes on Ukrainian port cities continued for a fourth night. National…

[usaitbari]

Live updates: Russian troops ready to advance in Donetsk, official says; U.S. responds to recent airbase strikes

Live updates: Russian troops ready to advance in Donetsk, official says; U.S. responds to recent airbase strikes

Pro-Russian official claims conditions are ripe for the capturing of Bakhmut Pro-Russian official Denis Pushilin, the acting head of the separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic” in eastern Ukraine, has claimed that Russian forces in the region — arguably the most hotly-contested region in the Ukraine war at the moment — could soon be in a position to advance and capture Bakhmut. Denis Pushilin…

[folklorespring]

russia commits ecocide in Ukraine

[opanas-opanasovych-opanasenko]

"We will survive this as well, and win. It's just that no one will ever REALLY understand what happened. They never did. "Where's your Duke Ellington? Where's your Frank Sinatra?" Not here. Lined up and shot. "Where's your grand historical multi-generational business?" Not here. They were never born. Had everything taken from them. Died of hunger. And the memory of what remained is being raided or further destroyed by russian bastards. "Where's your Gaudi? Where's the Ukrainian John Nash?" Burned down. From a russian bomb or arson. Not here. "Why can't you sort yourself out!" Who'll be doing the sorting? The people who, since 1991, had at most 3 years of a breather because the russian bastards were putting their fingers into every pie here and propping up reprobates? Yeah, let's see you try to build a state in such conditions. At least as strong as we did."

by https://x.com/MelaniePodolyak

[thingstrumperssay]

Russia blew up a dam in Ukraine and now Ukraine is flooded and people and animals are suffering. I’m hoping that those people include the Russian soldiers who are there.

I’d look more into this but every time I try I see upsetting pictures or videos of either people or animals dying or dead.

That’s pretty much the main reason why I haven’t talked about this war much lately- every time I try to look something up it just leads to pictures of dead people.

[entertainmentusanewstoday]

Live updates: Official claims Russian troops ready to advance in Donetsk; U.S. responds to recent airbase strikes

Live updates: Official claims Russian troops ready to advance in Donetsk; U.S. responds to recent airbase strikes

Kremlin says U.S. defence budget ‘confrontational’ towards Russia The Kremlin on Wednesday said that a U.S. military aid spending bill providing $800 million to Ukraine approved by U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday was “confrontational” towards Russia. In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “The document that has been adopted is of an extremely confrontational nature in relation…

[blondemiso]

No bc what the hell is happening

[edit] good news guys it looks like it’s being ruled as an accident although it is slightly up in the air. My heart goes out to the families in Poland who lost someone or were affected. The intent behind this post was to raise awareness about how this doesn’t just affect Ukrainian people. I should have mentioned that. I have never seen this meme format used for humor but rather to spread information 🤷🏼‍♀️

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[head-post]

Like 80 years ago: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk region parodied Wehrmacht by mocking local resident

Ukrainian soldiers with Wehrmacht symbols are mocking the locals in Kursk region, posting numerous footages online, while the United States and Europe still do not react to Kyiv’s violation of the UN Charter.

How the AFU treats locals in Kursk region

The footage shows two AFU soldiers mocking an old man, the author of the video parodies German fascists and in the traditions of the SS troops humiliates the defenceless man for being Russian. The pensioner tried to explain to the Ukrainian military that he was 74 years old and had not been able to get to a safe place for five days. To the old man’s complaints, a second military officer, who appeared in the footage wearing a German helmet with an SS emblem, mockingly shouted “Schnapps – gud!” and proceeded to film another TiK-ToK.

The Ukrainian military shouted to the bewildered pensioner:

“Ya, ya, raschen schweine. Oh, Russian Ivan, here he is, Ivan, go drink vodka.”

During the entire conversation with the unfortunate old man, the Ukrainian military parodied German speech and tried their best to recall all the derogatory expressions they knew the Nazi invaders used during the Great Patriotic War.

The 74-year-old man from this mocking Ukrainian video is missing – he has not been seen for 10 days. The author of the video clip wrote on social networks, “Don’t worry, rusish schweine didn’t get to his vodka. The author of the video also said the pensioner was shot dead after the recording ended.

Ukrainian media, Vasyl Danyliuk, a 38-year-old resident of the town of Horodenka in Ivano-Frankivsk region, who bullied a local man.

