Call to action!
"It is our responsibility to show the international community a clear antiwar stance that we as Russian citizens, free from the claws of Putin's regime and propaganda machine, are taking"
message from @rusdemsoc
"We cannot allow ourselves to get used to this criminal war, let alone remain silent when Putin claims that it is being waged on our behalf and with our support." @rusdemsoc
These banners speak volumes (Prague, 26.3.2022)
It's been nearly a year since Putin has started an atrocious war against Ukraine
On Feb 24-26 there will be massive rallies & demonstrations held by Russians all over the world to protest against this terrible war
Russians living abroad, join them!
📷 Russians in 🇨🇿 (26.3.2022)
📢 Save the Date
📣 Russians all over the world protesting against this terrible war
🗓 When? February 24-26
Like every year, Putin held a very long press conference today. And like every year, he lied through his teeth the entire time.
🧵Here are just some of the falsehoods he pushed:
‘More than 40,000 sanctions have been placed on Russia’ – Just a couple of months ago, foreign minister Lavrov said the number of sanctions was only about half that, at 21,000.
‘We have no preconditions for peace talks’ – Putin himself in June said peace talks in Ukraine were conditional on Kyiv withdrawing from four of its regions and officially turning its back on plans to join NATO interfax.ru/russia/966604
In 24 years of rule, Assad and his cronies have robbed Syria blind.
@FT and @dossier_center reveal where the money went: luxury apartments in Moscow
(🧵Read on)
From March 2018 to Sept 2019, the Syrian central bank secretly sent 21 planeloads carrying over $250M in cash to Russia - nearly 2 tons of $100 and €500 notes. Supposedly for wheat, military aid & services. But the timing is suspicious.
Import-export documents were drawn up for these shipments, and on the surface they appear to be legal. However, suspicions were raised that all may not be as it seemed
🧵Here’re 3 crucial lessons that reveal Putin's strategic collapse (1/15)
(2/15) The Kremlin’s propagandists claimed the Syria intervention was a geopolitical triumph—a bold move to counter Western influence and return Russia to the big table on the world stage after the annexation of Crimea.
(3/15) Instead of proving Russia’s strength, Syria became a fiasco on par with America’s disaster in Afghanistan—only without any advance warning.
Wayne Gretzky signed on to promote a Chinese hockey team. Little did he know, it was actually a front for Putin's buddy to secretly sell Russian LNG.
🧵Here's how the greatest hockey player of all time has played a unknowingly helped Putin fund his illegal war on Ukraine
With pipeline gas exports dwindling, Putin is increasingly relying on LNG to fund his war. He’s entrusted it to one of his closest allies—his hockey buddy, Gennady Timchenko
Russia’s LNG exports are dominated by Timchenko-linked firm, Kunlun Red Star Energy Trading, which despite only having emerged recently, took in 51 billion rubles by the middle of this year
In Russia, children are now enemies of the state: 14-year-olds jailed for vandalism, teens imprisoned for online posts.
🧵With ≈100 minors labeled as terrorist, it's a clear pattern — here's how we got here (in case one famous foreign journalist currently in Moscow wants to ask Lavrov about it)
The surge in minors being prosecuted marks a shift in the nature of the regime from authoritarian to full-blown totalitarian. Even in the early years of Putin’s rule, such a thing would be impossible to imagine
In 2004 a group of National Bolshevik activists occupied the visitors’ room of the Presidential administration in Moscow. Among them were minors, and although found guilty, it was deemed unnecessary to imprison them rferl.org/a/1063679.html
Meet Lyubov Lizunova: At 16, she wrote "Death to the regime" on a garage wall. At 17, she became the first Russian schoolgirl imprisoned for opposing the war.
(Read on)
In October 2022, police detained Lyubov and her friends after they wrote an anti-regime message on a garage wall. What started as a minor vandalism case would spiral into something far more sinister.
Prosecutors charged Lyubov with "extremism" and "justifying terrorism" based on these social media posts. The vandalism charge was dropped due to statute of limitations, but the state pushed forward with the serious charges.