1.
Commentator:
- The Russian government started massive, undisguised terror against its own people. It seeks to divide people into two - fighting in Ukraine and lying in the GULag. Russia's governance is becoming increasingly primitive - punishments, punishments, punishments. Increasingly severe and increasingly cruel punishments.
...
2.
Some Western organizations write to Putin: Be so kind, be so good and release the political prisoners. Other Western organizations allow Russian athletes to return to international competitions.
And Putin's Russia presides over the UN Security Council!
Hypocritical West! Alas...
...
3. The West is doomed to humiliation and self-humiliation if it continues with its double standards towards Putin's Russia! The unity of the West is necessary; one arm of the West needs to know what the other is doing; it takes will and even courage from the West to isolate Russia everywhere, in all organizations, in all formats. Putin's Russia today is a Monster. An ugly hybrid of Hitlerism and Stalinism.

04/18/2023

Let's abstract from the daily details to look at the processes from above and longer term.
Why did I claim before February 24 that the War of rashism against Ukraine was inevitable, and on February 23 I wrote that it was only a matter of hours away?
Because unlike the vast majority of analysts in the West, I did not see this War as an anomaly, as an abnormality, but as a rear-guard fight with a retreat of the current world order.
The current world order was formed gradually after the end of the bi-polar confrontation. Part of it was also the West's basic deal with Russia - the West receives energy raw materials from Russia at normal (in separate periods and at reduced) prices, and in return turns a blind eye to the actions of the Russian government inside Russia.

A new proof of my thesis that from everywhere - from the left and the right, from the West and from the East, a mass counter-offensive against the Ukrainian counter-offensive is starting is the article of
Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan
"The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine. A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table"
in Foreign Affairs.

More nightmarish for Putin's Russia than the Ukrainian counteroffensive is its expectation. Fear, anxiety, stress, panic shake the bunker and the Kremlin. Obscene laws are passed, nuts are tightened until they break and burst, forces are raised to repress Russian people, hysterical commentators spew idiotic nonsense and bullshit.
If I were asked, I would delay this counter-offensive and demonstrate daily how I am accumulating strength and means for it.
Thus Putin will only continue to intensify his power madness; crazy rumors will be floating around Russia; the authorities will wonder how to further humiliate Russian people; chaos and anarchy in economics and finance will increase; the ruble will continue to fall; queues in front of exchange offices will turn into rallies of desperate discontent. And from the smallest spark a flame can break out; and the smallest drop may overflow the cup; and the smallest pebble can overturn the car; and the smallest grain of sand can cause the sand pile to collapse.
Putin will fall victim not to a huge cataclysm, but to something small, insignificant, imperceptible, at first glance negligible, which will topple the entire rotten dictatorial pyramid of his medieval, misanthropic, sociopathic and paranoid power...

04/13/2023

I read whatever was in the NYT.
I listened to whatever analysis I could listen to.
I remain convinced that this is a fake. A candid and uncluttered active event.
It's not even entirely in the spirit of info-manipulation: The truth, only the truth, always the truth, but never the whole truth.

Why do I think it's fake?