#vladimir putin livestream

[daancienttime]

Vladimir Putin noted that PM Modi takes tough stance in protecting national interest.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stating that the Indian PM takes a “tough stance” in protecting the interests of the people in the country. He also emphasised that PM Modi’s policy is a guarantee of deep relations between New Delhi and Moscow.

In a media interview, the Russian President said, “I cannot imagine that Modi can be intimidated, threatened, or forced to take any action or decision against the national interest of India and the Indian people. I know there is such pressure on them”.

He further stated that he is observing what is happening from the outside and added, “To be honest, sometimes I am surprised by his tough stance on protecting the national interests of the Indian people”.

The Russian President also mentioned that Russia-China relations are “continuously developing in all directions, and the main guarantee of this is the policy of Prime Minister Modi”.

[mariacallous]

There has been plenty of discussion in Western media about why Russians are not protesting President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the war against Ukraine, whether it’s due to the economy, genuine enthusiasm for the war, or fear. One thing that most experts agree on is that Russia has a severe political apathy problem. That’s true—but it’s also far more pervasive than even Russianists often realize.

This problem is not new; it’s a continuation of Soviet-era cultural norms that have been carefully amplified and curated by Putin’s state propaganda. Russian experts themselves were once able to point out the problem—including Andrey I. Kolesnikov (a member of the “Kremlin pool” of journalists as the deputy CEO of the influential Kommersant newspaper and the editor in chief of Russky Pioner magazine) in an RIA news article from 2006, or academic Marina Podhomutinkova in a 2011 paper.

As statistics on the increasingly low number of people who get involved in politics show, the situation has only gotten worse over time. Apathy, tinged with fear, is the Russian norm. That explains some of the strangeness of public opinion data. Recent polls by the Moscow-based Levada Center show that support for war among the general population remains high, fluctuating around the 75 percent mark. At the same time, 71 percent of respondents would also approve of immediate peace talks. Although part of this can be attributed to the “preference falsification” that researchers find is common in authoritarian states, the apathy that Putin has cultivated goes far deeper than that.

On a personal level, if you ask the average Russian what they actually want from the war or expect to achieve if they win, then the answer is a resounding “nothing.” I’ve asked this question to many Russians—including relatives, friends, and business acquaintances. I’ve also spent a considerable amount of time on various anonymous Russian imageboards and Telegram channels, asking about people’s opinions in situations where anonymity is guaranteed. The result stays the same—the average Russian person just doesn’t care.

As one interviewee told me, “This is a stupid question. I’ve never thought about politics in my life—that’s the smart thing to do. Let politicians do their politics; that’s not for me. Sooner or later, this will be over. Putin will probably figure something out with China and [U.S. President Joe] Biden. I just hope that they don’t start throwing nukes around, but that’s all.”

Unsurprisingly, my interlocutors almost universally asked for anonymity.

Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, stated a similar conclusion in an interview with Radio Liberty in January this year: “This is indifference and being overwhelmed by life, poverty, and lack of rights, and pacifist beliefs, or simply well-being combined with the position ‘politics does not interest me.’”

As Gudkov noted, in some ways, this helps Putin: Active, ideological pro-war supporters, known as turbopatriots, have certain demands that Moscow has largely failed to fulfill. Look at the imprisoned ultranationalist Igor Girkin, who turned on Putin after the war against Ukraine went sour.

Maxim Katz, a Russian opposition politician-turned journalist-responded when I asked him this question during a livestream : “What an American, very Western question. It’s hard for the people in the West to understand that the average Russian wants nothing from this war, he does not see the victory in any way, he completely doesn’t care. For him, this is a question that his superiors are dealing with. The most important thing for him is to ensure that this war doesn’t affect him personally in any way.”

In part, this cynicism is bred by the gap between propaganda and reality. Russian state media takes nationalism to extremes, but ordinary Russians know that this is nonsense, often using the phrase “war between the TV and the refrigerator” to talk about the discrepancies between broadcast propaganda and the reality of empty shelves or failing appliances. The elites also know that the people know. As the old Soviet saying goes, “You pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” That mentality is in full swing here.

This charade was a mainstay of the Soviet system. Elections were faked, with 99 percent of the population always voting for the only available party list. Trade unions nominally existed, but they were directly under the control of the Communist Party, never fulfilling any real functions, and any real expression of people’s political will was nearly nonexistent. But patriotism was compulsory, especially over national holidays. This led to an increase in apathy, nihilism, and disillusionment about the Soviet government.

When Mikhail Gorbachev took power, some nonpolitical interest clubs concerning social issues were finally permitted, such as the green movement. Russia had a brief spurt of real politics, freedom of speech, and open discussion—one that also coincided with economic chaos and a deep sense of disillusionment as Russia’s place in the world plummeted in the 1990s. The combination of all of these factors led to many people losing faith in democracy and liberal ideas, an increase of nostalgia toward the Soviet era, and a neglect of politics in general.

There’s a common Soviet era saying that remains popular among Russian speakers: “The folks up there see better.” What it means is that if you’re not one of the members of the political elite, then you should not be questioning their decisions, because they probably know better than you do—so don’t be curious, just do what you’re told. It’s related to another famous phrase—“I’m not an expert in this matter, but…”—that’s reached a meme status on the Russian speaking internet. Sometimes it’s joking, but often it’s used seriously. The idea that only an authorized few should get to have an opinion is embedded deep into the public mentality.

Another familiar trope that serves political apathy is the idea of “tough Russians.” Putin loves to play on that, portraying himself as a strongman who embodies the traditional Russian virtues of virility and masculinity. He makes macho but hollow boasts, such as his response from 2018 to a question about the potential of foreign nuclear threats against Russia: “We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead.”

But for ordinary people, there’s the commonly used term terpila (“the one who endures” or “endurer” in English). It refers to someone who just suffers through everything that life throws at them, without ever doing anything about it. It’s a negative term—but it describes many Russians.

These are the ideals that are being actively reinforced in Russia today as Putin doubles down on Soviet nostalgia. People are shown that they have a strong, powerful leader, who will bring greatness to the country. That is a promise of stability and prosperity, but because of Russia’s Soviet past, it is also a reminder that you shouldn’t bother with politics or civic engagement, and that only a narrow group of specialists are ever allowed to have an opinion in any given matter. If there are any problems, you should endure them as a so-called real Russian and not have any ideas of change.

What does this mean for the war? Well, it’s been decided by the higher-ups, so it’s not any of your business.

Roughly 20 million Ukrainians have relatives in Russia. One-third of Ukraine’s population stated in a 2011 survey that they have friends there as well. So, when Russians answer polling questions about their support for the war, they say “yes”—because that’s a political issue, and they have enough problems to deal with. At the same time, when they get asked about whether they would support immediate peace talks, they respond “yes” again, because the killing of Ukrainians just seems odd to the vast majority of people—even if they’ve bought into Putin’s propaganda about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government supposedly being full of Satanists and neo-Nazis.

As one of my own distant relatives told me on the phone, “What do you mean, want from the war? How can you even want something from a war? I want the war to end, and I think that every reasonable person has the same opinion!” Her husband added, “We’re just not that political, as a people, you know. Nobody thought this was possible, but now … now we just want this to end, to return to how things were.”

The bloodiness of this war seems to play little role in the average Russian person’s political activity. Casualties in this conflict are very high—current estimates of those killed or wounded in the conflict put the figure at more than 500,000 people, much higher than the casualties suffered during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where approximately 15,000 USSR soldiers were lost, with approximately 35,000 more wounded. The difference lies in who is getting mobilized.

During the Afghanistan war, the Soviet Union sent regular conscripts to fight, as per the mandatory service and zinc coffins were seen in cities all over the USSR. In the Ukrainian war, Putin is careful to preserve the illusion of normalcy for the citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg—it’s the ethnic minorities and convicts that do most of the fighting, as to not provoke the Russian people into caring too much. Especially since he has another political issue with this war that he needs to be careful about.

Putin has described Ukrainians as belonging to the Russian civilization—misled by the West, yes, but brothers nonetheless. My impression from talking to Russians is that at this point, they’ll support whatever Putin declares needs supporting, whatever scheme he has going on, as long as this confusing nightmare ends faster. Then everyone, ideally, could go back to business as usual, pretending that this war never even happened.

There is a silver lining to this though. Putin is 71 and has been in power for nearly 25 years. Anyone who could have given him an honest opinion, much less some constructive criticism, has long been forced into retirement, pushed into exile, imprisoned, or outright killed. He’s visibly lost touch with reality—according to a recently defected Kremlin insider, Putin does not use a smartphone, nor does he know how to use a computer beyond the very basics of functions. He does not use the internet. A video where he, supposedly, is shown logging in to vote via Russia’s online voting platform in the farcical so-called presidential election in March was laughable, as it’s obvious that Putin has no idea what he’s doing.

But the cynicism and apathy of the older generation may not extend to the younger one. The Kremlin has no clue about what to do with the younger generation, who mainly watch YouTube and listen to podcasts. Among this category of Russians aged 25 to 39, the Levada Center’s April polls showed only 23 percent support for the war. Russia’s best attempt at propaganda on YouTube was its failed RuTube project, where various popular Russian content creators were paid large amounts of money—more than they were making via their channels on YouTube—to move all of their content to RuTube and occasionally include pro-Kremlin content among whatever they were posting normally.

As a result, most of the pro-Putin YouTube channels have lost their audience, and the Russian government is wasting money paying for content that nobody watches. It’s also about to launch a state-approved version of Wikipedia, which will steal articles from the original Russian-language wiki and then automatically censor them. The project is equally likely to crash and burn.

