1/ Three yurts are to be sent from the Russian republic of Buryatia to protect Buryat soldiers fighting in Ukraine from HIMARS attacks. Shamans will use them to restore the souls of shell-shocked soldiers and to obtain assistance from the spirits of ancient Hun warriors. ⬇️
2/ A Buryatian civil society organisation, the Fund for the Revival of the Historical Heritage (known as the "Hun Fund") is sponsoring the initiative to provide yurts for soldiers to undergo shamanic rites and restore their morale.
3/ Hun Fund chairman Oleg Bulutov (on the left here) says that "Only shamans can, for example, return the soul. It happens that a person is frightened, hit by an explosion or something else. Shamans have the ability to quickly restore a person.
4/ Or if you are injured, have a concussion, then baryashins ("bone-setters") can promptly help on the spot - correct the spine or do something else."
5/ According to the group's spokesman Erdem Taphaev, "If a person does not have a soul, he is lost, he is dangerous to everyone, because he has a weapon in his hands.
6/ With the help of rituals, [the soldier's] soul will be returned, and then as a fighting unit he will be fully operational. It's primarily spiritual help."
7/ The yurts are also intended to attract the spirits of ancient Hunnish warriors to help their descendants fighting in Ukraine. Bulatov says: "When a ceremony is held, the Hun warriors, they come there ...
8/ Let's say, HIMARS, we call them "Chimeras". If the Chimera is moving, the Hun warriors who were asleep wake up. They need a place, they need yurts, they see their home, all sorts of paraphernalia, and help our fighters."
9/ Bulatov sees historical echos in the war in Ukraine: "History is repeating itself. Once our ancestors – the great Huns – defeated the Goths, protecting the Slavs. As you can see, history that happened 16 centuries ago is repeating itself today."
10/ The arrival of the yurts is also intended "to make the Ukrainians a little afraid: they still have a little memory [of the Tatar-Mongol yoke]", Taphaev says.
11/ The Buryats originally intended to bring the yurts to the Russian-held Starobesheve district of Donetsk oblast, as "the closer they are to the line of contact, the faster the fighters can get there, and the rites have a different power," according to Bulatov.
12/ However, things haven't quite worked out as planned: while the yurts have already been taken on trucks to Rostov-on-Don, they are not now going to go into Ukraine. According to the "Baikal People" Telegram channel, the Buryats are worried about the Ukrainians bombing them.
13/ "Information about our yurts had leaked to the Ukrainian side, and they are already rubbing their hands about covering them with artillery fire," Taphaev says "Even the bombing of the Crimean bridge would be nothing compared to this possible [attack]."
14/ To avoid this scenario, the Buryats plan to keep the yurts in Rostov along with a rotating crew of shamans and the paraphernalia they need – rams, sacrifices, fires and so on. Buryat soldiers will be able to visit them from mid-December. /end
1/ The Wagner mercenary group's 'cock division' now seems to be a reality, judging by a new video of a Wagner convict recruit's debriefing. In the video, the convict talks of how Wagner is mobilising a segregated unit of raped men, who are treated as untouchables. ⬇️
2/ Wagner's head Yevgeny Prigozhin has previously said that he intended to create a 'cock division' made up of such outcast prisoners. He says that he had "recommended" (to the Russian Ministry of Defence?) the creation of such a formation.
3/ In Russia's brutal prison hierarchy, 'cocks' (also known as 'lowered' or 'offended') are the lowest of the low, subject to constant sexual abuse and humiliation. They are literally untouchable, other than while being raped – prisoners regard cock status as being contagious.
1There's been a lot of fuss about Elon Musk disclosing emails from previous Twitter management about how the company dealt with data from Hunter Biden's laptop that was posted on Twitter. But it's worth pointing out how this is disastrous for both Twitter and Musk himself. /1
🔺 Musk is very publicly behaving as a partisan political actor – using Twitter to promote Republican causes explicitly. This might have been suspected of other social media bosses (e.g. Zuckerberg) but Musk is being absolutely open about it. /2
🔺 Dems will surely now regard Twitter as having been weaponised by an overt partisan actor – Musk will not get any favours from the Administration or Congress. Congressional hearings into Musk's moderation policies were already very likely and will surely be tougher now. /3
1/ Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has promised to send former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin home "in a plastic bag" if he goes near Wagner positions while wearing and carrying mostly NATO military clothing and equipment. ⬇️
2/ Rogozin, who was formerly in charge of Russian military industries, posted photographs of himself visiting Russian troops in Ukraine while wearing an estimated $16,000 of equipment from NATO countries and Austria. Only his helmet was Russian.
3/ Russian milbloggers didn't like this at all. Nor, it turns out, does Prigozhin. Writing on the Telegram channel of his Concord Group, he says:
"We are already seeing how wonderfully our satellites fly and how far we have come in that direction.
1/ People across Russia are freezing in their homes in temperatures as low as -38°C because essential utility workers have been mobilised – even after the supposed end of mobilisation – and sent to Ukraine, hindering repair and maintenance work at home. ⬇️
2/ The "We can explain" Telegram channel reports that several regions and cities in Russia, including Astrakhan, Krasnodar and Rostov, are suffering problems with their communal heating systems because the engineers responsible for maintaining them have been mobilised.
3/ A source in Astrakhan's municipal services says: "We have appealed to the military registration and enlistment offices and officials, explaining that the heating season is coming soon and we need people, but we never received a clear answer."
1/ The Russian Interior Ministry has accidentally exposed the location of a secret Russian mobilisation camp at Lyepyel in northern Belarus, according to a report by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel which appears to be based on a leaked police report. ⬇️
2/ According to VChK-OGPU, the disclosure came about inadvertantly when a woman was arrested at Belorusskaya metro station in Moscow for having a bayonet knife from an AKM assault rifle on her person. The knife had been given to her in Belarus by her mobilised son.
3/ VChK-OGPU writes:
"Her 29-year-old son had been drafted into the Russian Armed Forces as part of the partial mobilisation. The man was doing compulsory military service and has a military specialisation as a marksman.
1/ Another member of the Wagner mercenary group has been executed by his own side – a convict soldier named Viktor Anatolyevich Sevalnev, who served with the Luhansk People's Republic People's Militia and retreated from the front line after his unit took heavy casualties. ⬇️
2/ I've told Sevalnev's story in the thread linked below. He was recruited from a Russian prison to serve in the Luhansk region and was given command of a unit due to previous combat experience in Chechnya. However, half his unit was killed in battle.
3/ Sevalnev himself was injured and ended up in hospital. His son was killed in the same battle. While recovering from his wounds, Sevalnev was taken from his hospital bed some time in November and was told that he would be shot for allowing his unit to retreat.