- Ronald Wilson Reagan
Reagan would’ve pushed back against Putin and his Nazis with all his heart and soul. You are on the wrong side of this. Wake up, Buttercup.
Posted on 09/22/2022 7:20:36 PM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine hit a turning point Wednesday—but not the kind the Kremlin wanted.
Instead, the Russian leader may have inadvertently put the final nail in the coffin of his decades-long reign with his bombshell announcement that hundreds of thousands of citizens will be called up to face likely death in the war next door. Advertisement
While Putin’s most loyal allies rallied around the leader with calls for unity and defense officials bent over backward to provide dubious assurances to the general public, ordinary Russians rushed for the exits and took to the streets.
Airline tickets out of the country sold out within a matter of hours. There were myriad reports of men of conscription age being barred from buying bus and airline tickets, and human rights groups reported that draft notices were already being handed out to people at bus stations and train stops in some areas.
Street cleaners and homeowners associations were reportedly tasked with delivering the notices in other areas.
Anton, a manager at a Moscow-based IT company, was nervous while waiting in line for passport control at Vnukovo Airport on Wednesday morning. He was fleeing to Armenia just hours after the mobilization announcement.
“Unfortunately, this is my war, although I never asked for it: victims of this war are my people, I have been helping suffering people; and the bastards who started this war are my enemies,” he told The Daily Beast after passing through border control.
He was constantly checking a “Border Control” group chat on Telegram, made up of about 15,000 Russian middle-class professionals making plans to escape Moscow following the announcement.
Anton’s friend, 35-year-old Alexander Koryakin, another Russian IT tech, had also left for Armenia earlier on Wednesday. Koryakin said he was now “breathing freely and thinking straight” in Yerevan.
“This war, this is definitely not my war, this conflict has been artificially blown up, Russia does not need it,” he said, adding a message for others still stuck in the country: “Run away, there will be nothing good in Russia for a long time. This is not a betrayal, this is your survival.”
Valentina Melnikova, the head of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, said the mobilization shows Putin only wants to escalate the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech during an event to mark the 1160th anniversary of Russia's statehood in Veliky Novgorod on September 21, 2022.
“Today Putin mobilizes people, tomorrow he will employ nuclear weapons, our job is to help those who do not want to serve,” she told The Daily Beast.
Hundreds of demonstrators were detained in Moscow as well as cities as far-flung as Ulan Ude, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk, and Perm, among others, according to the monitoring site OVD.info. Protests continued to erupt across the country despite prosecutors in the capital warning demonstrators they could face up to 15 years in prison for speaking out against the war.
Some of the protesters detained were subsequently given draft notices while in lock-up, according to OVD.info and Mediazona. The wife of one jailed protester told Mediazona that authorities filmed as they presented her husband with a draft notice and told him he had to take it “because he is a citizen of the Russian Federation and is obliged to appear tomorrow at the commissariat.”
Outrage only intensified amid reports that some public workers had already begun receiving draft notices en masse. Medical staffers in Moscow have already been called up, according to human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov, who also called BS on the Russian defense ministry’s claims the mobilization would only be “partial.”
The Insider reported that doctors and nurses at one private clinic in Moscow had also received draft notices.
The actual text of the decree declaring mobilization puts no cap on the number of people to be called up and does not limit the draft to reservists, as defense officials claim. The document also contains one “classified” clause that keeps the number of those to be mobilized concealed.
The backlash was swift: “The crazy old man is going all in, his bets–are our lives. They promised us to take Kyiv in three days. The Ukrainians took in three hours what we took in three months. Now there is a mobilization for ‘fresh meat’ in order to bomb civilian sites,” hackers wrote in a statement posted on the homepage of St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport.
“Ukraine already won. The question is how badly we’ll lose,” the statement read.
Police officers are seen deployed in central Novosibirsk on September 21, 2022, following calls to protest against partial mobilization announced by President Vladimir Putin.
Protests also broke out in unexpected places, with customers of one jewelry store chain reportedly receiving a message that read, “Today Vladimir Putin announced a general mobilization. This means your husbands, children, and fathers can be sent by force to fight in Ukraine at any moment. Into the war that Putin started and he is losing…”
The company, 585 Gold, later blamed the messages on hackers.
