1. Ukrainian hackers post Russian casualty numbers on Russian official websites and social media accounts. That's not bad. A better idea - post instructions for sabotage. For example, if you burn trackside relay cabinets, it will lead to huge delays🧵
Russia is heavily reliant on railways. Russian autoroutes have always been of low quality (with few exceptions) and thanks to sanctions Russia will face difficulties with producing and repairing trucks. Railways sabotage will heavily undermine logistics and supply of Z-operation
Railways sabotage in Belarus is already so widespread that it's severely undermining supply of a northern Russian Z-army. In Russia it's less common. And yet, that's exactly what's happened yesterday - someone attempted to blow up a relay cabinet with a handmade bomb near Kaluga
Railway sabotage is great idea. First, it's small scale action which a regular guy can do. Just go and burn a relay cabinet. Second, it can inflict enormous damage. Third, railways are so long, it's just impossible to properly guard them all. Which makes them easy to attack
Consider that Russian military industry is very heavily concentrated in a few clusters. For example, MLRS systems like Grad are produced on Motovilihinskiye Zavody plant in Perm. Just one major production center in entire Russia - makes it easy to sabotage
Ofc this MLRS plant uses imported instruments. Their technologist mentioned Seco, Sandvick, Walter, Iscar, Mitsubishi, Ghuring, Botek and Tungaloy. He mentioned only one Russian plant which produces instruments of high enough quality - KZTS in Kirov. It's apparently a bottleneck
Btw: this also shows how important it is not to allow technological import into Russia. Polish activists did a great job blocking the trucks leaving to Belarus. Belarus has been the main hub for Russian smuggling since 2014. Now as it's blocked, they'll try to use Georgia I think
Transsiberian railway is a highly vulnerable communication line. It's the only viable way connecting European Russia with Siberia and with China. Thus it'll be highly important for smuggling and technological import Russia can't do without
On July 23, 2021 flood damaged a railroad bridge on the Transsiberian. As a result, 500 trains were delayed. Trade flows were disrupted: companies had to reduce their shipments by the railway by 50% between July 26-28. They didn't restore the normal schedule till mid August.
That shows how vulnerable is the critical infrastructure in Russia. My advice - make concise instructions with sabotage, especially railway sabotage, and post them on Russian official websites and social media accounts. It's way more efficient than posting casualty numbers
Not everyone in Russia agrees with Z-campaign. Here you see people in St Petersburg beating up a truck driver who put Z onto his truck
A guy in Voronezh tried burn down a military commissariat (recruiting station). He failed - they put the fire down, but his choice of aim was emotionally motivated and inefficient. Infrastructure sabotage is much better. Make instructions with visuals and post on official media
2. If possible, target Russian military and National Guard on social media and send them standard instructions on how to avoid being sent to Ukraine. Which pretexts you can use, what instruments you have. No moral preaching, just - you can tell them A, B, C and they'll fuck off
3. Make public pressure on Western companies that refuse to leave the Russian market. French supermarket chain Auchan, and German Globus told they aren't leaving. Pressure them publicly, make it impossible for them to remain. That's important for increasing the systemic shock
4. Make pressure on European governments to stop railway shipments from Europe to China through Russia. Yeah, they're still going, though their number decreased. And I strongly suspect they'll be used for smuggling vital European components for Russian military industry
5. It's time to start talking with minority POWs, check their views and recruit those who could potentially change sides. Russian army heavily relies on minorities as cannon fodder. You know which region drafted the most people in Central Military District in 2021? Bashkortostan
In 2021 when they lacked few hundred recruits to meet the quota, local ruler (a Kremlin man) ordered not to break "old traditions of military draft". They'd broke the law in every way forcing recruits into the army. That's how Moscow is getting cannon fodder for its imperial wars
Moscow is using quite a wide range of minorities in Ukraine. Some examples of soldiers who are either KIA or captured, I'm not always sure. This guy is either a Tatar or a Bashkir from Bashkortostan
This one is a Kazakh from Astrakhan. Despite being just 14% of Astrakhan Oblast population, ethnic Kazakhs comprise 86% of Astrakhan casualties in Ukraine. Being a poor rural minority they naturally become a cannon fodder
A soldier from Tuva KIA
A captured Crimean Tatar serving in the Russian army. Crimean Tatars are heavily oppressed in Russia. After annexation new authorities started destroying their houses, disappearing their activists and random people. Their position is way worse than that of Kazan Tatars
My advice - approach minority POW and check their views. Then choose those who can change sides and train them in special companies/batallions. With Russia spiralling to chaos, their impact can be huge. Remember, without Czechoslovak Legion there would be no Civil War in Russia
Apart from recruiting minorities according to ethnic principle, it might make sense to use regional one. Identify critical regions in Russia that are weak links in a chain and create companies out of their recruits. My advice - Far East and South (Krasnodar, Rostov, Stavropol)
Let me quote Guicciardini
"I often noticed during the wars that people didn't carry out necessary actions thinking it's too late. And yet, later it would turn out, it was the high time for it. Things go much slower than we expect. That should serve as a warning"
End of 🧵
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Nation state is not some basic property of reality (as many falsely presume). They do not just organically grow out of the “ethnically drawn borders”. That is not how it works. They usually grow out of the *administratively* drawn borders, on whichever continent.
