Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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‘An Army of Zombies Is Leading Us to Hell’
An interview with a Moscow professional who just quit Russia to escape Vladimir Putin’s military draft
By Anna Nemtsova
The Atlantic
SEPTEMBER 23, 2022, 7:30 AM ET
After President Vladimir Putin announced this week that Russia was conscripting some 300,000 reservists and military veterans to reinforce its war effort in Ukraine, international flights out of Russian cities quickly sold out. This latest wave of Russia’s exodus included Anton Shalaev, a 38-year-old senior manager at an IT company, and 15 colleagues.
On less than a day’s notice, these men of military age all left their relatively comfortable lives in downtown Moscow to fly to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Because of Putin’s war, Shalaev tossed a book, an iPad, and a laptop in a backpack and got out of Dodge.
Shalaev and his co-workers are true tech geeks, producers of high-value computer games. They represent their country’s brightest and best, members of a tech elite that was the economic foundation of Russia’s new middle class. In a last selfie from Moscow, Shalaev brandished a coffee mug that bore the slogan not today, satan.
Anna Nemtsova: Why didn’t you want to be drafted to fight in Ukraine?
Anton Shalaev: On the day Putin declared the war, I knew I would never fight on behalf of this new Nazi Reich. They are my personal enemies: mercenaries who steal my country from me, occupy foreign territories, and kill innocent people. Putin’s army commanders have had plenty of time to turn down their contracts; instead, they are recruiting more cannon fodder now.
So I chose to help Ukrainians suffering from this horror—pay for shelters in Kyiv with cryptocurrency and write antiwar posts on social media. To encourage Russians at home, I said: “Guys, look, I am writing this from Moscow.”
Nemtsova: What was your escape like?
Shalaev: Unlike state-owned companies such as Yandex or the Mail.ru Group, which are making their employees stay, we were independent of government funding, so we made an immediate decision to relocate.
The atmosphere at passport control in the airport was quiet but tense; men waiting for the flight around me were exchanging alerted glances. I had bought my ticket right before the announcement—we were already hearing rumors of the mobilization—so it cost me only about $300. But my colleagues got their tickets the next day, and they cost more than $1,000.
The departure was super stressful. The border guards took each of my friends aside into a small room, interrogated them, asked if they had ever served in the military, and if not, why not. And you know that type of sly border official making their little jokes: “Aha, you are leaving on the day of conscription.” Of course, they checked whether our names were in the database for the mobilization.
Nemtsova: Did you do military service, in fact, when you turned 18?
Shalaev: No, I entered the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which had a military department, so that released me from the service obligation. I studied political science, and dreamed of becoming a Russian diplomat—Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was a graduate there. For a long time, I considered myself a Russian patriot, ready to serve.
When I enrolled in college, in 2001, there was some ideological diversity: We had a neo-Stalinist who taught us about how “Josef” ruled with an iron fist, but the next class would be with a professor telling us about liberal values. Today, the school recruits students for the secret services. And lately, I heard that the dean has urged students to call for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to surrender.
Nemtsova: What do you think of the Kremlin’s decision making?
Shalaev: A few old men and an army of zombies are leading us to hell. I say that because people around me in Russia behaved as if they had been bitten by a zombie, dragging my entire country into a dreadful war. All I saw was Russian loser husbands beating their wives, while the entire rotting house of the state system has turn
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Speaking of repression "at home"
Edited for readability
Quote:
EU Commission President [Ursula von der Leyen, an unelected eurocrat] Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has 'Tools' If Wrong Parties Wins
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is being accused of election interference after threatening to use “tools” if the wrong election result is achieved in Italy’s national elections, set to take place this Sunday, Sept. 25.
Von der Leyen added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland.
“We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”
Giorgia Meloni’s electric performances at political rallies have made her a virtual shoo-in to become Italy’s first female prime minister in Sunday’s ballot. She’ll also be the first to campaign with the flame symbol, evoking the former fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
The prospect of a charismatic nationalist taking power with almost no government experience has investors and officials on edge. Italy, of course, is wrestling with the fallout from the most serious conflict in Europe since WWII. But the country has been adrift for years, struggling to hit on a formula which can unlock its potential while staying true to its identity. - Bloomberg
https://global-macro-monitor.com/2022/09/23/the-great-reset-saluta-la-
signora-mussolini-il-nuovo-pm-ditalia/
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:A history of "Democracy" in Italy:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Speaking of repression "at home"
Edited for readabilityQuote:
EU Commission President [Ursula von der Leyen, an unelected eurocrat] Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has 'Tools' If Wrong Parties Wins
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is being accused of election interference after threatening to use “tools” if the wrong election result is achieved in Italy’s national elections, set to take place this Sunday, Sept. 25.
Von der Leyen added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland.
