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Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

@anno1540

May 21

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18 hours in the making of a president: Inside Nicușor Dan’s election win

Romania’s new leader told POLITICO how he will approach international affairs and what he will do to rebuild trust in a democracy battered by corruption, economic strife and Russian meddling.
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It’s 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 18 — election day — and Nicușor Dan is trying to hold it together.

After months of campaigning in the country’s fraught presidential race, the independent mayor of Bucharest has just 12 hours left before he will learn his fate.

The morning air is cool in the yard outside School Number 4 in Făgăraș, Dan’s Transylvanian hometown. The sun breaks through, picking out streaks of snow on the tops of the mountains in the distance

politico.eu/article/nicuso…

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Today, the school Dan attended as a young boy is being used as a polling station, and he has chosen to come here with his long-term partner Mirabela Grădinaru to vote. At one point, the emotion of returning home and seeing his old neighbors and teachers threatens to overwhelm him.

“I was forcing myself not to,” Dan tells POLITICO afterward, laughing, as he mimes tears rolling down his face. “It was very emotional.”

Wearing a plain dark suit, white shirt and navy tie, he grips Grădinaru by the hand as they meet familiar faces and old friends on the playground. Several receive hugs.

Dan, 55, was born in the house next door to the school, a low-rise building painted apricot pink, with vines hanging over the garden to the side. His parents lived in the town for most of their lives, and Dan returned here for several months during the pandemic before winning his first term as mayor of Bucharest later in 2020.

With voting underway, POLITICO was granted exclusive access to Dan as he spent time with his family and closest aides away from the TV cameras on election day. These would be the last hours of calm before his life would be transformed forever. When the results rolled in on Sunday night, it became clear he had defied the odds and beaten the radical right-wing nationalist George Simion to take the presidency.

Dan’s victory was cheered in the halls of power across much of Europe, where many centrist politicians and officials had feared Simion would derail their mainstream agenda.

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Desperate Dan
While the opinion polls had started to tighten in the final week of the campaign, the 38-year-old Simion had been favored to win the run-off after winning the first round with 41 percent of the vote to Dan’s 21 percent.

“After the first round, the people for our side felt a little bit desperate,” Dan says, seated at the Bistro Story Caffe in the center of Făgăraș, with his partner and family at the next table.

“Mr. Simion made a lot of mistakes,” he adds, chief among them refusing to show up for television debates.

Dan and Simion debated each other directly only once — a three-hour affair that observers agreed benefited the mayor.

While Simion spent much of the time attacking his opponent loudly and aggressively, Dan remained calm, delivering methodical responses and refusing to be drawn into a slanging match.

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Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

@anno1540

May 18

1/
The Russian invaders have resorted to new tricks: what new things have they come up with for the residents of the occupied part of Ukraine?

In the temporarily occupied part of Ukraine, the Russian invaders are doing everything they can to establish maximum control over local residents. With special attention paid to families with children.

At the same time, they are now severely limiting the number of Ukrainians who are allowed to return home, at least for a certain period of time

There is no logic – only terror

The fact that the occupiers have a bad causal relationship has been known for a long time (let's remember the "reasons" for the war against Ukraine).

- No changes for the better are happening now.
Moreover, the actions of the invaders are becoming even more sophisticated and illogical - and this is clearly visible from what is happening in the occupied territory.

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One of the latest "innovations" introduced by the occupation authorities concerns schoolchildren.

- From now on, in order for a child to attend school, a statement from both parents is required - regardless of which of them is where and whether they live together.

The Center for National Resistance believes that this was done to force people to return to temporarily occupied territories.
t.me/sprotyv_offici…

"The goal is obvious: to drag as many people as possible into TOT, to filter, intimidate, and recruit," the Central Intelligence Agency says.

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"The thing is that the occupation authorities did everything to ensure that children, God forbid, would not study remotely in Ukrainian schools.

They see this as a great threat. And they directly stated:

"They will turn them into partisans and saboteurs there!"

The Russians are panicky afraid of this, it's true.

And there were real raids - they calculated which family had a child who did not go to a Russian school. Parents were threatened with taking away their children, sending them to an orphanage.

And therefore it is unclear why this innovation with statements from both parents is needed. Maybe we don't know something yet," a resident of occupied Berdyansk shared with us.

A woman of pre-retirement age, herself a former teacher, was forced to stay in the occupation to care for a sick relative. And she is convinced that most of those who remained in the occupation with their children have pro-Russian views.

"Let's be honest:

- The school teaches according to the Russian curriculum, many teachers are from the Russian Federation, and at the age of 14, Ukrainian children are required to be issued a Russian passport.

Which normal parents would agree to this?

Only those who betrayed #Ukraine. With very rare exceptions. Those who think about the future of their daughters and sons are still trying to escape from here," says Olena.

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Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

@anno1540

May 17

1/
ANALYSIS: How Well Understood Is Ukraine in the West?
For centuries, #Ukraine️ has been viewed by the West as a sub-category of Russia. Only now is the West realizing what a fatal misunderstanding this is – and how Moscow is taking advantage of it.
By:
@DVKirichenko

kyivpost.com/analysis/52308

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Now in the fourth year of its full-scale resistance, Ukraine continues to defy the assumptions of a Western world that, in February 2022, largely expected its rapid collapse. Ukraine’s belief in freedom runs deep in its history.

The national poet Taras Shevchenko believed in the unifying power of the struggle for freedom among Ukrainians.

His writings “inspired Ukrainians to dream of freedom while angering Russian official censors.”
ge.usembassy.gov/americans-hono…

This spirit was rooted in the legacy of the Cossacks, who built a tradition of self-rule and resistance to foreign domination.

