Thread by @KyleWOrton

Thread: 15 April 2022: Day 51 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine

A protest outside #Russia's Embassy in #Estonia, clearly directed against the Russian army's use of rape as a weapon of war in #Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1514190933104934918

#Putin's propaganda has domestically done its work: there is a mass-rejection of claims about Russian war crimes, the "Z" and "V" symbols and a stay-the-course attitude have been embraced by enough people, and neither casualties nor economic pain dissuade.

https://twitter.com/irgarner/status/1514588744879423491

Considerate of the #Russian government to give advanced notice of its latest intended war crimes

https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1514884733389488128

#Russia said it will begin escalated attacks on Kiev, claiming it as retaliation for attacks within Russia, e.g. at Klimovo in the Bryansk region yesterday.

#Ukraine just released an intercept of a Russian soldier telling his wife "we … fired on Klimovo"

https://twitter.com/ServiceSsu/status/1514857710126354436

This is just terrible from #Germany

https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1514872737533202433

Adviser to #Ukraine's President, Oleksiy Arestovych, talking about the Russian Legion, composed of Russian emigres who have an eye on throwing #Putin out of #Russia, after they've expelled his army from Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/akoz33/status/1514928817357438977

In #Russia, bulldozers have threatened to demolish the monument in Smolensk to the Katyn massacre, one of the worst atrocities by the #Soviet Union, the decapitation of #Poland's military, political, and cultural elite by the murder of 20,000+ people in 1940.

#Germany's Chancellor not exactly dealing with his critics in the most civilised way.

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1514990976917557249

An understandable effort by #Russia, but it has rather backfired: people in #Turkey well understand Moscow's role in supporting the #PKK - from the #Soviet era through to collaboration in #Syria over the last decade against Ankara's allies/proxies.

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1514927530985369600

900 bodies discovered around #Ukraine's capital in the areas #Russia has been cleared from.

https://twitter.com/W7VOA/status/1514997198638960641

The nearest #Russia came to an "official" justification for the war on #Ukraine, after the provocations along the line of contact failed, was that a "genocide" was ongoing in the Donbas. The Donetsk "republic" recorded seven civilian deaths in all of 2021.

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1514981601951764488

The leaked conversation of a #Russian soldier occupying the Kherson area being given permission by his wife to rape #Ukrainian women was genuine: the man's name is Roman Bykovsky, born in Orel, and he was involved in the theft of Crimea in 2014.

https://twitter.com/kromark/status/1514964537690177541

Not very smart international politics from #India, and arguably worse defence and economic policy, unless they're planning for some kind of museum where paying tourists can see what #Russia used to be able to convince people were effective weapons systems.

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1514952766451757064

Interesting thread on what Russians are thinking about this war

https://twitter.com/msturchenko/status/1515014711045246984

Very important interview with Sergey Karaganov, a close adviser to Putin, who reiterates - as every Kremlin spokesman and ally has - that #Russia struck physically in #Ukraine, but the target was the #US-led international order, specifically in Europe. corriere.it/economia/azien…

#pt: Putin adviser Sergey Karaganov: "#Ukraine had become something like Germany around 1936-1937. The war was inevitable, they were a spearhead of #NATO. We [#Russia] made the very hard decision to strike first, before the threat becomes deadlier."

#pt: Putin adviser Sergey Karaganov "it is becoming more and more likely" #Russia would extend the war beyond #Ukraine to "stop lines of communications" supplying Kiev.

This is more interesting as confirmation of Moscow would have done had they not been stopped in Ukraine.

#pt: Sergey Karaganov, one of the more reality-based people around Putin, says, "The Bucha story is completely fake-staged, it's a provocation", and muses on whether the attempt to take Kiev was a distraction from the South/South-east, and breaking Ukraine up into several states.

#pt: Sergey Karaganov, who remains close to #Putin, says he is fine with #Russia becoming a dependency of #China, and adds some very weird stuff - especially strange in an interview spent denouncing "Nazism" in #Ukraine.

#pt: More from Karaganov on the same theme: "We are talking about Ukraine, but we really want to build a different international system than the one that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union"

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1515023658170961927

#pt: Sergey Karaganov, the former Putin Presidential Adviser who is still close to the boss, repeatedly returns to the theme that "Russophobia" is akin to antisemitism between the two World Wars and this is what has forced Russia to act pre-emptively against Ukraine.

Latest demented act from the #Putin government: the Ministry of Justice has added nine #Russians to the "foreign agents" list, including journalist and popular YouTuber Yuri Dud, the great political scientist Ekaterina Shulmann, and cartoonist Sergei Elkin dw.com/ru/minjust-rf-…

- Fighting continues in #Mariupol around the Illich steel works and port

- #Russia said it has attacked Kiev overnight, attacking "a factory ... that made and repaired anti-ship missiles, in apparent retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva"
reuters.com/world/europe/p…

The Foreign Minister of the Nazi-NATO junta in Ukraine wishing "Happy Passover" to the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews who have inexplicably supported Kiev over their Russian liberators.

https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1515014957544394757

#Russia: The schools in Tyumen have replaced their tables with the "desks of heroes".

#Russia's censor Roskomnadzor has blocked The Moscow Times' website because of a story about Russian security personnel refusing to participate in the war on #Ukraine.

Confirmation that #Ukraine was telling the truth and - shock of all shocks - #Russia was lying.

https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1514998742667116546

A skin colour-based, ethno-nationalist "denazification" operation. Got it.

https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1514962208647696389