Russians won’t be overthrowing their regime anytime soon. But if the war becomes a more personal problem, attitudes could shift fast. This is important, because people reevaluate their risks on a daily basis—when the regime is strong, they would rather lay low and stay on the safer side. But as soon as cracks start to appear, the very same people can suddenly turn fiercely.

Western policymakers should take this into account. Russian people are absolutely fine with the war ending—as long as there’s a plan for them, and not a repeat of the humiliations of the 1990s.

[beardedmrbean]

People have started freaking out over this and even certain media websites have reported on it, but there is no indication that the lady who may or may not be Chris-Chan's girlfriend is pregnant.

Everything that was said can be found here: https://sonichu.com/cwcki/November_2024_livestreams#Jesus_Christ_Chan_-_Shadow_Generations_Speed_Run It looks more like Chris-Chan was just blabbing on about nothing after a troll sent a donation message.

I'd see that some large outlets were reporting on it when I answered the ask yesterday.

19:26: A donor tells Chris "We know what you did". Chris gets very quiet.

27:20: A super chat about Geno Samuel leads to a tangent about how no one have a full picture of Chris' life.

39:57: A donor asks Chris "When are you going to announce the child you're having?". Chris replies "when the child is actually coming into play or somewhere around that point or I just might keep y'all in the dark and wait until after the child is born."

43:58: Chris talks about future store plans, and continuing to work on the Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder card game.

52:46: Chris says that Vladimir Putin will die by his own sword and that a certain billionaire will die.

39:57 there that I highlighted is about it on there, vague at a minimum.

After the whole thing with Babs I'm not sure how I'd feel if there was a kid on the way really, other than hoping it's healthy and happy

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tess Owen at The Guardian:

In the last few years, a self-styled political movement that sounds like a contradiction in terms has gained ground online: “Maga communism”. Promoted by its two most prominent spokespeople, Haz Al-Din, 27, and Jackson Hinkle, 24, Maga communism comprises a grab bag of ideas that can seem lacking in coherence – ranging from a belief in the power of Donald Trump’s followers to wrest power from “global elites” to an emphasis on masculine “honor”, admiration for Vladimir Putin and support for Palestinian liberation. The two have been repeatedly kicked off social media platforms for spreading disinformation. Hinkle, for example, was booted from Instagram earlier this year – shortly after claiming in a series of posts that Ukraine was behind the terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow, despite Islamic State claiming responsibility for the act.

Hinkle and Al-Din have been ridiculed by critics as pseudo-intellectual, cravenly opportunistic grifters who have carved out an intentionally provocative niche designed to siphon followers away from other highly online political communities. “If you look at their policies, like what they actually propose, it’s clear that this is a deranged fringe movement that doesn’t really have a great deal of articulation,” said Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University and author of Against the Fascist Creep, which explored how rightwing movements co-opt the language of the left. “It seems ludicrous, but I would say it’s really a symptom of the erosion of rational political life.”

[...] Until recently, Al-Din and Hinkle’s reach seemed limited to corners of the internet largely populated by young men attracted to their messages on masculinity and US foreign policy. But with their inflammatory and often misleading posts about the Gaza war, and as they rail with increasing frequency against what they view as American imperialism, their footprint is growing. “Deranged” or not, Hinkle and Al-Din’s “movement” is attracting recognition in increasingly high places on the right. Hinkle’s defense of Putin’s foreign policy has earned him an invitation on to Tucker Carlson’s show and praise from Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Hinkle and Al-Din have also forged international alliances with the likes of the Russian ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, whom they met at a conference in Moscow earlier this year.

The founder of Maga communism cultivates a militant aesthetic when he addresses his followers via livestream from his home. His beard is carefully coiffed, and he often wears an oversized black blazer and black collared shirt. Behind him, swords are mounted on the wall, “to symbolize the war I am waging to defend the message I believe is true amidst mountains of lies”, Al-Din, 27, who streams on Kick and YouTube under the name “Infrared”, said in a phone interview. Both Haz and Hinkle say they support Trump not out of admiration for the man, but out of the belief that his followers represent the most significant mobilization of the American working class in decades.

They subscribe to social conservatism in a way that appeals to the growing numbers of gen Z males who believe feminism is harmful to men, and cast issues such as transgender rights, the climate crisis and racial justice as neoliberal distractions. “It’s not that we’re against women. We just perceive that the discourse, culture and the political sphere have seen a huge decline in the notion of honor,” Al-Din said. “One of the reasons for that is the decline in basic masculine virtues, the rise of a kind of effeminization, especially of men.” Hinkle has regularly made anti-trans comments on his own social media, making declarations such as: “We need to protect our youth from trans terrorists and propagandists.” “They’re firmly embedded in a corner of social media that is the most vitriolic, terminally online, troll culture,” said Reid Ross.

