Can anyone tell me what being gay or straight has to do with Russia and Ukraine? Or with leading any country? I must have missed something.
Lois
Whatever kind of dastardly creep Putin is, he has to have the support of a large bulk of the Russian people. So far, it appears he does. A tongue in cheek, but actual interview of some individual citizens on the Daily Show (during the Olympics) suggests that their ideologies would fit in nicely with those of some of our radical Tea Partiers.Much of it is largely out of fear, which is somewhat of a tradition in Russia going back to the Tsars. Ivan the Terrible as he was known in the west was known as Ivan the Awesome or Fearsome in Russia. Putin understands the use of violence and intimidation to control large populations, which was one of the key roles of the Soviet secret police throughout the length of the USSR. Putin came up through that system and obviously mastered its darker aspects. People understand what happens to those who question power in Putin's Russia such as Anna Polikovskaya.
The assassination of Anna Politkovskaya (born 1958), the Russian journalist, writer and human rights activist, took place on 7 October 2006. She was well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.[1][2] She authored several books about the Chechen wars, as well as Putin's Russia, and received numerous prestigious international awards for her work. Her murder, which occurred on Vladimir Putin's birthday, was widely perceived as a contract killing, sparking a strong international reaction.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anna_Politkovskaya Something else that Litvenenko stated was that under Putin the FSB was engaged in training terrorists one of which was involved in the 9/11 attacks. During the Cold War the USSR was a strong backer of groups attacking western nations, once again part of a culture that Putin comes from. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/6163502.stm
Perhaps most notably, he alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB in Dagestan in the years before the 9/11 attacks.This was coming from a former FSB lieutenant-colonel who was most likely murdered with Po-210 by a Russian agent who is now being protected from prosecution by the Putin government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko So how dangerous is Putin, I think he's about as dangerous as you can get.
These words of Anna Politkovskaya seem prophetic.
Politkovskaya's book, Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy, strongly criticized Putin's federal presidency, including his pursuit of the Second Chechen War. She accused Putin and the Russian secret service FSB of stifling all civil liberties in order to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship, but admitted that "it is we who are responsible for Putin's policies": "Society has shown limitless apathy.... As the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that." She also wrote: "We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit."[3] "People often tell me that I am a pessimist, that I don't believe in the strength of the Russian people, that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that," she opens an essay titled Am I Afraid?, finishing it—and the book—with the words: "If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the 'optimistic' forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren.
Can anyone tell me what being gay or straight has to do with Russia and Ukraine? Or with leading any country? I must have missed something. LoisAs Occam posted, it started with post #11.
Ukraine in turmoil. Zelensky to fire top general Zaluzhny
Meanwhile china send troops to russia and openly supports its efforts in ukraine
Turmoil in ukraine. The Ukrainian President Zelenski has fired the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Zaluzny.
Zaluzny was replaced by General Syrski
Naked capitalism: Ukraine Collapse Starting. What Happens Next?
Ukraine with all that money and weapons supplied by the west is coming to its final inevitable conclusion .
Ukraine now resembles a patient with a terminal disease who is staring to exhibit multi-organ failure. His longevity is still uncertain but is measured in months, not years. It’s not obvious which system will go first and whether that one by itself will be fatal or will kick off the terminal cascade. But the odds of pulling out of the current trajectory are poor.
We’d like to step back and consider what Russia’s choices might be as Ukraine starts coming unglued.1 Many commentators are focusing on the question of territorial acquisition because it seems to be hard to get out of the habit of thinking that way. Recall that the object of war, per Clausewitz:
War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.
Russia may have a fundamental problem. It has arguably been Putin’s top objective, certainly with respect to the US and Europe, to come up with a new security architecture. That was the theme of his much-hated speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007: No one is safe until all of us are safe.
Russia is very far along with one of its key aims, demilitarizing Ukraine, by virtue of not only depleting weapons stocks across the West and producing armaments at a rate the West cannot match, but sadly also by killing or maiming many of Ukraine’s service-age men, and now even women. Ukraine is considering and likely to pass what amounts to a mass mobilization bill. The US is now also committed to arming Israel; it’s not clear, given rising criticism across Europe of Israel’s genocide, if and when its allies will cut back on weapons supplies given their supposed disapproval. While it was noteworthy that the hyper aggressive German defense minister, Annelina Baerbock, whose country is defending Israel at the ICJ, criticized Israel’s conduct in unvarnished terms. But the tweet below points out, Germany has not yet cut back on weapons supplies: