Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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UN resolution demanding Russia’s immediate, unconditional withdrawal from Ukraine supported by 141 nations
The demand that Russia withdraw was a bitter pill for Moscow’s friends. Besides Russia, the other no votes were Belarus, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria. The 32 abstentions included China, Iran, India and South Africa and other developing countries that have remained mostly neutral or skeptical of Western motives.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said before the vote that “never in history has the line between good and evil been so clear.” But no line will ever be clear to people who make excuses for Trump.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-nations-call-for-russia-to-exit-ukrai
ne-as-war-nears-one-year-mark-e8506794?mod=djemalertNEWS
India abstained from the vote because of oil: "How much money did India save in a year by buying Russian fuel?" https://qz.com/how-much-money-has-india-saved-by-buying-russian-fuel-1
850153966 If India had voted, then millions of barrels of discounted oil per week would not be sold by Russia to India.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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You can’t understand the war in Ukraine without knowing history
By Timothy Snyder
Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and the author of “The Road to Unfreedom” and “Bloodlands.” His updated audio edition of “On Tyranny” includes 20 new lessons about Ukraine.
Teaching a lecture class on Ukrainian history last fall, I felt a touch of the surreal. The war in Ukraine had been going on for half a year when I began. A nuclear power had attacked a state that had given up its nuclear weapons. An empire was trying to halt European integration. A tyranny was attempting to crush a neighboring democracy. On occupied territories, Russia perpetrated genocidal atrocities with clear expressions of genocidal intent.
And yet, Ukraine was fighting back. Ukrainians resisted the nuclear blackmail, scorned the vaunted empire and took risks for their democracy. At Kyiv, Kharkiv and, later, Kherson, they beat back the Russians, halting the torture, the murder and the deportation.
We were at a historical turning point. But where was the history? The television screens were full of Ukraine day in and day out, and the one thing any viewer could say with confidence was that the commentators had never studied Ukraine. I heard from my former students, now in government or in journalism, that they were glad to have taken Eastern European history. They said that they were a little less surprised than others by the war; that they had more reference points.
The contrast between the historical importance of this war and the lack of coursework in history reveals a larger problem. We know too little history. We have designed education to be about technical questions: the how of the world. And solving everyday problems is very important.
But if we deprive ourselves of history, everything is a surprise: 9/11, the financial crisis, the storming of the Capitol, the invasion of Ukraine. When we are shocked out of the everyday but have no history, we grope for reference points, and become vulnerable to people who give us easy answers. The past then becomes a realm of myth, in which those with power generate narratives most convenient to themselves.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a story about the past that had nothing to do with history. Russia and Ukraine, according to him, were conceived together in a ruler’s baptism a thousand years ago. They shared the same culture, and therefore should be ruled by the same person. If anything else seemed to happen, it was not really history. Should Ukrainians not believe that they were Russians, this was the nefarious work of outsiders. Putin not only said such things; he had memory laws passed to prevent Russians from being challenged by history, and even had the word “Ukraine” stricken from textbooks.
As logic, this is circular; and as politics, it is tyrannical. If I can claim that Canadians are Americans because they speak the same language, or because we share a common history, that would strike us as an idiotic reason to order an invasion. When a dictator claims the power to define other people’s identity, then the question of their own freedom never arises. If identity is frozen forever at the whim of a ruler, citizens soon find themselves without choices.
As we observe where this logic led Russians, we begin to question the validity of such stories. But it shouldn’t have taken such an obvious atrocity for us to doubt. Until recently, far too many commentators were happy to go along with Putin: Russia and Ukraine were somehow eternally alike, people who spoke Russian were somehow Russians, culture as defined by a dictator was destiny.
It was surreal in a different way when millions of people joined my class online. Americans had recognized that something was wrong with the Russian myth but did not know how to fill the gap. It was heartening to hear, in the thousands of emails I received, that the gap could be filled by history. It was a lively semester; history was getting the students thinking. When we think historically, we recogni
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The Ukraine War Could Mean the End of Russia
Historically Russia always succumbed to centrifugal forces each time it suffered a defeat on the battlefield – this happened in 1905 after it lost to Japan, in 1917 after it lost to Germany in Europe, and then again in 1991 after it lost to the United States at the end of the Cold War.
