It's nearly 9 May, when #Russia is celebrating "Victory Day". It's time to talk about #Pobedobesie - a militaristic fetishisation of WW2 in Putin's Russia.
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#Pobedobesie is a pejorative term used to describe the "hyperbolic celebrations" of Victory Day in #Russia. This has been dubbed the Victory Cult.
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#Pobedobesie includes weaponisation of the legacy of World War II to justify #Russia's aggressive policies and an increase of militarism, using the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes.
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Significant part of #Pobedobesie is militarisation of education in Russia, including at preschool and primary school levels.
Children aged as young as 3-4 yo are dressed in military uniforms, and the idea of military service is "normalised".
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Within #Pobedobesie, Russian children are indoctrinated in the idea that their main motivation should be "to become defenders of the Motherland".
They are told that "it's not scary to die". And parents and teachers applaud such "lessons":
According to @irgarner, Putin has reconstructed the Soviet "cult of the Great Patriotic War" in a "manner that has all the hallmarks of a religion", and that the state's cult has been incorporated into Orthodox Christianity, and vice versa"
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#Pobedobesie occasionally takes on comic form: with "patriotic" bread, vodka and other products.
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But overall #Pobedobesie remains a dangerous cult of militaristic fetishisation, which drives Russia's aggression against neighbours, most notably against Ukraine, which is seeking freedom and European integration.
Independent exiled Russian media run a list of identified names among the Russian military fatalities in the Russian war in Ukraine. The number of verified KIA is now over 200,000.
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The biggest Russian war fatalities in absolute numbers are from some ethnic republics plus economically depressed regions, notably in parts of Siberia:
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The biggest group among the verified Russian war fatalities are the volunteers:
So, the Kiel Institute's Ukraine Support Tracker update has been published, with the data to end of 2025.
Let's unpack, a short thread.
Overall, Western aid to Ukraine continued through 2025, but it is now mostly aid from geographic Europe. US ended its aid in January 2025.
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In 2022-25, Ukraine received nearly double amount of aid from geographic Europe compared to aid from the US; there are nearly 180 bn euros of European aid yet to be allocated to Ukraine.
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With the US stepping away from supporting Ukraine in early 2025, Europe had to step up its aid allocations, including both military, financial and humanitarian assistance.
The Kiel Institute for World Economy published an update to its Ukraine Support tracker which shows aid to Ukraine flowing from Western partners since 2022. Data set ends on Oct. 31, 2025.
THREAD.
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Europe remains the main source of government support to Ukraine, significantly bypassing the US. US effectively ended providing aid to Ukraine in early 2025, after the Trump administration returned to the White House.
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The Nordic countries lead in terms of the share of their GDP they allocate as aid to Ukraine, especially in 2025, after the US ended its support.
They give much more proportionally than the Big Five European countries.
So, I looked at the US-Russian “peace plan” and found multiple contradictions, where one point of the plan would directly contradict one or several other points. One thing is clear - the plan was not developed by diplomats or specialists in international law.
THREAD.
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1. “Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed” vs handing territory to Russia
•Point 1: “Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.”
•Point 21: Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk are recognised as “de facto Russian, including by the United States.” Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are frozen along current front lines, and Ukrainian forces withdraw from the part of Donetsk they still control; that withdrawal zone becomes a neutral demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation.
These two ideas pull in opposite directions:
•If “sovereignty” is meant in the sense of Ukraine’s internationally recognised 1991 borders, then confirming it contradicts the explicit recognition of Russian control over Crimea, Donbas and a demilitarised slice of Donetsk.
•If instead “sovereignty” is silently redefined to mean “whatever is left after these concessions”, then point 1 becomes essentially cosmetic and misleading relative to the rest of the document.
So there’s a built-in contradiction between the headline promise (sovereignty confirmed) and the detailed territorial carve-outs.
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2. “Reliable security guarantees” vs caps, alliance bans, and loss of guarantees if Ukraine fights back
•Point 5: “Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.”
•Points 6-8: Limit the Ukrainian armed forces to 600,000; require a constitutional ban on NATO membership; and forbid NATO from stationing troops in Ukraine.
•Point 22: After the territorial arrangements, both sides must not change them by force; any security guarantees do not apply if this is breached.
In practice:
•Ukraine is permanently barred from the main collective defence alliance that could make its security guarantee credible, and its own forces are capped.
•If Ukraine ever tries to regain lost territory “by force”, the guarantees are voided - effectively punishing it for exercising self-defence.
Calling such a conditional and one-sided promise “reliable” is internally inconsistent: the plan describes the guarantees as strong while simultaneously writing in conditions that gut them at the moment Ukraine might need them most.
In Ukraine, there is a fresh opinion poll about the Russia-Ukraine war, by reputable KIIS pollster. A short thread.
Only 18% of Ukrainian respondents think that the war will end in 2025; 27% believe it will end in 2026; 32% - in 2027 or later.
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Number of Ukrainians saying that they are willing to endure the war "as long as necessary" is now 62%, up from 54% in March 2025.
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In the event if the US stops all support to Ukraine, overwhelming majority of Ukrainians (76% in Sep 2025) believe the country should continue its resistance; only 14% would support to agree to Russian demands: