This site is extremely careful about what we post concerning the Russia Ukraine war. For one thing, it’s very hard to know what is true. Those interested in finding materials upon which to make a judgement are advised to read any comment by Yucki on the matter in the comments, as well as many other people who post excellent materials. Martin for one, who I hope comes back to the site soon, once his understandable annoyance with the Firewall, slowing down publication of comments subsides a little.
But this looks legit. As far as we can tell, the leader of the Mercenary army that operates for Russia has decided to attack Russian leadership and appears to be doing so.
Moscow is in lockdown amid growing fears of a military coup as Yvegney Prigozhin and his feared 25,000-strong Wagner militia take control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, saying they are ‘ready to die’ as they vow revenge for a military strike from Putin’s forces that the mercenary leader says killed some of his men.
All public events have been cancelled in the Russian capital as Vladimir Putin prepares to take to TV in a bid to affirm his increasingly shaky grip on power.
Prigozhin issued a new message at about 7:30am Saturday Moscow time saying his men have infiltrated the Southern Defense Command in Rostov-on-Don and that the city’s airfield was under his control. Residents have been told to stay in their homes by government officials, but some were seen out observing what was happening, even live-streaming the action on their cell phones.
Update(1815ET):There are now widespread reports and circulating footage of additional armored vehicles deployed by military police units in key parts of Russia, including in Moscow and Rostov regions, with TASS saying they have been ordered to protect government buildings, as speculation that Wagner’s Prigozhin is making real moves against Russian leadership tonight.
The Washington Post is meanwhile recapping the following of reports that authorities are seeking his arrest:
Russia’s Federal Security Service late Friday announced a criminal case against Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, accusing him of “incitement to armed rebellion” after he declared an open conflict with Russia’s military leadership and called on Russians to join 25,000 Wagner fighters against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top commanders.
Footage like the below is widely circulating as beefed up military security deployments have been observed in various places:
Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov attends a military parade on Victory Day, which marks the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in the Chechen capital Grozny, Russia May 9, 2022. REUTERS/Chingis Kondarov/File Photo
MOSCOW, June 24 (Reuters) – Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Saturday his forces were ready to help put down a mutiny by Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and to use harsh methods if necessary.
Kadyrov in a statement posted on Telegram called Prigozhin’s behaviour “a knife in the back” and called on Russian soldiers not to give in to any “provocations.”
He said that Chechen units were moving towards the “zones of tension” and would act to “preserve Russia’s units and defend its statehood”.
Kadyrov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin who commands extensive military forces in Chechnya, had previously been seen as a Prigozhin ally, sharing some of the Wagner boss’s criticisms of the Russian military hierarchy.
In recent weeks, however, Chechen commanders aligned with Kadyrov had begun criticising Prigozhin’s regular outbursts against the defence ministry.
?LATEST COUP UPDATES: PUTIN SPEAKS, PRIGOZHIN RESPONDS, HEAVY CLASHES BEGIN NEAR MOSCOW
– Putin FINALLY made a speech in which he mentioned “treason” and “mutiny” twice, talked about Russia “fighting hard for its future”, labelled the events as an “internal mutiny” and a “stab… pic.twitter.com/dXVeG72cw6
It is unfortunate that the NATO spokesman is so unfamiliar with game-theory that he reduces Russia’s nuclear option to one of rationality. Game theory actually shows that when a person is faced with losing everything and they only have a trump card left to play, a rational person likely will play it. What is rational is situational and perceptual.
First, Dr. Steve Turley does his analysis of Putin’s speech and actions within that speech yesterday:
Below is the entire speech with a live, real-time English translation voice over. I asked our long standing Russian translator to check it and she said it was honest, but sloppy and lacked nuance as all live voiceover translations do. But you get the gist.
Below, English subtitles. It may be a better translation
This report is more spin than fact. But what isn’t in war time. More will be posted as it becomes available. But it isn’t good whatever view you get. This discussion on a referendum in Donbas is ludicrous. It needs to be looked into if the people of the Donbas actually held a referendum before the invasion, or if this is something the people of the Donbas actually want. In any case, here is a report on today’s announcement by Putin and we will post more as we get it. Hopefully we can find a factual one which details just what Putin said and you can make up your own minds.
(As soon as I can find a straight forward video that explains what Putin actually said, I will post it at the top. [Done] Meanwhile here are people interpreting it and its meaning for us all. As annoying as that is in the absence of knowing what he actually said.)
Executive Order on partial mobilisation in the Russian Federation
The President signed Executive Order On Declaring Partial Mobilisation in the Russian Federation.
As per federal laws No. 61-FZ On Defence, dated May 31, 1996, and No. 31-FZ On Mobilisation Preparations and Mobilisation in the Russian Federation, dated February 26, 1997, and Federal Law No. 53-FZ On the Military Duty and Military Service, dated March 28, 1998, the President declared a partial mobilisation in the Russian Federation as of September 21, 2022.
The Executive Order provides for calling up citizens of the Russian Federation for service in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation as part of the mobilisation effort. Citizens of the Russian Federation called up for military service as part of mobilisation will enjoy the status of military personnel serving in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation under contract.
The Executive Order sets forth money allowances for the citizens of the Russian Federation called up for military service as part of mobilisation, as well as the duration of the military service contracts signed by the military personnel, grounds for discharging military personnel serving under contract, as well as citizens called up for military service in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation as part of mobilisation.
Corresponding instructions have been issued to the Government of the Russian Federation and top government officials in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
Under the Executive Order, citizens of the Russian Federation employed by defence companies will benefit from an exemption from the mobilisation draft for the period of their employment by these organisations. The Government of the Russian Federation shall define the categories of citizens of the Russian Federation who have the right to draft exemptions and the manner in which these exemptions shall be provided.
Going to post what I have, but most of it is untranslated. As we know more, we will update. There is already materials in the Reader’s Links on this. Publishing now, but check back every now and again.
Serbia: President Vu?i? on the situation in Kosovo: “We want peace but I tell you right now: there will be no surrender & Serbia will win if they try to start persecuting Serbs, intimidating the Serbs, to kill the Serbs, Serbia will win.”
Serbie : Le président Vu?i? sur la situation au Kosovo : "Nous voulons la paix mais je vous le dit tout de suite : il n'y aura pas de reddition & la Serbie gagnera s'ils essaient de commencer à persécuter les Serbes, à intimider les Serbes, à tuer les Serbes, la Serbie gagnera." pic.twitter.com/hPMiS9bEqS
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said shots were fired at local police & blamed ‘rebel elements controlled by the Serbian government in the north’ & also urged caution over misinformation.
Le Premier ministre du Kosovo, Albin Kurti, a déclaré que des coups de feu avaient été tirés sur la police locale & a imputé la responsabilité aux "éléments rebelles contrôlés par le gouvernement serbe dans le nord" et a également appelé à la prudence face à la désinformation. pic.twitter.com/0AXd1MY0Sz
One suspects we may hear this on Serbian radio a lot in the next little while.
Canada, and the West is so Orwellian/communist at this time, it is difficult to write anything true about anything important. But maybe this will fly if I can find it. We did an interview with brad Johnson about the real motives of the Christchurch Mosque militant. It may be directly related.
Just to tie a few things together, it becomes increasingly evident that aspects of the Democrat party are engaged in information warfare at many levels against us, we the people. And even taking pages right out of George Orwell, who of course just took pages right out of Karl Marx and his disciples.
This week, Wikipedia has frantically been redefining the definition of ‘recession’ in order to be in line with whoever writes the scripts for Joe Biden. They have been engaging in no less than Winston Smith levels of historical revisionism in order to force government policy at the expense of reality. And when you turn your back on reality, that itself carries an extremely high cost. Often death.
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[…]the Special Interbranch Nuclear-Biological-Chemical Defense Response Company was sent from Athens to determine the white powder that is scattered around the accident area.
An Antonov cargo plane operated by a Ukrainian airline crashed Saturday near the city of Kavala in northern Greece, authorities said. Local residents reported seeing a fireball and hearing explosions for two hours after the crash.
Greek Civil Aviation authorities said the flight was heading from Serbia to Jordan. The An-12, a Soviet-built turboprop aircraft, was operated by cargo carrier Meridian.
