Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Monday, December 22, 2025 09:07
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PAGE 193 of 193

Friday, December 19, 2025 12:57 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

December 19, 2025

When addressing responsibility for the invasion, Putin again falsely claimed that Russia did not start the war and that he bears no responsibility for the deaths it has caused.

"We do not consider ourselves responsible for the deaths of people because we did not start this war," he said, falsely accusing Ukraine of lacking readiness for peace.

The claim contradicts overwhelming evidence that Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, killing tens of thousands of civilians and displacing millions.

https://kyivindependent.com/putin-opens-annual-presser-with-maximalist
-demands/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, December 19, 2025 1:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 4:53 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Europe kicks the €210 billion question down the road

EU leaders told the Commission to keep trying. The deadline: end of 2027.

By Peeter Helme | Dec 19, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/19/eu-delays-210bn-frozen-assets-e
nd-2027/

The European Union’s €90 billion ($105 billion) loan for Ukraine isn’t an ending. It’s a countdown. EU leaders approved the emergency funding early Friday after disagreeing on tapping €210 billion ($246 billion) in frozen Russian assets, according to European Council conclusions.

But they also gave the Commission a mandate to keep working on the reparations loan mechanism—and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made clear where this is heading.

“Financing Ukraine beyond 2027 will be part of the next long-term EU budget discussion,” she wrote on X.

“We reserve our right to use the cash balances from Russian assets immobilised in the EU to finance the loan.”

Translation: the €90 billion buys time. The fight for the frozen assets continues.

The 2027 problem

The €90 billion covers roughly two-thirds of Ukraine’s estimated needs through 2027. After that, Europe faces the same question it just ducked: borrow more, or finally touch Russia’s money?

One EU diplomat told Reuters the compromise amounted to “saving face” rather than solving the problem.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 4:56 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ukraine cannot continue to survive on Europe’s starvation rations

Editorial: Despite agreeing to a €90bn interest-free loan that could keep Kyiv afloat for two years, European leaders seem unduly nervous about forcing Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. If Europe is ever to defeat Russia, it must now go further – or risk humiliation

Friday 19 December 2025 14:43 EST

https://www.the-independent.com/voices/editorials/ukraine-russia-eu-lo
an-putin-war-b2887890.html

Unlike some of his more aloof predecessors, the latest autocrat running Russia doesn’t mind subjecting himself to lengthy media questioning, if only once a year, as a kind of pre-Christmas treat for himself.

Vladimir Putin enjoys delivering rambling lectures as much as his American counterpart, though the Russian president’s aren’t quite so angry and possess more of a scholarly veneer, fake as it is. His latest marathon press conference does, however, serve to confirm that this is a leader who is determined to achieve his maximalist strategy in Ukraine by whatever means suit him best at any given point.

These include multi-spoked diplomacy to divide the EU (Hungary being the weapon of choice), peeling America out of Nato, military activity on the battleground, espionage and disinformation abroad, and, of course, bombing and freezing Ukrainian civilians to death. He can also tap up powerful allies in China, India and Iran for financial support, dual-purpose technology, weaponry and even manpower to support his crude “meatgrinder” method of war.

At this moment, President Putin is content to maintain an involved but uncompromising stance in the peace talks, while simultaneously pressing on with his slow advances on the ground, and the indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure, be it power plants or kindergartens. If his friends in the US administration – including Donald Trump himself – manage to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky into surrendering territory that Russia hasn’t been able to capture in the fighting, and to disarm Ukraine, then so much the better. Russia can then regroup while America relaxes its economic sanctions, and prepare for the next invasion.

If not, and the war drags on, then Putin won’t mind either the human cost – more than one million Russian casualties so far – or the stress to the Russian economy. His goal of occupying Ukraine, extinguishing its national identity, and integrating it into his empire makes any sacrifice made by his people worthwhile. It would cement his regime in permanent power – and, in his review, consolidate Russia’s superpower status – and would command the respect of his enemies at home and abroad. He likes to be feared – another thing he shares with Mr Trump.