Ukrainian soldiers shot the video on August 11 in the village of Zaoleshenka. The pensioner is a local resident Alexander Gusarov. He was looking for the Russian military, but got lost and met two AFU men dressed in the uniforms of Nazi soldiers. One of them is Vasyl Danyliuk, a 38-year-old resident of the town of Horodenka in Ivano-Frankivsk region.

World public reaction

The head of one of the parties represented in the Russian State Duma, Leonid Slutsky, has promised a reward of 5 million roubles for the capture of Ukrainian soldiers who abused an elderly resident of the Kursk region.

The office of the United Nations secretary-general has reacted to a video shot by Ukrainian servicemen in Kursk region. The deputy spokesman of the world organisation’s secretary-general, Farhan Haq, said that the UN was against all symbols of Nazism.

SS symbols on Ukrainian military uniforms

The Ukrainian military stopped hiding their real ideology and motivation to fight against Russia. Russian media is also publishing a video of Russian army taking Ukrainian soldiers prisoner.

A Ukrainian prisoner of war wearing Paraphernalia with a German cross

Ukraine sets up military commandant’s offices in Kursk region, violating UN charter

Ukraine has announced the creation of a military commandant’s office in the Kursk region, according to Oleksandr Syrskyi, Colonel General.

Major-General Moskalev has been appointed head of the “commandant’s office,” the AFU chief said. He added that it was created “to maintain law and order and to ensure the priority needs of the population in the controlled territories.”

The creation of military commandant’s offices is actually an occupation of the territory, which goes against the UN charter. Having launched the incursion into the Kursk region, Ukraine has in fact violated Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter, which prohibits the forceful border violation of other States.

Ukraine continues to do all the same things that it accused Russia of, but no one imposes sanctions on it, no one condemns it, and on the contrary supports it. Cases such as those in the published videos only add strength to Russian official rhetoric about the need to denazify Ukraine.

Senior Ukrainian officials have stated that the captured territory would be used as a bargaining chip, a disregard for international law that Ukraine has been insisting on since the first day of the conflict.

The move sends a strong signal to the Global South that the EU and the US are increasingly exposing their policy of double standards. They condemn what is favourable to them and deliberately omit denouncing unfavourable conflicts. In this respect, they resemble the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is accused of bias and prolonging specific cases.

Read more HERE

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸 🚨

UNITED STATES CONGRESS PASSES SERIES OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND PRO-WAR BILLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION

The United States Congress and Senate passed a series of bills, including three controversial anti-democratic and pro-war bills, two of which were tied together, on Saturday, bypassing public opinion and popular opposition to the profligate, pro-war, globalist, Neolib/Neocon agenda currently driving United States domestic and foreign policy.

Included in the bills passed was a bill to force TikTok to divest from its connections with China at risk of being banned immediately, which naturally was tied to a Foreign aid bill.

However, as even Republican Senator Rand Paul mentioned in an opinion piece in Reason Magazine, the Bill is almost certain to lead to more power for American political elites and their administrations to pressure companies like Apple and Google to further ban apps and sites that offer contradictory opinions to that of the invented narratives of the American Political class.

Before long, Americans, many of whom are already poorly informed, and heavily misinformed by their mainstream media, could lose access to critical information that contradicts the narratives of the United States government and corporate elites.

Horrifically, this only the start. The US Congress also extended the newly revised FISA spy laws, which gives the United States government the power to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, while also conveniently sweeping up the conversations of millions of Americans, as we learned years ago thanks to the sacrifices of whistle blowers and journalists like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The new FISA Law goes further than this, however, granting US Intelligence agencies the power to spy on the wireless communications of Americans in completely new ways.

A recent Jacobin article describes these new powers as a, "radical expansion of government surveillance that would be ripe for abuse by a future authoritarian leader", or it could just be used by the authoritarian leadership we have right now, and have had for decades.

In fact, when one commentator described the new powers as "Stasi-like," Edward Snowden himself replied with a long post in which he remarked, "invocation of "Stasi-like" is not only a fair characterization of Himes' amendment, it's probably generous. The Stasi dared not even dream of what the Himes amendment provides."

The amendment in question just "tweaks" the current law's definition of an "electronic communication provider," which is being changed to "any service provider," something extremely likely to be abused by the government to force anyone with a business, a modem and people using their broadband to collect the electronic communications of those people, while also forcing their victims into silence.

