Finden sie das mal in nicht rechten Medien

14. September 2023

… also im deutsch­spra­chi­gen Medienspektrum.

Selen­skyj zuckt dann mal low key auf der YES con­fe­rence gegen­über dem Eco­no­mist aus.

Tap­ping loud­ly on the table, Mr Zelen­sky rejects out­right the idea of com­pro­mi­se with Vla­di­mir Putin. War will con­ti­nue for “as long as Rus­sia remains on Ukrai­ni­an ter­ri­to­ry”, he says. A nego­tia­ted deal would not be per­ma­nent. The Rus­si­an pre­si­dent has a habit of crea­ting “fro­zen con­flicts” on Russia’s bor­ders (in Geor­gia, for examp­le), not as ends in them­sel­ves but becau­se his goal is to “res­to­re the Soviet Uni­on”. Tho­se who choo­se to talk to the man in the Krem­lin are “tricking them­sel­ves”, much like the Wes­tern lea­ders who signed an agree­ment with Adolf Hit­ler at Munich in 1938 only to watch him inva­de Czecho­slo­va­kia. “The mista­ke is not diplo­ma­cy. The mista­ke is diplo­ma­cy with Putin. He nego­tia­tes only with himself.”

Curtail­ing aid to Ukrai­ne will only pro­long the war, Mr Zelen­sky argues. And it would crea­te risks for the West in its own backy­ard. The­re is no way of pre­dic­ting how the mil­li­ons of Ukrai­ni­an refu­gees in Euro­pean coun­tries would react to their coun­try being aban­do­ned. Ukrai­ni­ans have gene­ral­ly “beha­ved well” and are “very gra­te­ful” to tho­se who shel­te­red them. They will not for­get that gene­ro­si­ty. But it would not be a “good sto­ry” for Euro­pe if it were to “dri­ve the­se peop­le into a corner”.

src: click

Schö­ne Demo­kra­tien habt ihr da. Wär scha­de wenn das nicht mehr so gut wei­ter läuft…

Was war passiert?

Nuland ist passiert.

Kocht gleich bei der ers­ten Fra­ge hoch:

Naja, also nach der nächs­ten Tran­che an 20 Mil­li­ar­den bekommt die Ukrai­ne erst­mal län­ger nichts, denn in den US sind wir ja in einem Wahlkampfjahr.

Ach­ja und die F-16 sind auch mehr so zur Luft­ver­tei­di­gung ukrai­ni­scher Städ­te gedacht…

Ach­ja, und was den Nato­bei­tritt anbe­langt, naja zur Nato kön­nen nur nicht kor­rup­te Staa­ten, tut uns leid…

Ach und App­le­baum fin­dets plötz­lich gut, dass Deutsch­land sei­ne Lie­fe­run­gen mehr so auf 10 Jah­re Krieg streckt…

Der Stan­dard hat heu­te Maul­sper­re ver­ord­net bekommen.

Und Deut­sche Wel­le schiebt bereits Krisen-PR.

For­mer NATO Gene­ral: Wes­tern self-deterrence only pro­longs Ukrai­ne war | Con­flict Zone

Die­se Gesell­schaft ist das abso­lut abgrund­tief gro­tesk Allerletzte.

Aus gegebenem Anlass

14. September 2023

Hab mir mal eini­ge Wahl­slo­gans für die neue Wagen­knecht Par­tei ausgedacht:

Mehr Flüs­sig­gas aus Russland!
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Mehr Russland-Öl aus Indien!
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Wat­ten­meer chlorgereinigt?
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Wäh­le kon­ser­va­tiv. Wäh­le Links.
Die neue Linke.

Nord-Stre..? Was Stra­zi, ein Bombendelphin?
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Medi­en­spre­cher Ser­dar: Jugend­sün­de, auch Nazis kön­nen pri­ma Azow Stahl kochen?
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

40.000 Euro Heizung.
Die neue Linke.

Caro­la Racke­te - Fron­tex Chefin
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Ossis? Das sind doch die Putinversteher.
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Bor­rel­led? In 50 Tagen von “Ja wir müs­sen den Krieg in der Ukrai­ne so schnell wie mög­lich been­den, aber wenn der Krieg been­det sein wird, wie wird der Krieg denn been­det wer­den? So schnell wie mög­lich ja - aber nicht egal wie!” zum 10 jäh­ri­gen Krieg?
Mit uns nicht. Die neue Linke.

