My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education.
What Queensland Style Red Necks Like Putin Are Doing to Us
Hitler Reacts to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine.“People compare Putin to me. I find this insulting.”
The attack on Ukraine is, to quote US President Joe Biden “unprovoked” and “unjustified”, inspired by paranoia and lies. In a rambling speech announcing what he called the “special military operation” against Ukraine, Mr Putin said his goal was to “deNazify” Ukraine which he claimed posed a mortal threat to Russia. Orwell could not have made it up. In reality, Mr Putin wants to depose Ukraine’s democratically elected Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky.
ZELENSKY TO PUTIN: I’m no Nazi — I’m Jewish. “Putin’s address and justification wasn’t meant for Western ears. It was aimed at Russians and ethnic-Russian Ukrainians with long memories and long grudges from World War II. In the run-up to World War II, Ukraine — which at the time did not include as much ethnic-Russian territory — had suffered through the Holodomor, a deliberate genocidal famine imposed by Joseph Stalin. The Soviet leader wanted to suppress the kulaks, but more importantly the western-leaning Ukrainians that chafed at the Soviet occupation. Estimates of casualties from the imposed famine of 1932-33 runs as high as 3.9 million. By June 1933, 28,000 people were dying each day, while the Soviets expropriated millions of tons of Ukrainian wheat. As a result, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in his surprise war of June 1941, ethnic Ukrainians rallied around the Germans as liberators — but only at first. Rather than take advantage of the Ukrainian hatred for the Soviets, the Nazis imposed the same racial policies in Ukraine that they imposed on other Slavs in eastern Europe. Still, some collaboration took place among ethnic Ukrainians, and that has not been forgotten among Russians.”
“He’s lost his fucking mind.” It’s Monday night, and I’m speaking to my friend, the American-Ukrainian author Vladislav Davidzon. We have both just watched Vladimir Putin’s televised speech from the Kremlin, and he — like Putin — is no longer mincing words. He lives in Ukraine; he can no longer afford to…
Vladimir Putin’s dangerous madness
More than 180 municipal deputies from cities across Russia, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Samara and Volgograd, among others, have signed an open letter strongly condemning Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Russian Celebrities, Public Figures Speak Out Against Ukraine War
The Russian Way of Warfare (PDF) RAND Corporation. From 2014. See the section on “The Potential for Nuclear Escalation” starting on page 5.
Sydney Editorial: Putin has proved to be as evil as we always feared
Ukrainian President Zelensky says Russia’s invasion has severed Moscow from the rest of the international community.
“What do we hear today? It’s not just rocket explosions, combat and the roar of aircraft. This is the sound of a new iron curtain lowering and closing Russia off from the civilized world,” he says in a video address.
The man who put a price on my head as second in charge of the KGB back in 1980 is back from his sane hiatus and now returns to his new cold war totalitarian madness
Vladimir Putin has been the spider at the centre of the Kremlin’s web for more than two decades. The cynical changes made in 2020 to Russia’s constitution suggest his desire for power is stronger than ever; events on the Ukrainian border show he’ll go to any lengths to maintain it. But absolute power comes at a cost.
Lies and propaganda are his key weapons. Some observers think, however, the scale of his dishonesty is entering the realms of fantasy; he might be losing touch with reality.
“I don’t believe he is well briefed,” Sir Andrew Wood, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow from 1995 to 2000, told i, in reference to the nonsense Putin spouted about Russia’s success in fighting the Covid pandemic during the ritual end of year press conference in December. “Listening to that press conference, it struck me that he had no idea what he was talking about.”
If the Russian tanks come to Kyiv, would Semyon Gluzman, a dissident who served 10 years in the gulag for daring to condemn Soviet abuse of psychiatry, pick up a gun and fight?
Russian President Vladimir Putin launches invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskyy declares martial law
My old friend let out a deep sigh and said: “I cannot be a soldier at my age. I have never killed anybody. I don’t know how to use a gun. But I know what I will do. I will go to the street to protest. Of course, I will be arrested. I prefer not to be killed. I don’t like our president, Zelenskyy, but this is my country. We need to think about getting a new president, but not the president of Russia. So I will protest.”
In Vladimir Putin’s war of the mind, Semyon, 75, is still a crack shot for the other side. In 1971, he was the first psychiatrist to open fire on the Soviet Union’s weaponization of his branch of medicine to suppress dissent, and he paid a heavy price for his courage. He did his time in a penal colony for political prisoners in the Ural Mountains near the city of Perm. He and his fellow convicts were pitifully clothed for the intense cold, which, on one occasion dropped to minus 50 below zero. Semyon was a regular in the punishment cell, where it was cold to the bone: “I didn’t follow the rules of how we’re supposed to behave. I didn’t want to change my ways. I didn’t want to fall in love with the KGB.” But the officers who ruled over them said, ruefully, “You have created a university for yourselves here,” to which Semyon replied, “But we didn’t buy the tickets.”
Takeaway Host John Hockenberry spoke with Yuriy Sergeyev, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations, at the Core Club in New York City yesterday evening. Ambassador Sergeyev was confident in his country's ability to hold free and fair elections—even in the tumultuous east.
Redneck Putin is Mentally Ill: Ukrainian Ambassador on Russia's Sick Leader
The “Putin has Asperger’s” story highlights the stupidity of psychological diagnosis from a distance
As Ukrainian cities come under air attack from Russian forces, the country has also suffered the latest blows in an ongoing campaign of cyber attacks. Several of Ukraine’s bank and government department websites crashed on Wednesday, the BBC reports.
The incident follows a similar attack just over a week ago, in which some 70 Ukrainian government websites crashed. Ukraine and the United States squarely blamed Russia.
Russia is using an onslaught of cyber attacks to undermine Ukraine's defence capabilities
Does Vladimir Putin Really Suffer From Parkinson’s Disease Or Its Just Another Political Stunt To Save ‘Putinism’?
Putin approves ‘special military operation’ as Russia launches invasion of Ukraine by land, air and sea.
Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities on Thursday. Ukraine reported columns of troops pouring across its borders into the eastern Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, and landing by sea at the cities of Odessa and Mariupol in the south.
Russia has invaded Ukraine. Here's what you need to know
Russian President Vladimir Putin launches invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskyy declares martial law
After reports of explosions near Kyiv, Joe Biden accuses Putin of choosing a ‘war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life’