Russia Watch Thread

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caltrek
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Russia’s Yevgeny Prigozhin Admits Owning Wagner Mercenary Force
September 26, 2022

Introduction:
(Al Jazeera) Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has acknowledged he founded the Wagner Group, a private military company in 2014, the first public confirmation after he previously denied ownership and sued journalists for reporting it.

The Wagner Group, staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces, has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, among other countries.

The press service of Prigozhin’s Concord catering firm posted his admission on the social network VKontakte in response to a request for comment from a Russian news site on why he stopped denying his links to Wagner.

“I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this. From that moment, on May 1, 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion,” Prigozhin said, who has close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I am proud that I was able to defend their right to protect the interests of their country.”
Read more here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/ ... prigozhin
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wjfox wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 6:37 pm
All that methane, which is 25 times more potent than CO2 in trapping heat, being released into the atmosphere. :?
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The Draft
by Robert Reich
September 28, 2022

Introduction:
(Eurasia Review) Last Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian civilians would be drafted to bolster forces in his unpopular war in Ukraine. Almost immediately, the Kremlin faced widespread opposition, including demonstrations. On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “citizens with higher education” would be exempt from the draft, especially those in telecommunications, information technology, banking and “systematically important” media companies.

When I heard this news I flashed back to 1968. Tens of thousands of us then graduating from college were subject to being drafted and very possibly going to Vietnam.

College students were deferred but local draft boards decided whether to continue deferments for graduate school. Many of us were not only afraid of being killed, but also thought the war insane and unjust. We demonstrated against it. Some burnt our draft cards. We did not want to be complicit in the immoral war. But what to do? Draft resistance meant going to prison or to Canada.

The handful of us who had been awarded Rhodes Scholarships for study at Oxford negotiated with our draft boards.

Bill Clinton got his extended deferment by signing a letter of intent to join the Reserve Officers Training Corps after Oxford.
Read more here: https://www.eurasiareview.com/28092022 ... aft-oped/

caltrek’s comment: By the time I would have been eligible for the draft, it had ended. They were still assigning priority numbers in case they decided to re-institute the draft. They did this bingo style. Each birthday was in this way arbitrarily assigned a number, the lower the number the quicker you would be called up. I remember a discussion in school with a friend. He announced that his number was so low that my number could not be lower. I asked him what his number was, and he replied something like “7.” I then explained to him that the number matched to my birthday was “1”.

I do think there are a lot of such parallel experiences between Russia of today, and the United States in the Vietnam War era. So, I can also relate to what many Russian men are now going through. To be placed in a position of being (potentially) drafted to fight in an unjust war.
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The Russian Are Coming
October 6, 2022

Introduction:
(CBS) Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid compulsory military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing on a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea, Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's office said Thursday.

Karina Borger, a spokesperson for Murkowski, said by email that the office has been in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that "the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service."

ICE officials are currently holding the two Russian nationals who arrived in Alaska in a small boat on Tuesday, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez. The individuals were transported to Anchorage for vetting and screening after DHS was alerted of their arrival by local officials.

Alaska's senators, Republicans Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, said Thursday the individuals landed at a beach near Gambell, an isolated community of about 600 people on St. Lawrence Island. The statement doesn't specify when the incident occurred, though Sullivan said he was alerted to the matter by a "senior community leader from the Bering Strait region" on Tuesday morning.

"This incident makes two things clear: First, the Russian people don't want to fight Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine," Sullivan said in a statement. "Second, given Alaska's proximity to Russia, our state has a vital role to play in securing America's national security.
Read more here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-russian ... murkowski/

caltrek’s comment: “The Russians are Coming” is a title chosen by me, not CBS. It is because it reminds me of a cold war era comedy that portrayed a fictional landing of some harmless Russians into a small community somewhere on the coast of the United States.

Two Russian individuals hardly proves that none of the Russian people “want to fight Putin’s war.” The tens of thousands fleeing to neighboring countries in eastern Europe and Central Asia are another matter. Especially if their numbers keep growing.
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Take this with a grain of salt as it is still far from confirmed, but Twitter is alight with this today. Whether or not there is authenticity to this, it shows there's a growing rift within echelons of power within the Kremlin.

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^^^Her is an article on that:

Nord Stream 1: First Underwater Images Reveal Devastating Damage
October 18, 2022

Introduction:
(The Guardian)The first underwater images taken of the ruptured Nord Stream 1 pipeline reveal the devastating damage caused by what Danish police have described as “powerful explosions” under the Baltic Sea.

Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday published photographs and film footage taken by an underwater drone at the site near the island of Bornholm where the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany ruptured on 26 September.

They appear to show long tears in the seabed near the concrete-reinforced steel pipe that was not merely cracked but torn apart in an act of suspected sabotage. At least 50 metres of the gas pipeline appeared to be missing, Expressen said.

Three separate investigations are currently trying to assess the full extent of the damage to the two twin pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, and collect evidence as to who was behind the sabotage.

A German government official on Monday confirmed there would be no joint investigations team working on clearing up the pipeline blast as initially envisioned, but three separate investigations carried out by Danish, Swedish and German authorities would coordinate closely.
Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2 ... ng-damage
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Possibility Of A Forcible Change Of Power Can No Longer Be Dismissed
by Paul Goble
October 23, 2022

Introduction:
(Eurasia Review) “For the first time in a quarter of a century,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, “the question of the possible transfer of power by force in Russia has become not a purely theoretical but a practical one. This doesn’t mean that the probability is high … but now such a probability is not equal to zero as was the case even a year ago.”

The fact that this possibility has increased, the London-based Russian analyst says, means that “the borders of the comfort zone for elites have changed,” with a clear trend toward a situation in which “the risks of not taking part in such an action will begin to exceed the risks of doing so” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=634E9C023E1 ... 6C962A3D7C).

This is only about shifts within the elite, Pastukhov continues. “Under conditions of war, any movement from below is extremely improbable.” The Kremlin has the requisite tools to control the population “with the help of propaganda and repression up to the very last moment.” But popular attitudes may affect elite calculations.

Putin and his entourage are “well aware of where everything is heading” and are doing whatever they can in order to keep the situation from tilting against them. But the problem is this, Pastukhov argues. “They have lost control of the situation.”

As a result, “all their actions have the paradoxical consequence of aggravating the situation because the logic of a political space closed off by war is at work. Since defeat is impossible and victory still unattainable, the leadership must constantly raise the stakes.”
Read more here: https://www.eurasiareview.com/23102022 ... sed-oped/
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The Rise Of Prigozhin: 'Putin's Chef' Steps Further Into The Limelight

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-prigozhi ... 12554.html
The press statement, put out by a St. Petersburg company called Concord Catering and Management, pulled no punches: The elected head of Russia’s second-largest city is a crook, it suggested.

Prosecutors should investigate the “possible fact of the creation by Governor [Aleksandr] Beglov of an organized criminal community on the territory of St. Petersburg in order to plunder the state budget and enrich corrupt officials in his entourage,” the company said in its October 31 statement, addressed to the national Prosecutor-General’s Office.

In the often cutthroat arena where Russian politics and business meet, this sort of allegation might normally pass as business as usual.
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