Sie ken­nen mich. (Bild von der Wagenknecht.)
Die neue Linke.

Sozi­al gerech­te Ener­gie­wen­de? Gas als Übergangstechnologie.
Die neue Linke.

Lücke im aktu­el­len Parteispektrum?
Die neue Linke.

Deutsch­lands Wertewesten.
Die neue Linke.

Deutsch­lands Pensionen.
Die neue Linke.

Deutsch­lands Industrie.
Die neue Linke.

Früh­märz verhindern!
Die neue Linke.

Selen­skyj ret­te die Krim. Wir ret­ten Deutschland.
Die neue Linke.

Euro­pa nicht den Polen überlassen.
Die neue Linke.

Paris vorm Aufstand?
Die neue Linke.

Mei­ne Güte, die wer­dens rich­tig schwer haben.

Wie kann man diese Gesellschaft eigentlich noch verarschen?

13. September 2023

Yes Con­fe­rence 2023:

Path to Vic­to­ry: A View from the US Government

Spea­ker:

• Vic­to­ria Nuland (Online)

Only one ques­ti­on: Does the path to vic­to­ry invol­ve han­ding out cookies?

Also thank you to the the Vik­tor Pin­chuk Foun­da­ti­on for orga­ni­zing the event.

And if I may - hows your hus­band doing the­se days, now that the Hoo­ver Insti­tu­ti­on suc­cess­ful­ly deplat­for­med Mear­s­hei­mer and allo­wed Kot­kin to craft the wes­tern war nar­ra­ti­ve ten days after the start of the war?

(Six peop­le like this video so far.)

Nata­lia Gume­ni­uk (the mode­ra­tor in the Nuland video), for tho­se who dont know her here, is a ukrai­ni­an PR per­son, doing focus tes­ting, on what messaging to use to edu­ca­te the public on topics in regard to the ukrai­ne war (https://en.journlab.online/home). Her agen­cy is fun­ded by the ukrai­ni­an government and the Stav­ros Niar­chos Foun­da­ti­on SNF Ago­ra Insti­tu­te at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. Stav­ros Nia­chos was the, sin­ce decea­sed, greek bil­lion­aire ship­ping com­pa­ny mogu­le who got to buy all US war ships in euro­pe after WW2 for pen­nies on the dol­lar, to start his ship­ping empi­re with. Ah the stories.…

Here is Gume­ni­uk tel­ling an audi­ence, how gre­at the ukrai­ni­an patrol poli­ce is, which all jour­na­lists in the Ukrai­ne have to get accredi­ted by, by now. Inclu­ding a christ­mas tree in the sto­ry and ever­ything.… Gre­at peop­le, by the way, which invi­ted her to con­certs first and later also orga­ni­zed the first jour­na­lists trips to Bucha. (Just one guy in the audi­ence wasnt com­ply­ing and asked a nas­ty ques­ti­on, other­wi­se that event was great.):

Embed­ded Repor­ting == Front­li­ne Journalism

edit: Oh thats so neat!

Vic­to­ria Nuland: We have to deli­ver more Jave­lins to Tai­wan, becau­se tho­se are gre­at “defen­si­ve weapons”.

24.11.2019: Zago­rod­nyuk on get­ting back the Donbas: 

The aid, inclu­ding counter-artillery bat­te­ry radar, night-vision gear and patrol boats, has sin­ce [in the later parts of the Trump admi­nis­tra­ti­on] been unf­ro­zen and is making a real dif­fe­rence to Ukrai­ni­an for­ces figh­t­ing Russian-backed sepa­ra­tists in eas­tern districts.

But it is the Jave­lin which appears to be a game-changer, Ukraine’s defen­se minis­ter told CBC News.