Unlike Mr Trump, though, Russia’s leader is normally calm in demeanour, and, as it suits him to at the moment, gives the impression that he is relaxed about the glacially slow progress of his “special military operation”. He also seems rather pleased about the disarray in Europe in recent days. He derides European leaders as “piglets”, and as “burglars” attempting to steal the $200bn (£150bn) of Russian financial assets that have been frozen in the European clearing system since his unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Sadly for Europe, the EU leaders are far from a ruthless, well-organised gang of jewel thieves. Instead, they resemble a squabbling band of amateurs, with some members under suspicion of wanting to help the Kremlin rather than frustrate it, and openly obstructing the attempt to make Russia pay for its aggression.

In the end, the Europeans stumped up an interest-free loan of €90bn (£79bn) for Ukraine. This, it is claimed, will keep the Kyiv government running for a year or two. The unspoken assumption is that, by 2027, when the war will be in its sixth year, the Russians will be so exhausted, and their economy and war machine struggling to such an extent, that Moscow will be forced to sue for peace. At that point, a fairer settlement can be achieved – and with it, the return of most of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence.

Perhaps. But there are pressures on Ukraine, too, such as running out of soldiers. It is also beyond doubt that Russia’s friends will continue to support the Kremlin, and even possible that the US will rapidly relax its sanctions and allow Russia to rejoin the world economy, so that Mr Trump can pursue lucrative real estate and other deals.

Europe, in other words, has once again given Ukraine “just enough”. Just enough, that is, to keep Ukraine going and avoid it being overrun by the Russians – but not enough for its military to achieve decisive victories and push the enemy back, as it has managed to do before.

European allies are twitchy about the Ukrainians’ use of long-range weaponry to hit deep inside Russia and elsewhere, such as the successful strikes on Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” of oil tankers. Some fear a nuclear conflagration, though Russia has done no more than make idle threats about that.

In other words, Europe seems unduly and perversely nervous about giving Ukraine what it needs to actually force the Russians to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, some European nations are still buying Russian gas.

Contrary to President Trump’s wishful thinking, this war is unlikely to be over by Christmas. The cruelties and the attrition will continue into the spring and the summer, and in a year, the battle lines will be more or less where they are now. Europe, divided and unwilling to spend more money on its defence, seems set to be not much more resolute than it was in the early days, when Berlin wanted to limit its military assistance to some new helmets for the Ukrainian troops.

Such a dismal situation may be inevitable, given the differences between European governments and their complacent electorates – but it is not sustainable. Ukraine cannot continue to survive on starvation rations from Brussels.

Europe, including Britain, therefore needs to decide whether it actually wants to defeat Russia. The opportunity to do so is still there, and, with Ukraine as an ally, victory would turn Europe into a fortress against a revanchist Russia.

If not, then everything that has been done thus far, all the lives lost and the money spent, will have been in vain. Ukraine will cease to exist. Europe, humiliated, will be left at President Putin’s mercy, fretting about where he will act next: Estonia? Moldova? Finland? Poland?

An enlarged, emboldened and stronger Russia will menace Europe for decades to come, Europeans will have only themselves to blame, and this time the Americans won’t rescue them. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 5:46 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

“You do nothing and you can still be shot”: Ukrainian woman describes torture in Russian detention

By Kathrine Frich | Dec 20, 2025

https://www.dagens.com/war/you-do-nothing-and-you-can-still-be-shot-uk
rainian-woman-describes-torture-in-russian-detention

Life under occupation reshapes daily routines in ways that are hard to imagine from afar.

For civilians trapped behind shifting front lines, survival often depends on silence, luck and endurance.

One Ukrainian woman’s testimony offers a rare account of what that reality looked like from the inside.

Early disappearances

According to The Insider, Olena Yagupova lived in Kamianka-Dniprovska, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, when Russian forces took control of the area in the first days of the full-scale invasion.

She said order was imposed quickly through patrols, checkpoints and house-to-house searches.

“People started disappearing from the very beginning,” Yagupova told The Insider, describing how residents were detained without explanation.

She said workers from the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant were among those targeted.

“They had lists of the plant’s employees,” she said, adding that some people were pressured into cooperation while others were tortured or sent to dig fortifications. Communication with the outside world, she said, was almost impossible.

Arrest without charges

Yagupova said she was detained on October 6, 2022.

Her husband served in the Ukrainian army, and she had worked in regional public administration, factors she believes made her a target.

“They had no warrant and no charges,” she said.

An FSB officer and members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic searched her home, she said, taking property before moving her to a local police station.

“They suffocated me with bags, tortured me with electricity, simulated execution, raped me,” Yagupova said.

