A friend forwarded this message from her friend in St. Petersburg, Russia:
1. Russia did not attack Ukraine, but Ukraine must definitely stop defending itself.
2. A special operation is not a war, but economic sanctions are a war.
3. The war began so that the war would not start.
4. Conscripts were not sent to Ukraine, but some of them died there.
5. The maternity hospital was bombed because the Nazis were sitting there dressed as pregnant women, but it was still not bombed.
6. The special operation is proceeding according to plan, the troops do not meet resistance, but in 20 days they only managed to capture Kherson and surround Mariupol.
7. All Ukrainian planes were destroyed by missiles at airfields. But 2 weeks later, Ukraine vilely bombed Belarus.
8. You can wish death on Ukrainians on Russian TV, but wishing death on Russian invaders on Facebook is extremism. 9. Russian troops are fighting not with civilians, but with the Nazis. All 40 million Nazis. You will be surprised, but it easily fits and in all seriousness coexists in the minds of a significant part of Russians.
I added this one, since I recently read a statement from a spokesman for the Russian Defense Agency stating that Russia never targets civilians.
9. Russia never attacks civilians or civilian facilities, like hospitals, apartment buildings, homes, theaters, or civilian evacuees.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Snarky posts such as this are not helpful. De-escalation, diplomacy, and détente are necessary to end the current crisis in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine will end when Putin decides to stop bombing Ukraine. There have been negotiations since the beginning of the war. They have produced nothing. The Russian side promised safe evacuation routes from Mariupol, then bombed them. The Russians said they were abandoning their assault on Kyiv, then intensified it. How does anyone negotiate with a nation that consistently lies?
It’s a waste of time. There is only one way to “negotiate” with these criminals.
The war should end at once. But it won’t end until Putin decides to end it. He invaded Ukraine and shells its cities, town, and villages 24/7. He can stop the war whenever he wants to. He has sent thousands of young Russian men to their death. For what?
For shame, for shame, Diane. Snarking at poor Vlad.
You can’t make up stuff this ridiculous.
And thank you, Diane, for your wisdom and moral clarity about Putin’s campaign of murder.
Putin’s pulling TF out of Ukraine is necessary to end this wholesale murder. Crisis my ___SS. This was Putin’s CREATION.
James Eales: You need to talk to Putin, maybe he will listen to you. Putin deserves snarky posts and public humiliation 24/7. He’s a monster and war criminal who does not care how many Ukrainians and Russians he slaughters in his war to enlarge the Russian empire, already the largest country on earth. Including parts of Japan: quote – Russia and Japan have never formally signed a peace treaty to end World War II.
Northern territories
One of the key issues is competing claims over territorial rights to the Kuril Islands, which Tokyo calls its Northern Territories. Soviet troops seized them from Japan at the end of the war, and Russia still occupies the island group.
However, in March Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, said that southern Kuril Islands are a sovereign part of his country, and not part of Russia, which has controlled the group of islands since 1945. end quote from cityamdotcom
Imagine, Mr. Eales, a thief breaking into someone’s house and killing some family members and then holding a gun to that person’s head and saying, “I am here to negotiate.” That’s your bloody Chekist Putin. Right now, the little fascist, imperialist Mafia boss and thief of the wealth of the Russian people is calling up another 135,000 hapless Russian conscripts to send to slaughter children, in violation of international law, all the while continuing to churn out fresh lies while “negotiating” in bad faith.
Here’s what to do about the Russian demands: tell the Russian “negotiators” what the soldier on Snake Island did. Then, drive the murderers to hell out of the Ukraine.
Slava Ukraini!
cx: out of Ukraine
Oh, and send those Polish MIGs to Ukraine to help the Ukrainians “negotiate” with the Russians.
James Eales– How is this a “snarky” post? Coming from St Petersburg, I see it is an insight into the propaganda that informs Russian popular support of this war.
As to your 3 “d”s: attempts at diplomacy, as Diane notes, are ongoing. De-escalation is so far not forthcoming from Russia,and is absurd in the context of Ukraine which is so far merely attempting a fourth “d,” i.e., defense, and hardly “escalating.” And détente is a word that combines diplomacy with de-escalation (see above).
BTW, Putin has taught Western Europe, NATO and non-NATO alike, one thing: Each country must have sufficient force at its border to repel a Russian invasion. Not exactly what the clearly now cognitively challenged Putin was looking to accomplish:
The War That Is Not A War. DOXA Student Magazine Editors are being held as HOSTAGES for criticizing Putin’s War. Their 11-month Moscow trial just ended. Accused of inciting minors to take part in illegal opposition protests. 1 year under House Arrest w/ no phones+internet. Now jail. Moscow Times
Addendum to #9: the Nazi Ukrainians are blowing themselves up to get sympathy
Yeah. How crazy is that?!?!?!