In cer­tain are­as, they can make a cri­ti­cal dif­fe­rence,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk.

src: click

In cer­tain defen­si­ve are­as in Don­bas, of course… 

Wer kennt sie nicht die defen­si­ven Rake­ten­wer­fer Bri­ga­den der leich­ten Infan­te­rie… Zur Ver­tei­di­gung gegen die schlecht aus­ge­rüs­te­ten und nicht gepan­zer­ten Inva­si­ons­trup­pen der Chi­ne­sen beim Angriff auf Taiwan…

Rocket artil­le­ry can­not usual­ly match the accu­ra­cy and sus­tai­ned rate of fire of con­ven­tio­nal gun artil­le­ry. They may be capa­ble of very dest­ruc­ti­ve strikes by deli­vering a lar­ge mass of explo­si­ves simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, thus incre­a­sing the shock effect and giving the tar­get less time to take cover. Modern computer-controlled con­ven­tio­nal artil­le­ry have recent­ly begun to acqui­re the pos­si­bi­li­ty to do some­thing simi­lar through MRSI but it is an open ques­ti­on if MRSI is real­ly prac­ti­cal in a com­bat situa­ti­on. On the other hand, precision-guided rocket artil­le­ry demons­tra­tes extre­me accu­ra­cy, com­pa­ra­ble with the best gui­ded gun artil­le­ry systems.

[…]

The hig­her accu­ra­cy of gun artil­le­ry means that it can be used to attack an enemy clo­se to a friend­ly for­ce. This, com­bi­ned with the hig­her capa­ci­ty for sus­tai­ned fire, makes gun artil­le­ry more sui­ta­ble than rocket artil­le­ry for defen­si­ve fire.

src: click

Rocket laun­chers are also com­mon­ly cate­go­ri­zed as artil­le­ry, sin­ce rockets per­form much the same func­tion as artil­le­ry pro­jec­ti­les, but the term artil­le­ry is more pro­per­ly limi­ted to lar­ge gun-type wea­pons using an explo­ding pro­pel­lant char­ge to shoot a pro­jec­ti­le along an unpowe­red trajectory

src: click (britannica.com)

Pro­pa­gan­da hat aber immer noch nie­mand entdeckt.

Getting banned on /r/ukraine is fun.

13. September 2023

Can someo­ne lay it out for me, why peop­le should sup­port this war for ano­t­her 10 years via paypal (thats how long ger­ma­ny has plan­ned its mili­ta­ry aid for, which Anne App­le­baum finds high­ly appro­pria­te), when clear­ly cri­mea is almost out of fuel, and the sub­se­quent fami­ne, which Ukrai­ne can use as a means of pres­su­re to for­ce rus­sia to nego­tia­te, surely is only a mat­ter of days away?

Becau­se its 20 USD Tues­day, so lets get a dona­ti­on train rolling?

I’m cur­r­ent­ly watching this (see below) - and would real­ly like to know.

The favo­ri­te con­fe­rence of Timo­thy Sny­der (see: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/30/how-timothy-snyder-became-the-leading-interpreter-of-our-dark-times-putin-trump-ukraine , see also: click) has gone into ano­t­her round!

Here is what was dis­cus­sed - with hea­vy US par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on and mode­ra­ti­on this time around:

YES WAR ROOM: Yal­ta Euro­pean Stra­te­gy Annu­al Mee­ting 2023 Opening

The ope­ning panel was rebran­ded “YES war room”.

From the war room, we get strai­ght into:

What Does This War Mean for the Future of Man­kind and Today’s Civilization?

Then of cour­se we ven­ture over to

What Heroes Fight For and Give Their Lives For

And yes, at least one hero sad­ly has died.

