Prigozhin took the only ticket out of the burning train to oblivion. He staged a “coup” to become a pariah, and then “cut a deal” where he’s “ousted” from Putin’s court of thugs. Now he can go back to running his businesses in Africa, never to be called upon for help again.
His goal was never to take over Moscow, but to show that he had a shot at doing it, with a non-zero probability, high enough for Putin to accept a deal as a less risky outcome, no matter how shameful, no matter how weak Putin would end up appearing in the process.
Jun 11, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It’s literally unbelievable how Ukraine managed to get to where they are.
They managed to fight back a massive onslaught with Stingers and Javelins. Then they fought Russia to a standstill, earning themselves a few HIMARS, “to test the waters”.
They mangled Russian logistics,
squeezing Russia to the point where Ukraine could retake Kharkiv Oblast and Kherson.
This earned them Western air defences, as everyone understood Russia would try to bomb city center energy infrastructure to freeze everyone in wintertime. Ukrainians survived that as well.
Aug 21, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Next Tuesday will mark the 83rd anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, where Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia formed an alliance to each occupy its respective half of Europe.
2 years later Germany broke the pact, which is why Russia is still mad at Nazis - for betraying them.
Russia is the last colonial empire on earth, which started dislocating in 1990. It might have held on for a few more decades if not for #Pedoputin gloriously misreading the room & attacking Ukraine with his rag tag army of alcoholic rapists with wooden teeth & 50 year old tanks.
Aug 19, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
A story about why I love old bananas.
In the winter of 1991/1992, a truck in a French humanitarian convoy broke down and split off from the rest of the pack. They managed to fix the issue, and decided to try and catch up. Destination: Vilnius, Lithuania. Cargo: medical supplies.
As they entered Poland, they got lost. Every road sign, whenever there was one, was written in Cyrillic. It was heavily snowing. Their next checkpoint was Lida, Belarus, but they couldn’t figure out where they were. Somehow they made it to Klaipėda, the seaport, 500 km off route.
Jun 24, 2022 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Stalin invaded Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland & Poland in 1939 under the pretence that Russia was afraid those countries would be used by Germany to attack Russia.
Putin invaded Ukraine under the pretence that Russia was afraid Ukraine would be used by NATO to invade Russia.
Stalin never actually expected Germany to actually attack Russia. That's why the Russian army was caught unprepared during Operation Barbarossa.
Putin never actually expected the West to unite against Russia. That's why Russia was caught unprepared by Western sanctions.
Jun 16, 2022 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
This will be a personal story. It’s hard to tell. But needs to.
People living in the West don’t understand what Russia is. They say it’s a “great power” with “imperialistic ambitions”. They point to how Great Britain behaved with the Irish, how the British committed atrocities.
The Irish were very lucky.
British soldiers killed, made mistakes, went rogue, and of course it was horrible. But the British are civilised people. They are educated, psychologically bound to certain rules, they believe in humanity.
Russians are animals. They believe in nothing.
May 31, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Kremlin told the truth when they said Russia was forced to invade Ukraine because it was threatened.
Not militarily, of course, or they wouldn't have thought their army of rapists & thieves would be able to crush the UAF in three days.
Russia was threatened by Ukraine's success.
Despite the Russian aggression of 2014, illegal annexation of Crimea, and invasion in the Donbas, Ukraine's GDP had made up all its losses since. Ukrainians were enjoying the freedom and emancipation of people living in a democracy. The IMF program was working, and with EU help,
Apr 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
France’s and Germany’s impotence in the face of absolute evil is the final nail in the coffin of Metternich’s balance of great powers in Europe. Russia is dying as well, out of cannon fodder and cheap oil.
The new great power in Europe will be Poland-Ukraine & friends.
I don’t know what happened to Germany, but French elites have been shitting themselves for a while now. They really thought the Gilets Jaunes were the forefront of the next revolution. Their books are cooked - French GDP is officially 7th in the world, but in reality, it’s 12th.
Apr 10, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Nobody is talking about the consequences of this. Russia still has 30 days (“grace period”) until an official default is declared, and bondholders go to court.
Obviously financial covenants are at play (CDS holders can demand payment, Russian bonds can’t be used as collateral…).
But second order implications are much more wide-reaching. The bankruptcy trustee will ask the freezing of all Russian state assets, and the blocking of all transactions. Lawyers will argue that a payment by any Russian entity should also be blocked, npr.org/sections/money…
Apr 5, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
40 days into a genocide, with toddlers raped & executed by Russian animals, the German government is still “discussing” (understand: REFUSING) sanctions.
Infamy will follow you in your grave @Bundeskanzler. I can’t believe we’re both Europeans. You spineless, pathetic little man.
Because sanctions have to be approved at the EU level, Germany is in effect forbidding other EU countries to impose sanctions on Russia, because they’re afraid it would hurt Germany.
We’re reaching unimaginable depths of depravity and cowardice.
Apr 5, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Some are doubting the reality of Russian atrocities, because a normal human being can’t comprehend three year old girls being systematically raped and executed.