She described two days of abuse aimed at forcing false confessions, followed by months in detention without formal accusations.

Life in detention

She told The Insider she spent four months in pre-trial detention, often sleeping on the floor in overcrowded cells during winter. “In pretrial detention, your goal is to live one day,” she said.

Food was scarce, water limited and medical care nonexistent, she said.

Guards forced detainees to sing the Russian anthem for hours while beatings took place.

Many inmates, she added, were civilians detained for minor or unclear reasons.

A guard once gave her a book, she recalled. “Read it, it will be useful to you,” he said. The book was about the Nuremberg Trials.

Forced labor

In January 2023, Yagupova said she was transferred from detention to a labor camp. Before the transfer, she said, officials filmed a video claiming she had been released.

“They forced us to dig trenches and demine the fields,” she said. Such videos, she added, were meant to mislead families and avoid responsibility.

In October 2025, the International Criminal Court in The Hague accepted Yagupova’s testimony, according to The Insider, adding her account to a growing body of evidence about alleged abuses in occupied Ukrainian territories.

Sources: The Insider, International Criminal Court, Digi24.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 5:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

Seriously dude. Fuck yet another Democratic money laundering scheme that was your Ukraine bullshit.

We're done with that too.

The fleecing of Americans by Democrats comes to an end here.

You lose. Forever.

Checkmate.

--------------------------------------------------

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 5:58 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

A Russian cargo plane broke in half—because Russian industry is broken, too

A Russian air force An-22 that disintegrated near Moscow is indicative of deeper Russian dysfunction.

By David Axe | 19/12/2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/19/an-22-crash/

• The crash of a Russian air force airlifter speaks to a wider problem
• Russian warplanes are wearing out faster than Russia can replace them
• The Russian air force is doomed to shrink as more planes get grounded ... or crash

The Russian air force Antonov An-22 heavylift transport plane that broke in half and crashed near Ivanovo air base 250 km west of Moscow on 14 December may have been the last An-22 in Russian service.

The horrific crash, captured on video from the ground, underscores a growing problem for the Russian air force as Russia's wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fifth year: Russian warplanes are wearing out faster than Russian factories can replace them.

The Russian air arm is still much bigger than the Ukrainian air force and boasts capabilities the Ukrainian air arm lacks, such as heavy bombers and stealth fighters. But the Russian air force, or VKS, will almost certainly shrink, a lot—and not just because its aircraft are getting shot down by Ukrainian missiles and blown up on the ground by Ukrainian drones.

No, the Russian air force will shrink because many of its roughly 1,700 fixed-wing aircraft—fighters, attack jets, bombers, and transports—will simply wear out from overuse in the wider war.

"It wouldn't shock me if by the time the war in Ukraine ends, between combat losses, wear/tear and aging of its already old aircraft fleet, [the] VKS might end up being down ~40% from its pre-war fleet of combat aircraft," Czech analyst Jakub Janovsky predicted.

The four-engine, turboprop An-22 that crashed near Moscow, killing seven people, was around 50 years old, but continued in service a year past its anticipated retirement, likely owing to the demands of the Russian war effort. Russian transport aircraft shuttle troops and supplies around Russia and also deliver cruise missiles to Russian bomber bases shortly before those bombers strike Ukrainian cities.

The Fighterbomber Telegram channel claimed it was the last An-22 in air force use. The giant turboprop could haul 80,000 kg of cargo and land on rough airstrips.

An airlifter can safely fly for 50 years or even longer if it's properly maintained, overhauled, and upgraded. But it's evident from the An-22's mid-air disintegration that it wasn't properly maintained, overhauled, and upgraded.

The problem may be endemic across the Russian air force fleet. Maintenance isn't keeping up with use as Russian planes relentlessly bombard Ukraine.

It's a problem Defense News identified as early as March 2024. "The Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS, continues to burn through the life span of its fighter aircraft in the war against Ukraine," the trade publication reported.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/2000268262672896151/

Combat losses aren't the real problem

The Russians have lost around 170 aircraft in combat in Ukraine since February 2022. That's 10% of the pre-war fleet.

Russian factories have produced enough new aircraft to replace virtually all of the combat losses.

But they haven't produced enough new aircraft to make up for older planes that become unflyable owing to metal fatigue.

