@CITeam_en is reporting that Russia has formed the 3rd Army Corpse and is deploying it to Ukraine. Where did they form and train it? In Mulino ofc. German-built Mulino is the only modern training ground Putin has, so he trains his army of invasion there. Thank you, Rheinmetall AG
After 2014 Rheinmetall AG "left" the project to the Russian "Гарнизон" company. Thankfully, import genius allows to trace where Гарнизон was importing stuff from. It's all from Germany, Rheinmetall AG making the lion share
It looks as Гарнизон was merely a proxy for Rheinmetall
It was in Mulino where Putin launched his manoeuvres West-2021 preparing his army for the invasion of Ukraine. Because this Rheinmetall-built facility is the only modern training ground Russia has
Not only the regular Russian army but also the Wagner mercenaries use this ground for training. Because Russia does not have any other modern facilities to train it's land army. Only the Rheinmetall AG-built Mulino
Since 2015, construction of Mulino was supposed to be completed by Russians. And yet, my sources say that the Rheinmetall still continued their participation in the project as suppliers. They are reported to have supplied "over 90% of the planned volume" of equipment by 2020
According to my sources, problem with Mulino came not from the Rheinmetall - they continued their supplies honestly and diligently. It came from the Russian side. Гарнизон and other proxies were simply stealing too much. They completed Mulino, but quality was lower than planned
When discussing current economic hardships of Germany, we should not forget about the responsibility of Rheinmetall AG and other German industrial companies in building the Putin's war machine. Best Russian military infrastructure is German-built. The end
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I have recently read someone comparing Trump’s tariffs with collectivisation in the USSR. I think it is an interesting comparison. I don’t think it is exactly the same thing of course. But I indeed think that Stalin’s collectivisation offers an interesting metaphor, a perspective to think about
But let’s make a crash intro first
1. The thing you need to understand about the 1920s USSR is that it was an oligarchic regime. It was not strictly speaking, an autocracy. It was a power of few grandees, of the roughly equal rank.
2. Although Joseph Stalin established himself as the single most influential grandee by 1925, that did not make him a dictator. He was simply the most important guy out there. Otherwise, he was just one of a few. He was not yet the God Emperor he would become later.
The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.
The first thing to understand about the Russian-Ukrainian war is that Russia did not plan a war. And it, most certainly, did not plan the protracted hostilities of the kind we are seeing today
This entire war is the regime change gone wrong.
Russia did not want a protracted war (no one does). It wanted to replace the government in Kyiv, put Ukraine under control and closely integrate it with Russia
(Operation Danube style)
One thing to understand is that Russia viewed Ukraine as a considerable asset. From the Russian perspective, it was a large and populous country populated by what was (again, from the Russian perspective) effectively the same people. Assimilatable, integratable, recruitable
In 1991, Moscow faced two disobedient ethnic republics: Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both were the Muslim majority autonomies that refused to sign the Federation Treaty (1992), insisting on full sovereignty. In both cases, Moscow was determined to quell them.
Still, the final outcome could not be more different. Chechnya was invaded, its towns razed to the ground, its leader assassinated. Tatarstan, on the other hand, managed to sign a favourable agreement with Moscow that lasted until Putin’s era.
The question is - why.
Retrospectively, this course of events (obliterate Chechnya, negotiate with Tatarstan) may seem predetermined. But it was not considered as such back then. For many, including many of Yeltsin’s own partisans it came as a surprise, or perhaps even as a betrayal.
The single most important thing to understand regarding the background of Napoleon Bonaparte, is that he was born in the Mediterranean. And the Mediterranean, in the words of Braudel, is a sea ringed round by mountains
We like to slice the space horizontally, in our imagination. But what we also need to do is to slice it vertically. Until very recently, projection of power (of culture, of institutions) up had been incomparably more difficult than in literally any horizontal direction.
Mountains were harsh, impenetrable. They formed a sort of “internal Siberia” in this mild region. Just a few miles away, in the coastal lowland, you had olives and vineyards. Up in the highland, you could have blizzards, and many feet of snow blocking connections with the world.