But everyone who knows what Russia truly is, knew this would happen. This is a reminder from the 2nd day or the war:
Russians aren’t people like you and me at this point. You can blame years of propaganda, you can blame centuries of tyrannical oppression, whatever.
The only language they’ll understand is overwhelming force. Deadly sanctions. Complete isolation.
Stop making up excuses and do it.
Apr 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
@coloradotravis@TensaiCapital@Santiag78758327 Russians do. That's how they subjugated Ukraine twice already over the last 100 years. First, with the Holodomor. Then, by another genocide post-WWII, where they would come into villages and kill everyone - babies, women - so that freedom fighters would eventually lose support...
@coloradotravis@TensaiCapital@Santiag78758327 from the civilian population. They replicated this strategy in Lithuania. Hundreds of thousands dead, tortured, sent to Siberia. Freedom fighters would blow their faces off with a hand grenade before dying, so that their families would be safe. The resistance gave up around 1955.
Apr 3, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The West’s muted response to the war in Ukraine is a rerun.
They stroke a peace deal with Russia in exchange of Eastern Europe in WWII. Eastern Europe got slaughtered, but the West did well: end of war, Marshall Plan got the economy going.
Why should they act any different now?
The Ribentropp/Molotov pact, a curse word in Poland and the Baltics, divided Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the USSR.
It was replaced by the agreement reached at the Yalta Conference, which gave Eastern Europe to the USSR.
Eastern Europe was always just a piece of loot.
Apr 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Look at pictures of Bucha. Read the stories of rape, mutilation, torture, murder. Imagine what pictures and stories will come out of Mariupol. Imagine what pictures & stories we’ll never see from Donbas, where the Russian animals have been torturing, raping, killing for 8 years.
I’m still dumbstruck by the flaccid response to these horrors from Europe. Russian gas is still flowing, Russian banks are still open, Russian oligarchs are still walking around European capitals with most of their fortunes safe from harm. Ukraine is still short on weapons.
Mar 28, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
A little bit of history about reliance on Russian gas.
In 2008, the Lithuanian government voted a law to build an LNG terminal near KlaipÄ—da (Memel for the Germanophiles). It was a strategic decision, motivated not financially, but politically.
At first, the attempt failed.
The government had hired a German consultancy for a feasibility study, & the conclusions were unequivocal - the project was "financially unviable", for Russian gas was much cheaper.
The project had to be frozen for a couple of years. Never ask Germans their opinion about energy.
Mar 25, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A good friend of mine moonlights as a Bolt driver (it’s like Uber). He has the knack to make people talk. A couple of days ago he took a young man who ended up confiding that he’s the son of a Russian oligarch and all his family has fled Russia a week ago through Kaliningrad.
They managed to get through border guards because they had Israeli passports, and I guess bags of cash for bribes. His parents lost a debilitating amount of money in the last month. They still own a lot of businesses outside Russia. He’s living and studying in Vilnius now.
Mar 17, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A good lie isn't about making up bullshit.
It's about picking a few true facts, stripping them of context, and presenting them to an audience, all the while knowing how that audience will interpret those facts and unconsciously rebuild a twisted context around them.
The lie isn't what you say. It's how you lead people to build a false interpretation of what you say.
This involves a deep knowledge of your audience, premeditation, and ill intentions from the get go. This doesn't happen by accident.
Let's dissect the lie by @Cernovich.
Mar 9, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I don't have a single friend in Western Europe who understands what Russia is. They keep westplaining how the Ukraine war could have been avoided, how Zelensky should give up the Donbas and Crimea. They can't understand that if he does that, Russia will simply invade them again.
The linked thread is the ultimate explanation of the Russian state governance. Russia is ruled by a gang of murderers without morals or regards for human life, funded by exports of raw materials, cemented by endless oppression and violence. The murderers want to keep it that way.
Mar 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Our Ukrainian refugee friend starts working today at Lithuania’s leading media portal. They’re beefing up their staff for content in Russian, as they saw a surge of demand, mainly from Belarus, for news that doesn’t come from Kremlin’s propaganda factories. The fight goes on!
The influx of Ukrainian refugees in Lithuania is both heartbreaking, challenging, and welcome, as we can actually do something. Everyone is coming together. People need a place to live, they need jobs, their children need classes taught in Ukrainian. Incredible solidarity.
Mar 2, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
For having worked on IT infrastructure in Russia, they require everything to be installed locally. They have a copy of Microsoft cloud running there, thinking they’re safe. But they have no clue how to maintain/upgrade it. Everything they have will go to shit in under 3 months.
This is what easy money gets you: all the shiniest new stuff, but no clue how it works. Corruption means that talent is crushed. You take everything for granted. There’s this culture of despise to compensate for the fact that you’re completely relient on outsiders.
Feb 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Putin has built a guillotine for himself. He’s got a few days left until his own people smoke him out of whatever rathole he’s hiding in, and put his head on a spike.
Ukraine managed to resist long enough for everyone to recover from the initial shock, and now weapons are flowing
Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, is a PR genius, and has managed to create an emotional bond with billions of people everywhere, enabling politicians around the world to roll out real sanctions against Russia’s corrupt oligarchy. Dominos are falling with unbelievable velocity.