LPM, Lies Per Minute, that would be Putin and his ministry of “truthiness.” The largest “democracy” in the world, by population, appears not to give a damn about the horrors going on in Ukraine. India is staying neutral and dares not criticize Russia.
“LPM, Lies Per Minute, that would be Putin and his ministry of “truthiness.”
Just taking a play out of the tRump playbook.
Beyond Orwellian, isn’t it?
And in another note, couldn’t Ginni Thomas pass for Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury; not Meryl Streep) from The Manchurian Candidate?
Media report that Ginni Thomas wanted Trump to appoint Dan Bongino to a high ranking position. Bongino is a Fox personality, he purchased an ownership stake in Parler and he pronounced the investigation into Trump and Russia collusion a scam. Bongino graduated from Archbishop Molloy H.S.
Jane Mayer reported that Ginni Thomas took $200,000 from Frank Gafney’s right wing Center for Security Policy. Frank J. Gafney has been described as anti-Muslim. He writes for the Catholic Exchange.
J.D. Vance, running for Rob Portman’s senate seat in Ohio is funded by Peter Thiel. Thiel’s religion was influenced by Rene Girard who was a convert to Catholicism.
Vance opined that Americans shouldn’t care about Ukraine. Bongino also opined that the “Russia-Ukraine conflict Is not our war.”
The biographer of Thiel (Thiel’s a major GOP donor) said we should fear his power. Thiel is on the steering committee of the Bildenberg Group.
Interesting note- Thiel was a speech writer for U.S. Secretary of Ed., William Bennett.
It looks as though Ukraine and a lot of fresh Russian conscripts are about to experience a fresh wave of horror. Unspeakable. Obscene.
Now we know why Traitor Trump admires and has a serious man crush on Putin.
Putin may be a few years younger than our traitor, but it is apparent that Putin is Traitor Trump’s role model for how an all-powerful, ruthless leader, terrorizes, lies to, and rules his country crushing or poisoning anyone that gets in the Dear Leaders way.
See: HATE drives human madness of WORLDâS PROXY WAR inukraine
is that a link? couldn’t find it.
This is what the American Reich Wing Repugnican Party wants right here:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-04-01/op-ed-russia-invaded-country-occupation
A woman tells how when she was a little girl in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, she longed to become Little Pioneer, wondered whether she should do what was expected of her and rat on her mother and grandmother if they dared suggest anything the slightest bit negative about the Russian occupiers, and worried, because of Soviet propaganda, that when her family moved to Sweden, people would jump out of the piles of garbage on the street and shoot them.
This is NOT an April Fool’s day joke. Nothing funny about it at all. But it’s the America that DeSantis, Scott, and other Republican presidential hopefuls would create if they had the chance.
What a powerful piece, Bob, all should read the link. Thanks for posting this. Conveys how controlled media—propaganda—works on the young mind.
It reminded me very much of conversations with the ordinary middle-class German couple who had hosted my 1st husband’s hisch year abroad, when we visited them some years later (in the early ‘70’s). My then-partner was direct, always engaging them in “how could you have thought…”- type questions. They had clearly had to think through it all, as their son & gf (our age) & perhaps that entire generation (tho they loved their parents) felt their parents’ generation had ruined their country.
They spoke of impoverishment and lack of public services in their childhood, which began turning around under Hitler [the famous ‘made the trains run on time’]. They described Hitler Youth as essentially Boy/ Girl Scouts with the added piece that it bolstered self-esteem against what was even at their young age sensed as post-WWI general opprobrium against their country. They saw cattle-cars of Jews being ferried through their small city to Bergen-Belsen: “we were told they were Russian prisoners of war.”
Most salient to me: they noted that Opa (Grandpa) only joined the Nazi party because the family paint-supply store would not have been allowed to operate otherwise. This told me that all of it was underwritten by fear of losing one’s livelihood, and perhaps imprisonment. This was the message to the parental generation which bought acquiescence, enabling propagandization of their children.
Things improved under Hitler, at first, only because he borrowed very heavily, much of it from American banks, to finance huge public works projects, including armaments and highways. Then, he had to invade and loot other countries to pay it back.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_German_Girls
Check this out, Ginny, starting at 22:27. Baden-Powell, imperialism, and the origins of the Boy Scouts, or, creating an organization to turn out cannon fodder for the Empire.
https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-202/lecture-15
Dear President Joe:
First, SEND UKRAINE THE FREAKING PLANES! Second, thank you for your leadership.
Time for the UN to indict Putin.
https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/a-former-un-chief-prosecutor-called-putin-a-war-criminal-and-called-for-an-international-arrest-warrant-for-the-russian-president/articleshow/90616202.cms