Garpal Gumnut
Ross Island Hotel
- Joined
- 2 January 2006
- Posts
- 13,859
- Reactions
- 10,712
Mittel Europe is a mob of bloodthirsty tribes.and another festering issue. Moldova .... and Transnistria.
- 2.7 million pop
- Dependent on Russian gas
- the government was fully aware of the "vulnerabilities that Moldova is in", including the energy sector..
- applied to join EU
- Some 1500 Russian troops in the latter breakaway sector could cause problems
One tiny European nation fears it may be central to Putin's plans to wreak new havoc in Ukraine
While Moldova has long demanded Russia withdraw troops from the separatist region of Transnistria, its residents are split on the likelihood of an attack from Russia's troops.www.abc.net.au
Ukraine’s GUR reported that Russian officers are intensifying censorship of their troops and restricting access to the internet due to low morale.[1] The GUR claimed that Russian commanders complain about increasing Ukrainian influence over the information consumed by Russian soldiers. The GUR claimed to have intercepted an extract from an order issued by the Deputy Commander of the Western Military District for military and political work, which blamed low Russian morale on the internet and social media. The document reportedly instructs Russian officers to either ban or severely censor all messages received by personnel, as well as access to the internet. Draconian measures to restrict access to information among Russian personnel will likely further exacerbate low morale and desertion rates.
Posted 10hr ago as per LiveuamapIf this is true, is it crossing some sort of line?
In the Herald Sun:
Ukraine-Russia war: Unverified reports of chemical attack in Mariupol
Russia has reportedly used chemical weapons in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol where it’s believed “tens of thousands” of people were killed.
Merryn Johns, Maria Bervanakis and AFP
Britain is trying to verify reports that Russia has used chemical weapons in an attack in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, London’s top diplomat said.
Western officials have previously expressed concerns that Russia, finding its February 24 invasion of its neighbour grinding into a protracted conflict, could resort to more extreme measures, including chemical weapons.
“Reports that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the people of Mariupol. We are working urgently with partners to verify details,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss wrote on Twitter.
“Any use of such weapons would be a callous escalation in this conflict and we will hold Putin and his regime to account.”
Ukrainian politician Ivanna Klympush said Russia had used an “unknown substance” in Mariupol and that people were suffering from respiratory failure.
“Most likely chem.weapons!” she tweeted.
On messaging app Telegram, an aide to the Mariupol mayor wrote that a chemical attack “is not currently confirmed”.
“We are waiting for official information from the military,” Petro Andryushchenko wrote.
Earlier, Ukraine’s Azov battalion claimed a Russian drone had dropped a “poisonous substance” on troops and civilians in Mariupol.
Azov regiment says Russian troops used kind of chemical dropped from a drone, those impacted have respiratory failure, vestibulo-atactic syndrome
Perhaps that will leave more cars heading to other countries to help ease the world wide shortage?There is growing evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and growing atrocities against Ukrainian civilians are not just delivering long-term damage to Russia’s reputation around the world but to its economy at home as sanctions begin to take a heavy toll.
Automotive News Europe reported yesterday that “New vehicle sales fell 60 percent in March from the previous month at Rolf, Russia’s largest dealership….” Rolf’s CEO, Svetlana Vinogradova, told Reuters she expected full year demand to fall by half in 2022.
Geez, now thats what I call some CB intervention! 20% interest??Forecasts for overall economic contraction is Russia this year range from a 10 percent contraction forecast by Goldman Sachs to a 15 percent drop forecasted by the Institute for International Finance.
Signs of a slowdown are already showing up in manufacturing. The S&P Global Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for Russia fell to 44.1 in March. A reading below 50 signals a contraction.
Even Russia’s economy ministry is sharing news of the bleak outlook. Reuters reported yesterday that the economy ministry announced yesterday that “annual inflation in Russia accelerated to 16.70 percent as of April 1.”
In an attempt to deal with the soaring inflation, the Russian central bank has hiked its benchmark interest rate from 9.5 percent to 20 percent. One day after the Ukraine invasion, Standard and Poor’s cut Russia’s debt rating to junk. Junk ratings soon followed from Moody’s and Fitch.
The Martens from Wall street on Parade suggested that the Russian eceonomy is tanking in a big way, which may be much bigger problems for Putin than the tut tutting from the West.
Perhaps that will leave more cars heading to other countries to help ease the world wide shortage?
Geez, now thats what I call some CB intervention! 20% interest??
The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported on Saturday that in Russian supermarkets “Instant coffee has risen almost 70 per cent and sugar is up 30 per cent.” Multiple European news outlets are reporting that shelves are bare for feminine hygiene products.
Russia, with a population of 145 million will most likely have a GDP on par with or lower than Australia's GDP which has a population of 25 million, one sixth that of Russia.
Just how far does the economy have to contract before the plebs start to get restless?
Mick
It's looking nasty for your every day Moscovite isn't it. Not sure how much public information is available inside Russia at the moment and what spin is being put through local media, but you'd think they'd be getting close to the real info. Maybe. But, if they change the regime, will they just get another autocrat who wants to do the same?
Fox News will rot your brain, stop watching it before your symptoms become permanent.More dirt on the Biden Administration; Just want to display my discuss with Biden and the way his led NATO and the EU not to confront the Russian forces, but to dance around the invasion and leave Ukraine out to dry without a no fly zone...i don't think he's a competent person, leading Australia into dismay around it's policy to China...A filthily individual that passed his overdue date and should be espied.
The Biden Crime family on the wrong side of the fence. A corrupt Biden, that thinks and says he knows the enemy, but really he's just apart of it... Say's he knows Putin, but really there kissing cousins...
This is Putin's last chance.Just released..
"An air raid alert has been declared for all of Ukraine’s regions, following warnings Vladimir Putin could launch an “immediate escalation” of the war".
It's "all clear" in Kyiv now after several loud overnight explosions were reported in the Ukrainian capital. Blasts were also earlier reported in Kherson - Ukraine's authorities have so far made no public comments on the situation in the Russian-occupied southern city."An air raid alert has been declared for all of Ukraine’s regions, following warnings Vladimir Putin could launch an “immediate escalation” of the war".
"Fifty days of our defence is an achievement," President Zelensky said. "Achievement of millions of Ukrainians. Everyone who made the main decision in life on 24 February - to fight. To be human. Not to give up. And not to betray."
Further on the idea that the whole process was built on bribes comes this from Washington ExaminerIf it is true the Russian invasion tactics was based on the (false) belief there were Russian support groups in Ukraine able to assist Russian troops it is almost, but not quite, funny. Basically, a directorate was provided cash to establish and support such groups but people in the directorate kept the cash and submitted false reports to the Kremlin the groups actually existed.
Last month, members of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, began to disappear. Espionage is, by its nature, an opaque business, but sources suggested that senior members of the FSB’s Fifth Service, essentially Russia’s overseas intelligence operation, were being arrested or confined to their homes. There was talk of embezzlement, but definite facts were thin. The details are only now emerging, and they help explain why Russia is losing in Ukraine and, indeed, why autocracies are often terrible at fighting wars.
Until 2014, Ukraine was fairly evenly split between, to borrow 19th century Russian terminology, Westernizers and Slavophiles. Some Ukrainians wanted to join the institutions of the free world, including NATO. Others preferred, if not a merger with Russia, at least a special relationship with what they saw as the sister nations to their east and north. When Putin annexed Crimea and effectively detached parts of the Donbas region, he removed millions of Russophile voters and thereby gave Ukraine a solidly pro-Western majority.
Putin had thus unwittingly created what was, from his perspective, an intolerable situation. The last thing he wanted was a kindred population on Russia’s border, speaking a cognate language but moving toward liberal multiparty democracy. So he began to prepare for a further and more decisive military intervention.
From at least 2015, the FSB’s Fifth Service was charged with preparing the ground. Large sums were set aside to suborn Ukrainian civil and military leaders. The idea was that when the moment came, senior Ukrainians, such as mayors, regional governors, generals, and police chiefs, would switch sides, opening the gates to their paymasters.
But the FSB’s bosses never believed an invasion would happen. And so, Russia being Russia, they siphoned the cash off into yachts in Cyprus and numbered Swiss accounts.
Imagine the scene when, toward the end of 2021, Putin called his spy chiefs in and asked them to confirm the bribes had been disbursed and that key Ukrainian institutions would throw in their lot with the Russian invader. The terrified FSB leaders assured him that, yes, all was well while desperately trying to find a way out of the hole they had dug for themselves.
Running away was not an option. Their former colleague Alexander Litvinenko had fled to London, accusing the FSB of having orchestrated the Moscow theater hostage crisis and apartment bombings. But living in London did not protect him. He was assassinated with polonium in 2006. Another former agent, Sergei Skripal, had moved to the sleepy English town of Salisbury, but he was poisoned with Novichok in 2018 by two GRU operatives. He survived, though an innocent bystander was killed. If even living under the queen’s peace was no guarantee of safety, what could the corrupt FSB officers do?
It looks as if they did the only possible thing in their position. They sought to prevent the invasion from happening so that their embezzlement should not come to light. The way they appear to have done so is to have told their Western counterparts what was being planned, hoping that, once Putin knew that his plot had been uncovered, he would drop it. Hence the detailed knowledge that Britain and the United States had about what was coming — knowledge that their governments made public and that Putin lamely denied.
In the event, of course, the invasion went ahead anyway. But the same structural problem continued to plague it — namely that, in authoritarian states, people tell their bosses what they want to hear. It soon emerged that much of the money set aside for the modernization of the Russian military had also been diverted into private bank accounts. Tanks lacked basic spare parts. Weapons systems failed. But, again, no one wanted to be the bearer of bad news.
This brings us to a counterintuitive truth. Democracies, supposedly soft, decadent, and convulsed in culture wars, often turn out to be better at fighting than brutal dictatorships. This is not because their people are braver or more virtuous — it's because they have systems in place that allow for greater transparency and speedier error correction.
Let’s flip that around. The thing that Putin’s Western admirers tended to drool over was how “strong” he was. Far-right European politicians such as Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, as well as a few Trumpsters in the U.S., thrilled to the way he knocked opponents aside and sneered at gay rights.
But ask yourself this: How strong does he look now? It turns out that, although his goons were plenty strong when murdering female journalists or breaking up peaceful demonstrations, they fell to pieces against regular soldiers.
Don’t write off open societies — they’re tougher than they look.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?