Hinkle and Al-Din’s links to communism are tenuous at best, but they may be opportunistically emphasizing the label to tap into shifting attitudes. Polling has indicated that members of gen Z, even gen Z Republican voters, are more open to socialist ideas compared with previous generations. In a video debunking Maga communism published last year, the Marxist economist Richard Wolff noted that there’s precedent for nationalist movements co-opting communist rhetoric, particularly during times of social upheaval and economic hardship. “If you’re a political movement and you want to get supporters at a time when socialism is attracting more and more interest, well, you might be tempted to grab hold at least of the name,” Wolff said, noting that this was a strategy most famously used by Adolf Hitler during his rise to power. “It’s provocative,” Hinkle said of his movement’s name, smirking, in a 2022 interview with the comedian Jimmy Dore. “But that’s why it’s trending on Twitter right now.”

According to an infographic regularly recirculated by Hinkle, proposed Maga communist policies include “dismantling big tech”, banning “antifa street terrorism”, ending “woke academia” and subsidizing gyms in every community. They also propose exiting Nato; deporting the Obamas, Bushes and Clintons to the International Criminal Court; ending “open borders”; and “putting banking into the hands of the people”. Hinkle and Al-Din also claim they’re anti-imperialists and cling to the enduring myth of Trump as the more dovish candidate. Their band of online followers see themselves as pitted against “the unipolar world” and “western hegemony”, and they often support authoritarian nations that the US sees as its adversaries, such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Al-Din, for example, told the Guardian that he has a “profound” admiration for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in part due to his “resilience in defending the honor and history of Korean civilization”.

[...]

Al-Din and Hinkle’s position on the Israel-Gaza conflict makes them outliers in the broader Maga movement, which has largely rallied behind Israel. Trump and his allies have cast pro-Palestinian protests in the US as another manifestation of “wokeness”. Trump recently described protesting college students as “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers”. While some other young leaders on the far right, such as the white nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes, oppose Israel for explicitly antisemitic reasons, Al-Din and Hinkle insist that their position on the conflict is grounded in their broader “anti-imperialist” stance, shared by more prominent conservatives such as Tucker Carlson, who has also criticized US support for Israel. Hinkle and Fuentes have been allies in the past; Hinkle and Al-Din have previously streamed on Fuentes’ platform Cozy.tv, and Hinkle said he had gotten dinner with Fuentes last September. They fell out shortly after following an argument about class politics and the country-folk artist Oliver Anthony’s viral song about the working class.

But despite Hinkle and Al-Din’s high-profile support for Gaza, the pair were recently jeered at a pro-Palestine event at Emory University. The event was co-hosted by Cair (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and was to feature the political activist Norman Finkelstein. The Emory law student Grayson Walker, the showrunner for Al-Din’s Infrared show, was a co-organizer, and added Al-Din as a speaker at the last minute.

In his bizarre speech, Al-Din berated members of the audience, saying that they were responsible for spreading “imperialist and Zionist propaganda and slander against my comrade Jackson Hinkle” and were “just as culpable in the crimes of the Zionists as those who give their dollars and money to them”. The audience booed him and shouted “shame on you”, after which Cair abruptly canceled the event and put out a statement. “Today, we unwittingly damaged the movement for Palestinian liberation by allowing a rogue actor to hijack an event intended to highlight the Palestinian genocide,” Cair said in a statement. “A student co-organizer commandeered this platform by inserting hateful and divisive guests into the program,” it continued, adding that the organizer, Walker, had “greenlighted a deeply problematic speech”. (Hinkle and Al-Din later claimed they’d been “canceled” by “the Zionists” and used a homophobic slur to refer to the pro-Palestinian students at Emory.)

The Guardian has an article on MAGA Communism, an ideology that marries communism with MAGA politics (basically right-wing politics with a left-wing aesthetic). Jackson Hinkle and Haz Al-Din are its biggest spokespersons of it.

[mightyflamethrower]

Tucker Carlson Reacts to Joe Biden Shouting Incoherent Gibberish at the State of the Union

March 8, 2024 | Sundance | 741 Comments

There really isn’t much you can say about what was witnessed last night in the People’s House. Joe Biden shouting at America for an hour while muttering something about snickers bars, snack food and the need to send billions of dollars to Ukraine was essentially the gist.

Following one of the most incoherent teleprompter reads in the history of presidential politics, one can only imagine how Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were briefed on what took place in Washington DC at 9:00pm. Suffice to say, no sleep was lost amid the global community of leaders who smile as the USA influence collapses.

What was even more goofy, was the pretending amid the corporate media that Joe Biden said stuff that was discernable and/or potentially fitting the office of the executive. The various news agencies each described the color of the emperor’s new coat as if it actually existed. The pretending was/is simply off the charts bizarre, and normal Americans tuned out and went on about doing things normal Americans do.

That said, Tucker Carlson watched the naked emperor and livestreamed his thoughts on the insanity of the event, he then gives a reaction. WATCH:

It’s hard to live in a country where ‘pretending’ is the new normal in politics and media.

