IR & Security Analyst, Senior Lecturer in IR & Security Studies MGU 2012-14, LSE postgrad, Climate Change, US Navy vet-Nuclear Engineering marksleboda@gmail.com
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Jul 17, 2023 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
Quick take:
Russian Defenses Carved into the Earth
(Part 1 of series)
^ Quick take:
The Defenses that the Russian Military Has Prepared Against the Kiev Regime Offensive
(Part 2 of series)
Mar 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"International 🦘 Court" not recognized by Russia, Ukraine, the US, China and others issues headline-generating propaganda as part of the information war, while conveniently ignoring the West-backed Putsch regime in Kiev repressing & mass murdering its own people for 9 years.
^ For the "crime" of east Ukrainians moving their own children & orphanages out of the conflict zone and range of the West-backed Putsch regime in Kiev that has been shelling them for 9 years. @bopanc
Jan 19, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
NATO feels they can hit Russia through Ukrainian Putsch regime proxies anywhich way they want because they no longer fear a Russian escalatory response, except against said Ukrainian proxies which they don't care about.
1/- archive.is/tcZOE
^ 2/- Russia needs to hit back at NATO to let them know there are consequences. Otherwise NATO will continue to strike Russia & escalate with impunity because they believe that Putin is weak.
Some potential Russian responses:
Nov 9, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A Russian military retreat from Kherson will be an enormous political cost to Putin, ends any foreseeable future move on Nikolaev and Odessa, and puts the Crimean Canal and defense of Crimea itself in question.
^ If Putin signs a ceasefire or peace settlement in the near future (something I still think unlikely), surrenduring a significant city that he had recognised as part of Russia to Kiev & the West, it will be his political end. The Russian people will not accept such a defeat.
Oct 5, 2022 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
Manpower, the numbers Thread🧵
Manpower: the numbers:
The Kiev regime started the conflict with approximately 250,000 trained armed forces
Through volunteers, territorial defense (now regularly thrown into the front) and mass forced conscription they have raised that number to around 700,000 total, though many have next to no training or experience.
Sep 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The situation in Ukraine is becoming clearer. The biggest Kiev regime counter-offensive is yet to come, most likely in the SouthEast from the Ugledar direction towards Mariupol and potentially even Donetsk city. 1/-
^ 2/- The New Kiev regime counteroffensive in the SE contains a substantial armored first of Polish-supplied modernized T72s and IFVs. Lacking sufficient manpower in the intervention force to protect all occupied territory, the Kremlin prioritized & sacrificed the Kharkov region
Aug 21, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The attempted assassination of Dugin which instead resulted in the killing of his daughter, was part of the increasingly demented propaganda & infowar of a desperate & crumbling US proxy Putsch regime in Kiev in lieu of success on the battlefield of which it is incapable 1/
^ 2/- The killing of "Putin's brain" who "inspired" the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict would be celebrated by Kiev regime propagandists as a "victory".
It does not matter in the slightest that none of it is true. It doesn't matter that in reality Dugin has
May 19, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Objectivity is not dead. Objectivity never existed. It was always a figment, a fairy-tale, a scam... Its just that now even the pretense of it has been tossed to the gutter. The glowing neon of Post-modernity has no need of such mythology... 1/-
^ 2/- Quote "Theory is always for someone and for some purpose. All theories have a perspective. Perspectives derive from a position in time and space, specifically social and political time and space.
Apr 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
When Westerners are so locked up in their Exceptionalism that they convince themselves despite not speaking Russian or Ukrainian that they know more about what is "really" happening there than Russians do, many w friends & family in Ukraine, and 5 million Ukrns residing in Russia
The reality is that the average Russian, through standard Russian media, Telegram, and hearing from actual Ukrainians, knows far far more about what is really happening in Ukraine, and has been happening there for the last 8+ years, than the average Westerner does. @MaxAbrahms
Mar 29, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
We are seeing the Russian intervention in #Ukraine enter a new more realistic sequential conflict phase that will be characterized by:
- more focus of forces on limited regional objectives
- once objectives met, reinforcement, consolidation, new objectives set
1/-
^ 2/-
- greater use of drones, airpower, drone targeted artillery
- war of attrition
- periodic lulls for reinforcement, consolidation, and logistics
- continued jar jar diplomacy noises, likely temporary ceasefires followed by renewed conflict
Mar 2, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
This is #theGreatDecoupling between the West and Russia. Economic linkages will be cut down to only energy and a few other commodities & chemicals that Europe is dependent on Russia for. The West controls and has weaponized their entire economy in their war to break Russia. 1/-
^ 2/- Political, social and cultural linkages will also be severed to a high degree. Weaning Russia off this dependence will be hard and immiserating. But with Chinese and some other Eurasian support, Russia may just weather it. The entire global economy will suffer as well.
Nov 24, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
States have never been able to choose their alliances freely. Under post-Cold War US suzerainty it has been "for me & mine, but not for you". Is Syria or Venezuela free to choose Iran as an ally? Is Turkey or Germany free to trade w Russia? No, not without punishment from the US.
Even closer to the crux, after the democratically-elected Yanukovich admin in Ukraine dared to say no at the altar to the proffered neoliberal shock therapy EU Association Agreement & started to pivot to Russia, Ukraine was targeted for regime change by the US & EU. @RALee85
May 2, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Raise your hands if you think a "non-fascist" regime officially integrates Neonazi brownshirts like Azov & Right Sector into its police, military & security services and reifies Nazi collaborators & Holocaust perpetrators like Bandera, OUN & UPA as heroes & founding fathers?
^The Maiden regime that Zelenskiy inherited in #Ukraine IS a Banderite fascist regime in that the Banderite vanguard fought them into power, maintains them in power, and is hostage to them, because if Zelenskiy moved against them or broke with them ideologically, he would @27khv
Jan 22, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
This "ridiculous man" is more than willing to debate you on air on your whitewashing of and apologism for @Navalny's odious far right, racist, and ultranationalist political views. Care to discuss facts instead of slurs? Any time, any platform @ichbinilya@OCCRP
I take it that @ichbinilya@OCCRP would rather stick to potshot slurs and run away rather than debate actual facts about @Navalny's odious far right, racist, and ultranationalist political views, hunh?
Sep 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"More deadly than all known offshoots of Novichok", of which the normal version is supposedly a nerve agent 8x more deadly than VX. And still NO ONE dies from it.
Such incredible propaganda bullsh💩t and all goes completely unquestioned through Western media stenographers...
As a navy nuke, I had CBRN training in the military. Someone exposed to a lethal dose (a drop) of VX via skin contact or ingestion has a severe (convulsions, vomiting paralysis) response within seconds to minutes. Fatal from minute to an hour. Now multiply that deadliness 8x+
Aug 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Strikes around the country including state companies are a sign that the Belarussian security services stupidly brutal & excessively heavy-handed tactics against election protesters have caused the general public to become sympathetic to what were 1/2 wsws.org/en/articles/20…
^ 2/3 a vocal and active minority. Strikes are potentially a much greater threat to Lukashenko's regime than street revolution by youth ever could be. Lukashenko is teetering on loosing the "legitimacy" of the tacit consent of general population which was all he had at this point
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