this ukrainian amateur propaganda poster with a call for "derussification" by renaming leo tolstoy square in kiev into skoropadsky square is funny on several levels
one of them being that skoropadsky was a reactionary monarchist who wanted more autonomy for the little russian landowning nobility & opposed separating ukraine from russia
skoropadsky's idea was basically a restoration of the russian empire but with the aristocracy in what is now central ukraine having more political power and autonomy within some kind of federalized system
the whole "derussification" thing really would be funny if it weren't so sad. the ukrainian ministry of education removing gogol from the curriculum the other day for being a moskal orc after three decades of claiming him as ukrainian.
deputy education minister vitrenko: "all works about the mystical power of russian arms, all that mythical stuff, it must be discarded. everything that concerns, as they say, the suffering of the russian soul, these works are too heavy for ukrainians, we don't need them at all"
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The "blood and barbaric" terrorist attack has killed dozens of innocent, peaceful people
He expresses gratitude to ambulance crews, firefighters and rescuers who did everything to save people's lives; condolences to all those who have lost relatives and friends
March 24th will be a national day of mourning, additional anti-terrorist measures have been introduced in Moscow and other regions
After the dissolution of the USSR, the US seized the opportunity to re-educate and indoctrinate young and bright students from formerly hostile countries.
A lot of programs were established to "Spread democracy", "Teach post-soviet kids American values" etc
One of the most successful programs of this kind was FLEX. They literally decided to flex on their enemy's grave. Future Leaders Exchange entailed bringing 15–19 year-old students from the former Eastern Block over to the US to live with a host family and attend US high school
There were a lot of Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, and Georgian students competing for a spot. Attending a random American public school free of charge for a year seemed like a dream come true for utterly demoralized people from those countries in the 1990s
Going through this new WaPo article on Ukrainian terror attacks inside Russia. Interesting combination of bragging about how great the CIA is but also trying to create distance from what the SBU is actually doing. washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/…
The CIA are nice guys, unlike the SBU. Training, providing advanced surveillance equipment & intel, supplying explosives, sure! But to press the button... God forbid. “Local excesses”, as they said under Stalin. The world hegemon hides behind the bicolor rag again. How American.
The author knows little about the history of post-Soviet intelligence agencies; the FSB was basically built from scratch in the 90s (by the former head of the Ukrainian KGB, by the way), while the SBU basically is the UkrSSR's KGB.
We started RWA three years ago. Originally, it had nothing to do with any kind of war reporting or snarky political commentary. The purpose of RWA was to make Russian culture & history more accessible to an interested audience; in a way that wouldn't feel like walking through a museum or reading a NYT article. Our audience back then was small but active, and we produced some of our best episodes back when we only had 1% of our current follower count on Twitter. So, as discussed on our last stream, we decided to post some of our older content we'd like to highlight that you may have missed:
RUSSIAN VOLUNTEERS, PART I: Russians participating in foreign conflicts in the age of romantic nationalism: the Greek War of Independence, Garibaldi’s invasion, the Balkans, the War between the States. The history of Russian-Boer relations, and the common fight against perfidious Albion.
RUSSIAN VOLUNTEERS, PART III: White and Red Russians fighting for a common cause in Xinjiang. The Soviet-Tsarist LARP army in the Chinese Warlord Era. White and Red Russians fighting each other in Spain; what White émigrés thought about fighting for Franco.
Armenia doesn't want to be friends with Russia because it wants to be friends with Russia's enemies instead. Russia's enemies are coincidentally also allied to Armenia's mortal enemy. People in Artsakh will suffer greatly because of this & Armenia might cease to exist as a state
Meanwhile, the Armenian media establishment pushes a shameless “Russia has betrayed Armenia and is supporting Azerbaijan” narrative, while Azerbaijan, a borderline Western satrapy, allied to Turkey & Israel, is gearing up for war again, & Armenia isn't preparing at all...