Greek media reported there were eight people on the plane and that it was carrying 12 tons of “dangerous materials,” mostly explosives. But local officials said they had no specific information on the cargo and provided varying numbers of people on board. […]
Locals reported seeing a fireball and a plume of smoke before the crash.
ERT reported that army and explosive experts were en route to the site, located on farmland close to two villages that are part of the Paggaio municipality. But they are not expected to start working before dawn. Experts from Greece’s Atomic Energy Commission will join them.
A large cargo aircraft transporting munitions from Serbia to Bangladesh has crashed and exploded in a ball of flames in northern Greece, killing all eight crew onboard.
Serbia’s defence minister, Nebojša Stefanovi?, said the plane was carrying 11.5 tonnes of military products, including illuminating mortar shells and training shells, and the buyer was the Bangladesh defence ministry.
Greek authorities said there were eight crew members onboard. A Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman said they were all Ukrainian citizens.
Witness reports suggested the Antonov An-12 plane caught fire while still in the air and that they had heard explosions as it flew over the area on Saturday night, Athens News Agency reported. Greek authorities said the pilot had made an emergency call before crashing.
Russian media write that on 11 June, three explosions took place near the village of Gulivka in the Bryansk region (40 km to the border with Ukraine). At the same time a signal indicated loss of communication with the latch of the Druzhba pipeline.
Source:Meduza with reference to the [Russian Internet media] Baza
Details: It is reported that one of the explosions damaged the transformer substation with the power unit of the pipeline latch.
Another explosion occurred in the place where the cable was laid. There was a shell hole [measuring] 40 by 20 cm.
Druzhba oil pipeline attacked in Bryansk region near the border with Ukraine – The Moscow Times
Unknown people tried to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline in the Bryansk region, 40 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. Every fifth barrel of Russian oil exports is pumped along this route to Europe, Baza reports.
According to the Telegram channel, the incident occurred near the village of Gulevka early in the morning on Saturday, June 11. Three explosions thundered there, after which a signal was triggered about the loss of communication with the pipeline valve.
As a result, the electrical substation, protective mechanisms, cable and anti-dig pipe were damaged. The oil pipeline itself was not damaged and continues to operate.
According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, sabotage groups allegedly constantly penetrate into the region from the side of Ukraine and mine various objects.
“At the end of May, six border guards were killed in a battle with a sabotage group in the Bryansk region. Last night, saboteurs planted explosive devices under the Druzhba oil pipeline, the publication says.
At the end of April, in the Bryansk region, two large oil depots burned down overnight. One of them is a storage facility with a capacity of 10 thousand tons, which is part of the Druzhba pipeline system. Rescuers from seven regions had to put out fires for seven hours. Presumably, the attack was carried out from drones.
(I guess, look at the bright side? CBC, Global News, CTV, CNN and a plethora of other professional news sites sell certainty, nearly all lies but certainty for a decent price. We offer uncertainty for free!)
The past week or so have seen some remarkable and truly dangerous escalations and potential expansions in the war so far limited to Russia and its annexation of the Donbas region of Ukraine.
The situation is fluid and ongoing and cannot be fully understood at this time. But a timeline can be described in terms of the salient events.
First, as RAIR reported on May 15th, the newly elected conservative Prime Minister of Hungary, who just enjoyed his fifth consecutive electoral victory by a large margin, made a public statement about refusing to accept all of the various European Union demands in terms of embargoes and other measures intended to punish Russia, as he felt those measures represent an existential threat to Hungary and the Hungarian economy. he did however, offer to take in as many Ukrainian refugees as needed and has taken more than many other European nations combined as a portion of their population.
In the following video, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán talks about where he draws the line on sanctions against Russia. He makes it clear that an energy embargo is off-limits because of the damage it would do to the Hungarian economy.
Then, on Tuesday May 24th at Midnight, PM Orban put Hungary on a war footing, effectively declaring martial law. He did specify though, that this was in response to what he felt was an economic threat. Potentially from the EU itself:
As of May 27th, several new developments. Here are two reports on a Ukrainian threat to cut off an oil pipeline to Hungary originating in Russia. One from Ukrainian news and first, one from Russian news site, Sputnik.
