Ukraine

[IDM]

Is the express becoming an outlet for analysts to put out all kinds of what if theories, rather than presenting news of what is really happening.??

[River Don]

Is the express becoming an outlet for analysts to put out all kinds of what if theories, rather than presenting news of what is really happening.??

Have a look at it. The European airports threat story is coming from an official Russian source. According to the Express.

[Colin C No.3]

Just had one on my phone.

‘Aliens have landed in Blackburn & are taking over peoples bodies’.

It’s about time we had some good news for once!

[IDM]

Is the express becoming an outlet for analysts to put out all kinds of what if theories, rather than presenting news of what is really happening.??

Have a look at it. The European airports threat story is coming from an official Russian source. According to the Express.

Eventually found it - navigating the express site on my phone is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there..

Regardless of what we may think of the BBC, surely they would have picked up on this.?

[normal rules]

This is the passage in;the express

The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said: "We call on EU and NATO countries to stop the thoughtless flooding of the unviable Kyiv regime with the latest weapons systems in order to avoid enormous risk to international civilian aviation and other means of transport in Europe and beyond."

I see no direct threat to any European airport in this text. It may be that they are concerned that surface to air missiles could endanger anything flying over Ukraine.
I don’t see how Russia could start targeting international airports in any case, unless it was through cyber attacks on air traffic control systems .

[River Don]

This is the passage in;the express

The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said: "We call on EU and NATO countries to stop the thoughtless flooding of the unviable Kyiv regime with the latest weapons systems in order to avoid enormous risk to international civilian aviation and other means of transport in Europe and beyond."

I see no direct threat to any European airport in this text. It may be that they are concerned that surface to air missiles could endanger anything flying over Ukraine.
I don’t see how Russia could start targeting international airports in any case, unless it was through cyber attacks on air traffic control systems .

Point taken. It is opaque.

The Russians do have cruise missiles that could feasibly target airports don't they?

[River Don]

This is the passage in;the express

The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said: "We call on EU and NATO countries to stop the thoughtless flooding of the unviable Kyiv regime with the latest weapons systems in order to avoid enormous risk to international civilian aviation and other means of transport in Europe and beyond."

I see no direct threat to any European airport in this text. It may be that they are concerned that surface to air missiles could endanger anything flying over Ukraine.
I don’t see how Russia could start targeting international airports in any case, unless it was through cyber attacks on air traffic control systems .

Point taken. It is opaque.

The Russians do have cruise missiles that could feasibly target airports don't they?

Doh!

Comprehension is so important. I don't normally fall for these stories.

Annoying.

Education is so important, kids.

[normal rules]

They could use cruise missiles, but that would open up the biggest can of worms this planet has ever seen. Except perhaps when the world was in its infancy, and it was full of boiling gas and volcanoes.

[River Don]

They could use cruise missiles, but that would open up the biggest can of worms this planet has ever seen. Except perhaps when the world was in its infancy, and it was full of boiling gas and volcanoes.

Well that's what the Express were inferring.

I'm more than happy to hold up my hands and point out this headline is misleading and I fell for it.

Read it carefully particularly when it's a publication like the Express

[River Don]

It is tiring.

Tiring to always have to ask yourself, who is writing this and what do they want.

It has always been like this of course but most don't ask. Now of course the Russians are being fed a story. A story that is not true. But it's coming from a source they believe implicitly. Just as we all believed the BBC in the 60s.

It is difficult to remain objective. Particularly in these days of information overload.

[River Don]

I have learned something with this war.

We are f**king stupid monkeys.

We are f**king stupid monkeys who will do anything to get ahead.

I don't hate this. It's nature.

Can we rise above nature? I hope so.

[normal rules]

Darwin’s evolution theory.
The battle to survive. To pro create. To compete.
Plants, birds, primates.
Thing is, as a species, we have “evolved” so much, perhaps too much. We have become self defeating.
We will kill ourselves.
Compete and win At all costs. Even at the expense of other species and each other.
The battle between east and west is nothing more than a competition. A multi faceted competition between differing ideologies, cultures and regimes.
Survival of the fittest may be irrelevant if this conflict goes south.
Darwin would turn in his grave.

[River Don]

We appear to be at war with the natural world.

...we do.

It's f**ked up.

[normal rules]

Putin needs to watch a certain film. And listen very careful to this famous quote from it. I’ve reduced it in size for simplicity.

“ I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly.

if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer; the decision rests with you.”

[River Don]

NR

This is the simple truth of the old hippies.

We simply cannot fight anymore because if we do... There is no future.

No future.

[BobG]

This is what online discussions SHOULD all aspire to.

Intelligent, informed, wondering, linking of disparate snippets into coherent wholes.

Despite it's subject matter, this is the thread of the decade for me.
.There's been the occasional reversión to type from some, but this thread actually fills me with a bit more hope that humanity could progress if we get through the current b*llocks.

