Lyubov, who worked as an accountant, lived under Russian occupation for nearly a year and “in January of this year, they came for me,” she said.

Speaking via a translator, she said that Russian soldiers forced their way into her house, claiming they were looking for weapons, and confiscated “a map of Ukraine, the flag of Ukraine, souvenir magnets with Ukraine images, and a token with blue and yellow ribbon symbolizing victims of World War II.”

“Those were their evidence against me,” she said.

She was taken to what she called a “torture chamber” and held for five days, where she said she was beaten, forced to undress, cut with a knife and threatened with rape and murder(..)

P.S. The so-called "pacifists" and all other Russophiles who hinder the strengthening of Ukraine's self-defense capabilities are actually complicit in Russian war crimes...

Another day, another Russian war crime. This time Putin killed a two-month old baby and injured his mother.

The baby's body was pulled out of the rubble of the three-storey building in the village of Zolochiv, said Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Synehubov. Two other women were hurt when Russia fired two S-300 missiles, he said, hitting the hotel and nearby buildings. Attacks on the Kharkiv region have intensified since the end of 2023. Zolochiv is only 20km (12 miles) from the Russian border and too close for Ukraine's air defences to offer sufficient cover. The S-300s that hit the hotel in the early hours of Tuesday were originally produced as surface-to-air missiles for Russia's air defences, but they have been adapted to hit Ukrainian targets on the ground. They are seen as cheaper than more accurate cruise missiles.

So Russia is running low on cruise missiles and is forced to substitute S-300s which were originally meant to his targets in the air.

Putin may be low on cruise missiles but one of his top US cheerleaders is in Moscow to pay homage to him.

Tucker Carlson reminds me of those US pro-Hitler commentators who would use their radio shows in the 1930s to extol the virtues of fascism.

Tucker is supposed to interview Putin but he isn't waiting for the interview to spread lies about the US news media. CNN's Abby Phillip does an effortless debunking of Tucker Carlson's Kremlin bullshit and then speaks with Russia specialist Julia Ioffe.

There's an entire ecosystem of far right mendacity which includes Putin, sex offender Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson, and various Congressional toadies like Marjorie Traitor Greene. They are united in their hatred of democracy and will tell any lie to damage it.

the annexation is now “official.” hard to find the words right now for the criminality of it all

Sumy, Ukraine

Russian War Crimes

A Russian missile attack hit an 'Important Military Target' - a civilian home - in the city of Dnipro and killed two adults and two children.  

Damage and lack of accuracy almost certainly indicates that it was a Russian AS-4 'Kitchen' (Kh-22), the same type that hit a mall in Kremenchuk early this summer.

I don't trust the world to hold russia accountable because history shows we won't, but... I mean something's got to be done

Like they can't be allowed to get away with this, the consistent horrible and down right evil atrocities repeatedly committed. The shelling of nuclear plants, the shelling of specifically civilian targets (there's no way to look at what they do and say that civilians aren't intentionally targeted over military), the mass graves of tortured civilians

It can't be permitted. It's bad enough what we let countries get away with because it's in their own borders, but these butchers invade other countries and kill and mutilate and scorch the earth, and enough is enough, something has to be done

Russia has literally shown that if they aren't stopped they'll only be emboldened, and they've shown that they don't think they'll be held accountable because they haven't been

This invasion has to end with the total destruction of putin's government, it has to end with every major politician and military leader on trial for war crimes

How to make that happen without marching on moscow I don't know (and I don't want that, to be clear I'm saying I don't know how we can actually get them), but we've got to do something

I don't know... I just don't know. The only practical thing I can say is we must continue to supply Ukraine with everything we can give them, because they're defending the world's freedom right now. Other than that... I don't know... I really don't

It just sickens me, and the horrible thing is we all know how little is likely to be done. We all know how toothless the UN is, I hope we've learned how corrupt so many global charities are... I don't know... it's sickening and frustrating, and I mean hell, I'm not even the one getting bombed

...no words, it's just horrific

Logistics Collapse. I can only make an assumption, in the… | by Nadin Brzezinski | Jul, 2022 | Medium

Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised. No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid. And yet while the western establishment media has been chock full of the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence, Israeli atrocities are excused or quickly forgotten. Accusations against Hamas are endlessly reheated to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial militant group, in turn rationalising the slaughter and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as a terrorist organisation. But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel – not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing of import about the military that carried them out. If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still need to be reported months after they took place, why does the establishment media never feel the need to express equal horror and indignation at equivalent or worse acts of cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza – not five months ago, but right now? Israel's torture of doctors, its sexual assaults of Palestinian women, it's leaving premature babies to die after its forces stormed a hospital. Where is the outrage? This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the western media that leads to only one possible deduction: Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and for the most obscene of purposes. Through consistent and glaring failures in their coverage, establishment media – including supposedly liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court has assessed as plausibly a genocide. The role of the media has not been to keep us, their audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in living memory. It has been to buy time for US President Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US presidential vote. If Russian President Vladimir Putin was a madman and a barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli officials, when every one of them supports far worse atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at civilians? And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the US political class for materially backing Israel to the hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid? Worrying about the optics, the president expresses his discomfort, but he carries on helping Israel regardless. While western politicians and commentators worry about some imaginary existential threat those brief events of five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the map day by day, quite undisturbed.

Russia has launched dozens of missiles and drones towards Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, injuring at least five people, amid growing concern about safety at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s biggest.

Ukraine’s top military command said it destroyed all 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones that were launched during the night, adding that Russia had also launched dozens of missiles.

“Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded civilians, high-rise buildings, private homes and other civilian infrastructure were damaged,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in its daily update.

The latest air assault comes as Moscow prepares to celebrate Victory Day, a major Russian holiday that marks the anniversary of its defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II and usually includes a military parade through Red Square.

These are not shots from a film about the apocalypse, this is our reality after the arrival of rashists in Ukraine: Bakhmut on fire after Russian shelling, Ukraine, 2022. Photo by  Ирина Рыбакова

Source: ASLAN

P.S. The Russian army is only capable of terrorizing civilians. Despite their huge numbers, this band of armed robbers is ineffective when faced with a real opponent...Unfortunately, Western weapons came too late and in too little quantity, and that is why it is so difficult for Ukraine to protect civilians from attacks by Russian criminals...

Kherson Civilians Flee  As Russian Attacks Intensify.

Russian missile attack Ukraine Russian attack kills 22 civilians on Ukraine's independence day

Russian missile attack Ukraine Russian attack kills 22 civilians on Ukraine’s independence day

Russian Ukrainian War : Ukraine August 24 marked the 31st Independence Day (Independence Day of Ukraine). At this time, good wishes were received in Ukraine from all over the world. However, Russia put a damper on that happiness by launching a missile attack. On Ukraine’s Independence Day, Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine. A Russian missile attack killed 22 civilians and set fire to a…

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Ice Cream Man

A Russian drone dropping a F1 hand grenade attached to an ice cream stick on Ukrainian civilians.

-Runs back into the room from having been wrapped up in the Sub Shitshow- context PLEASE on what’s up with Putin!?

Lol okay buckle up:

Yevgeny Prighozin is (well, as of now) one of Putin's closest allies. He is Putin's former chef and now the CEO of Wagner Group, the Russian private army of mercenaries who have spent a decade plundering Africa and destroying Syria in the employ of various terrible local dictators. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has become one of the Russian army's mainstays, mostly because they're the only ones who seem able to actually do anything. Of course, it did still take them nine months to take Bakhmut, Ukraine's *checks notes* 53rd largest city with very little strategic value, but given what a shitshow the regular Russian army has been, that's good. Or something.

The Russian army is mostly good at destroying dams and bombing civilians, which are obviously terrible for many reasons, but not that useful in the military scheme of things.

However, Wagner are also -- I hasten to stress -- thoroughly terrible people. Aside from all the shit in Africa and Syria, they've done likewise in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Legally speaking, they technically "don't exist," which has allowed them to get around a lot of the usual rules and regulations that are supposed to "bind" (ha) the Russian army. They are obviously in Ukraine directly at Putin's behest and doing Putin's bidding, but it turns out that giving an ambitious and amoral psychopathic warlord his own private army of criminals, rapists, killers, and whoever else they can dredge out of Russia's prisons to throw at the front line and die en masse may not be a good idea?

Shocking, I know.

Anyway, Prigozhin has spent months ripping into the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, for what a whole shitshow clusterfuck this whole stupid war patently is. (Not, however, that this has stopped him from continuing to eagerly carry it out, since he's just as much or indeed even more of a zealot as the rest of Putin's government.) This has included blaming Shoigu for equipment losses, underprovisioning of Wagner troops, general strategic numbnuttery, etc. Prigozhin has not, however -- again, until now -- attacked Putin directly, or backed off from getting his losers killed in Bakhmut and/or wherever else. One suspects that Putin has been perfectly happy to let Prigozhin scapegoat Shoigu for the war's failures, since this means Shoigu can always just conveniently fall out a window or something if it gets too necessary to make a public show of displeasure, and not Putin.

