Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

This thread is incredible. UK Russian Embassy is trying to claim the Mariupol hospital victims are fake.



It shouldn't come as a surprise as their strategy has always been to lie, deflect, and launch counter accusations. Very much in line with old school Soviet tactics, which should come as little surprise since many of these folks leading Russian military and intel institutions came up through the Soviet KGB ranks.
 
It shouldn't come as a surprise as their strategy has always been to lie, deflect, and launch counter accusations. Very much in line with old school Soviet tactics, which should come as little surprise since many of these folks leading Russian military and intel institutions came up through the Soviet KGB ranks.
They've now started doxxing the victim.
 
It shouldn't come as a surprise as their strategy has always been to lie, deflect, and launch counter accusations. Very much in line with old school Soviet tactics, which should come as little surprise since many of these folks leading Russian military and intel institutions came up through the Soviet KGB ranks.

Sama as Israel
 
That's a bit cringe. The pics were taken by his official photographer, and no doubt slightly acted. There's a certain flavour of 'instagram virtue signal' here
As someone who's heard a lot of Putin's rants (not personally though) I can confirm that this reaction is probably completely genuine. He can't even hang up.
 
As someone who's heard a lot of Putin's rants (not personally though) I can confirm that this reaction is probably completely genuine. He can't even hang up.

Even if the reaction was genuine the pictures are supposed to be from February. Their publication is out of context.
 
There have been a number of recent podcasts about Putin, discussing how hard it would be to pry him out from within. Many believe it would require the Soloviki to take action in some way; specifically some combination of Patrushev, Bortnikov, Naryshkin, and Shoigu. Many of these guys are either old KGB cronies of Putin's dating back to the 70s and/or (in the case of Patrushev) corrupt St. Petersburg conspiracy theorists who are actually fueling Putin's imperialist views instead of pushing back against them. Putin has also managed to diversify away from the old KGB crowd incase they decide to move against him but putting an outside like Shoigu in charge of the military. This would make it very hard to plot a successful coup against him because not all of the necessary players would be sufficiently unified to keep it a secret for long enough to pull it off.

But circling back to sanctions, these are definitely the guys who need to be targeted (along with all family members remotely close to them) instead of the the usual caviar slurping Oligarchs with mega yachts who have little sway to influence Putin's behavior.
Siloviki*. Soloviki is an interesting combination of that word and Solovki, famous GULAG camp — if you were Russian I'd call it a Freudian slip but it just seems like a curious coincidence.

But yeah, his whole hierarchical system is based on the principle of personal loyalty & most of the guys that have access to him have been close to him for many, many decades. Even someone like Hitler had an internal conflict between the party and the military with him seriously favouring the former (which lead to the most famous coup).
 
Siloviki*. Soloviki is an interesting combination of that word and Solovki, famous GULAG camp — if you were Russian I'd call it a Freudian slip but it just seems like a curious coincidence.

But yeah, his whole hierarchical system is based on the principle of personal loyalty & most of the guys that have access to him have been close to him for many, many decades. Even someone like Hitler had an internal conflict between the party and the military with him seriously favouring the former (which lead to the most famous coup).

Maybe he is. Maybe he was an operative in Cuba and decided to use a spanish sounding username instead of his actual russian name, Ruslan.
 
Siloviki*. Soloviki is an interesting combination of that word and Solovki, famous GULAG camp — if you were Russian I'd call it a Freudian slip but it just seems like a curious coincidence.

But yeah, his whole hierarchical system is based on the principle of personal loyalty & most of the guys that have access to him have been close to him for many, many decades. Even someone like Hitler had an internal conflict between the party and the military with him seriously favouring the former (which lead to the most famous coup).

At least it didn't autocorrect to Soulvaki and send me to a nearby Greek restaurant.
 
It's an acronym:

Russia
and
our
ukrainian
lebensraum

That's an interesting theory. A russian operative that grew up in GDR and moved to the US as a teenager. He was wronged by Putin and pledged to take his revenge.
 
FNgI_WnXwAASJch
 



Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Konashenkov: The United States is training migratory birds to migrate from Ukraine to Russia and spread pathogens.

@Raoul looks like the angry birds are flying back in