Yet while both the West and Russia have long believed they “know” Ukraine, both have consistently misjudged its resilience.

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Russia’s first invasion in 2014 should have triggered a deeper reckoning across the West to confront the imperial logic and deeply rooted ideology that has driven Russia to genocidal intent against Ukraine.

Yet Ukraine’s story remains too often misread or reduced. Its past is compressed, its identity filtered through a Russian lens, and its struggle diminished to the language of great power competition in the view of the new @realDonaldTrump administration.

This strategic blind spot led to devastating consequences in the lead-up to the full-scale invasion. The US and other Western governments initially believed that supplying Ukraine
voanews.com/a/three-reason…

- with heavy weapons wouldn’t change the outcome of Russia’s invasion, and therefore withheld critical military aid, such as heavy weaponry

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Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

@anno1540

May 16

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ISW. @TheStudyofWar explained what the #Kremlin is preparing the #russians for with statements about negotiations in Istanbul

The Kremlin has sent Russian media "methods" with recommendations for covering the talks between Ukraine and Russia in #Istanbul.

The main message is that they are supposedly a

"continuation of the interrupted talks" in Turkey in the spring of 2022".

Russia, like three years ago, continues to make demands on Ukraine that are tantamount to the capitulation of our state, which indicates Moscow's unwillingness to end the war and that the chances of success in these negotiations are low.

How the Kremlin recommends talking about "negotiations" and what these demands actually indicate, was analyzed by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)
understandingwar.org/backgrounder/r…

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The opposition Russian publication Meduza reported the day before, on May 15, that Russian media outlets had received a "manual" from the Kremlin with instructions on how to cover the talks in Istanbul

Even before the talks began, the Kremlin administration sent out manuals to the media it controlled, clearly outlining how to interpret the events in Istanbul. The main goal was not to inform, but to create a pre-justified fiasco.

As Meduza has learned , the propaganda media have received clear instructions from the Kremlin administration on how to "correctly" cover the talks in Istanbul. This is not about objective reporting, but about another act of mass disinformation.
meduza.io/feature/2025/0…

In a leaked document obtained by journalists, Kremlin officials emphasize the need to convince Russians that Putin's delegation is acting "independently" and not subject to any external pressure.

In particular, the participation of Vladimir Medinsky, a faithful executor of the dictator's will, is presented as a "logical continuation" of his role in the failed 2022 negotiations

The instructions cynically keep silent about any specific positions that the Russian Federation will take to the meeting with Ukrainian representatives.

- Obviously, not because of secrecy, but because of the complete lack of real intentions to negotiate.

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This, by the way, was directly stated by Medinsky himself. Speaking to journalists in Turkey, he stated that Russia considers the talks in May 2025 to be a "continuation" of the previous talks in Istanbul in April 2022, which, according to him, were interrupted by Ukraine.

"Medinsky reiterates Putin's statement from May 11 that new bilateral talks in Istanbul will be based on the draft agreement on the Istanbul Protocols from April 2022, which contained conditions that would mean Ukraine's surrender and would leave Ukraine helpless to defend itself against potential future Russian aggression," the analysts noted".

At the same time,

- a political strategist working with the Kremlin told Meduza that Russian officials who control domestic policy believe that the Istanbul talks will end in a "dead end," and that the Kremlin estimates that the West will likely impose new sanctions in response to such a "dead end."

So the Kremlin is strongly "recommending" Russian propaganda media to preemptively talk about a "new package of sanctions" - emphasizing that the new sanctions "will not harm Russia's development" because Russia "successfully copes with the challenges of any sanctions."

- The Kremlin's lies continue, Putin is doing everything he can to increase the pressure and continue his war on terror

Read 12 tweets

Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

@anno1540

May 14

1/
Diplomatic and espionage scandal: how @PM_ViktorOrban is preparing to "take control" of #Transcarpathia and for what tragedy #Hungary should apologize to #Ukrainians
obozrevatel.com/ukr/politics-n…

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The difficult relations between Ukraine and Hungary have become even more tense. For the first time in the history of Ukraine, the SBU has exposed a Hungarian military intelligence agent network that was spying against our state.

One of the main goals of the detainees was to understand the mood of the residents of Transcarpathia if the Hungarian military entered the region

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"However, it did not end there".

- Calling the actions and statements of the SBU "propaganda", our neighbors first expelled two current Ukrainian diplomats from the country, and then the Hungarian counterterrorism center also detained a former Ukrainian diplomat in #Budapest, whom the Hungarian authorities allegedly suspect of espionage.

#Ukraine responded by expelling two Hungarian diplomats from #Kyiv.

Hungary went further and refused to participate in the negotiations on the issue of national minorities, which were supposed to take place on May 12, which is one of the main obstacles in the bilateral negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the European Union

Read 19 tweets

Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

@anno1540

May 14

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⚡️Despite growth claims, Russia’s war economy shows deep risks, @Reuters reports.

"Contrary to Kremlin narratives, time is not on Russia’s side," reads a new report from the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE).
kyivindependent.com/despite-growth…

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While the Kremlin continues to project economic strength—citing GDP growth of 4.3% in 2024—SITE researchers warned that the apparent resilience is misleading.
kyivindependent.com/putin-to-annou…

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"The fiscal stimulus of the war economy has kept the economy afloat in the short term, but the reliance on opaque financing, distortionary resource allocation, and shrinking fiscal buffers makes it unsustainable in the long term," the report read, according to Reuters.
reuters.com/world/europe/r…

"Contrary to Kremlin narratives, time is not on Russia’s side."

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Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

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Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

Lew Anno Support#Israel #Ukraine 24/2-22

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