Thank you everybody

BobG

[SydneyRover]

It would be good for the government to give all the reasons why people such as Abramovich have been sanctioned, so everyone knows.

[BobG]

It would be equally good to hear why plenty of folk have  NOT been sanctioned.

BobG

[Ldr]

Given the rhetoric by some on here it’ll be interesting to see if they take part in this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60701941

[normal rules]

Says it all I think.

[wilts rover]

Given the rhetoric by some on here it’ll be interesting to see if they take part in this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60701941

Agreed. Given the support some people have given to defund the BBC and rubbishing their output, it's also interesting to see them promote stories on it?

[normal rules]

A map of Russia from just 100 yrs ago explains a lot. Maybe Putin has OCD and just likes straight line borders?

[Ldr]

Given the rhetoric by some on here it’ll be interesting to see if they take part in this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60701941

Agreed. Given the support some people have given to defund the BBC and rubbishing their output, it's also interesting to see them promote stories on it?

Well I cancelled my tv licence Wilts if that makes you feel better and removed the ability to receive live tv or stream it

[Dutch Uncle]

Interesting article from Washington Post by an ex CIA operative with 30+ years of service - who in Russia should Putin be afraid of

[idler]

It won’t open for me on my iPad Dutch.

[Dutch Uncle]

It won’t open for me on my iPad Dutch.

Copied and pasted for you idler, hope it is not too long for this site:

Analysts and Russia watchers are batting about the idea that perhaps Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin has become mentally unstable. They point to ranting speeches where Putin seems to invent history out of whole cloth, or his public and cringeworthy dressing down of one of his intelligence chiefs. Then there are the meme-worthy photos of Putin sitting at the end of ridiculously long tables. Some observe that Putin simply doesn’t look well physically — puffy in the face and less steady on his feet. Speculation suggests that all of this is due to the Russian leader’s increased isolation, his surrounding himself with yes-men, or his angst over the bite of widespread economic sanctions the West and other allies have leveled against him since Russia invaded Ukraine. Others say he is afraid of covid-19 and taking draconian precautions.

Putin is indeed afraid, but not of covid. He fears a coup.

The oligarchs aren’t the ones who would turn on Putin. There is something of a power-sharing agreement between Putin and his oligarchical team, but it is one-sided and mostly economic: Putin allows them to run large moneymaking entities in Russia and abroad, and in return, they help him launder his own funds or assist him for whatever else he deems them useful. But the oligarchs have no direct access to hard power, such as police or other armed security forces in Russia.

Nor will the mythical Russian “man on the street” rise up to dethrone Putin. There are Russians who support Putin’s policies, and others who have simply become politically apathetic. Many believe the state propaganda, which is the only news information most Russians can access. While on occasion Russian citizens do protest — sometime in the thousands and tens of thousands — these demonstrations are always forcefully broken up by police and security forces.

The Kremlin allows protests (which they undoubtedly know about in advance due to intelligence work conducted among protest organizers) so that to Westerners, it appears there may be a bit of freedom of speech in Russia after all. This way, Putin can claim to his Western audience that Russians have a right to express their political views. After the riots are over, though, the protesters are often incarcerated or worse.

The real threat to Putin comes from the siloviki, a Russian word used loosely to describe Russia’s security and military elite. These are people like Nikolai Patrushev, currently the secretary of the Russian security council, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), as well as other current and former senior security officials.

Men like Patrushev and Bortnikov not only possess hard power, but they know how to use it and are inclined to do so. The FSB includes around 160,000 members of the Border Guard service, as well as thousands of armed personnel with law enforcement authorities. But the strength of the FSB comes not only from its ability to do violence; the organization is also highly secretive. FSB officers are skilled at working clandestinely, keeping their most sensitive operations strictly compartmented to small groups. Putin understands this better than most: He once ran the organization himself.

The siloviki are willing to use this deadly mixture of hard power and secrecy when a serious threat to the Russian kleptocratic system emerges. That’s because the security elite derives their power from the system. The whole operation can flex when threatened; street protests are tolerated to a certain extent, and Russia has withstood lesser Western sanctions in the past. Like branches of an old tree, the kleptocratic autocracy in the Kremlin can withstand the occasional storm, but if the trunk is rotting, the siloviki will take action.

If Russia gets away with using chemical weapons in Britain, what will it try next?

The siloviki are formidable. These are the men who tried to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny; when that failed, they had him imprisoned, seemingly indefinitely. The heads of the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, planned and executed the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal using a Russian military-grade nerve agent. Other siloviki planned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, lacing his tea with polonium in a London hotel. Putin, who reportedly approved these operations personally, is only too familiar with the capabilities of the security elite.

Putin and the siloviki are all Chekists at heart. The Cheka was the first modern iteration of an organization that eventually evolved into the KGB. But the organization’s name or structure is less important than the Chekist mentality, which traces its roots back to Vladimir Lenin and later, Joseph Stalin. Both Soviet leaders were fond of leaning into terror as a methodology for controlling Russia, and this tradition has been passed down from one generation of Chekists to the next. On what used to be called “Chekist Day” in Russia (now called with greater political correctness Security Agency Workers Day), Putin would routinely make celebratory phone calls to the senior leaders in what Russians still refer to as their “special services.”

