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Russian invasion of Ukraine imminent, BBC reports

wetnose

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From Gorbachev's visit to Canada in 1983, before he became leader:


At the time of the visit, 52-year-old Gorbachev was a rising star. Two years after he’d been named to head the Soviet Central Committee’s agricultural portfolio in 1978, he received full member status within the ruling Politburo. Ailing General Secretary Yuri Andropov saw Gorbachev as a lieutenant who could fight the corruption that had stifled the country during the later years of Leonid Brezhnev’s reign. Gorbachev would be only the second member of the Politburo to visit Canada (former premier Alexei Kosygin travelled here in 1971).

The Soviet delegation landed in Ottawa during the afternoon of May 16. “On the tarmac,” Whelan recalled, “Mikhail greeted me with a great big Russian bear hug.” The next day began with Gorbachev addressing a meeting of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence. He attempted to humanize the Soviet side of the Cold War, blamed the Americans for repeatedly raising the temperature, and proposed closer relations between Canada and the Soviet Union. “The distance between the continents,” he declared, “should not be measured by the minutes of flight of ballistic missiles but by the closeness of our human values, the most basic of which is life itself.”

May 20 saw a full schedule of stops, starting with a tour of the Hiram Walker plant in Windsor. From there, it was off to Leamington to visit the Sun Parlour Greenhouse Growers Co-Operative. According to Whelan, that stop stuck in Gorbachev’s mind throughout the rest of the trip. “As Gorbachev was leaving, [greenhouse owner Gino] Pannunzio shook his hand and said, ‘I’m just a little tomato farmer, and I know you’re from a big country, but I don’t think my wishes are any different from yours or those of your people. I hope and pray for peace for you and your people.’”

At all stops, Gorbachev had no shortage of questions, especially concerning expenses and revenue. “Dapper, soft-spoken and completely at ease with farmers and businessmen he encountered on the day-long tour, Gorbachev soaked up a wealth of information on area food production,” the Windsor Star observed. As for how the trip affected Gorbachev, Shulgan concluded that “he realized how far ahead the Western world was, and he saw how the personal ownership of land and the proceeds of labour could motivate a work force.”
 
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wetnose

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Things aren't going well for Russia, in day 195 of its 3 day "special military operation".

What's next: spy satellites from Cuba? Submarines from Mongolia?


Russia is buying millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea to support its invasion of Ukraine, according to a newly declassified US intelligence finding.

A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Monday that the fact Russia’s defence ministry had turned to Pyongyang demonstrated that “the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions”.
 
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wetnose

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Meanwhile, Ukraine has started its counter offensive - Kherson in the south, and Kharkiv in the north. The stated objective is not necessarily to gain back ground but to degrade the Russian invaders #s and capabilities.

 
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sene5hos

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On the morning of September 8, Vitaly Ganchev, a Russia-appointed administrative head of the Kharkiv region in occupied north-eastern Ukraine, boasted about how an attack by Ukrainian forces had been repulsed and taken heavy losses. The key city of Balakliia, he told Russian state television, was “under our control”.

By that afternoon, however, multiple videos posted on social media showed Ukrainian troops streaming across what Ganchev had earlier claimed was Russian-occupied territory. One video showed Ukrainian soldiers hoisting a flag above the town of Balakliia.

That evening, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed Ukrainian forces had taken more than 1,000 sq km of territory.
 

sene5hos

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KYIV, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces have seized an expanding area of previously Russian-held territory in the east in a "very sharp and rapid" advance, a Russian-installed regional official said on Friday, in a breakthrough that may mark a turning point in the war.

After keeping silent for a day, Russia effectively acknowledged a section of its frontline had crumbled southeast of Ukraine's second-largest city Kharkiv.
 
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EagerBeaver

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wetnose

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Prepare for Russia itself to disintegrate

Lieutenant General (Retired) Ben Hodges is the former commander of US Army Europe and a senior advisor at Human Rights First
==============================

The Kremlin’s disastrous losses in Ukraine could result in the collapse of the Russian Federation

It is becoming increasingly clear that Ukraine is going to win this war and that the Kremlin faces a historic crisis of confidence. Indeed, I now believe it is a genuine possibility that Vladimir Putin’s exposed weaknesses are so severe that we might be witnessing the beginning of the end – not only of his regime, but of the Russian Federation itself.

This vast empire encompassing more than 120 ethnic groups is on an unsustainable footing, and like that famous Hemingway quote, its collapse may be gradual at first but could quickly become a sudden, violent and uncontrollable event. If we fail to prepare for this possibility in the way that we failed to prepare for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it could introduce immense instability to our geopolitics.

I see at least three factors that could lead to the Federation’s collapse. The first is the breakdown of domestic confidence in the Russian Army, which has traditionally been at the core of the Kremlin’s legitimacy. Its humiliation in Ukraine is now almost complete, with the proud Black Sea Fleet still hiding behind Crimea, too frightened to take action against a country that doesn’t even have a navy.

And Russian men, once enticed by the military’s pay offers, are shunning recruitment en masse in the knowledge of the fate the battlefield holds for them. This has exacerbated the disproportionate recruitment of ethnic minorities from Chechnya and other nations on the edges of the Federation – the easiest groups to use as cannon fodder – which has raised grievances that won’t easily be forgotten.

If some militant Chechens were to decide to trigger another war of independence, where would Putin find the military resources to fight it now that he has dedicated so much to Ukraine? He will no doubt be aware that if such a war is won quickly and decisively by the Chechens, it could trigger a wave of similar insurgencies across the Federation.

Second, the damage suffered by the Russian economy has been too devastating to sustain a population of 144 million. The loss of energy markets, which compensated for the country’s lack of modern industries, cannot be reversed. European governments will not rely again on Nord Stream 1, having witnessed how easily it can be turned off, and are already making long-term investments in domestic energy supply.

Russia has also relied on arms exports, but which country will be interested in buying its equipment or weapons now? Such an economic crisis can be sustained for months in the misplaced hope that business will one day return – but even in Russia the well of stoicism has its limits.

This brings us to the third factor, which is the sparse nature of Russia’s population. For despite possessing 70 times the landmass of the United Kingdom, the Federation has just twice the population. These numbers make civic solidarity difficult to achieve in the best of times, but now, with the metropole in a weak position, any sense of national identity could rapidly deteriorate.

Western sanctions will force Moscow’s elites to make difficult economic trade-offs. They will inevitably bail-out the middle classes in the capital, who pose a more immediate threat to officials, to the detriment of minority populations in the constituent nations.

Seen this way, it is shocking how little discussion there has been about the potential end of the Russian Federation. We ought to be asking difficult questions now lest they be sprung on us out of nowhere.

For instance, how would this play out in a country that has considerable stockpiles of nuclear weapons and few centres of power? Who would extract the nukes? How do we avoid leakage of weapons and militants into the Baltic states? Is a major internal conflict inevitable or can the collapse be contained within a political context?

Combined, these dilemmas pose a very significant challenge for the West. Get it wrong and we could face disaster. Our failure to prepare for the last Russian collapse some 30 years ago, and the internal unrest that ensued in its aftermath, arguably led to the Putin presidency. We cannot risk being unprepared a second time.
 

EagerBeaver

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"2022 Russian businessmen mystery deaths" You know its bad when there's a wiki page dedicated to it

It seems like there is a mini Civil War going on between Putin and assorted Russian businessmen who don't like the economic sanctions and want to run profitable businesses. I wonder how this will shake out over time. Short term, Putin maybe silences some of them, but long term none of these guys are going to be happy about running not for profit businesses.
 
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wetnose

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"2022 Russian businessmen mystery deaths" You know its bad when there's a wiki page dedicated to it


Nothing personal, just day to day business in a state run by criminals. Just imagine the warring Mafia families in New York back in the 60s, fighting over position and territory.

In this case, an anti-Putin faction has been quietly knocking off his allies and advisors, isolating him. Maybe a new party of hardliners?
 

sene5hos

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Ukrainian officials say they have found a mass burial site with hundreds of bodies in territory recaptured from Russian forces, in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called proof of war crimes by the invaders.

Mr Zelenskyy says many Ukrainians were also buried in other sites in the north-east and appealed for foreign powers to step up weapons supplies, saying the outcome of the war hinged on their swift delivery.

"As of today, there are 450 dead people, buried. But there are others, separate burials of many people.
Tortured people. Entire families in certain territories," Mr Zelenskyy said.

The head of the pro-Russian administration, which abandoned the area last week, dismissed the accounts of the burials outside the city of Izium and accused Ukrainians of stage-managing atrocities.

"I have not heard anything about burials in Izium," Vitaly Ganchev told Russian state television.
 
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