“We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”
Giorgia Meloni’s electric performances at political rallies have made her a virtual shoo-in to become Italy’s first female prime minister in Sunday’s ballot. She’ll also be the first to campaign with the flame symbol, evoking the former fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
The prospect of a charismatic nationalist taking power with almost no government experience has investors and officials on edge. Italy, of course, is wrestling with the fallout from the most serious conflict in Europe since WWII. But the country has been adrift for years, struggling to hit on a formula which can unlock its potential while staying true to its identity. - Bloomberg
https://global-macro-monitor.com/2022/09/23/the-great-reset-saluta-la-
signora-mussolini-il-nuovo-pm-ditalia/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
General elections were held in Italy on 6 April 1924 to elect the members of the Chamber of Deputies.[1] They were held under the Acerbo Law, which stated that the party with the largest share of the votes would automatically receive two-thirds of the seats in Parliament as long as they received over 25% of the vote.[2] The National List of Benito Mussolini (an alliance of Catholic, liberal and conservative political parties) used intimidation tactics against voters,[2] resulting in a landslide victory and a subsequent two-thirds majority. This was the last multi-party election in Italy until 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_Italian_general_election
The people Democratically elected the best man -- Mussolini. Once he was in, the only way to be rid of him was violence, but a decade too late, long after he had wrecked Italy. That is Italian-flavored Democracy. Since the 1940's, individual Italian voters have given no indication that they actually understand their personal responsibilities for how screwed up their Democracy is. Instead, they watch it happen without comprehending what they are doing wrong. The voters have picked one stupid ass government after another for 75 years.
The longest-serving prime minister in the history of Italy was Benito Mussolini, who ruled the country from 1922 until 1943; the longest-serving prime minister, but only because he couldn't be removed except by force. The Italians had a bad government, but at least the government clearly knew what its goals were.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Former opposition MP Dmitry Gudkov left Moscow well before the war, saying he was warned to go - or go to jail. Today, all prominent Russian opposition figures are either in custody, dead, or in exile.
So at a recent gathering in Vilnius, a slogan on stage called on those abroad to "be brave, like Ukraine", but the mood was subdued with a hint of helplessness.
Many are actually now looking to Ukraine to do what they could not achieve peacefully inside Russia: defeat Putin.
"I think the West should ramp up military assistance to Ukraine, that's the only option," Mr Gudkov says.
Alexei Navalny's team agrees but goes further. Since the opposition politician was imprisoned, dozens of his team have moved to Vilnius to escape prosecution as "extremists" themselves.
"Putin committed his gravest mistake when he invaded Ukraine. I believe he dramatically decreased the duration of his reign," Mr Navalny's right-hand man, Leonid Volkov, tells me.
This week's call-up has confirmed that belief, as videos of men saying tearful goodbyes to their families pops up all over the country.
"No one attacked Russia, no one needed these separations and these deaths," Mr Volkov wrote on Twitter. "But on 24 February, a maniac led his country down a dead-end."
Mr Navalny's team has been trying to undermine support for the war via YouTube. The audience for their shows, made in Vilnius, has doubled since the invasion.
They are also pushing for more Western sanctions - not visa bans against a whole nation.
They want Ukraine's allies to look beyond President Putin's near-circle and sanction those whom Mr Volkov calls "war enablers" - a list of over 6,000 names, from judges to state journalists.
"Our call to Western governments is to sanction all those people and present them with an exit strategy: tell them what they have to do to get off the list," Mr Volkov says.
"This will create splits. Many will start to jump ship, and Putin's system can't work without them," he adds.
Russian troops have since been forced into retreat from large areas of Ukraine and President Putin has responded as usual: by escalating.
As well as the call-up, there is his threat of annexing more Ukrainian land and another nuclear warning for the West.
Russia's president has staked a huge amount on this campaign and things could well get much worse.
That leaves activist Anastasia Shevchenko struggling with a sense of guilt that she could not do more to stop him.
"I blame myself and it's not a good feeling, believe me," she admits.
But her decision to leave Russia was sealed when her son had to write a letter at his primary school to the soldiers, wishing them victory.
Instead, he told them they had no right to fight their neighbours.
"I think all we can do now as Russians is say sorry - and protest against Vladimir Putin," Anastasia says. "Because Putin personally is the reason for what's going on. Why so many people are dying."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63000034
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were. Your name calling is a tell. "You's so stupid!" It's a tell that you have nothing and you're scrambling, deflecting. We see this all the time when second runs circles around you and makes you look like an idiot. You come out swinging with the insults. You've been exposed as a fraud and your only defense is.... if we get bored. Such goals.
Putin is a dead man walking.
T
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Quote:
Putin is a dead man walking.
And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Shortly after dawn on the morning of Saturday, December 22, 1849, the twenty-eight-year-old Dostoevsky stood on a black-draped scaffold erected on the drilling ground at Semyonovsky Square in his native St. Petersburg, and prepared to die at the hands of a firing squad. It was a cold, overcast, Russian winter day, with flakes of snow falling at the condemned man’s feet. Dostoevsky was bound to a stake between two other men, a biblical trinity he would have recognized, with nine more prisoners awaiting their turn in the wings. All of them had been convicted of what the presiding court called a “conspiracy of ideas” to undermine the tsarist regime. On the frozen ground behind the scaffold stood a row of carts laden with twelve empty coffins.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Putin is a dead man walking.