It’s worth remembering that while in 1913 the Russian imperial court celebrated three hundred years of Romanov rule, with unparalleled pageantry in St. Petersburg and across the country, a mere four years later the country was wracked by two revolutions, while the great emperor Nicolas II and his family were butchered by the Bolsheviks. The empire was no more.
Little attention has focused on what might happen in Russia in the wake of this incredible folly committed by Putin last February. One question that ought to be on everyone’s mind is: where is Russia heading (after this war)?
What Putin Wants and What History Teaches
Putin’s Russia is re-litigating 1991 – in that sense, it is another aspirational empire, much like interwar Germany – still convinced that the Russian people can reclaim their imperial place in the sun once the treachery of its politicians has been expunged. Putinism is much like the Dolchstoßlegende (Stab-in-the-back myth) narrative during the Weimar Republic insofar as there is a sense among the citizenry that the Russian military never lost against the West, but was subverted by politicians – cowardly Gorbachev, drunken Yeltsin, you name it.
This imperial resentment gave Germany Adolf Hitler and a war that lit Europe on fire and which did not end until the back of German imperialism was finally and unequivocally broken. At a risk of over-rationalizing history, this is where Russia is today.
Putin’s claim that he is restoring the great Russian people, velikiy russkiy narod, follows the same tropes of resentment and entitlement to empire that Europe endured in the mid-20th century when Germany was intent on re-litigating Versailles.
And if Europe is to know lasting peace, the Russian armies that have raced into Ukraine must be unequivocally defeated in such a way that it shatters all illusions of Russian empire in the minds of Russian citizens.
More at https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/02/the-ukraine-war-could-mean-the-end
-of-russia/
The Russo-Japanese War 1904 to 1905
https://www.history.com/topics/asian-history/russo-japanese-war
The costly and humiliating series of Russian defeats in the Russo-Japanese War left the Russian Empire demoralized, added to Russians’ growing anger at the failed policies of Czar Nicholas II, and would fan the flames of political dissent that ultimately resulted in the overthrow of the government during the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Russian support for Putin’s war in Ukraine is hardening
Putin has unleashed a wave of repression not seen since his KGB hero Yuri Andropov ruled, jailing citizens for the slightest hints of questioning of his official line, a mix of Russian imperial and Soviet nostalgia that has been rushed into curricula for schools and universities across the country. Artists, writers and actors have been hounded from their jobs for even suggesting critical views, their works and exhibits replaced by new ones scrubbed for adherence to the neo-Soviet “traditional values” Putin wrote into law. Schoolchildren denounce teachers and parishioners priests for suggesting peace instead of war.
To shore up support, his government has doled out cash payments to citizens in the country’s impoverished regions and shut down the few remaining media outlets that challenged the official state version of events. In stage-managed events lavishly covered by the state media, Putin maintains the image that the war is far away, rarely referring to it directly, highlighting economic successes, new welfare benefits and renovated clinics. That was the message of his state-of-the-nation speech this week, which blamed the conflict on the US and its allies but offered no hint of when it might end. Instead, Putin offered new benefits to veterans and their families, touting the value of combat experience as the “best school of life.”
So far, the message is working. Even as the invasion has dragged on far longer than the few days that the Kremlin originally hoped and casualties have mounted into the tens of thousands, the majority of Russians say they are ready to keep fighting, according to independent polls. Only about a fifth of Russians want to bring a quick end to the war if that means admitting defeat, according to a Kremlin consultant.
Around the country, Putin’s explanation that Russia is fighting not Ukraine but the entire “collective West,” a narrative adopted after a string of defeats at the hands of Kyiv’s forces, has resonated more than the initial claims the war was about removing the government in Kyiv, according to pollsters. The fact that the US and its allies aren’t actually fighting doesn’t shake that conviction.
The perceived strength of the support reinforces the Kremlin’s confidence that it can triumph in the conflict by outlasting Ukraine and its allies, even if that means tolerating much greater sacrifice, according to people close to the leadership.
