Russian invasion of Ukraine

The journalist's expression!

Interesting to see increased focus on UK lawyers assisting Oligarchs.

My cynical side can't help but think that it's being pushed by the Government to divert media attention from Tory donations, connections and collusion.

The "Putin's going to do martial law on Friday" rumours are pretty widespread

Quite impressive under all that botox.

Just heard this from someone trying to leave Russia today saying they think men aged 18-55 won’t be able to leave tomorrow.

So most people during covid lockdown did something like trying to learn an instrument or a language. What did Putin do? Planned such a spectacularly disastrous war that he had to announce martial law and general conscription in his own country one week after launching it.

The conscription will be for two things:

1, Some extra people for the grinder he's creating (and the poor bastards will get ground up, I can't imagine they're going to be trained before being thrown in)
2, To say "Look, the West is pushing us into a corner; TOTAL MOBILISATION"

He's going the the feeling of the Great Patriotic War I'm sure.

Where is this coming from?

All the national newspapers

Ukraine authorities say seized Russian tanks don’t need to be declared on tax form

Ha

Lots of vids of Russian soldiers in camo at train stations the last few days.
When asked where they are going and they say maneuvers or training. Maybe Putin told them all to say that? The whole “I didn’t know” bullshit excuse that every single POW seems to be saying.

Putin might also plan to use these soldiers against his own people. It worked for the Tsar.

Can anyone give a link to reliably translated full-length versions of the published footage from Putin's "security council" meeting and his subsequent rambling lecture, please?

I am imagining some junior civil servant suddenly having to look after a load of superyachts, Lambos, helicopters and London property (and footbal clubs) and work out what on earth to do with them.

Nah, the Tories will just get one of the big accountancy firms to handle it for them in return for a %.

Thinking about it @Velocio - any chance you can auto send Twitter links to Nitter on site?

This is a ridiculous suggestion 😂

Any comment? If Stop the War don't want to be seen as Putin's useful idiots, can they stop Kremlin propaganda being disseminated at their events?

Are you serious that you want me to comment on this? What is your problem?

While talking of improvements to the site. I wish that once you put someone on ignore you will also ignore all posts replying to that user.

This would be excellent

Why?

You jumped on me for my original comment, which was this:

The difference between the tanky far left and everyone else is that we recognise the people of Ukraine have a right to self determination and shouldn't simply accept being a vassal state of Putin.

You asked if I was referring to Stop the War, and I said some in Stop the War. Two days later Kremlin propaganda is being disseminated at a Stop the War event, which is pertinent to our conversation, no?

I am happy to leave it, but I think there is pretty strong evidence that there is a tendency with some in Stop the War and affiliated Labour MPs to accept and disseminate Putin's talking points. I also think it is legitimate to point that out.

On more of the same, I really hope this video of Dianne Abbot is a deep fake, because it would be very disappointing if she said this:

https://twitter.com/hurryupharry/status/1499375611894190081

@soul You can't just redirect people to different URLs because a subset of forum users like Nitter. Some people who have Twitter accounts may actually want to go to the Twitter URL (not me, just playing devils advocate).

I think the daily mail has/had some sort of redirection.

This is monumentally sad/depressing/horrifying (but not surprising) if true.

Russia has drawn up plans for public executions in Ukraine as and when
cities are captured by Russian troops, Bloomberg reports.

Twitter, not Nitter link, but this is an interesting thread on Putin’s challenges at home:

https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/1499388272027570179?s=21

I guess a tick box would sort that then? Either way, I've just added a browser extension to safari on desktop now that redirects automatically...

Defence experts are puzzled by how few Russian combat aircraft are flying over Ukraine. Russia hasn't even attempted to gain air superiority. Possible explanations being floated are:

• shortage of precision guided munitions
  
• political approval not yet given to use unguided munitions instead (they would cause far more civilian deaths)
  
• poor inter-service coordination means Russian air force chiefs are not confident that their planes wouldn't be shot down by their own troops
  
• jet pilots only get about 100 hours of flying time per year, so they might not be confident about using the theoretical capabilities of recently acquired advanced aircraft
  
  

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/mysterious-case-missing-russian-air-force
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-happened-russias-air-force-us-officials-experts-stumped-2022-03-01/?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email