First they draw administrative borders based on whatever rationales and considerations. Then, these arbitrarily drawn administrative borders turn out to be surprisingly stable, more stable than anyone could ever expect. Eventually they become borders of the nation states.
States do not grow out of ethnicities. States grow out of the administrative zones, fiscal zones, customs zones et cetera. Basically, a Big Guy got a right to collect taxes and rents over these territories, but not those territories. Then the border between what he can milk…
Every election in the US attracts huge global attention. People in Pakistan, people in Paraguay, people in Poland, people in Papua New Guinea are monitoring the course of elections and tend to hold strong opinions regarding whom they would prefer to win
Why would that be the case? Well, one obvious reason would be that the US elections are, in fact, seen as the world elections. People in Paraguay do not vote in the US and yet, the US elections have a very strong impact on the fortunes of Paraguay.
Or Russia, in this case:
And I am not discussing the economic fortunes only. In terms of politics, in terms of culture, in terms of discourse, American relations with the rest of the world tend to be strikingly one-directional. Much or most of the global discourse comes downstream from the Unites States
There is hardly any other genre of literature more factual, and more realistic than the sci-fi. It is exactly its non-serious, seemingly abstract character that allows it to escape censorship and ostracism to a far greater degree than it is normally possible for a work of art.
Sci-fi allows you to to present the most painful, insulting, insufferable, obnoxious, criminal and traitorous arguments in a non-serious way, as a fun, as a joke. In this regard, it is far superior to any other genre. Compare three ways to sell a heresy:
By its very nature, sci-fi is inseparable from the social commentary. For this reason, quality sci-fi should be always read as a self-reflection and self-criticism of the society it is written in.
If the "Gulliver’s Travels" is a reflection on Britain…
Tatarstan is a large and wealthy ethnic republic located, in the very middle of Russia. While being culturally and institutionally distinctive, it is not really peripheral. It sits in a few kilometres from the population centre of Russia🧵
While Tatarstan does not sit in the centre of Russia geography-wise, it does so demography-wise. The Russian centre of population (red star), located somewhere in southwest Udmurtia, is literally in a walking distance from the Tatarstani border.
It is the very middle of Russia.
If you look at the Russian administrative map, you will see that most ethnic republics (colored) occupy a peripheral position. The main exception are republics of the Volga-Ural region (green), located in the middle of Russia & surrounded by the Slavic sea.
Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.
Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.
(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
As a person from a post-Soviet country, I could not but find the institutions of People’s Republic of China oddly familiar. For every major institution of the Communist Russia, I could find a direct equivalent in Communist China.
With one major exception:
China had no KGB
For a post-Soviet person, that was a shocking realisation. For us, a gigantic, centralised, all-permeating and all powerful state security system appears to be almost a natural phenomenon. The earth. The sky. Force of gravity. KGB
All basic properties of reality we live in
It was hard to come up with any explanation for why the PRC that evolved in a close cooperation with the USSR, that used to be its client state, that emulated its major institutions, failed to copy this seemingly prerequisite (?) institution of state power