Ukraine Warns ‘Something Should Happen’ to Pipeline Delivering Russian Oil to Hungary
Budapest has spent weeks shooting down proposals by Brussels to ban Russian oil and gas in the European Union, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban warning that an embargo on Russian oil would be tantamount to “dropping an atomic bomb” on the Hungarian economy. Hungary purchases about 65 percent of its oil and 85 percent of its gas from Russia. Kiev should make “something happen” to the Druzhba (“Friendship”) pipeline carrying Russian oil through Ukraine to Hungary to teach Budapest a lesson, Lana Zerkal, an adviser to Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko, has suggested.
Hungary has taken advantage of Russia’s war against Ukraine, actually blackmailing the European Union, but Ukraine has something to respond with. The relevant statement was made by Advisor to Ukrainian Energy Minister Olena Zerkal during the Kyiv Security Forum, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
According to Zerkal, Hungary’s appetites for EU funds are growing every day.
“They decided that their finest hour had come, when they could demand anything, so as not to destroy the European unity,” Zerkal said.
She expressed regret that Hungary had been allowed to do so.
“In fact, the European Commission had to change its policy and allow for investments, the use of European funds even to build a new oil pipeline, not to mention the re-equipment of oil refineries,” Zerkal noted.
In her words, they are also receiving all funds frozen under other programs.
The two news sites report the same issue but with distinctly different timbres.
Hungary has now issued a new policy. Hungary, they assert, will not vote in favour of the Brussels Oil Embargo proposal, to boycott Russian oil for the entirety of the European Union.
Should Ukraine make good on its threat to block energy to Hungary, it would represent the most serious threat to the EU since BREXIT, as Hungary would face a decision to either shoot itself in the left foot by joining a boycott that would cripple and nearly kill its economy, or shoot itself in the right by finding itself in a potential kinetic war with Ukraine alongside Russia. Of course there is always a third and usually fourth option. But these two are the most obvious.
Hungary has “indefinitely” cut off its supply of natural gas to Ukraine, a move that Kiev’s state gas firm has described as “unexpected and unexplained.”
Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency cites Hungary’s gas operator, FGSZ Ltd., saying that the pipeline cutoff “was made to meet the growing domestic demand.”
However, The Financial Times notes that the gas was shut off “days after the head of Russia’s Gazprom monopoly visited Budapest.” FGSZ’s move comes three days after Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest.
It is noteworthy that nowhere in the NPR article do they mention the threat by Ukraine to cut off the energy pipeline from Russia to Hungary, which is linked above, both from Ukrainian and Russian news.
UPDATE 2:
Ukrainian president, Zelenskyy questions why any European nation should have the autonomy to make descisions in their own interests. Presumably meaning not in his.
KYIV/MARIUPOL, Ukraine, May 16 (Reuters) – Troops holed up in the last Ukrainian stronghold in the besieged port of Mariupol began evacuating on Monday, appearing to cede control of the once prosperous city to Russia after months of bombardment.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said 53 injured troops from the Azovstal steelworks were taken to a hospital in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk, some 32 kilometres (20 miles) to the east.
Another 211 people were taken to the town of Olenivka, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists, Deputy Defence Minister Anna Malyar said. All of the evacuees will be subject to a potential prisoner exchange with Russia, she added.
Ukraine has confirmed that hundreds of its fighters trapped for more than two months in Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks have been evacuated.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said 53 badly wounded soldiers were taken to the town of Novoazovsk, held by Russian-backed rebels.
She said another 211 were evacuated using a humanitarian corridor to Olenivka – also a rebel-held town.
Russia earlier said a deal had been reached to evacuate the injured troops.
About a dozen buses carrying Ukrainian fighters who were holed up beneath the besieged plant were seen leaving the huge industrial site in the southern port city on Monday evening, Reuters news agency reported.
Russian forces may have opened fire at Israel’s jets in Syria, according to a report.
The alleged attack is believed to have taken place in Syria on Friday last week, according to Israel’s Channel 13 news.
Newsweek has not been able to independently verify whether the attack did take place and whether it was the act of Russian forces.
The unsourced report alleges that Russia used its S-300 anti-aircraft missiles as the Israeli jets attacked targets in Northwestern Syria.
3.
We will add reports as they come in and meet some kind of impossible to define standard for what is worthy of reporting on this conflict. Please do check the comments under this post as the day progresses though.