Of cour­se, lea­ving amp­le time to get into the real­ly important, detail­ed stuff, like --

What Works In Today’s World and What Must Be Chan­ged? (with Boris Johnson)

Which is fores­ha­dowing the next panel of -

To Secu­ri­ty and Jus­ti­ce in an Unsafe World: Con­cre­te Steps

Then comes the con­fe­rence highlight:

A Con­ver­sa­ti­on with Geor­ge W. Bush: Ukrai­ne and NATO: Loo­king Back to 2008 and to the Future

Befo­re real­ly get­ting into the deep fis­cal deba­tes of -

Sup­por­ting Ukrai­ne Is the Best You Can Do For the Glo­bal Economy?

After which its final­ly time for a -

Working Bre­ak­fast: Insti­tu­ti­ons, Mecha­nisms and Plans for Ukraine’s Reconstruction.

Which leads into the aptly named -

The Eco­no­my of Sur­vi­val and the Eco­no­my of Recovery

Which means for any bankrupt coun­try plea­sing inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors of cour­se, so we get to

Reforms, Demo­cra­cy and Ukraine’s Acces­si­on to NATO and the EU

next.

But then they are more inte­res­ted in -

The Mili­ta­ry Front

Now we come to the aspi­ra­tio­nal part of the Conference.

The Power of Ukraine’s Ideas

but what would the Power of Ukraine’s ide­as be without Natio­na­lism? So lets have a ses­si­on on:

Has the West Lear­ned from Its Mista­kes After Years of Neglec­ting Ukrai­ne to coope­ra­te with Russia.

Then, strai­ght into

Healing Ukrai­ne: Reha­bi­li­ta­ti­on and Men­tal Health

(Becau­se Hero sad­ly died?)

But then back on track with the best our mili­ta­ry lea­ders­hip can mus­ter in terms of brin­ging this to a mili­ta­ry end, which of cour­se is a panel on -

Path to Vic­to­ry: A View from the US Government

After having heard so much regar­ding the future of Ukrai­ne, its time for - a Townhall:

Town­hall What is the Defi­ni­ti­on of Vic­to­ry as of Sep­tem­ber 9, 2023?

Topic: Vic­to­ry, what does that even mean?!

But honest­ly I have no idea what this is:

Of 8 Bil­li­on Peop­le, How Many Are on Ukraine’s Side?

May­be a public edu­ca­tio­nal function/initiative of the ukrai­ni­an state?

May­be we can ask him?

Con­ver­si­on with Kyry­lo Buda­nov, Lieu­ten­ant Gene­ral, Chief of the Defence Intel­li­gence of Ukraine

Thats it, thank you for your atten­ti­on and may we see you next year!

Clo­sing Remarks

Havent found any PR here so far though.

Nata­lia Gume­ni­uk (the mode­ra­tor in the Nuland video), for tho­se who dont know her here, is a ukrai­ni­an PR per­son, that does focus tes­ting, on what messaging to use to edu­ca­te the public on topics regar­ding the ukrai­ne war (https://en.journlab.online/home)

We crea­te high qua­li­ty con­tent to pro­mo­te a con­struc­ti­ve dis­cus­sion around com­plex social topics, and test this con­tent on audi­en­ces, befo­re deve­lo­ping edi­to­ri­al stra­te­gies based on the socio­lo­gi­cal rese­arch. Our experts rese­arch public opi­ni­on and test con­tent among dif­fe­rent audi­en­ces, and media archi­tects deve­lop edi­to­ri­al stra­te­gies based on socio­lo­gi­cal rese­arch and audi­en­ces’ feedback. 

Her agen­cy is fun­ded by the ukrai­ni­an government and the Stav­ros Niar­chos Foun­da­ti­on SNF Ago­ra Insti­tu­te at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. Stav­ros Nia­chos was the, sin­ce decea­sed, greek bil­lion­aire ship­ping com­pa­ny mogu­le who got to buy all US war ships in euro­pe after WW2 for pen­nies on the dol­lar, to start his ship­ping empi­re with. Ah the stories.…

Here is Gume­ni­uk tel­ling an audi­ence, how gre­at the ukrai­ni­an patrol poli­ce is, which all jour­na­lists in the Ukrai­ne have to get accredi­ted by, by now. Inclu­ding a christ­mas tree in the sto­ry and ever­ything.… Gre­at peop­le, by the way, which invi­ted her to con­certs first and later also orga­ni­zed the first jour­na­lists trips to Bucha. (Just one guy in the audi­ence wasnt com­ply­ing and asked a nas­ty ques­ti­on, other­wi­se that event was great.):