HOWEVER, things took a turn VERY FAST today, within about 12 hours. Prigozhin has, as noted, spent months tearing the Russian military leadership a new asshole -- not because he's a good guy (he's a fucking war criminal on like, 10 different levels), but because it is plainly obvious what a shitshow this is and even a war criminal has his limits as to how much totally pointless murderous bullshit he wants to go through, I guess. (That includes telling the truth about why the war started -- i.e. to steal Ukrainian stuff/land for the oligarchs, and not any of Putin's other stupid excuses.)

Today (June 23) Prigozhin accused the Russian Ministry of Defense of orchestrating a rocket attack on Wagner's camp in eastern Ukraine (near the Russian border) and causing massive casualties;

We don't have proof of this yet, or indeed much else of what Prigozhin is talking about, BUT he finally decided to put his Coup Hat On and get serious about "punishing" Russian military leadership, i.e. presumably Shoigu, declaring that "there are 25,000 of us [Wagner soldiers] and we're coming into Russia to sort out this chaos"

So -- again, according to Prigozhin, who is not the world's most reliable source on anything -- he turned his army of yoinks around, left Ukraine, and marched into the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian military command in charge of the assault on Ukraine is headquartered;

For a while, there was nothing but Prigozhin's various unhinged rants on Telegram to prove any of this, but it's now early tomorrow morning in Russia and there are indeed a lot of videos of what DOES IN FACT LOOK like Wagner mercenaries rolling into Rostov and storming Ministry of Defense buildings;

Firm information on what is going on is almost nonexistent, even for Russia, but Putin is clearly taking this seriously; Moscow is shut down, there are armored vehicles on the streets, Google is down in Russia, and Russian newscasters are interrupting their broadcasts to insist Don't Look, Everything Is Fine Here, Totally Fine, Do You Hear Swan Lake? I Don't Hear Swan Lake!

Nobody can find Putin either, allegedly, but don't worry! He has been "briefed on the situation and everything is under control!"

The Russian FSB (successor to the KGB) has meanwhile issued a warrant for Prigozhin's arrest, said they'll charge/prosecute him for treason and armed rebellion against the state, and ordered him to stand down/his own men to arrest him

This, uh, does not appear to be working

ANYWAY, Putin's basically fucked no matter how this ends. Wagner literally just led an armed mutiny, he can't feel good about sending his ex-bestie Prigozhin back to Ukraine with any confidence that his orders will continue to be obeyed, it's Russian-on-Russian open war in the streets of Rostov and God knows where else, he's totally lost control of the narrative, the war, the domestic political situation, Wagner, probably good chunks of the Russian military command/elite establishment, etc., and we all know what happens to dictators in Russia who can no longer dictate

(And yet the Russian army is still finding time to lob some missiles at civilian buildings in Kyiv tonight, because they suck).

This is obviously a huge lucky break for Ukraine as well, since if the Russians are busy fighting each other, they can continue to push for a big breakthrough on their counteroffensive.

So yeah. Pride Month really wheeling out the big guns here, after Putin was the top option picked for Lady Karma to do her thing on in my poll a few weeks ago.

Stay tuned.

The United Nations Security Council on Monday night rejected a resolution put forward by Russia for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. It was the first failed attempt to reach a consensus on a resolution by the international community to stop the war between Israel and [...] Hamas since it began on Oct. 7. [The Russian-led draft resolution received five votes in favour (China, Gabon, Mozambique, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates) and four against (France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States), with six abstentions (Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Malta, and Switzerland).]

Twenty-five countries had agreed to co-sponsor the Russian text, including several Arab and Muslim states such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt. US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and United Kingdom Ambassador Barbara Woodward mainly objected to the text not explicitly mentioning Hamas in its condemnation of “attacks on civilians.”[...]

Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya defended his resolution, saying it was a “purely humanitarian” text that had the support of Arab countries, and assured that if it was rejected it was solely due to geopolitical calculations. He added that it was incomprehensible that the UNSC would waste even more time in the face of a conflict that is inflaming the entire region and has already left thousands dead in a single week.

16 Oct 23