Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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PAGE 353 of 1104
Religious freedom in Ukraine – especially the freedom of religious minorities – are far better defended in Ukrainian-controlled territories than in Russia or Russian-occupied Ukrainian lands. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) found that Russia is one of the worst violators of religious freedoms due to its restrictive state policies and prosecution of peaceful religious activities that are legal under Ukrainian law.[49] Ukraine’s Evangelical Baptist community, for example, expanded to encompass 2,272 churches and over 113,000 believers between 1991 and 2017.[50] Conversely, the Russian government has effectively outlawed foreign missionary work in Russia and persecuted Baptists along with many other Protestant sects since 2016.[51] Russia’s campaign of religious repression relentlessly targets Ukrainian churches and ”undesirable” Russian minorities in occupied Ukraine on a systematic basis. Russian forces will likely intensify this campaign and seek to eradicate religious organizations independent of Kremlin control, as Russian forces have done with Crimea’s Muslim Crimean Tatar population since occupying the peninsula in 2014.[52]
Moscow’s religious persecution campaign seeks to eradicate the Autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which Moscow views as schismatic despite the decision by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019 granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church its independence from the Moscow Patriarchate. Russian occupation authorities are likely systematically eliminating OCU churches in occupied Ukraine. ISW’s research found that 34 percent of the reported persecution events targeted the OCU, making it the single most targeted religious group. The high percentage of persecution events aimed at the OCU is not surprising on the one hand because it is the most popular confession in Ukraine. It is surprising on the other hand because the Kremlin has been posturing as the defender of Christianity in general and Eastern Orthodoxy in particular.[20] Witness reports indicate that Russian authorities are seemingly targeting the OCU for its Ukrainianess. The Russians pursued such targeted attacks on the OCU even during the short-lived Russian partial occupation of Kyiv Oblast early in the war, suggesting that this targeting was an intentional component of the Russian invasion from the outset.[21]
Russian occupation officials are systematically seizing UOC property to transfer to the Moscow Patriarchate and are eliminating worship in the Ukrainian language. The synod of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a decision to officially annex the OCU’s dioceses in Dzhankoi, Simferopol, and Feodosia in Crimea on June 7, 2022, “out of the need to maintain an effective canonical and administrative connection with the central church authorities.”[22] Six Russian FSB agents raided an OCU church in Melitopol, detained and deported its priest for conducting the liturgy in the Ukrainian language, and then closed the church in November 2022.[23] Russian authorities have converted several OCU churches in occupied Ukraine to the Moscow Patriarchate.[24] The full extent of Russian efforts to forcibly convert Ukrainians in occupied territories to Russian Orthodoxy is unclear. Russian occupation authorities have made no explicit statement allowing the OCU to coexist with the Russian Orthodox Church in occupied Ukraine, which is alarming given the documented instances of repression and forced conversion of OCU churches.
Much more at https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-9-2023
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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How America let Putin off the hook after Crimea
A POLITICO investigation shows that the tough sanctions put in place starting in 2014 suffered from weak enforcement at the Department of Justice and a lack of cooperation from allies, allowing oligarchs and their enablers to skate free.
Although Washington has since 2014 imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, the Justice Department under the Obama and Trump administrations did not prioritize prosecutions related to that war — filing relatively few cases until after Putin escalated it in 2022.
POLITICO’s findings support critics who argue that Washington, and the West more broadly, was too lenient toward Russia for too long, especially when it came to Ukraine. Such critics, who include Russian dissidents and Ukrainian activists, say America in particular should have imposed — and enforced — tougher Ukraine-related sanctions and other penalties more often and faster in the wake of the initial 2014 invasion.
“There was a whole appeasement psychology for a long time,” said Bill Browder, a British financier who has tangled with Putin and long argued for a tougher U.S. approach to the Kremlin. “It’s obvious to anyone who was close to the situation that Putin was maybe 95 percent responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, but we were 5 percent responsible by not doing anything up to this point.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/09/putin-russia-ukraine-sanction
-justice-department-00090386
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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As Ukraine prepares its spring offensive, Russia goes from defeat to defeat
by Max Boot
There hasn’t been much movement on the front lines of Ukraine since Ukrainian forces liberated the city of Kherson in early November. It’s easy to conclude that the war is at a stalemate pending the outcome of Ukraine’s widely expected spring offensive — which would benefit from even more Western support than it has been getting. While there might be an element of truth to that assumption, it also masks a lot of developments in the past five months that have been positive for Ukraine and negative for Russia.