We won't walk away?? You mean like we did to Israel???

[ravenkings]

Vladimir Putin’s generals vulnerable despite surviving revolt – FT

There was no sound on the brief video of Sergei Shoigu published on Monday morning or any indication of where Russia’s defence minister was as he pored over a battlefield map. 

 But the seemingly mundane footage was the first evidence that Shoigu was still in his job. Neither he nor Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s invasion force, have been seen in public since Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an extraordinary coup attempt to oust them on Friday. 

Though Prigozhin and his Wagner paramilitaries ultimately halted their march on Moscow, with the warlord agreeing to leave Russia, he has left both men increasingly vulnerable in his wake. 

The failed revolt has given Russian president Vladimir Putin a stark choice — whether to fire the generals or let them remain in command of his faltering invasion of Ukraine, with both options carrying a significant risk of further blowback both for the war and his regime, analysts say. 

“Shoigu and Gerasimov are so bad in their jobs that it’s dangerous to Putin to leave them in place,” said Dara Massicot, a senior political scientist at the US-based Rand Corporation. “But loyalty and stability are number one for Putin. I just don’t see how he’s going to have these terms dictated to him like this.”

For months, Prigozhin has taken aim at Gerasimov and Shoigu, blaming them for Russia’s military shortcomings in Ukraine and portraying them as inept leaders who were sitting comfortably in Moscow as Russian soldiers died on the battlefield. 

By Sunday, some Russian military analysts were speculating that Shoigu and Gerasimov could be two additional casualties of the failed coup, after Prigozhin and his fighters travelled half the distance from the Ukrainian border to Moscow, captured a military base and took down several army helicopters — all within a matter of hours. 

“Shoigu and Gerasimov are now obvious lame ducks and they will be removed, I think,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defence think-tank. He did not exclude the possibility that the two men’s departure could have been part of the brokered deal that led to Prigozhin standing his men down. The Kremlin has denied this. 

The damage to Russia’s prestige has been such that even pro-war commentators on state television and social media admit that the coup called the entire war into question. 

“This is a serious blow to the authority of the country and the authority of the president,” Karen Shakhnazarov, a Kremlin-linked film director, said on a popular online livestream show. “There was a feeling here that everything was unshakeable, and that turned out not to be the case.” 

Should Shoigu and Gerasimov ultimately be forced out, it would mark a dramatic fall for both men — one a player in the slippery Russian political hierarchy, the other a longstanding military official who became the commander of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

The first — Shoigu — is the longest-serving minister in Russia who took over the defence brief in 2012 after previously serving for decades as the emergency services minister. That job afforded him a public profile to rival Putin’s, with televised appearances arriving by land or by helicopter at every man-made or natural disaster in the country. 

Over the years, he accompanied Putin on holiday trips to Siberia, the two men posing together foraging for mushrooms; sporting sheepskin coats while dining outside in the snowy setting; and spearfishing shirtless in the summer. 

In more recent years, scrutiny had grown over the fame and business dealings of Shoigu’s family members, who had become targets of hardline ire for their privileged lifestyle and seeming insulation from the war’s consequences.

Gerasimov, meanwhile, feuded with commanders who disagreed with his brutal tactics in Ukraine, which generals and militia members alike thought sacrificed too many men for too few gains. 

Prigozhin’s criticism of Shoigu and Gerasimov — and the Russian military more broadly — has festered for months. In one video this spring Prigozhin railed against the backdrop of a Russian graveyard. “You sit in your expensive nightclubs and your kids enjoy life making YouTube videos . . . These guys are dying so you can get fat in your wood-panelled offices.” 

The reception Wagner’s men got in Rostov shows the popularity of Prigozhin’s tirades against the army leadership. On Saturday morning, when Prigozhin demanded a face-off with Shoigu and Gerasimov, Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy head of Russian military intelligence, laughed: “Take them!”

When Wagner left the southern city that was the launch pad for the coup, crowds waved, cheered and took selfies with Prigozhin — but booed the security forces who came to replace them. 

The main trigger for Prigozhin’s putsch appears to have been Putin’s backing of Shoigu’s move to make Wagner sign contracts with the defence ministry earlier this month. 

“The problem with Wagner was growing, it would reach a crisis point after the [declaration]. Putin was likely warned and did nothing,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a US defence think-tank, wrote on Twitter. 

Though Putin publicly backed Shoigu’s efforts, Prigozhin vehemently refused — conscious of the damage such an arrangement would do to his standing as a powerful warlord who answered only to Putin, according to a person who has known him since the 1990s. 

“He understands fully well that if he turns into a zero, then Shoigu would have dealt with him at some point. So he went all out and decided to show Putin that he’s the only real one out there and he needs to be left alone with his money,” the person said. “He got it a bit wrong, and everything went to shit, as it usually does [in Russia].” 