Consider the Sukhoi Su-34 and Sukhoi Su-35, respectively—the Russian air force's best attack plane and best fighter. The VKS went to war in February 2022 with around 130 Su-34s and 100 Su-35s. In 45 months of hard fighting, the air arm has lost 35 Su-34s and eight Su-35s.

Over the same span of time, Sukhoi has delivered around 39 Su-34s and 26 Su-35s, more than making good combat losses. But that doesn't mean the air force's inventory isn't shrinking.

"A subset of its fleets has built up significant fatigue hours," the Royal United Services Institute in London explained in a recent report.

RUSI noted that Russian industry is scaling up production of other key weapons—tanks, drones, and missiles—tenfold in order to replace lost and expended hardware ... and also hardware that simply wears out. But the Russian aviation industry probably can't increase its output tenfold.

Why Russian factories can't keep up

"At the higher level, Russia's aviation industry appears to be a strong sovereign sector with advanced indigenous capabilities," the think tank noted. "However, once one begins to examine the second- and third-tier suppliers, the robustness of Russia's aviation industry appears less assured."

The sector depends on a skilled workforce and a steady supply of foreign components. The workforce is under stress. And sanctions have disrupted the flow of foreign parts—Ukrainian intelligence has identified over 2,000 imported electronic components in Russian Su-series fighter jets.

"The difficulties Russia has encountered to achieve even small increases in [aircraft] production, in a sector with comparatively fewer sanctions than other parts of its defense industry, speaks to a range of vulnerabilities across the Sukhoi supply chain," RUSI observed.
A shrinking fleet

Those vulnerabilities are why there aren't enough new planes reaching VKS regiments. And why older planes continue to fly even when they're unsafe.

Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service has reported that Russian airlines could lose nearly 30% of their aircraft by 2030 as sanctions strangle the aviation sector—and the military side faces similar pressures. The Russian air force is doomed to shrink as more worn-out planes get permanently parked ... or crash.

Explore further
Frontline report: Russia’s military air fleet is unraveling aircraft by aircraft, crew by crew

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 7:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
A Russian cargo plane broke in half—because Russian industry is broken, too

Oh. I'm sure it is.

Get fucked, loser.

You're a fucking idiot.

--------------------------------------------------

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 3:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine cannot continue to survive on Europe’s starvation rations

Then maybe they should stop wasting money on gold toilets.

------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Sunday, December 21, 2025 6:44 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to seize all of Ukraine and ultimately restore control over parts of Europe that once belonged to the Soviet empire, according to six sources familiar with US intelligence assessments.

These conclusions contradict the Kremlin’s public claims that Russia poses no threat to Europe and directly refute Putin’s own denials.

Despite these assessments, the Donald Trump administration continues to claim that Russia is interested in peace, even as US intelligence agencies maintain the opposite view.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/20/us-intelligence-say-putin-wants
-ukraine-baltics-poland-and-more-trumps-team-says-russia-wants-peace/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, December 21, 2025 10:58 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Who Wins Wars — and Why (Introduction)

As Samuel Charap, one of the leading analysts of the Russian military for the Rand Corporation – arguably the US government’s most important strategic studies think tank – described the situation, Russia was so strong that the west should not even bother to arm Ukraine:

Russia has the ability to carry out a large-scale joint offensive operation involving tens of thousands of personnel, thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of combat aircraft. It would likely begin with devastating air and missile strikes from land, air, and naval forces, striking deep into Ukraine to attack headquarters, airfields, and logistics points. Ukrainian forces would begin the conflict nearly surrounded from the very start, with Russian forces arrayed along the eastern border, naval and amphibious forces threatening from the Black Sea in the south, and the potential (increasingly real) for additional Russian forces to deploy into Belarus and threaten from the north, where the border is less than 65 miles from Kyiv itself.

‘U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine: A Silver Bullet?’, Rand Corporation, 21 January 2022,
https://www.rand.org/blog/2022/01/us-military-aid-to-ukraine-a-silver-
bullet.html

As Charap and his co-author argued, US weapons could ‘do nothing’ to change the basic flaws in the Ukrainian military, nor did they represent a threat large enough to deter Russia. As such, it would be best to leave Ukraine to accept its doomed fate and throw itself on the mercy of Putin’s Russia. This was no one-off. It was a vision of Russian power and Ukrainian weakness that had been used for years to argue against providing Ukraine with modern weaponry – on the assumption that Ukrainian conventional resistance against the great power of Russia and its military was doomed.