But what likely has the Russian autocrat losing the most sleep these days (and perhaps acting a bit erratically) is that Putin, who takes the time to study history so as to better distort it, cannot have overlooked the coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. At the time, the Soviet Union was unraveling. Factories were failing because employees simply stopped showing up for work — because their employers had stopped paying them.

More troubling to the security and military elite, the Soviet republics around the perimeter of the state were beginning to break away, declaring autonomy and even independence. The siloviki were witnessing a massive disruption that they feared would lead to the dissolution of the country — and the power they had amassed — as they had known it for decades. Rather than let the system from which they derived power and riches devolve further, they intervened, detaining Gorbachev while he was vacationing at one of his dachas. In the end, the attempted coup was unsuccessful, but it marked the beginning of the end of Gorbachev’s regime — and the entire Soviet Union.

How to read Vladimir Putin

Putin, with his KGB background, must see the obvious parallels. The West, with great unanimity of effort, has imposed crushing sanctions on Russia, and the kleptocratic system is beginning to feel the pressure.

The first to feel the sanctions will be the oligarchs, who have become accustomed over the years to wringing wealth out of Russia by virtue of the sweetheart deals Putin allows for their businesses. Sanctions on these businesses will gut the oligarchs’ wealth. They’ll have a harder time laundering ill-gotten gains, which means it will be harder for oligarchs and their families to enjoy the money they have stolen from the Russian people. They won’t be able to use their personal jets and yachts (several of which have already been seized by Western governments). Europe, the United States, Canada and several Asian democracies will not grant oligarchs visas. The oligarch class will begin to complain — and then to panic.

Ordinary Russians are already beginning to feel the pinch, with reports of credit cards and electronic payment systems not working. Western goods in stores will be harder to come by, and even harder to buy as the ruble loses value. And due to sanctions on Russian airlines, Russian citizens will be severely limited as to where they can travel outside the country (and maybe even inside the huge landmass, as planes will not receive needed parts and maintenance). Normal Russian citizens will begin to complain. Many will take to the streets, as several thousand already have.

Putin will see little threat from either oligarchs or common Russians. He has mechanisms to repress both, and he has done so effectively in the past. No oligarch will forget the fate of Mikhael Khodorskovskiy, who spent 10 years in prison for challenging Putin politically and is now exiled in London.

And all Russian citizens understand, almost at the genetic level, Putin’s ability to inflict terror and death on demonstrators. Russian opposition figures and journalists don’t want to end up like Boris Nemtsov (shot within shouting distance of the Kremlin) or Ana Politikovskaya (shot in the head in her apartment building).

But the siloviki pose a much more serious danger for Putin. If the security elite perceives the system is rotting, they will do what’s necessary to protect their interests. They have weapons and the personnel to threaten Putin. They know how to operate under Putin’s radar, because they are the ones in charge of the radar itself. And while it is reasonable to assume Putin has some means to monitor the siloviki, he will not be able to follow their actions constantly and with great precision, given all the other issues on his plate.

How to prevent nuclear war: Give Putin a way out

The invasion of Ukraine has triggered a withering response that threatens the viability of the Russian state. As in 1991, the country is at grave risk. The siloviki, watching the slow-motion dissolution of the kleptocratic autocracy that has kept them in power for the past three decades, have the ability to end Putin’s regime. They may decide to act.

Putin would do well to remember the words Felix Dzerzinskiy, the brutal head of the Cheka, uttered over 100 years ago: “We stand for organized terror — this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution.”

The only question remaining is whether the siloviki consider this to be such a time.

[tyke1962]

Great article that Dutch , very informative .

Thanks for sharing it .

[scawsby steve]

Good article, Dutch. The question is, would the siloviki allow Putin to start a nuclear war, which would mean the destruction of their families and loved ones, and the Russian people?

Maybe not, if we're lucky.

[idler]

Thanks for the effort Dutch, it's really appreciated.
Lots of food for thought there.
I wonder how much time Putin spends looking over his shoulder?
One thing for sure I bet there are one or two of his siloviki hierarchy thinking of a future without Putin if things carry on deteriorating towards a nuclear outcome.

[normal rules]

I have a confidence that we have people within the service that are attempting to or have already cultivated relationships with persons who are siloviki.
The highest level of espionage.
Agents within the Kremlin close to the inner circle.
It’s something the UK have always been very good at.
Mi6 will have an awareness of what’s going to happen before it actually does.
They may even be in a position to steer and influence.
A lot of talk of Russian influence in London, but trust me, this works both ways.
We may not have uk billionaires owning great swathes of Moscow, but we will have something far, far more valuable.
Influential, powerful Russians on our payroll.