Putin’s biggest mistake, Rand’s Massicot said, was to give Shoigu his backing without finding an acceptable way for Prigozhin to save face. “When he threw his support behind the defence ministry, it basically put a target on Prigozhin’s back,” she said. “A competent statesman would have reached out to offer Prigozhin an incentive, or something to buy him off. Clearly, that wasn’t done.” 

With Prigozhin now in exile, Shoigu’s position could even be strengthened, according to the person who knows the warlord — as Putin will see no reason to fire a loyalist. 

“Shoigu’s the only winner,” the person said. “He’ll be the defence minister forever.”

[sa7abnews]

‘Stupid’ Biden threats caused Ukraine conflict – Trump

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/stupid-biden-threats-caused-ukraine-conflict-trump/

‘Stupid’ Biden threats caused Ukraine conflict – Trump

The former president told Elon Musk there had been “zero chance” of hostilities until the current American leader opened his mouth

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has accused US President Joe Biden of bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war by making “stupid threats” against Russia, blaming the Ukraine conflict on Biden’s “low IQ.” Trump has often claimed that the conflict never would have happened had he still been in the White House in early 2022. In a livestreamed conversation with X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk on Monday, the former US president said he had viewed Russia’s troop buildup on the Ukrainian border as a negotiating tactic. “I thought [Russian President Vladimir Putin] was doing that – because Putin’s a good negotiator – I thought he was doing that to negotiate,” Trump stated. “But then Biden started saying such stupid things. For instance, he said that ‘[Ukraine] can be a NATO country.’ Now, Russia, for as long as there’s been NATO, said ‘we’re never going to agree to that,’ and we go right up front and say that.”

Read more

Trump’s ‘interview of the century’ with Elon Musk: As it happened

For decades, Ukraine’s potential accession to NATO has been recognized in Washington as “the brightest of all red lines” for Moscow, current CIA director and former US ambassador to Russia William Burns wrote in 2008. Nevertheless, the White House rejected a draft treaty put forward by Putin in late 2021 that would have prevented the conflict in return for a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion. “I could have stopped that, and a smart president could have stopped that. It was so bad, the words that [Biden] was using, the stupid threats coming out of his stupid face… that could lead to World War III,” Trump continued. Trump claimed that he had a good relationship with Putin, but that he had personally threatened the Russian leader with consequences if he sent troops into Ukraine: “I said ‘don’t do it. You can’t do it Vladimir. You do it, it’s gonna be a bad day.’ I told him things, what I’d do, and he said ‘no way’. And I said ‘way.’”  “And you know it’s the last time we ever had that conversation,” Trump added. “I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again.”

Read more

Vance explains Trump’s plans for Europe

The Kremlin has never confirmed or denied that such a conversation took place during Trump’s time in office. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would stop the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected president this November. He has never fully elaborated on how he would do this, but recent media reports suggest that he would leverage the massive US military assistance to Kiev to pressure Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky into accepting some territorial losses in exchange for peace. However, Trump did not lobby his congressional allies to block a $61 billion aid package to Kiev in April, and said at the time that he would support lending, rather than gifting, money to Kiev in future. Trump did not discuss future US aid to Ukraine with Musk, instead calling on EU nations to increase their own contributions.

[retainermcga]

@usairforce to get to the band level of Air Force dialog / after a series of queries my Area 51 titanium response statement / when you visualize a spherical core such as a mind castle of wheel chair and manufacturing of magnet / and then where does the hvt in charge of the two dumbasses install his throne which does both / cool I like that code / my plan as stated is to have a boss level journey of making sheets of titanium as a livestream event / how Vladimir Putin my titanium sheets business alliance delivers the titanium sheets to my ship into the gulf of Mexico / which my satcom system track to the true Area 51 deliver gate however my video series ends with a different journey entirely / to explain my interests at Area 51 ELITE LIGHT SABER DRINKING PARTY WEAPONS / ELITE AERONAUTICAL DEVICE DEMONSTRATION KIT AS TO MY WHEREWITHAL TO GAIN ACCEPTANCE AS KING OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY / ON THIS PLANET THERE WILL BE NO LETHAL NEAR TO FORM LIGHT SABERS AND AGAIN CHINATOWN WARS IS AN INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN MOVIE BY DARTH VADER

[partisan-by-default]

Russian streamer Anna Bazhutova, known on Twitch as Yokobovich, has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for livestreaming witness accounts of alleged atrocities committed by the Russian army during its occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

French news agency AFP, via the Moscow Times, says Bazhutova was found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian army on her Twitch channel. The live broadcast originally occurred in June 2023, according to the report (although other sources, including Radio Free Europe, say the incident took place in 2022), and included witness accounts of massacres carried out by Russian forces. The government of Ukraine has made similar allegations of mass killings conducted by withdrawing Russian forces that left hundreds dead; Russia has rejected the claims and said evidence of the massacres was "staged" by the West.