In speaking this way, Charap and others were parroting (without properly interrogating) the great power paradigm that has been in wide-scale operation since the nineteenth century. Even more unfortunately, Charap and other analysts who believed Russia would conquer Ukraine easily argued publicly for strict limitations on weapons to be sent to Ukraine. It was part and parcel of why Ukraine was so short of advanced weapons when the Russians invaded, and has arguably resulted in the limitation of what Ukraine has been sent since. This has led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians (and Russians), and shaped a war that could have been over far more quickly. It should have been the nail in the coffin of a concept that never made much sense to begin with. Sadly, the idea of great powers, probably because of its deceptive ease, has lived on. But we need to drop the whole phrase entirely – before it gets even more people needlessly killed in wars that cannot be won by non-existent ‘great’ powers.

From the introduction to War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why
By Phillips Payson O'Brien [2025]
https://z-lib.fm/s/?q=Phillips+Payson+O%27Brien+War+Power
https://z-lib.fm/book/120019548/4ff78e/war-and-power-who-wins-warsand-
why.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 22, 2025 6:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

From Chapter 10, States vs Alliances, in War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why
By Phillips Payson O'Brien [2025]

The experience of the war in the Middle East also revealed that the US had forgotten its failure in South Vietnam and the extreme difficulty of trying to create an ally who would fight for it. The United States’ intervention in Afghanistan started in 2001, just days after 9/11. Over the next two decades, the US is estimated to have spent an eyewatering $2.3 trillion on the intervention.25 This is larger than the GDP of all but a handful of nations. At the same time, the human cost was large. The US lost 2,324 military personnel and 3,917 contractors, and 1,144 allied troops died as well. Afghani deaths were exponentially higher; considering those who died on all sides and civilians killed, the number would probably reach into the hundreds of thousands.26 All this expense was in vain. Different US governments from both parties, including the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, tried many different strategies to try to establish a workable Afghanistan government that could outlast the US occupation. In other words, the United States tried to create an ally where none existed. The results made the American intervention in Vietnam and the earlier Soviet intervention in Afghanistan look like relative successes. The US-installed regime, with its large army well-equipped with US weapons, outlasted the occupation by a few hours. Without US military force, America’s putative Afghan ally was doomed. It was one of the most disastrous attempts to create an ally in human history.

And it had a further disaster in that it led to the US failing to understand that Ukraine offered the exact opposite case – a possible ally who wanted US friendship and support and would be willing to do the fighting. In Ukraine, the US was presented with a chance to help a people who wanted to build a democratic system and were more than willing to risk their own lives and futures to do so. At the same time, the Ukrainians were fighting the greatest threat to US security in Europe – Vladimir Putin’s Russia. However, the US seemed to have totally lost any ability to properly judge its own interest and the strength of its possible allies, and instead prepared to sacrifice Ukraine to Russia before the Russian Army had even crossed the border.

The assumption that the Biden administration had made (and those around Donald Trump had as well) was that Ukraine would be quickly conquered. Indeed, the administration thought so little of the Ukrainians’ willingness to fight for themselves that they engaged in a bout of self-pity. On the eve of the Russian invasion, the president bemoaned his own fate, saying: ‘Jesus Christ! Now I’ve got to deal with Russia swallowing Ukraine?’27

Sadly for the US and the democratic world, the Biden administration was never able to adjust its understanding of the value of Ukraine as an ally. It continued to view Russia as some great power that should not be defeated and Ukraine as a small power that needed modest support, but who could never be a true ally. Biden kept Ukraine from being given a clear path to NATO membership and also strictly limited the military aid given to the Ukrainian military. Crucially, Ukraine was given US aid to fight only a limited-range war, and was forbidden to attack Russian military targets in Russia (even those which were being used almost daily to attack civilian targets in Ukraine). The result was that the Biden administration transformed what could have been a Ukrainian victory into a long-term, bloody and grotesque attritional struggle that resembled World War I (with drones) more than anything else.

It was a catastrophic view that stretched the gamut of failure from all aspects of war and power. Biden had, like US presidents before him, such as Trump and Obama, failed to understand that Ukraine was not some insignificant state whose people would give up in the face of Russian power. The Ukrainians had a strong sense of identity and the economic/technological ability to create their own effective military force. Moreover, their growing, open system allowed for a more flexible military culture that had enabled them to plan effectively for the Russian invasion. In other words, Ukraine had a number of areas of strength, and many of the qualities needed to be an effective ally.

In the end, though, this underrating of allies has been one of the great failures of the post-World War II world. While it was widely understood that both world wars were won by alliance groupings, after 1945 too much attention was paid to the supposed ‘great’ or even ‘super’ or ‘hegemonic’ powers. It has been a tragic mistake that has led continually to wars that should never have been fought. As a rule of thumb, it is normally the case that you cannot make an ally fight for you if they do not wish to, but an ally that does want to fight is worth its weight in gold.

https://z-lib.fm/s/?q=Phillips+Payson+O%27Brien+War+Power
https://z-lib.fm/book/120019548/4ff78e/war-and-power-who-wins-warsand-
why.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 22, 2025 7:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

High-ranking Russian general killed in Moscow car bombing

By Kateryna Hodunova | December 22, 2025 10:54 am

https://kyivindependent.com/high-ranking-russian-general-killed-after-
car-bombing-in-moscow-russia-cites-possible-ukrainian-involvement/

Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff's operational training department, was killed in a car bombing in Moscow on Dec. 22, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

An explosive device attached to the underside of the lieutenant general's car detonated in the morning on Yaseneva Street in Moscow. Sarvarov was taken to the hospital but later died from his injuries.

Russia's Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case into the killing and that investigators and forensic experts were working at the scene. Security forces were also examining the site, interviewing witnesses, and reviewing CCTV footage.

Investigators are considering multiple lines of inquiry, including a possible link to Ukrainian special services, the committee said.

The Kyiv Independent cannot independently verify the Russian Investigative Committee's claims.

Sarvarov was appointed head of the Russian Armed Forces' operational training department in 2016. Sarvarov previously served in Syria from 2015 to 2016.

Ukraine has not been officially linked to the car bombing and is yet to comment, though Kyiv has previously targeted Russian officials involved in Moscow's full-scale invasion.

Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Armed Forces' radiation, chemical, and biological defense troops, was killed in an explosion at a residence in Moscow in December 2024, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine told the Kyiv Independent.

Mikhail Shatsky, a Russian expert involved in modernizing missiles launched against Ukraine, was shot dead near Moscow on Dec. 12, 2024, a Defense Forces source told the Kyiv Independent.

Aleksey Kolomeitsev, a Russian colonel who trained specialists in the use of attack drones, was killed in the city of Kolomna in Moscow Oblast, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) reported on Sept. 28, 2024.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 22, 2025 7:42 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

‘We are f–king fascists’ — Pussy Riot memoir looks at everything wrong with Russia

By Kate Tsurkan | December 21, 2025 7:27 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/we-are-f-king-fascists-pussy-riot-memoir-l
ooks-at-everything-wrong-with-russia/

Upon being released from prison in December 2013 after serving time for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” Russian political activist Maria Alyokhina observes that she and her fellow Pussy Riot punk group members “arrived in a different country.”

Outwardly, Russia sought to convey to the world during this period that it was a serious global power through events such as the Sochi Winter Olympics. The reality, as Alyokhina writes, was completely different: just a few months later, Russia would launch its war against Ukraine, annexing the Crimean Peninsula and sparking a fight in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

As Russian soldiers began to commit violence abroad, Russian society itself descended into something darker: “The authorities give the green light to create violence within our own country. The number of Nazi groups increases. Gopniks with St. George’s Ribbons, calling themselves patriots, attack and beat up anyone who disagrees with the new ‘patriotism’.”

Alyokhina’s new book, “Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia,” covers the period from her first release from prison to her escape from Russia in the spring of 2022, a span that coincides with some of the darkest moments in the country’s recent history. These years are punctuated by events such as the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny — episodes that function less as narrative climaxes than as recurring markers of a system sliding deeper into repression.

The book lingers unevenly on these moments, but the inconsistency appears deliberate rather than careless. The effect, when the episodes are read in close succession, is cumulative rather than dramatic. What emerges is not only a record of political violence in contemporary Russia, but an account of how quickly the extraordinary becomes habitual — how catastrophe, repeated often enough, loses its capacity to shock.

Against the often fractured and polemical discourse that characterizes much writing by Russian exiles, Alyokhina’s book stands out for its clarity of judgment. She does not avoid the question of Russian society’s collective guilt for the war, unlike those who claim “if everyone is guilty then nobody is guilty.”

Instead, Alyokhina insists on holding together two uncomfortable truths: that she did what she could to change the country, repeatedly and at increasing personal cost, and that Russian society at large remains complicit in the horrors that followed. The book’s moral weight lies precisely in this refusal to convert individual resistance into collective exoneration.

“I’m afraid to say the most important thing out loud — a verdict," she writes about the Bucha Massacre. "(It’s a verdict) on all of us. I’m not sure Russia has the right to exist after this."

The horror of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine is intensified by how quickly much of Russian society appears to embrace the conflict, Alyokhina writes, with many insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “doing the right thing.” The Kremlin’s survival is bound up with the machinery of war: it is not only a tool of foreign aggression but a domestic imperative, used to consolidate loyalty and suppress dissent as Alyokhina observes with unflinching bluntness: “Numbness. We are f–king fascists.”

A substantial portion of “Political Girl” is devoted to documenting Russia’s crimes against Ukraine, while also noting related injustices like the persecution of the Crimean Tatars or the Kremlin-backed repression in Belarus. Alyokhina details the meticulous planning behind Pussy Riot’s high-profile actions, both in Russia and abroad, aimed at securing the release of political prisoners such as Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov.

Taken together, these episodes underscore a central argument of the book: that criticism of one’s country can constitute the deepest form of love for it. While Russian authorities brand dissenters like Alyokhina as “traitors,” her actions show that any hope of a more just society depends on confronting the enduring authoritarian structures that block such reform.

Throughout the book, Alyokhina also makes clear the heavy moral toll on those who dare to speak out, even as the dangers mount. In the shadow of the full-scale war, when dissent in Russia has become dangerous to an unprecedented degree, she captures the grim logic that makes prison feel, in her words, “the only honest thing” to do. Yet such sacrifices yield little. As one young activist tells her after serving a sentence: “Nothing has changed. I did (my time), I got out, and nothing has changed at all.”

Through her repeated encounters with Center E, the government agency tasked with combating “extremism,” Alyokhina confronts the chilling workings of an authoritarian state. In Putin’s Russia, “extremism” simply means freedom of speech, assembly, and independent thought.

When Alyokhina and her fellow activists try to exercise these basic rights, overly friendly strangers strike up conversations, probe for opinions, or try to provoke conflicts. The tactics are crude but relentless, and over time, the activists learn to recognize them. What emerges is less a cat-and-mouse game than a new social grammar, where suspicion becomes ordinary.

Alyokhina’s repeated attempts to cross the border in the spring of 2022 after fleeing house arrest are Kafkaesque in the most literal sense. With each effort, a creeping sense of anxiety builds, leaving the reader constantly on edge, unsure how she will finally manage to escape and avoid being thrust back into the relentless machinery of the Russian prison system.

While “Political Girl” is worthy of praise, one is left to ask, in the end, what can be taken from these accounts. Alyokhina writes that she and her fellow activists showed the world the “true face” of Putin. Yet he just recently taunted European leaders as “piglets” and promised to continue pursuing his war aims in Ukraine, whether through threats masked as diplomacy or by force.

The threat of another front opening elsewhere in Europe looms, with the same disbelief being voiced by those who thought a war in Ukraine was impossible. If the testimonies of persecuted Russian activists, Ukrainian soldiers, survivors of Russian atrocities, and all those who have seen Russia for what it is fail to spur meaningful action, the question looms: what can be done, and by whom, in the face of such relentless brutality? An attempt to answer this question, or at least to unpack it, is largely missing from the book.

The quality of the translation is also one of the book’s biggest setbacks. Several Russian transliterations of Ukrainian cities mar it: “Kiev” appears instead of the now-standard “Kyiv,” and “Slavyansk” instead of “Sloviansk.” (Ironically, “borshch” is correctly spelled.) The Russian transliteration lapses are unfortunate, as they diminish the moral clarity of Alyokhina’s work.

However, it is not an isolated case. A number of other recent Russian books in translation show similar inconsistencies, including former Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s posthumous memoir and journalist Dmitry Bykov’s biography of President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the latter even switching between Ukrainian and Russian spellings depending on the speaker — a subtle trick that still reinforces imperial conventions.

Ultimately, “Political Girl” is more than a memoir. It is a searing indictment of the moral and political rot that permeates contemporary Russia, implicating not only those who wield power but also those who willingly look away.

Alyokhina’s account leaves no doubt about the depth of the country’s authoritarian entrenchment and the personal cost of resisting it. The book is both a record of personal courage and of collective failure: it testifies to what some dared to do, while exposing how much more could — and should — have been done to avoid the horrors of the reality we live in now.

Note from the author:

Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading this article. There is an ever-increasing amount of books about or related to Ukraine, Russia, and Russia's ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine available to English-language readers, and I hope my recommendations prove useful when it comes to your next trip to the bookstore.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 22, 2025 7:46 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to seize all of Ukraine and ultimately restore control over parts of Europe that once belonged to the Soviet empire, according to six sources familiar with US intelligence assessments.

First of all ... anonymous "sources familiar with"? Not one of our intelligence agencies directly?
Who?
Since originally "reported" in Reuters (a British publication) was it British sppoks making up shit again, like the Steele "dossier"?

Secondly, Tulsi Gabbard herself publicly said no such report exists, and she laid it at the feet of those working against a negotiated settlement.

We can always count on you, SECOND, to bring us the latest propaganda so we know what the deep state wants us to think.

Thank you for your service.

-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Monday, December 22, 2025 8:01 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

EU sanctions Jacques Baud, a SWISS Retired Colonel who was a Swiss Intelligence officer and analyst.

Quote:
Jacques Baud, a retired Swiss colonel with a background in intelligence services and peacekeeping work, has been sanctioned by the EU for being a "mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda".

Baud, who resides in Belgium, has now had all his assets frozen and faces a travel ban within the union. He himself rejects the accusations and maintains that he never uses Russian material in his books.

Jacques Baud is a former member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service and a specialist on Eastern European countries. He has served as head of the UN Doctrine for Peacekeeping Operations and participated in negotiations with senior Russian military and intelligence officers directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Within NATO, he participated in various programs in Ukraine, particularly during the Maidan Revolution in 2014.

https://nordictimes.com/europe/swiss-ex-colonel-sanctioned-by-eu-for-p
ro-russian-propaganda/

I have listened to Col Baud, and he is one of the clearest, most level-headed analysts of the war.

Eurocrats can no longer tolerate objective, reasoned analysis. The EU is an unelected bureaucracy that slipped into authoritarianism and now requires total allegiance to its warmaking objective.

-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Monday, December 22, 2025 9:07 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I have listened to Col Baud, and he is one of the clearest, most level-headed analysts of the war.

Eurocrats can no longer tolerate objective, reasoned analysis. The EU is an unelected bureaucracy that slipped into authoritarianism and now requires total allegiance to its warmaking objective.

There is no confirmed information in the provided sources that Jacques Baud is directly paid by the Russian government. He does, however, regularly appear on pro-Russian media programs and has been sanctioned by the European Union for spreading Russian propaganda.

Key Details

• Sanctions: The EU has added Baud to its sanctions list for "information manipulation and influence operations" that undermine stability in Ukraine, which the EU attributes to actions supporting the Russian government. These sanctions include an asset freeze and a travel ban within the EU, and prohibit EU citizens and companies from providing him with funds. This makes it difficult for him to receive royalties from his French publisher within the EU, for example.

• Allegations of Propaganda: Baud, a retired Swiss army colonel and former NATO and UN analyst, is described by sources as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda. His claims include that Ukraine orchestrated its own invasion to join NATO and questioning Russian responsibility in the Bucha massacre.

• Baud’s Denials: Jacques Baud rejects accusations that he spreads conspiracy theories and, in turn, has accused his own detractors of being "paid by foreigners".

• Known Income Sources: His current main publisher is the French company Max Milo. He is also an author of several books on intelligence and war.

While the EU has sanctioned him for actions supporting the Russian government's narrative, there is no direct evidence in the provided search results confirming a salary or direct payment from the Russian state to Jacques Baud. His financial support seems to come from his publications and media appearances, although the source of funding for the pro-Russian platforms he appears on is not specified.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Jacques+Baud+paid+by+Russia

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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