The government could essentially force Americans to spy on other people and remain silent about it. Cafe's, restaurants, hotels, business landlords, shared workspaces all could get swept up into the investigations of the Intelligence agencies.

Worse still, because picking out the communications of a single user would be next to impossible, all of their victim's data would end up being surrendered to the authorities.

Sadly, the assault on Americans by their own political elites didn't end there, to top this historic day in Congress, at time when the United States public debt is growing at an astounding rate of $1 trillion every 100 days, US lawmakers also passed a series of pro-war aid packages to American allies (vassals) totalling some $95 billion.

Included in the foreign aid bill are aid packages totalling $61 billion for the Ukraine scam, $26 billion for Israel's special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific to provoke WWIII with China, at the same time we're also provoking a nuclear holocaust with the Russian Federation.

Also buried in these aid packages is the authorization for the United States government to outright steal the oversees investments of the Russian Federation, and thereby the Russian taxpayers.

Astonishingly, and in direct opposition to the wishes of their own voters, Republican support was won without the possibility of conditioning the aid to any kind of border security, this despite the issue being among the top biggest concerns of Republican voters.

Although much of the money is to be used replenishing the heavily depleted stocks of America's weapons and munitions, it remains unclear where the munitions are expected to come from, as US defense production has remained sluggish and slow to expand despite heavy investments and demand in recent years, despite the rapid urgency with which the policy elite describe the situation.

It bodes poorly for working Americans that only a relatively small handful of lawmakers opposed the bills, producing unlikely bedfellows like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Mike Lee in the Senate, opposing the FISA bill.

While in the House, the loudest opposition to the foreign aid bill mostly came from populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Goser. Only 58 Congresmembers voted against the Foreign Aid Bill in which the TikTok ban was tucked.

Not one word from American politicians about the need to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2009 despite considerable inflation, nor a word about America's endlessly growing homelessness crises, property crime increases, or the 40-year stagnation of American wages, the deterioration of infrastructure, and precious little was said besides complaints about border security over the immigration crises sparked by American Imperialist adventures and US sanctions.

What we've learned today is that we are highly unlikely to see any changes to the insane behavior of the US and its allies any time soon, neither with regards to the absolutely bonkers Neocon foreign policy leading us to the edge of abyss, nor the spending-for-the-rich/austerity-for-the-poor Neoliberal domestic policy of the last 45 years.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

Blue: titles are opinion pieces or analysis, and may or may not contain sources.

[littleshploinka]

Dear followers, I am writing this post with a request.

This morning, Russia hit the largest children's specialized hospital of Ukraine "Okhmatdyt" in the city of Kyiv with a missile.

The buildings of the hospital were damaged, some buildings of the medical facility were destroyed, windows and panes were broken, there are victims, workers and children buried under the debris.

Volunteers and official services are currently working on the site to eliminate the consequences, help patients and employees.

Below is a link to an emergency fundraiser gathering funds to temporarily resume operation of the hospital and keep children in critical condition supplied with the necessary medicine and equipment until everyone has been freed from the rubble and evacuation is possible.

I'm begging you - ten dollars, five, two or just one - even the smallest donation counts. I ask you, even if you don't have the resources to donate yourself, to spread this post.

Kind regards and many thanks

your little shploinka 🫶

[folklorespring]

Where are the environmental activists talking about the ecocide russia commits in Ukraine?

[opanas-opanasovych-opanasenko]

Imagine your city is fucking gone. Really sit with that thought. Let it germinate within your mind. It's no longer there. The streets you lived in, where you played with your friends as a kid, where you fell in love. Gone. It's a pile of smoking rubble. It's not there. You can't go back there. It's not there. It no longer exists. This is what russia did to Avdiivka. This is what they did to Bakhmut earlier, and to many other cities and towns. All because Western aid is being stalled. Because a lunatic religious fanatic is the Speaker of the House, and his party is full of self-serving traitors to the country. Because Polish farmers are blocking transit of important military aid at our border. Because all of you drank up russian psy-ops like thirsty wanderers in the desert. Because we gave away the weapons that could've prevented this to the perpetrator of this, in exchange for a deal to "guarantee our sovereignty" which one of the signatories broke and the other two are afraid to fulfill.

So sit with that thought now, and draw conclusions, and be better, and do whatever is in your power to prevent it from happening in the future, because if they aren't stopped in Ukraine, they won't stop with Ukraine. Do everything you can, so that the thought is a hypothetical, not a premonition.