At some point after Bazhutova's stream, Russian bloggers supporting the war filed complaints with police, shortly after which her home was searched and her electronic devices confiscated. She was later arrested and has reportedly been held in pre-trial detention since August 2023.

Bazhutova's Twitch channel was banned in March 2023 for violating the platform's terms of service, although the specifics of the violation are unknown as Twitch doesn't publicly share details relating to channel bans. Fragments of it remain visible through the Wayback Machine.

Russia outlawed "discrediting" or spreading "false" information about its military in 2022 shortly after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine; in 2023 it expanded that legislation to encompass virtually any group fighting for Russia, including mercenary units like the Wagner Group. The Moscow Times noted in a separate report that the crackdown "has led to the silencing of nearly all anti-war statements and news that clashes with the Kremlin’s narrative of the war."

Probably the best-known target of the new Russian laws, at least among gamers, is Metro 2033 author Dmitry Glukhovsky, who has been vocally critical of the invasion of Ukraine, and of Russian ruler Vladimir Putin directly. Glukhovsky was sentenced to eight years in prison for speaking out against the invasion, but evaded imprisonment because he's not actually in Russia. Bazhutova, a resident of Moscow, was not so lucky.

[therealputinofficial1952]

🔴 [live]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette, The Daily Don :: [Scott Horton]

* * * *

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, November 22, former president Trump hosted the antisemitic artist Ye, also known as Kanye West, for dinner at a public table at Mar-a-Lago along with political operative Karen Giorno, who was the Trump campaign’s 2016 state director in Florida. Ye brought with him 24-year-old far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes attended the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in its wake, he committed to moving the Republican Party farther to the right. Fuentes has openly admired Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is currently making war on Russia’s neighbor Ukraine. A Holocaust denier, Fuentes is associated with America’s neo-Nazis. In February 2020, Fuentes launched the America First Political Action Conference to compete from the right with the Conservative Political Action Conference. In May 2021, on a livestream, Fuentes said: “My job…is to keep pushing things further. We, because nobody else will, have to push the envelope. And we’re gonna get called names. We’re gonna get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever.… When the party is where we are two years later, we’re not gonna get the credit for the ideas that become popular. But that’s okay. That’s our job. We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party. And if we didn’t exist, the Republican Party would be falling backwards all the time.” Fuentes and his “America First” followers, called “Groypers” after a cartoon amphibian (I’m not kidding), backed Trump’s lies that he had actually won the 2020 election. At a rally shortly after the election, Fuentes told his followers to “storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.” Fuentes and Groypers were at the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, and at least seven of them have been charged with federal crimes for their association with that attack. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed Fuentes himself. Accounts of the dinner suggest that Trump and Fuentes hit it off, with Trump allegedly saying, “I like this guy, he gets me,” after Fuentes urged Trump to speak freely off the cuff rather than reading teleprompters and trying to appear presidential as his handlers advise. But Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024 just days ago, and being seen publicly with far-right white supremacist Fuentes—in addition to Ye—indicates his embrace of the far right. His team told NBC’s Marc Caputo that the dinner was a “f**king nightmare.” Trump tried to distance himself from the meeting by saying he didn’t know who Fuentes was, and that he was just trying to help Ye out by giving the “seriously troubled” man advice, but observers noted that he did not distance himself from Fuentes’s positions. Republican lawmakers have been silent about Trump’s apparent open embrace of the far right, illustrating the growing power of that far right in the Republican Party. Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have affiliated themselves with Fuentes, and while their appearances with him at the America First Political Action Conference last February drew condemnation from Republican leader Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), now McCarthy desperately needs the votes of far-right Republicans to make him speaker of the House. To get that support, he has been promising to deliver their wish list—including an investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter—and appears willing to accept Fuentes and his followers into the party, exactly as Fuentes hoped. Today, after the news of Trump’s dinner and the thundering silence that followed it, conservative anti-Trumper Bill Kristol tweeted: “Aren’t there five decent Republicans in the House who will announce they won’t vote for anyone for Speaker who doesn’t denounce their party’s current leader, Donald Trump, for consorting with the repulsive neo-Nazi Fuentes?” So far, at least, the answer is no.

[Heather Cox Richardson :: Letters From An American]

[mariacallous]

Putin spoke with Belarus' Lukashenko on the Ukraine situation

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko spoke by phone on Thursday, according to Belarusian state news agency Belta.

"At about 5:00 a.m. today, a telephone conversation took place between the Presidents of Belarus and Russia, during which Vladimir Putin informed his Belarusian counterpart about the situation on the border with Ukraine and in the Donbas," Belta cited the Belarusian presidential press service as saying.

Troops entering Ukraine via Belarus: CNN has witnessed, through a livestream video, troops atop a column of military vehicles entering Ukraine from a border crossing with Belarus.

Well fuck.