Meanwhile, anger seems to be growing over Russian lawmakers who cheer on the war but let ordinary citizens do the dirty work.
Dmitry Vyatkin, a lawmaker in Putin’s United Russia party, raised eyebrows with a speech Wednesday claiming it’s “easy” to decide to head to the frontline in Ukraine–but arguing that he and other lawmakers can’t do it because they’re too busy explaining the “importance” of the war to people.
The family of Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was also put on the spot over their apparently untouchable status during the mobilization.
A reporter for Popular Politics, a news program created by allies of imprisoned Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny, phoned up Peskov’s son, Nikolai, during a Wednesday broadcast and impersonated a military commissar, telling him he was being called up for military service in accordance with the mobilization.
“You must understand, if you know I am Mr. Peskov, how entirely wrong it is for me to be there,” Nikolai responded. “Basically, I will decide this on a different level.”
Much like the leadup to WWII, when it started in 1939, 99% of Americans were against getting involved, even to the extent of aiding Britain.
That all changed when Hitler’s troops marched into Paris.
So you are basically calling a poll taken the 15th of this month and just dismissing it?
You’re quite the dip stick huh.
When are you moving to your new found best nation on Earth?
Unfortunately, neither your link here or the one you had at comment #22 will link when clicked. They are in black rather than in red which does work when clicked. Any way you can repost them in red. Would love to see how heroic Finland is responding to Putin’s insanity against his own people.
Thank you for your wiadom and insight Comrad Gnome.
Thank you for advertising the well attended Gay Pride celebration in New York Comrad Kiryandil.
And how much do you get paid per post Comrad paperclip, and by whom?
Who is trying to stink up and destroy FR Comrad Allegra?
Piano not included.
Calling your FR posse, grammy glee?
“Be sure to do your part.”
I have & will continue. The obvious question is will you contribute financially to Free Republic?
Just select the link and right click to open - there is some sort of box that comes up asking something in Finnish - good luck with that.
LOL - asks the gutless coward who has to ping his fellow ankle-nippers. Of course, the answer to that is you and your little Zelensky Fan Club pals.
You certainly don’t see me polluting this site with multiple spammy, propaganda posts every day, do you?
I’ll give you credit for knowing that you’re no match for me on your own.
But you can’t even spell “Comrade.” And it seems you lil’ Zelensky fans call everybody who doesn’t worship your mincing, corrupt money-laundering demigod “Comrade.” That must be in your “How to Be a Stupid Troll” handbook.
Bulgaria unveils how much Russia pays influential people to spread its propaganda
"2,000 euros per month, almost 3 times the average salary in Bulgaria"
In case anyone wanted to know what their cut was in relation to what Bulgarian shill are paid, 2,000 EU is currenty 1,940 USD.
Says who and where?
Back in February or March, Zelensky was talking about ending cooperation with nuclear proliferation because Russia was threatening to invade, then invaded Ukraine. In the 1990s, Ukraine agreed to give up the Soviet Nuclear weapons back to Russia, in exchange for recognizing its sovereignty. Russia broke that promise by interfering in Ukrainian affairs and gradually worked its way into a position to invade. There is no reason to honor a treaty when the other side has violated it.
Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons and no control over the US or any other nation's nuclear arsenal. Putin is threatening to use the rigged vote in captured territories to make them Russian, then "defend" them with nuclear weapons.
For the last 70 years, no nuclear armed nation has invaded another nation, claimed captured territory as its own, and threatened the use of nuclear weapons until now by Putin.
Where do you get off twisting Zelensky's words from six months ago, when Putin actually said it a few days ago?
“Be sure to do your part.”
……………………………………………….
I have & will continue. The obvious question is will you contribute financially to Free Republic?
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Well, I’m not ashamed of donating to support FR and allow my name to be included in the lists of donors.
Listen bot boy look at the cover of yesterdays NY Post and Tuckers Carlson’s opening last night.
Look and do the research. These two clowns are going to kill us all.
GREAT!
Implodes.
IMPLODES!
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