Since he came to power in 2000, Putin has been remaking Russia to harden his control over society for just this kind of conflict, crushing potential threats to his power and eradicating opponents and dissenting views. Since he sent troops into Ukraine a year ago, that effort has accelerated exponentially. Staffers are already laying plans for his re-election campaign in 2024, which would keep him in power at least until 2030, the people said.
The Kremlin spent two decades forging the ‘Putin Majority’ — the tens of millions of Russians sure that the former KGB operative knows best — and is confident it’s still solid and ready for whatever he decides, the people said. That’s likely to be a war that may last years, but also could be a temporary truce to win time to gird for a new fight. At the same time, surveys show that anything that brings the war close to home for Russians — such as last year’s mobilization of 300,000 reservists — fuels alarm and support for a negotiated settlement.
The educated middle class in the country’s largest cities that had for decades been less antagonistic toward the West has been transformed or eradicated. Upwards of a million Russians, many of them young professionals, have left the country in the biggest exodus since the 1990s. Those in the elite once considered relative ‘liberals’ who’ve stayed are cowed into silence by fear of retribution or have embraced the Kremlin’s anti-western line.
Dmitry Medvedev, who as Putin’s hand-picked president from 2008-2012 embodied the hopes of the ‘liberal’ wing, has become on
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Russia's current plan to take over Ukraine is to exhaust the country and its military over a long campaign, rather than focusing on taking new territory, according to the latest report from the UK Ministry of Defence.
Defence Intelligence
UPDATE ON UKRAINE
24 February 2023
INTELLIGENCE UPDATE
• Since 2014 Russia's strategic goal in Ukraine has highly likely been consistent: to control its neighbour. Over 2014-2021, it pursued this objective through subversion, by fomenting an undeclared war in the Donbas, and by annexing Crimea.
• On 24 February 2022, Russia pivoted to a new approach and launched a full-scale invasion which attempted to seize the whole country and depose its government. By April 2022, Russia realised this had failed, and focused on expanding and formalising its rule over the Donbas and the south. It has made slow and extremely costly progress.
• In recent weeks, Russia has likely changed its approach again. Its campaign now likely primarily seeks to degrade the Ukrainian military, rather than being focused on seizing substantial new territory. The Russian leadership is likely pursuing a long-term operation where they bank that Russia's advantages in population and resources will eventually exhaust Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1628997992039473153
The strategy outlined by the MOD matches what experts say Russia has been doing lately.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Official: Explosion reported at Russian ammunition depot in occupied Mariupol
by The Kyiv Independent news desk
February 25, 2023 11:27 am
An explosion allegedly occurred at a Russian ammunition depot in occupied Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, earlier on Feb. 24, reported Petro Andriushchenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol.
Andriushchenko said, citing a local resistance group, that the depot was destroyed. The official did not provide further details.
On the morning of Feb. 25, Andriushchenko also said explosions were heard in near Yalta and Yurivka, the villages near Mariupol. According to him, numerous Russian troops had been temporarily stationed there.
Earlier on Feb. 23, Ukraine's Southern Command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said that the area of Russian-occupied Mariupol was "no longer completely unreachable" for Ukrainian forces.
Earlier the same day, the city council reported three explosions in Mariupol with "a high probability" of hitting the area where Russian troops had been temporarily stationed.
Mariupol, located on the Azov Sea in Donetsk Oblast, has been under Russian occupation since May 2022, following a three-month-long siege that destroyed most of the city.
https://kyivindependent.com/news-feed/official-explosion-reported-at-r
ussian-ammunition-depot-in-occupied-mariupol
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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My year of living under constant attack in Kyiv
Mariia Shuvalova writes:
At 5 a.m. on February 24, 2022, my husband woke me up in our Kyiv apartment. He had heard explosions.
In complete darkness, I tried to dress and pack documents, a laptop, and cash into a backpack. Immediately I started experiencing nausea, diarrhea, and pain in the bottom of my stomach. My period began three weeks earlier than it normally would (something that also happened to many Ukrainian women with whom I’ve spoken). And I also had COVID.
We went to our relatives’ place, as they had a basement.
On February 10, 2023, we were still in Kyiv, and I was once again ill with COVID. Russia continues to attack my country with missiles from jets and a frigate in the Black Sea, so I hear air raids almost constantly. But this morning, my husband woke me up and said, “Morning bombardments again, so we are going out to eat waffles.”
Our emergency backpacks—containing vital documents, cash, tactical first aid kit, knife, protein bars, coffee beans in chocolate, torch, lighters, warm socks, gloves, and a laptop with a power source—are always near our front door. This morning, we picked them up, and walked out—to a waffle cafe, located in a basement, with a sign on the door reading, “We Do Not Work During Massive Shellings!!!”
It’s been one year since Russia escalated its war on Ukraine to one of nationwide, full-scale military aggression. The act of going out for waffles is one way we try—despite living under mortal threats and enduring the collapse of the lives we once lived—to recreate what was once a normal world. These old routines don’t feel the same, though they are valuable as they give us the fleeting comfort of feeling we can control at least this one little thing.
Great danger forces you to appreciate basic things. Small stories make up big landscapes, like going out for waffles during airstrikes. Here are some reflections on living my life during wartime.
More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/my-year-of-living-under-constant-attack-
in-kyiv
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Pobrecito!
Maybe those ppl in Kiev should have thought twice about shelling Donetsk city. For 8 years.
*****
Bakhmut and western hills about to be encircled. Ukrainian lifespan at the Bakhmut front about 4 hours.
https://www.newsweek.com/bakhmut-life-expectancy-near-four-hours-front
lines-ukraine-russia-1782496
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Putin Casts War as a Battle for Russia's Survival
President Vladimir Putin cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people - and said he was forced to take into account NATO's nuclear capabilities.
A year since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin is increasingly presenting the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history - and saying that he believes the very future of Russia and its people is in peril.
"They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part - the Russian Federation," Putin told Rossiya 1 state television in an interview recorded on Wednesday but released on Sunday.
The NATO and the West dismiss such narrative, saying their objective is to help Ukraine defend itself against an unprovoked attack.
President Vladimir Putin cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people - and said he was forced to take into account NATO's nuclear capabilities.
A year since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin is increasingly presenting the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history - and saying that he believes the very future of Russia and its people is in peril.
"They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part - the Russian Federation," Putin told Rossiya 1 state television in an interview recorded on Wednesday but released on Sunday.
The NATO and the West dismiss such narrative, saying their objective is to help Ukraine defend itself against an unprovoked attack.
Putin said the West wanted to divide up Russia and then control the world's biggest producer of raw materials, a step, he said, that could well lead to the destruction of many of the peoples of Russia including the ethnic Russian majority.
"I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today," Putin said. He said the West's plans had been put to paper, though did not specify where.
The United States has denied that it wants to destroy Russia, while President Joe Biden has warned that a conflict between Russia and NATO could trigger World War Three, though he has also said Putin should not remain in power.
Putin said the tens of billions of dollars' worth of U.S. and European military assistance to Ukraine showed that Russia was now facing off NATO itself - the Cold War nightmare of both Soviet and Western leaders.
Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from Ukraine, including from Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014.
RUSSIA
Putin's existential framing of the war allows the 70-year-old Kremlin chief to gird the Russian people for a much more deeper conflict while it also allows him much greater freedom in the types of weapons he could one day use.
Russia's official nuclear doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons if they - or other types of weapons of mass destruction - are used against it, or if conventional weapons are used, which endanger "the very existence of the state."
Putin has signalled he is ready to rip up the architecture of nuclear arms control - including the big powers' moratorium on nuclear testing - unless the West backs off in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, he sought to underscore Russian resolve in Ukraine by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announcing new strategic systems had been put on combat duty and warning that Moscow could resume nuclear tests.
Putin said Russia would only resume discussion once French and British nuclear weapons were also taken into account.
Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons, has the world's biggest store of nuclear warheads. It has more warheads that the United States, France and Britain combined, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
"In today's conditions, w
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Putin Casts War as a Battle for Russia's Survival
Biden*, Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan and SECOND cast war in Ukraine as plan to destroy Russia.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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