Because that means that Russian forces can come down from the north, and Kyiv is fairly to the Belarussian border.

[alaturkanews]

Putin says Russia is not interested in the disintegration of Afghanistan

Putin says Russia is not interested in the disintegration of Afghanistan

When asked if Moscow would recognise the Taliban government, President Vladimir Putin said there would be nobody to talk to directly if Afghanistan breaks up as a country and called to 'legalise' a political force there. #Putin #Afghanistan #Taliban Subscribe: http://trt.world/subscribe Livestream: http://trt.world/ytlive Facebook: http://trt.world/facebook Twitter:…

[chubbycaucasianchristiancloseted]

In my next show I would like to discuss the Russia, Ukraine conflict and will be using this CNN timeline as a base for events.

In my next show I would like to discuss the Russia, Ukraine conflict and will be using this CNN timeline as a base for events. Putin announces “operation” on Thursday February 24th at 04:50am (EET). Unfortunately Putin would make threats during this speech I would appear to scare the Biden administration and the United States European allies.

Direct Quotes:

4:50 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech, saying he had decided "to conduct a special military operation ... to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years," repeating a baseless claim about Ukraine's Russian-separatist-backed Donbas region.

He went on to warn: "Whoever tries to interfere with us, and even more so, to create threats for our country, for our people should know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history."

5.07 a.m.: Russian forces launched a series of missile attacks against locations near Kyiv, as well as the use of long-range artillery against the northeastern city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border.

6.48 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to Putin with a minute-long speech of his own, saying he had spoken to US President Joe Biden and that the US was rallying international support for Ukraine.

"The West is with us," he said, and announced martial law across the country.

At the same time, a livestream video seen by CNN showed troops atop a column of military vehicles entering Ukraine from a border crossing with Belarus. The livestream video was taken at the Senkivka, Urkaine crossing with Veselovka, Belarus.

[sa7abnews]

Trump outlines hopes for relations with Putin

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/trump-outlines-hopes-for-relations-with-putin/

Trump outlines hopes for relations with Putin

If reelected, the former president has said he expects to get along with “tough characters”

It is “a good thing” for US presidents to get along with foreign leaders, even if Washington disagrees with their policies, Donald Trump has said. The Republican presidential nominee cited his own track record with Vladimir Putin, claiming that the Russian leader “respected him.” In a livestreamed interview with X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk on Monday, Trump accused the current US administration of weakness and a failure to engage with certain foreign leaders. “I know Putin very well. I got along with him very well. He respected me and it’s just one of those things,” the former president said. Trump claimed he had established a rapport with Putin despite the ‘Russiagate’ attack on his administration, which he said had been launched by his then-Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and a group of “shifty people.”

Read more

‘Stupid’ Biden threats caused Ukraine conflict – Trump

“I hope to get along well with him again. You know, getting along well with them is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump said, referring to Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump was responding to Musk’s suggestion that “evil dictators” and “real tough characters” need to be intimidated by the White House for the world to be a safer place. The Republican reiterated his claim that the Ukraine conflict would not have broken out under his watch, blaming incumbent President Joe Biden for the start of hostilities. Trump claimed that while in office, he had issued unspecified warnings to Putin regarding Ukraine. “I said: ‘Don’t do it, you can’t do it. Vladimir, you do it, it’s gonna be a bad day. You can’t do it’. And I told him things that I’d do. And he said: ‘No way’. And I said: ‘Way’.” He also recalled the runup to the crisis in late 2021-early 2022, when Russia accumulated troops in regions close to Ukraine after NATO rejected Moscow’s call to deflate the tensions. Trump, who was no longer in office at the time, said he had perceived the military buildup as Putin’s way of trying to reach a deal.

READ MORE: Harris leading Trump in key states – poll

“Putin is a good negotiator. I thought he was doing that to negotiate,” Trump said. “But then Biden started saying such stupid things.” In particular, Trump cited Biden’s vow to bring Ukraine into NATO against Russian objections. Moscow has protested the US pledge to Kiev ever since it was first made under President George W. Bush in 2008.

[automatismoateo]

Pro-Trump Christian White Nationalist Nick Fuentes praises Putin’s Ukraine invasion: ‘Thank you for your service to all the Russian heroes’. via /r/atheism

Pro-Trump Christian White Nationalist Nick Fuentes praises Putin’s Ukraine invasion: ‘Thank you for your service to all the Russian heroes’.

https://deadstate.org/pro-trump-white-nationalist-praises-putins-ukraine-invasion-thank-you-for-your-service-to-all-the-russian-heroes/

During a recent livestream, white nationalist Nick Fuentes gave his thoughts on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In sum, Fuentes think Putin and his military are doing a great job, especially in light of what he says is America’s transformation into a nation of “fat retards.”

Submitted March 15, 2022 at 07:50PM by Leeming (From Reddit https://ift.tt/4KHERWd)