One of Vladimir Putin’s pseudo-justifications for his war of aggression was the supposed fear that Ukraine would join NATO. That was never likely (and still isn’t). But, as a result of his invasion, Finland just joined NATO, and Sweden should be close behind. Not only does Finland have Europe’s largest artillery force, but it also recently agreed to combine its warplanes with those of Norway, Denmark and Sweden in a joint operating force. The Nordic partners have 250 front-line combat aircraft, instantly creating a new military superpower in northern Europe. Thanks, Vlad, for making NATO stronger than ever.
So, too, Putin has no one but himself to blame for his recent indictment on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court. That won’t have any immediate impact, but it’s not the kind of thing anyone wants on his résumé. At a minimum, it further delegitimizes Putin and hampers his travel to avoid arrest. Someday, like Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, he could even wind up on trial for his crimes.
Putin tried to show that he was not isolated by hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Moscow last month. But, beyond the photo op, Putin did not get much out of the meeting: Xi did not agree (at least publicly) to supply weapons to Russia or even to build another gas pipeline from Russia to China. China’s ambassador to the European Union just said that China’s “no limits” friendship with Russia — proclaimed last year by Xi and Putin — is “nothing but rhetoric.”
By contrast, the support that Ukraine has received from more than 50 donor nations is much more than just rhetorical. All that aid has turned Ukraine, during the past year, into one of the strongest military powers in Europe. Putin hoped to use a cutoff of Russian gas supplies to force the Europeans to stop supporting Ukraine. The Russian gambit failed; Europe adjusted to the cutoff and hasn’t wavered in its support of Ukraine.
Ukraine has not only been winning the battle for international support. It has also won another critical and underappreciated victory in recent months in its battle to keep the lights and heat on.
In early October, frustrated that Russia’s advance on the ground had stopped, Putin began targeting Ukrainian electrical and heating infrastructure with missile and drone strikes. The Russian strategy was to make life so unbearable for Ukrainians that they would sue for peace. It didn’t work, thanks to all the air defenses, generators and spare parts sent by the West and all the dedication shown by Ukrainian air-defense and electrical-repair crews. Now spring is arriving, the lights are still on, and, according to one recent poll, 97 percent of Ukrainians still believe they will win the war. Ukraine is even exporting electricity once again.
Russia’s piecemeal offensive in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine hasn’t gone any better than its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. A three-week battle for control of the coal-mining town of Vuhledar ended in disaster for the Russians. Repeatedly ambushed by skillful Ukrainian defenders, the lumbering Russian columns had to pull back after losing an estimated 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers and 5,000 soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
Russia has suffered even heavier losses of personnel — mostly prisoners and mercenaries from the Wagner Group — in its suicidal, human wave attacks on the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. A
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If Russia is doing so bad, how come the propaganda machine keeps working overtime to tenderize your idiot brain, Second?
You are so fucking stupid.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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I stopped reading at the byline because everybody knows Max Boot is a neocon 'tard.
I noticed that SECOND and THUGR are avoiding that whole "leaked top secret Pentagon docs show Kiev in poor position for spring offensive" topic. ... or anything tainted with actual facts
Did you notice that they always post OPINION?
Who are they trying to kid?
DOJ Races To Find Source of Leaked Pentagon Documents
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/doj-races-find-source-leaked-pe
ntagon-documents
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
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Quote:If I post facts, you call them lies. Here is the truth: everyone I know who shares your opinions/your version of facts about reality are people who created for themselves unnecessarily difficult lives. I assume your life is as messy as theirs. I attribute their unfortunate lives to being crazy / having difficult personalities / generalized lack of wisdom when they make major decisions. All of this also describes Russia, which has an economy smaller than Canada. None of that means anything to you, but just imagine if Canada was a person as obnoxious as Russia. Canada could cause major problems in the world and, especially, in the US.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I stopped reading at the byline because everybody knows Max Boot is a neocon 'tard.
I noticed that SECOND and THUGR are avoiding that whole "leaked top secret Pentagon docs show Kiev in poor position for spring offensive" topic. ... or anything tainted with actual facts
Did you notice that they always post OPINION?
Who are they trying to kid?
DOJ Races To Find Source of Leaked Pentagon Documents
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/doj-races-find-source-leaked-pe
ntagon-documents
Getting back to those messy people, they tend to have short lives full of failures and heartbreak and blame Biden for it. Trump will save them, they claim. I'm expecting Russians will be feeling their own misfortune in Ukraine, this year and next, and blaming it all on Biden. If only Trump had been President, Ukraine would have been an easy conquest.
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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Quote:
SECOND: I assume your life is as messy as theirs.
You know what they say about assumptions SECOND: they make an "ass" out of "u" and "me". Well, maybe you, bc I'm.not the one making assumptions.
As usual SECOND, I get about one or two sentences into your post and then I trip over something so egregiously stupid I stop.
Save yourself some time: limit your replies to one or two sentences bc the rest is just shit-canned.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
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Ukraine gives Russia two options: Leave Crimea peacefully or be ready for battle
Politico reports:
Ukraine has not changed its plans for the return of territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea.
“Ukraine will choose the way to bring Crimea back, using political and military means,” Tamila Tasheva, the Ukrainian president’s envoy on Crimea, told POLITICO.
“To minimize Ukrainian military losses, minimize threats to civilians who live in occupied territories, as well as the destruction of civilian infrastructure, Ukraine plans to give Russia a choice on how to leave Crimea. If they don’t agree to leave voluntarily, Ukraine will continue to liberate its land by military means,” Tasheva added.
Her comments come after Andriy Sybiha, deputy head of the president’s office, gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he said Ukraine might be ready to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if Kyiv succeeds in achieving its strategic goals on the battlefield.
“We are ready to open a diplomatic page to discuss this issue,” Sybiha said in the interview, referring to Kyiv’s long-planned counteroffensive. “It doesn’t mean that we exclude the way of liberation [of Crimea] by our army.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-russia-crimea-war-peace-volody
myr-zelenskyy/
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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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine gives...
= shitcan
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
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Quote:Russian Ka-52 Helicopter Obliterated in 'Edelweiss' Brigade Strike
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine gives...
= shitcan
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ka52-attack-helicopter-ukraine-losses-
1792905
A Russian Ka-52 combat helicopter was shot down by Ukrainian forces near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut, according to Ukraine's military.
The "Alligator" Ka-52 combat scout-attack helicopter "was shot down during an airstrike attempt on our positions," Ukraine's "Edelweiss" 10th separate mountain assault brigade wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. This was confirmed by Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine's East Grouping of Forces, Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported.
The helicopter was brought down using the Piorun MANPADS, a portable air-defense system, Cherevatyi said.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian defense ministry for comment via email.
The Kamov Ka-52 is one of Russia's prized attack helicopters. The twin-seat, all-weather attack aircraft is a "highly upgraded version" of the earlier model Ka-50, according to the U.S. military. It can fire anti-tank missiles, air-to-air guided missiles, and be fitted with a 30-millimeter armament.
The Ka-52 can "execute any combat task with high efficiency," according to Russian state military exporter Rosoboronexport. It has coaxial main rotors and a modernized avionics suite, traveling at a maximum speed of approximately 186 miles per hour.
It's designed to destroy tanks, military vehicles, aircraft and manpower, including on the front lines, Rosoboronexport said.
Ukraine has previously publicized reports of downed Russian Ka-52 helicopters, and its General Staff said in an update on Thursday that Moscow had lost 292 helicopters since the start of the invasion. However, this tally doesn't specify the number of Ka-52 aircraft lost, and Ukraine's counts typically come in higher than many Western estimates.
Although Russia started its invasion of Ukraine with around 100 Ka-52 helicopters, according to Forbes, one count suggests it has now lost around one-third of its "Alligator" day-and-night attack helicopters, as of Thursday.
Russia has lost 33 Ka-52 "Alligator" helicopters since February 24, 2022, according to a count by Dutch open-source outlet Oryx, which visually confirms military losses in Ukraine.
By October 25, 2022, Russia had lost at least 23 Ka-52 "Alligator" helicopters, which represented "nearly half of Russia's total helicopter losses in Ukraine," the British defense ministry wrote on Twitter.
The losses were likely linked to Ukraine's use of MANPADS, and Russian commanders appeared to be turning to "high-risk attack helicopter missions" to back up its troops, the ministry added.
Back in January, Ukraine's air force said Kyiv's military had shot down three Ka-52 helicopters in just 30 minutes. The aircraft had been flying over the disputed Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the air force said in a post shared to Twitter.
Karolina Hird, a Russia analyst with the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank, previously told Newsweek that the Ka-52 is an "effective attack helicopter that is generally comparable to the U.S. AH-64 Apache."
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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