Embed­ded Repor­ting == Front­li­ne Journalism

Zusatz:
Gut - jetzt bestä­tigt auf der Kon­fe­renz Chris­ti­an Freu­ding, was deut­sche Jour­na­lis­ten bereits vor 23 Tagen hören durften:

Seh­emp­feh­lung wegen etwas ganz Ande­rem. Der Jour­na­lis­mus freut sich wie­der und springt nickend und lächelnd im Kreis, weil er end­lich wie­der Cathryn Clü­ver Ash­brook befra­gen kann, wies denn jetzt weitergeht.

Er war seit zwei Wochen jetzt bereits so gespannt drauf.

Clü­ver Ash­brook erklärt dem deut­schen Qua­li­täts­jour­na­lis­mus heu­te - ja also so 10 Jah­re Krieg wür­de ich für Deutsch­land schon einplanen

src: click

Der Krieg dau­ert noch 10 Jahre.

see: click

Deutsch­land plant die mili­tä­ri­sche Unter­stüt­zung schon bis 2033.

Chris­ti­an Freu­ding wird auf der YES con­fe­rence natür­lich inter­viewt von der unab­hän­gi­gen Anne Applebaum.

Solitary confinement, very bad.

10. September 2023

You couldnt take it for more than two weeks. Its against the law.

Now back to the important ques­ti­ons at hand. 

How has the US film­crew that worked on a docu­men­ta­ry about lovers who died in a vul­ca­nic errup­ti­on, which was in aus­tria by acci­dent, whe­re they were just finis­hing ano­t­her pro­ject, mana­ged to get into the Schwarz­wald and talk to Naval­ny (whos behind secu­ri­ty detail­ing at that point), and con­vin­ce him that - and I quo­te “the docu­men­ta­ry will be your insuran­ce poli­cy”, to sub­se­quent­ly par­ti­ci­pa­te in the sundance film fes­ti­val (AGAIN?! Die “gewon­ne­nen Awards” von 20 Days in Mariu­pol wur­den in den letz­ten Mona­ten auf­ge­hübscht. Die bes­te Doku des Jah­res! Sagt das Sundance Film Fes­ti­val. Und die Docu­days UA (Ukrai­ne), und das DocA­viv Fes­ti­val in Isra­el. Und das Fes­ti­val der Cine­ma for Peace Foun­da­ti­on in Ber­lin. Und CPH:DOX (Jury­preis! Aber ernst­zu­neh­men­des Film­fes­ti­val) und natür­lich das Cleve­land Inter­na­tio­nal Film Fes­ti­val mit sei­nem berühm­ten Greg Gund Memo­ri­al Stan­ding UP Award!) - and only short­ly after the docu­men­ta­ry pre­mie­red at sundance -- hundred-thousands, if not mil­li­ons of peop­le alrea­dy saw it online. And from social media moni­to­ring we even know, that it drew trac­tion in russia.

Which is obvious­ly the ans­wer to the mode­ra­tor of the Insti­tu­te of Poli­tics at Har­vard Ken­ne­dy School asking the panel twice - how that docu­men­ta­ry has been recei­ved in rus­sia, how wide spread its reco­gni­ti­on was, and what its impact has been.

You know fol­lowing the usu­al publi­shing sche­du­le of “we release it for free in the second week after it pre­mie­res at sundance”, and then have peop­le at a Ken­ne­dy school panel pro­noun­ce proud­ly, that as soon as one ser­ver in rus­sia was taken down, ano­t­her one pop­ped up, becau­se this was so crowd sourced.

The Sundance Pre­mie­re was on Janu­a­ry 25th 2022, the first tor­rents released 8 days later on Febru­a­ry the 3rd. (see: click)

AVC
Format/Info : Advan­ced Video Codec
For­mat pro­fi­le : High@L4.1
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2 042 kb/s
Maxi­mum bit rate : 2 000 kb/s
Width : 960 pixels
Height : 480 pixels

Which was befo­re the imdb page of the film was even craw­led by goog­le, which hap­pen­ed on the 29th of Febru­a­ry 2022.

Spe­ci­fied as a Web­rip. So not as a scree­ner. Which is rather odd, becau­se the Wiki­pe­dia page of the movie doesnt men­ti­on any web­re­lease back then…

In fact the first docu­men­ted sce­ne release (with an actu­al .nfo file) hap­pen­ed three mon­ths later on the 29th of May 2022, the source then was being indi­ca­ted as HBO Max. Which fun­ni­ly enough had released the film for strea­ming on 26th of May 2022, with the only pri­or airing being on CNN on the 28th of April 2022, accord­ing to the films wiki­pe­dia page.

Also, Medu­za repor­ted this in March 2023:

Anti-Corruption Foun­da­ti­on employees share free pira­ted ver­si­on of ‘Naval­ny’ documentary
11:33 am, March 14, 2023Source: Meduza
Several top employees of Ale­xey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foun­da­ti­on (FBK) shared links to a free and pres­um­a­b­ly pira­ted online ver­si­on of the film Naval­ny, which won the Aca­de­my Award for best fea­ture docu­men­ta­ry on Sunday, on Twit­ter and Telegram.

The ver­si­on of the film avail­ab­le on the site lin­ked by the acti­vists inclu­des the ori­gi­nal English-language audio with Rus­si­an sub­tit­les. There’s cur­r­ent­ly no legal way to watch the film in Russia.

In the posts whe­re they shared the link to the film, the FBK employees jokin­gly feig­ned frus­tra­ti­on that the film had been “lea­ked” by “pira­tes.” Ale­xey Navalny’s press secreta­ry, Kira Yar­mysh, has not respon­ded to Meduza’s ques­ti­ons about whe­ther the Anti-Corruption Foun­da­ti­on is asso­cia­ted with the site, though she also shared the link on Twitter.

src: click

Which is also gre­at, becau­se the Anti-Corruption Foun­da­ti­on employees coin­ci­dent­al­ly “found” the movie about one year after its initi­al leak online, and then resha­red it, just in time, after it won the Oscar.

Gre­at publis­her, btw, that sees all that and just isnt in it for the money… War­ner Bros. btw.

Of cour­se the film makers were touched and their bus­som swo­le with pri­de, when Naval­ny told them, that he deci­ded to move back to Rus­sia again, whe­re “they arres­ted him befo­re he even got his pass­port back”. [Bad rese­arch on part of the Mode­ra­tor by the way - becau­se the more note­wor­thy aspect was, that they rerou­t­ed his flight to ano­t­her air­port so media and the public wouldnt inter­rupt the arrest too much…], and then they alrea­dy got their second Oscar nomi­na­ti­on, and sub­se­quent win - the next year, so ever­ything worked out well.

Never­mind what hap­pen­ed to Naval­ny. The panel of cour­se indi­ca­tes that his spi­rits are still high and his will is unbro­ken, which can be glea­ned from his “15 the­ses of a Rus­si­an citi­zen who desi­res the best for their coun­try” (see below).

The film pro­du­cer won an Oscar three years pri­or of cour­se, for a docu­men­ta­ry about Bra­sil, a coun­try on the edge of demo­cra­cy.

So it real­ly was good luck, that the Film­crew was alrea­dy in Aus­tria, when Naval­ny was in Schwarzwald.

And who is that in the same panel? Oh, its Chris­to Gro­zev! Who runs bel­ling­cat! Which in Gros­t­evs own words is not the Anti-Wikileaks, its real­ly so much more respon­si­ble (respon­si­ble dis­clo­sure) than Wiki­leaks ever was. 

It alrea­dy stop­ped taking fun­ding from the U.S. government’s Natio­nal Endow­ment for Demo­cra­cy last year.

