Posted on 02/28/2022 8:10:18 PM PST by Mariner
A Russian military convoy that was outside of Ivankiv, Ukraine, on Sunday has since made it to the outskirts of Kyiv, satellite images show.
On Sunday, the convoy was roughly 40 miles northwest of the Ukrainian capital, according to images provided by Maxar Technologies.
Maxar said that roughly 17 miles of roadway is chocked full of the convoy, which consists of armored vehicles, tanks, towed artillery and other logistical vehicles.
The private US company said the convoy was located on the T-1011 highway at Antonov air base around 11:11 a.m local time.
Antonov is roughly 17 miles from the center of the Ukrainian capital.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
In response to the July 8th attacks on the “Ohmatdyt” Children's Hospital in Kyiv, we take a closer look at other times Russia has violated international humanitarian law by deliberately and indiscriminately targeting hospitals in Ukraine.
A staggering statistic from Physicians for Human Rights shows that Russia has carried out a total of 1442 attacks on health care in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. This has meant that one in 10 hospitals in the country have been directly damaged by Russian attacks.
Lawrence Freedman: Lashing Out - Understanding Russia's attacks on Ukrainian civilians
Natural gas prices in Russia up 34% since Putin’s 2024 invasion.
Since a State-owned company (Gazprom) has a virtual monopoly on the domestic market, that is essentially a tax on the population.
It is a break with the whole Putin era social compact, whereby the Russian people were paid off with rising living standards, in return for their acquiescence to Putin’s undemocratic and corrupt leadership. Now their living standards are being sacrificed in many ways at once.
As Abe Lincoln said, you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people, all of the time. The Russian people are increasingly the bill payers for Putin’s disastrous warmongering - and they can’t all be fooled about it forever. Putin has sold out their future.
It is also likely that many Russians find it difficult to pay higher prices. Yes, it is a breach of the social contract people had with Putin, in the same way that China’s economic crash leads to Xi’s breach of the Mandate of Heaven.
The Russian government proposed to significantly increase the number of conditions on which the Russian government can designate a person as a terrorist or extremist, likely as part of efforts to censor criticisms about Russia's war in Ukraine. The Russian government submitted a bill to the State Duma on July 15 that would expand the number of articles of the Russian Criminal Code under which the Russian Federal Service for Financial Monitoring (Rosfinmonitoring) could add people to Russia's list of terrorists and extremists.[14] The proposal notably would allow Rosfinmonitoring to add people whom Russian authorities have convicted of spreading “fakes” about the Russian military out of political, ideological, racial, national, or religious hatred to the list. The proposal would also allow Rosfinmonitoring to add people accused of committing unspecified “other crimes” motivated by political, ideological, racial, national, or religious hatred to the list — granting the Russian government significant leeway to designate people who have allegedly committed a wide array of crimes as terrorists and extremists. The Kremlin has repeatedly attempted to portray Russia as a harmonious multinational and multireligious society despite recent increases in xenophobic rhetoric from Russia's ultranationalist community.[15] The Russian government is likely looking to change the mechanisms for adding people to the terrorist and extremist list in order to incentivize Russians to engage in self-censorship by tightening the Kremlin's control over criticism in Russian society, especially about Russia's war in Ukraine, while posturing these changes as part of efforts to ensure political and religious freedom and societal harmony in Russia.
Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov is posturing himself and the North Caucasus as key to Russia's outreach to the Arab world. Kadyrov met on July 15 with United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ambassador to Russia Mohammed Akhmed Sultan Essa Al Jaber and Qatari Ambassador to Russia Sheikh Ahmed bin Nasser Al Thani in Grozny, Chechnya at the ongoing Caucasus Investment Forum.[23] Kadyrov emphasized Qatar's and the UAE’s “warm relations” with Russia and Qatar, while also highlighting their individual relationships with Chechnya and the wider Caucasus region. The Kremlin likely seeks to use the Caucasus’ unique geopolitical, religious, and socio-cultural positioning vis-a-vis the Arab world in order to draw investment to the region and increase political and diplomatic ties with major political players such as Qatar and the UAE. Qatar and the UAE, for example, continue to mediate prisoner of war (POW) exchanges and the repatriation of deported Ukrainian children, so it remains in Russia's interest to maintain firm ties with Gulf states.[24]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-15-2024
Just don’t show it to the Russians.
I managed to get secret footage of a secret NATO biolaboratory in Ukraine and the fighters they train.
https://x.com/DevanaUkraine/status/1812903673405538339
“It is also likely that many Russians find it difficult to pay higher prices.”
Food price inflation has been high, as has been energy. Regular people not involved in business across borders, are stuck with interest rates around 20% or higher in the ruble economy, and must pay higher prices for imported goods (very little that is nice in Russia, is made in Russia).
Unemployment has been low, and wages have risen quickly during the war, but that benefits a proportion of working people, whereas inflation hits everyone.
I have not seen good data (and honest data, like honest anything, is hard to come by in Putin’s Russia), on the net effect of higher wages and higher prices. Clearly, wage increases have mitigated the fall in the overall standard of living, with some people feeling better off.
To pay for the war and sanctions costs, the Russian Government has spread it around, reducing some other spending, raising some taxes, cashing out some reserves, taking on some more debt, and printing more rubles pretty aggressively (expanding M2 like 20-25% per year).
They were careful not to pull the financial rug out from under their population suddenly, but they have been doing it incrementally. The cost to the population, in terms of standard of living, is accumulating. Taxes are going up, inflation is going up faster, subsidies (like for gas) are being withdrawn, the currency is weakening (markedly in non-official “street” exchange rate), and interest rates are high. Not only are these bites out of the general standard of living accumulating, but they also face the prospect of accelerating, as limits to some forms of mitigation are reached (like reserves running low), and inflation risks accelerating on its own, as inflationary expectations become cemented.
They have been able to kick the van down the road to a significant degree in the short term, but the bills have accumulated. Russia is significantly more brittle to withstanding future economic shocks than it was in 2021, and the International sanctions regime is now institutionalized to roll out new economic shocks every few months.
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