Anyone who has followed this conflict closely can see alarming gaps in the Forces’ equipment. The lack of systems like self-propelled guns, rocket artillery, and weaponised drones / loitering munitions would put our troops in a seriously bad position if push came to shove.
The brutal reality is that Putin’s Russia embodies everything the Trump Republicans dream of for America: a boundlessly corrupt, white supremacist, ethnonationalist fascist state whose oligarchs possess limitless power so long as they obey The President.
They call themselves the “party of Reagan”, while they trip over themselves to sell the geopolitical future of Europe down the river to Moscow…
I see that they used the wrong tense for “described”, but that could be a typo. Other than that it seems grammatical to me. I guess “alluded to” and “described” are redundant, but that’s more a stylistic defect than an actual error imo.
I know here in BC the Labour ministry has job centres called “WorkBC” that not only help with resumes and job searches, but actually have dedicated classes specifically for newcomers from Ukraine.
P.S. Welcome! We’re glad to have you, and I hope everything works out without too much trouble :)
“Chinese officials visibly nervous at the outpouring of public praise for dead leader [who they had sidelined and demoted].”
Русский, no — Российский, yes.
Well, it’s a good thing that the Bad Foreigners are to blame for the issue — otherwise the Kremlin might be forced to engage in critical thinking over the implications of their incessant agitprop for the stability in minority regions, and we can’t have that.
I admire your optimism.
“State-sanctioned criminal violence”?
No, sorry Mr. Modi, you’re thinking of Gujarat in 2002, not Canada in 2023.
This article has confirmation from the GUR, Ukrainian military intelligence, that Kadyrov is critically ill. There are no exact details on what he has other than that it’s related to a chronic health condition, potentially kidney failure given his facial swelling. It’s also long been reported that he’s an addict.
I also call attention to the fact that Kadyrov allegedly had his personal physician executed in suspicion that the latter was poisoning him. It would truly be poetic justice if denying himself that medical treatment in a fit of paranoia precipitated this (hopefully terminal) episode.
“Great Patriotic War” is the fine conceit of historical revisionism that lets the Russians neatly overlook the unpleasant little detail that WW II started with the Soviets fighting as cobelligerents with Nazi Germany to invade Poland.
Where was that? I hadn’t heard of it, but I fully believe you.
This summary leaves out that said “cease and desist” notices also threatened execution for noncompliance — at the same time as the head cultist was urging her followers to kill nurses administering vaccines, prompting her followers to post pictures of their firearm arsenals.
It is only a matter of time before the cultists kill someone.
Upvote for a sincere question. Here’s the wiki article on its use as a fascistic pro-war symbol. Kazakhs are unhappy with it because they too are a country that Russia makes territorial claims against and are thus largely opposed to the war and its symbols.
It seems implausible in the short term, but if statements like these are in any way reflective of long term strategic goals, or even official rhetoric, it’s still ominous. Of course, given the fact it’s state TV, it could be the General purely reciting the party line to give the public the impression that the war is going vastly better than it really is. But it also reminds me of what were purported to be strategic planning documents leaked by FSB sources early in the war, from when Russia still believed they’d take Kyiv in three days. It described a plan to conquer the country in weeks, then present their army on the Polish border as a fait accompli and declare a no-fly zone over the Baltics as an ultimatum to NATO.
Whether that’s true or not, subsequent events showed that the ZSRF was incapable of even that plan, as you say. But the very level of disparity between nominal and actual capabilities that led Moscow to believe such a thing was possible to begin with certainly doesn’t speak to their ability to make accurate estimations of what their forces are capable of.
Yes — there’s no such thing as an armoured vehicle that can’t be knocked out, but there is such thing as one that can be knocked out without its crew burning alive.
Potemkin military.
“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.”