And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
A black-robed priest mounted the scaffold and faced the first group of prisoners at the stake. He quoted Romans 6: “The wages of sin is death.” Yet by acknowledging their sins, the condemned could still hope to inherit eternal life. All three of the bound men silently kissed the priest’s cross when it was offered to them. It’s said that Dostoevsky remained calm, remarking to the man next to him on the scaffold that he had recently read Le dernier jour d’un condamné, Victor Hugo’s novel about a criminal facing the guillotine who believes that in the end Christ’s law will replace that of man. Perhaps it was one of those timeless moments, when eternity intrudes into the world and we catch a glimpse of what the life of man was meant to be and, by the grace of God, may yet be.
There was a drumroll. No fewer than forty-five soldiers, in three rows of fifteen, shuffled into position in front of the scaffold, their rifles cocked. Their commanding officer raised his sword as a signal for them to take aim. And at that precise moment, with the condemned men suspended between life and death, a carriage turned the corner and raced onto the cobbled square, a uniformed arm frantically waving a white cloth from the window. The firing squad held its position as a deep-chested man in military braid leapt down from the coach and ran to the presiding officer with a sealed envelope. It contained a slip of paper bearing the news that the condemned men had been reprieved by gracious order of the tsar. They would instead merely be sent into internal exile. It later became known that the whole spectacle at Semyonovsky Square had been a piece of macabre theater. The mock execution was in fact part of the men’s punishment. One of the three individuals who had been tied to the stake that morning went permanently insane. One was never heard from again. The third went on to write Crime and Punishment.
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-use-and-abuse-of-history/article
s/to-the-depths-and-back
Ask yourself what kind of ruler would play such games? See any connections to Putin and his threatening to drop nukes? What interested Dostoevsky is the morality of crime, and how people can come to rationalize even the most depraved homicidal frenzy. Again, Putin with his rationalizations.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ask yourself what kind of ruler would play such games? See any connections to Putin and his threatening to drop nukes? What interested Dostoevsky is the morality of crime, and how people can come to rationalize even the most depraved homicidal frenzy. Again, Putin with his rationalizations.
Hell of a read.
The irony of what Putin is doing now to Russia, (set aside Ukraine and global implications) is his ego is saying he wants to return Russia to "greatness" - (gee, where have we heard that before??), but since the start, little by little, he's actually destroying it. Some Russians left when the Special op started, and now, with the call up thousands more are fleeing. Borders and airports are crowded with those with the money and the will to flee. The ones left, mostly low income with few resources, will be sent to maybe/probably die in the mud in another country. The evil stupid is amazing. Old men who crave the past and are selfish and willing to kill thousands to try and relive it. Hard to believe anyone who isn't afraid for their life, would support that sht.
Another good read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-cri
mes-united-nations.html
U.N. experts find that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine.
By Nick Cumming-Bruce
Sept. 23, 2022
GENEVA — Russian soldiers have raped and tortured children in Ukraine, a United Nations-appointed panel of independent legal experts said in a damning statement on Friday that concluded war crimes had been committed in the conflict.
A three-person Commission of Inquiry set up in April to investigate the conduct of hostilities in four areas of Ukraine laid out the graphic allegations in an unusually hard-hitting, 11-minute statement to the U.N Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“The commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined,” the panel’s chairman, Erik Mose, told the council.
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Quote:
President Zelensky Suggests Ukraine May Pursue Nuclear Weapons To Counter Russia, Putin Responds
https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-zelensky-suggests-ukraine-may
-pursue-nuclear-weapons-to-counter-russia-putin-responds
Quote:
Cheers as Liz Truss says she's ready to press nuclear button and unleash 'global annihilation'
https://news.yahoo.com/audience-liz-truss-ready-press-nuclear-button-u
nleash-global-annihilation-103552126.html
Quote:
In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed every line. We constantly hear threats against our country, our people. Some irresponsible politicians in the West not only talk about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine – systems that will allow strikes against the Crimea and other regions of Russia.
Such terrorist strikes, including with the use of Western weapons, are already being carried out on the border settlements of the Belgorod and Kursk regions. In real time, using modern systems, aircraft, ships, satellites, strategic drones, NATO carries out reconnaissance throughout southern Russia.
In Washington, London, Brussels, they are directly pushing Kyiv to transfer military operations to our territory. No longer hiding, they say that Russia should be defeated by all means on the battlefield, followed by the deprivation of political, economic, cultural, in general, any sovereignty, with the complete plunder of our country.
Nuclear blackmail was also launched. We are talking not only about the shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which is encouraged by the West, which threatens a nuclear catastrophe, but also about the statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia – nuclear weapons.
For those who allow themselves to make such statements about Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for some components more modern than those of the NATO countries.
And if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/09/text-of-putin-speech-announcin
g-partial-mobilization.html
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Another good read:
htt p s://www .nytimes.com/
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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