Zelensky says Ukrainian forces are still in control of part of Mariupol. He’s told them they can retreat if they see a way to do so and survive, but the troops insist on remaining, until they can leave with their dead and wounded.
He says Moscow has refused to claim their dead. They’re just kids, says Zelensky. But Russia won’t move on this, apparently afraid of revealing the true number of soldiers dying in Ukraine. They’ve offered “[body] bags” not even fit for dead pets, he says.
He says whole suburbs around Kyiv and towns like Volnovakha have been razed to the ground. “No more homes. No more streets. We can’t even show these images to Ukrainians [they’re so awful].” Russia’s invasion has been brutal beyond imagination.
On the supposed reappearance of Russia’s defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, @MoscowTimes points out that today’s teeny tiny footage seems to match what we saw on March 11, his last sighting. Background, necktie, and clothes. 🤷♂️ t.me/TMT_ru/3517
I don’t vouch for this theory, but it is a fact that the Kremlin in the past has presented footage that wasn’t recorded when it appeared to be.
There’s also this curious bit at the start of the footage.
This happened a few weeks ago but I just discovered the footage today. Meet Elena Osipova, a survivor of the Leningrad Siege who’s protested against Russia’s wars in Ukraine and Syria for several years already, often being arrested and harassed by crowds.
Here she is again in May 2019, nearly provoking a lynch mob in St. Petersburg by sitting outside with anti-war signs.
A brave and committed woman who knows what hardship and war are.
With this tweet, I think I’ve managed to trigger more people than with anything else I’ve ever written on this network. Russian chauvinists, anti-American edgelords, anti-consumerists, and everything else, in between and side to side.
A lot of the mockery assumes that I personally think these brands are essential components of freedom. No, except for a free press. But the rest are important in the Russian context for specific reasons.
Disney matters least on my (certainly incomplete) list. I see it as a stand-in for Russia’s inclusion in Western mass culture. Disney partnered with Russian film companies to make movies like the immensely popular Poslyedniy Bogatyr. (Earned $30 mil on a budget of $8 mil.)
Others maybe noted, but the Komsomolskaya Pravda text claiming 9,861 dead Russian soldiers originally had 2 closing paragraphs that disappeared in the “restored” version about (1) Russian naval captain Andrey Paliy’s death, and (2) two “merc” camps destroyed outside Zhytomyr.