Russia

[Irrev-Black]

Poor old bloody Navalny: his turn came round.
(SNIP)

Meet the new Opposition Leader.

https://apnews.com/article/yulia-navaln ... 33c27e4878

And Space Brat immediately did what? Makes me wonder.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-21/ ... /103491744

[stylofone]

A great piece of writing. Heartbreaking.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rs-ukraine

[stylofone]

When Trump won in 2016, I remember seeing evidence that the Russian "troll factory", the blandly named Internet Research Agency, was using a lot of social media memes and fake accounts. They were good at getting things to go viral, so you'd get a far greater impact for the limited amount of human labour you had available.

Now there is AI to pad out the various bots, fake news websites, astro-turfing and misinformation. Thanks to AI the quality and veracity overall of search-based information has gone downhill. Bogus news sites seem to be more of a thing now. With fossil fuel climate denying, pro-Russian Trumpists and other proto-fascists supporting these black ops, often knowingly, we are in a pretty bad palce.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/busi ... &sgrp=c-cb

[Loki]

Sweden is now officially a NATO member.

[pipbarber]

I expect Finland will be hastily speeding up their application.

Putin says Russian forces and 'systems' will be placed at Finnish border

In an interview with Russia’s RIA state news agency and Rossiya-1 state television, Russia’s Vladimir Putin signalled that he intends to boost forces along the country’s border with Finland.

The Russian leader criticised Finland and Sweden’s Nato accession, Reuters reported.

“This is an absolutely meaningless step (for Finland and Sweden) from the point of view of ensuring their own national interests,” he said, adding:

We didn’t have troops there (at the Finnish border), now they will be there. There were no systems of destruction there, now they will appear.

Guardian live feed.

Hmm. Well, this could be cataclysmic.

[stevebrooks]

I expect Finland will be hastily speeding up their application.

Putin says Russian forces and 'systems' will be placed at Finnish border

In an interview with Russia’s RIA state news agency and Rossiya-1 state television, Russia’s Vladimir Putin signalled that he intends to boost forces along the country’s border with Finland.

The Russian leader criticised Finland and Sweden’s Nato accession, Reuters reported.

“This is an absolutely meaningless step (for Finland and Sweden) from the point of view of ensuring their own national interests,” he said, adding:

We didn’t have troops there (at the Finnish border), now they will be there. There were no systems of destruction there, now they will appear.

Guardian live feed.

Hmm. Well, this could be cataclysmic.

They didn't have troops stationed at the Ukrainian border either, they were all just on a training exercise....well to see how quickly they could race to Kiev of course, but that's besides the point I guess! Mind you the more troops and equipment they station at the Finnish border the less that will have for the invasion of Ukraine, so that's actually good news not bad!

[stevebrooks]

Putin is once again embiggening his nuclear arsenal, but after all the red lines he's drawn someone needs to tell him the rest of the world isn't listening. It doesn't matter anyway, you only need enough nukes to wipe out the enemy, being able to wipe out the enemy twice isn't as advantageous as Putin seems to think it is!

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia’s nuclear triad — its three-pronged arsenal of weapons launched from land, sea and air — was “much more” advanced than that of the United States.

The reason other countries aren't throwing the word nuke around is because they know how stupid it is. It's like the policeman who draws a gun, if you get attacked when you have your gun drawn you have two choices, shoot them, or be killed because if you don't shoot they are just going to take your gun away and shoot you with it! Using it as a threat only works if the other side is listening or thinks you are serious.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/inno ... 7e166344ec

[pipbarber]

They didn't have troops stationed at the Ukrainian border either, they were all just on a training exercise....well to see how quickly they could race to Kiev of course, but that's besides the point I guess! Mind you the more troops and equipment they station at the Finnish border the less that will have for the invasion of Ukraine, so that's actually good news not bad!

The same occurred to me, but 'not bad news' for Ukraine is terrifying news for Finland, especially for anyone who happens to live anywhere near the border.

[stevebrooks]

I don't think the Fin's have much to worry about, there's a difference between being "based" somewhere and prepared to invade somewhere, generally troops based somewhere aren't frontline assault troops, they are usually support personnel, and if Russia was to decide to invade it would need to move some large assault forces to the border, which would be obvious to all the nations watching. I mean everyone saw Russian moving immense assault forces to the Ukrainian border under the pretext of training, and most nations just said, meh, Russian wouldn't dare, they are scare mongering, they won't make that mistake again.

Also the Fin's have lived under Russian threat for decades, I think stationing Russian troops there would change very little in the Finnish/Russian calculation, but it would make a huge in the Ukrainian situation, so I don't think it will happen, but then again Putin, in his way, is as mad as Trump, you can never predict what he might do.

[stevebrooks]

And another one bites the dust. No windows this time, suicide by hanging apparently;

Vitaly Robertus, the vice president of Lukoil, Russia's second-largest oil producer, was found dead in his Moscow office on Tuesday in an apparent suicide, according to local reports.

Multiple Russian Telegram channels, including independent Russian journalism project ASTRA and Baza, which is linked to Russia's security services, reported on Thursday that Robertus had been found "hanged" in his office.

This marks at least the fourth death of a top executive at Lukoil since Russia's war in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.

"The top manager committed suicide and died of asphyxia. He worked for the company for about 30 years," Baza said.

https://www.newsweek.com/vitaly-robertu ... ow-1879214