1/ Citizens of the puppet 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DNR) are complaining en masse that they are not being paid their promised compensation for deaths and injuries caused to local residents by the war. The DNR itself admits that it owes more than 38 billion rubles ($467m). ⬇️
2/ Relatives and soldiers of the DNR's armed forces – which have been decimated due to being used as so-called 'meat waves' against Ukrainian positions – have been posting numerous videos complaining about the lack of compensation payments and appealing to Putin for help.
3/ In one video, a wife says: "Starting from September 2022, funding for lump-sum compensation for wounded and killed DNR servicemen for 2022 was terminated. We submitted documents to the commission of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy of the DNR.
4/ "There are a lot of us. We applied to all authorities. From the presidential administration to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.
5/ "All our appeals are forwarded to the government of the DNR, which redirects them to the Ministry of Labour, and the answers come from there that there is no funding. We write to the deputies and there are no results."
6/ According to the wife of one wounded soldier, his unit "collected all the necessary documents promptly, the medical examiner issued a conclusion of a severe injury.
7/ "In November we submitted all the documents for payment, and for seven months there have been no payments, the allowance during treatment is 30,000 rubles ($371). The answer is the same, there is no funding."
8/ People seeking compensation have complained to the DNR state prosecutor's office, which admitted that an audit had "established the fact of lack of funding for this type of payment, which requires an amount of more than 38 billion rubles."
9/ It's very unlikely that the DNR will be able to pay the sums it owes, as its finances are precarious, its economy is a mess and it's kept afloat only by Russian government funding.
10/ The Russian government has shown little concern previously for the welfare of DNR soldiers and their families, so there seems to be little likelihood that the relatives' video appeals will achieve much. /end
1/ Muscovites are being locked into an ever-growing 'digital gulag', complain Russian warbloggers, as a still-mysterious mobile Internet shutdown in central Moscow enters its second week. The shutdown is reported to be causing huge commercial losses and inconvenience. ⬇️
2/ Starting March 5th, Internet access in central Moscow was shut down, apparently on the orders of the Russian government. It has even extended to shutting down Wi-Fi on the Moscow Metro and the parliamentary Wi-Fi network in the State Duma.
3/ 'Blue Beard' says the city is being plunged back into the primeval darkness of 2007:
"The only app that works in the city centre in the evening, regardless of mobile internet conditions, is Yandex Music.
Meanwhile, Sberbank and T-Bank's banking apps have crashed."
1/ In recent weeks, an entire genre has sprung up on Telegram of Russian bloggers suddenly realising that they live in a repressive dictatorship. They complain bitterly that they were "fools", they are being "enslaved", and forced to endure a "cultural counter-revolution". ⬇️
2/ The forthcoming ban on Telegram – likely to be announced on 1 April – appears to have woken up many Russian bloggers to the way the Russian government is systematically attacking free speech. 'Under the ice' predicts catastrophe:
3/ "In general, the desire to confine all citizens of the country to a sterile information bubble, eliminating the use of inappropriate social networks, books, music, and films, will have the most devastating consequences for the state itself.
1/ Russia simply isn't capable of doing in Ukraine what the US and Israeli air forces are doing in Iran, a prominent Russian warblogger admits. He blames the Russian air force's "organisational backwardness, underdeveloped intelligence, and lack of specialised aviation." ⬇️
2/ Ukraine's aviation situation is starkly different to that of Iran's, despite facing a theoretically more powerful opponent. The Ukrainian Air Force is not only still flying in substantial numbers but has expanded its capabilities with the addition of Western aircraft.
3/ 'Military Informant' discusses why the Russian Aerospace Forces are still unable to achieve air superiority over Ukraine after over four years of full-scale war:
1/ News that the Iranian regime is proving more resilient than expected highlights its unusual governing structure as a 'polydictatorship'. In many ways, it was designed from the ground up to resist regime change. ⬇️
2/ The regime comprises a multi-layered set of elected and unelected institutions that shares power across religious bodies bodies, the armed forces (particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), and economic entities. Each provides a separate and distinct power centre.
3/ They each have their own institutional bases, resources, coercive capacity, and claims to legitimacy — none of which fully controls the others, but which collectively make the regime more resilient to internal and external shocks.
1/ The shutdown of Starlink is reported to be causing a sharp rise in casualties among Russian signalmen and linemen, who are being systematically targeted by Ukrainian drones as they attempt to install alternative communications systems. ⬇️
2/ Pro-Kremlin journalist Andrey Medvedev reports that "in those units where Starlink was operational and then shut down, there was an increase in the number of killed and wounded signalmen and linemen. Why do you think this is?"
3/ "The guys are trying to extend fibre optics to their positions everywhere, while the Ukrainians are herding our signalmen and hitting them with drones. Here's an officer's comment. Not everyone will understand, but...
1/ Ukrainian drone attacks deep in the Russian rear have prompted alarm among Russian warbloggers. They warn that the 'kill zone' behind the front line has expanded far into the rear of the Russian-occupied Donbas region. ⬇️