So any poten­ti­al asso­cia­ti­ons with Wiki­leaks foun­der Assan­ge are just ent­i­re­ly misplaced.

Very bad, that soli­ta­ry con­fi­ne­ment, very bad.

In Rus­sia it nor­mal­ly wouldnt even be legal for more than two weeks in a row. But do you know the trick the rus­si­ans use to get around that?

The Har­vard Ken­ne­dy Cen­ter for Poli­tics will tell you! In this video.

Just stay with it - at least until the moment the filmma­ker exp­lains to you his “con­tai­ner of mea­ning” con­cept of docu­men­ta­ry filmmaking.

edit: Ever­yo­ne on the panel also was not­hing but impres­sed by Navalnys

15 the­ses of a Rus­si­an citi­zen who desi­res the best for their country

- of course:

On the eve of the anni­ver­s­a­ry of the full-scale and unpro­vo­ked inva­si­on of Ukrai­ne by Rus­si­an tro­ops, I have sum­ma­ri­zed the poli­ti­cal plat­form of mine and, hope­ful­ly, of many other decent people.

15 the­ses of a Rus­si­an citi­zen who desi­res the best for their country.

What was all this about and what are we dealing with now?

Pre­si­dent Putin has unleas­hed an unjust war of aggres­si­on against Ukrai­ne under ridi­cu­lous pre­texts. He is desper­ate­ly try­ing to make this a “people’s war,” see­king to turn all Rus­si­an citi­zens into his accom­pli­ces, but his attempts are fai­ling. The­re are almost no vol­un­te­ers for this war, so Putin’s army has to rely on con­victs and for­ci­b­ly mobi­li­zed people.

The real rea­sons for this war are the poli­ti­cal and eco­no­mic pro­blems wit­hin Rus­sia, Putin’s desi­re to hold on to power at any cost, and his obses­si­on with his own his­to­ri­cal lega­cy. He wants to go down in histo­ry as “the con­quer­or tsar” and “the collec­tor of lands.”

Tens of thousands of inno­cent Ukrai­ni­ans have been mur­de­red, and pain and suf­fe­ring has befal­len mil­li­ons more. War cri­mes have been com­mit­ted. Ukrai­ni­an cities and infra­st­ruc­tu­re have been destroyed.

Rus­sia is suf­fe­ring a mili­ta­ry defeat. It was the rea­liz­a­ti­on of this fact that chan­ged the rhe­to­ric of the aut­ho­ri­ties from claims that “Kyiv will fall in three days” to hys­te­ri­cal thre­ats of using nuclear wea­pons should Rus­sia lose. The lives of tens of thousands of Rus­si­an sol­di­ers were need­less­ly rui­ned. The ulti­ma­te mili­ta­ry defeat may be delay­ed at the cost of the lives of hund­reds of thousands more mobi­li­zed sol­di­ers, but it is gene­ral­ly ine­vi­ta­ble. The com­bi­na­ti­on of aggres­si­ve war­fa­re, cor­rup­ti­on, inept gene­rals, weak eco­no­my, and hero­ism and high moti­va­ti­on of the defen­ding for­ces can only result in defeat. The Kremlin’s deceit­ful and hypo­cri­ti­cal calls for nego­tia­ti­ons and cease­fire are not­hing more than a rea­listic assess­ment of the pro­spects of fur­ther mili­ta­ry action.

What are Ukraine’s bor­ders? They are simi­lar to Russia’s - they’re inter­na­tio­nal­ly reco­gni­zed and defi­ned in 1991 [this inclu­des Cri­mea, which is a rever­sal of posi­ti­on by Naval­ny on the day of the release of the 15 the­ses]. Rus­sia also reco­gni­zed the­se bor­ders back then, and it must reco­gni­ze them today as well. The­re is not­hing to dis­cuss here. Almost all bor­ders in the world are more or less acci­den­tal and cau­se someone’s dis­con­tent. But in the twenty-first cen­tu­ry, we can­not start wars just to redraw them. Other­wi­se, the world will sink into chaos.

Rus­sia must lea­ve Ukrai­ne alo­ne and allow it to deve­lop the way its peop­le want. Stop the aggres­si­on, end the war and with­draw all of its tro­ops from Ukrai­ne. Con­ti­nua­tion of this war is just a tan­trum cau­sed by power­less­ness, and put­ting an end to it would be a strong move.

Tog­e­ther with Ukrai­ne, the U.S., the EU and the UK, we must look for accep­ta­ble ways to com­pen­sa­te for the dama­ge done to Ukrai­ne. One way to achie­ve this would be lif­ting the restric­tions impo­sed on our oil and gas, but direc­ting part of the inco­me Rus­sia recei­ves from hydro­car­bon exports towards repa­ra­ti­ons. Of cour­se, this should only be done after the chan­ge of power in Rus­sia and the end of the war.

War cri­mes com­mit­ted during this war must be inves­ti­ga­ted in coope­ra­ti­on with inter­na­tio­nal institutions.

Are all Rus­si­ans inher­ent­ly impe­ria­listic? This is non­sen­se. For examp­le, Bela­rus is also invol­ved in the war against Ukrai­ne. Does this mean that the Bela­ru­si­ans also have an impe­ri­al mind­set? No, they merely also have a dic­ta­tor in power. The­re will always be peop­le with impe­ri­al views in Rus­sia, just like in any other coun­try with his­to­ri­cal pre­con­di­ti­ons for this, but they are far from being the majo­ri­ty. The­re is no rea­son to weep and wail about it. Such peop­le should be defea­ted in elec­tions, just as both right-wing and left-wing radi­cals get defea­ted in deve­lo­ped countries.

Does Rus­sia need new ter­ri­to­ries? Rus­sia is a vast coun­try with a shrin­king popu­la­ti­on and dying out rural are­as. Impe­ria­lism and the urge to sei­ze ter­ri­to­ry is the most harm­ful and dest­ruc­ti­ve path. Once again, the Rus­si­an government is des­troy­ing our future with its own hands just in order to make our coun­try look big­ger on the map. But Rus­sia is big enough as it is. Our objec­ti­ve should be pre­ser­ving our peop­le and deve­lo­ping what we have in abundance.

For Rus­sia, the lega­cy of this war will be a who­le tang­le of com­plex and, at first glance, almost unsolva­ble pro­blems. It is important to estab­lish for our­sel­ves that we real­ly want to sol­ve them, and then begin to do so honest­ly and open­ly. The key to suc­cess lies in under­stan­ding that ending the war as soon as pos­si­ble will not only be good for Rus­sia and its peop­le, but also very pro­fi­ta­ble. This is the only way to start pro­gres­sing toward remo­val of sanc­tions, return of tho­se who left, res­to­ra­ti­on of busi­ness con­fi­dence, and eco­no­mic growth.

Let me re-emphasize that after the war, we will have to reim­bur­se Ukrai­ne for all the dama­ge cau­sed by Putin’s aggres­si­on. Howe­ver, the res­to­ra­ti­on of nor­mal eco­no­mic rela­ti­ons with the civi­li­zed world and the return of eco­no­mic growth will allow us to do so without inter­fe­ring with the deve­lo­p­ment of our coun­try. We have hit rock bot­tom, and in order to resur­face, we need to boun­ce back from it. This would be both ethi­cal­ly cor­rect, ratio­nal, and profitable.

We need to dis­mant­le the Putin regime and its dic­ta­tor­s­hip. Ide­al­ly, through con­duc­ting gene­ral free elec­tions and con­vo­ca­ting the Con­sti­tu­tio­nal Assembly.

We need to estab­lish a par­lia­men­ta­ry repu­blic based on the alter­na­ti­on of power through fair elec­tions, inde­pen­dent courts, federa­lism, local self-governance, com­ple­te eco­no­mic free­dom and social justice.

Reco­gni­zing our histo­ry and tra­di­ti­ons, we must be part of Euro­pe and fol­low the Euro­pean path of deve­lo­p­ment. We have no other choice, nor do we need any.

src: click

Now go and watch the documentary.