1/ Russian strippers say that mobilisation has had an unexpected benefit for them – Moscow's 'inadequate' men have been sent to war, leaving them with a smaller but better-behaved clientele. ⬇️
2/ I've previously highlighted a report on how the war has impacted strip clubs in Moscow. It's been suggested before that the financial perfomance of strip clubs can be a leading indicator of imminent economic problems – so-called 'strippernomics'.
3/ The independent Russian SOTA media collective reports that the situation with Moscow's strip clubs is more complicated than earlier reports suggested. Customer numbers fell after the start of the war in February 2022 and partial mobilisation from September.
4/ However, this isn't all bad news, as strippers at a prestigious central Moscow strip club say that it's got rid of many of their unwanted poorly behaved customers. SOTA quotes one stripper:
5/ "We divide men into adequate and not so much. And to be honest, it's mostly the latter who are missing. They're probably at war right now.
6/ At the end of September and in October guys often came to us and said, 'That's it, tomorrow we have to fight, come on, dance for us.' But on the whole, it has become calmer to work. The most unpleasant customers now have no time for striptease."
7/ While revenues have fallen, SOTA reports, strip clubs have been able to make up the difference though a surge of customers arriving for their traditional pre-New Year strip club visit. /end
1/ Powerful interests in Russia are milking the war in Ukraine for profit and power, complains a Russian drone developer and blogger. He argues that the interests are indifferent to the loss of Russian lives and are ripping off the state defence procurement system. ⬇️
2/ 'UAV Developer' writes on Telegram: "You see, they couldn't care less about our victory."
3/ "They—a collective group of people in power, one of the towers [factions]—understand that the name of the Lord Special Military Operation can still be used to cover up any nonsense, and to call opponents foreign agents and enemies of the people.
1/ Russia is suffering huge casualties in the battle for Kostiantynivka, says a Russian soldier who is fighting there. He says that 75% of his unit of poorly-trained middle-aged men was killed in a single assault, with dogs eating the skeletonised bodies of the dead nearby. ⬇️
2/ A man named Tamerlan – likely from the North Caucasus, judging by the name – has recorded a video describing his experiences. He says:
"Today, 27 men went into the assault, and only six survived ... "
3/ "They're just fucking new guys, they've just arrived, they haven't even been serving for a month, damn it. We were herding them in there... It was a complete mess."
1/ The Russian government is blocking Telegram to destroy the Russian people's social connections, says former high-level government advisor German Klimenko. The frank admission has caused outrage among Russian commentators. ⬇️
2/ In an interview with 'Parliamentary Gazette', Klimenko says: "The primary function of any messenger is to create social connections. Therefore, to stop people from using a messenger, these connections must be destroyed."
3/ "In 2018, when Telegram first clashed with [communications regular] Roskomnadzor, the latter managed to knock out about 10 percent of social connections: let's say, I have a thousand contacts in the messenger, 100 stopped working, and 900 remained.
1/ Russia's block on Telegram, crackdown on VPNs and mobile Internet shutdowns are threatening to destroy the 'People's Military-Industrial Complex' – a vast ecosystem of volunteer and start-up efforts that manufactures and supplies the army with drones and other equipment. ⬇️
2/ The 'People's VPK', as it's known in Russia, has grown from garage workshops to well-organised industrial chains linking enthuasists, serving and ex-military personnel, and start-up companies to produce a wide variety of essential equipment for the Russian army.
3/ They supply many things that the Russian MOD and the slow and expensive state-directed military industrial complex does not: drones, signal repeaters, masts, armour plates, charging stations, sighting devices, electronic warfare equipment, and so on.
1/ The blocking of Telegram by the Russian government is a disaster for huge numbers of Russian businesses and citizens, who have now lost a key means of advertising and income. The Russian government's preferred app, MAX, lacks the features that made Telegram so essential. ⬇️
2/ Russian commentators are warning that two recent developments – Telegram's blocking by the state and the decision by two regulatory bodies that all advertising on it is retrospectively illegal – threaten to cause devastating economic harm.
3/ Telegram, which was developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, is almost universally used by Russians. It has become an essential business tool, with virtually every company in Russia advertising on it and many running their own channels for customers.
1/ The Russian army is recruiting incontinent, brain-damaged men who are incapable of fighting and are literally having to be carried around. A Russian warblogger protests the waste of resources that this represents. ⬇️
2/ Anastasia Kashevarova, a journalist and warblogger who has campaigned for the rights of Russian troops, highlights the ongoing problem of so-called "black recruiters" who recruit sick people into the army to meet arbitrary quotas and steal their recruitment bonuses.
3/ This is a widespread issue on which she has written before. Thousands of medically unfit men, many with infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis, have been recruited. Some have been discharged, but many have ended up on the front lines.