#russian ukraine crisis

[thenuclearmallard]

Russian imperialism and genocides of their Indigenous part 2

[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

[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 🫶

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

And to those who are still in favor of Harris, fuck yourselves, people in Gaza are dying because of you, because the blues are supplying weapons to Israel, and shove the text "But Trump is worse!" up your ass, because it's a shitty argument with which you avoid consequences for your crimes (Yes, fuck blue people like you fuck Trump fans, you deserve each other)

I had to get this shit out because liberals are annoying

(I started writing this post a few hours ago, but the battery started to die, so I had to turn it into a draft)

Yes, I'm pissed at the blue people because they will uncritically defend Harris…

Now that I have your attention:

[troythecatfish]

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

Let it be known that Ukraine has and will continue to hold onto Russian land until Russia leaves Ukraine's internationally recognized territory. Most of all it's very telling that Putin and Russian state media had downplayed and ignored Kursk due to it being an absolute disaster for Russia, well when they aren't calling for those same Russian villages and towns to be homed into the ground. It's almost insane to think that people thought Ukraine wouldn't last a week much less several years, but never underestimate the fighting will of people opposing tyranny. Don't stop fighting until Ukraine is free!! 💛💙💛💙💛💙

[half-life-crisis]

The #Russian #military crossed into #Ukraine 1,004 days ago. It is obvious by now that #Ukrainians do not want to be “#liberated” by #Russia. This #war affects #usall!

https://halflifecrisis.com/hlc-articles/ukraine-russian-conflict-1-004-days-later…

Next in line will be #Moldova, followed by the #USA, unless we understand #geopolitcs.

[head-post]

Putin approved Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving the country’s updated nuclear doctrine after US President Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to fire long-range missiles deep into Russia.

The doctrine comes into force on Tuesday, 19 November, with an earlier decree on nuclear deterrence policy becoming null and void, according to Russian media.

Among the key conditions for the possible use of nuclear weapons, Russia cited “aggression” by non-nuclear-weapon states backed by nuclear powers. Even the use of conventional weapons could be grounds for a nuclear response, according to the document.

Russia’s adversaries are defined as “individual states and military coalitions that view the Russian Federation as a potential adversary,” as well as those with nuclear weapons or “significant combat capabilities of general-purpose forces.” In other words, Moscow could use nuclear weapons after any member of the military alliances gets involved in the war in Ukraine.

The doctrine update should ensure “that a potential adversary understands the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against Russia and/or its allies,” the document said.

US Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian A. Nichols, confirmed that Biden authorised Ukraine to launch long-range weapons strikes against Russian territory. This was the first official confirmation from a US official following media reports on Sunday.

The previous doctrine, outlined in 2020, stated that Russia could deploy nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack or a conventional attack that threatened the existence of the state.

Read more HERE

[thenuclearmallard]

Russian imperialism/genocide part 1

[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.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

James Angelos at Politico:

BERLIN — Listening to Sahra Wagenknecht, Germany’s hard-left icon, you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the greatest threat to democracy is “lifestyle leftists” nursing lattes in reusable cups while shopping for organic kale at a Berlin farmers’ market. Such well-off, eco-friendly urban bohemians hold what they deem to be “morally impeccable” views about everything from Ukraine to climate change, she says, and then impose those beliefs over regular people with draconian zeal. Wagenknecht — whose recently formed populist party is polling in the double digits ahead of critical state elections in eastern Germany on Sunday — also believes there are too many asylum seekers coming to the country, claiming there’s “no more room.” She reserves much of her ire for Germany’s Greens, blaming their clean-energy push for the country’s deindustrialization, and favors closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. One of Germany’s most well-liked politicians, Wagenknecht started out in politics as a member of East Germany’s communist party and has long been the face of the country’s hard left. Of late, however, she often sounds positively far right.

Her views and scathing attacks on the mainstream left have, in fact, won her many far-right admirers. Björn Höcke, one of the most extreme politicians in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the party’s leader in the eastern German state of Thuringia was so impressed with Wagenknecht — particularly over her position on Putin — that he once called upon her to enlist in the AfD’s ranks. “I implore you, come and join us!” he said last year during a speech in Dresden. Instead, Wagenknecht has forged a new political force defined by a seemingly oxymoronic ideology she dubs “left conservatism.” In the process, she is upending German politics by chipping away at the crumbling dominance of the country’s mainstream parties and further scrambling the left-right divide that characterized Western politics for most of the 20th century. As established parties lose sway across Europe, the fractured political landscape makes it easier for political entrepreneurs like Wagenknecht to stake out new territory. That’s increasingly true in Germany too, which has long served as Europe’s anchor of stability — where politics were long relatively staid and predictable.

Long gone are the days when the Volksparteien — big-tent parties — could virtually alone determine Germany’s political course. Upstarts like the AfD and Wagenknecht’s party — dubbed Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) — are fomenting a revolt against the political mainstream. That rebellion is particularly strong in the region that makes up the former East Germany which — despite the more than three-decade effort to absorb and integrate the formerly communist state after the fall of the Berlin Wall — is increasingly following its own parallel political reality. With three state elections to be held in eastern Germany — in Saxony and Thuringia on Sunday, and in Brandenburg on September 22 — the AfD is leading or close to leading all the contests. Wagenknecht’s new party is polling between around 13 and 18 percent, a striking result for a party that just formed several months ago.

I met Wagenknecht earlier this year backstage at a theater in Berlin, where she was scheduled to answer questions from a reporter from Germany’s left-leaning newspaper Die Tageszeitung before a live audience. Wagenknecht sported her signature look — a jacket with padded shoulders, a knee-length skirt and pumps — a style so invariable she’s often asked about it by reporters. (“Ultimately you get the feeling that it’s a kind of uniform,” the Tageszeitung journalist, Ulrike Herrmann, told Wagenknecht on stage later that night.) Wagenknecht is far from alone in blurring the traditional left-right spectrum. In the U.S., former President Donald Trump has embraced some traditionally left economic policies on trade and tariffs, partly explaining his appeal to working-class voters. France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, has co-opted economic and welfare policies from the traditional left, attracting, in the process, many former French Communist Party voters.

When I asked Wagenknecht if she saw any similarities between herself and Le Pen or other radical-right parties, a hint of shock seemed to break through her cool, composed countenance. Such parties, she told me, do not truly represent the “so-called little people.” Rather, she said, her brand of politics does — a left that focuses on fighting economic inequality while, as she put it, also embracing social policies that foster “traditions, stability and security.” That’s territory, she said, the left has mistakenly ceded to the right. “These are quite legitimate human needs, and at some point the left was no longer interested in them,” Wagenknecht told me. She then blamed the rise of the far right on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his left-leaning coalition’s “arrogant” approach to governing. “This is the direct result of an incredible frustration and indignation about wrong policies,” she said. “And the indignation is justified.”

[...]

Yet, in subsequent years, Wagenknecht became an increasingly controversial figure within the Left Party, including when, amid the refugee crisis of 2015, she became a critic of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, using the mantra “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”). In 2016, after a spate of terror attacks perpetrated by migrants, Wagenknecht released a statement that read: “The reception and integration of a large number of refugees and immigrants is associated with considerable problems and is more difficult than Merkel’s frivolous ‘We can do it.’”

Members of her own party sharply criticized her, arguing that no true leftist should attack Merkel from the right on migration. That year, at a Left Party gathering, a man from a self-described anti-fascist group threw what looked like a chocolate cake topped with whipped cream in Wagenknecht’s face. Relations with many members of her own party grew more strained after Wagenknecht became a sharp critic of the government’s “endless lockdowns” during the Covid-19 pandemic and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Wagenknecht frequently appearing on German television to offer takes that echoed Kremlin propaganda. Finally, last year, she announced that she and a group of Left Party allies would leave to form their own party, with Lafontaine, her husband, also later joining. “We live in a time of global political crises,” she said in Berlin. “And in this of all times, Germany probably has the worst government in its history.” Many people, she added, “no longer know who to vote for, or they vote out of anger and despair.” The choice led to the unraveling of the Left Party, which was forced to dissolve its parliamentary faction, liquidate assets and fire staff.

Wagenknecht has since grown adept at finding a leftist angle for what are commonly rightist stances. Her skepticism of immigration is due, in great part, to her support of the welfare state, which, she says, requires a certain degree of homogeneity to function. “The stronger the welfare state, the more of a sense of belonging there must be,” Wagenknecht told me in Berlin. “Because if people have no connection to those who receive social benefits, then at some point they will refuse to pay for those benefits.” Another example was Wagenknecht’s vote against a bill passed by the German parliament earlier this year to make it easier to change one’s legal gender — a law, she said, that would “just be ridiculous if it weren’t so dangerous.” But she found a traditionally left line of attack for that view, targeting the profit-seeking pharmaceutical industry as the main beneficiary of the bill. “Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby.” She has also repeatedly called for an end to German military aid for Ukraine and negotiations with Putin — a view prevalent on the far right, but for her, an anti-war stance rooted in the leftist tradition.

That she sounds like the right on these issues brings to mind the “horseshoe theory” of politics, often attributed to the French author Jean-Pierre Faye and his 1996 book “Le Siècle des ideologies,” which holds that political extremes bend towards each other, in the shape of a horseshoe, so that the far left and far right ends are closer together than they are to the center.  But a more concrete explanation for her policies is that Wagenknecht sees a representation gap — a space for people with socially conservative views who are uncomfortable with migration and progressive politics, but are also wary of the AfD’s extremism. Wagenknecht, in other words, seeks to provide a more palatable, anti-establishment alternative. Wagenknecht, like leaders of other parties, has ruled out governing with the AfD in a coalition. At the same time, she has not, like others, ruled out cooperating with the AfD to pass what she deems to be sensible legislation.

Politico Europe takes a deep dive into the “leftist”-turned-right-wing German politician Sahra Wagenknecht. Wagenknecht formed her own party called Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) that features a mix of far-right and far-left stances.

[agentfascinateur]

June 15th Peace Summit to end war on Ukraine 🕊️🤞🏼

This democracy is worth it. Slava Ukraini. 💙💛

[acnewsworld]

Russia’s use of the Oreshnik hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile on the territory of Ukraine has forced London to take a more cautious approach regarding strikes with long-range weapons deep inside Russia, the country’s ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said.

“Not that they [London’s representatives] were scared, but overall they realized that a completely new factor had appeared on the scene – that’s the first thing. The second is that we have retaliated for the use of Storm Shadow [long-range missiles] deep inside Russian territory. That’s obvious as well. There is a sense that they are being a little more cautious, a little more balanced in their approach to this issue. And, in fact,

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