Just over a decade ago, I taught English to Misha, a boy from Moscow. An oversized pair of Sony headphones were constantly clamped over his ears. His hands were always busy tapping away on the smartphone his father, a wealthy businessman, had given him. Misha travelled abroad, spoke English, and had the best of everything. When I could tear him away from the siren call of social media and video games, Misha was desperate to hear about life in Canada. He peppered me with questions about everything from hockey to hamburgers.

It's Thursday. It's 6pm. It's Tucker Time! I hope you're ready for this shambles... ⬇️ It's TWO HOURS LONG. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

The UN is often slow and impotent, but destroying international liberal institutions is exactly what Moscow wants. Change the system from within. Don’t destroy it from without. The “fuck the UN” discourse reminds me of soft Brexiteers in the UK: “We share EU values but think it’s beyond reform, so we’re going to destroy ourselves instead of working with our partners.”

🧵 Russia's war on Ukraine is a spiritual-messianic crusade, exhibit #978234: the tale of a Putin-loving "military priest" and his acolytes at the front, who are undergoing a symbolic political-religious conversion by fighting. Nice unit badge, which both soldiers and their priest wear. Putin + religion + war = good. Putin placed on a pedestal alongside traditional saints as an icon (vital to Orthodox belief).

A favourite Putinist whataboutism is to claim that homelessness is rife in America while Russia has no such problem.

In fact, Russia has approximately 10 times more homeless individuals than the USA despite having less than half the population. Sources:
- .
- usafacts.org/articles/how-m…
euromaidanpress.com/2017/07/08/rus…

According to Levada Centre polling, Russians approve of the country's general direction (chart on the left) in massive numbers - higher in recent months than in the past decade - and Putin is hugely popular.

Putin is winning the war at home.

You might say that in an authoritarian/totalitarian society, people are afraid to criticize the state in these polls. Maybe, but at the very least the polls are telling us that massive discontent is not about to bubble over into widespread revolt.

Putin going full antisemitism: “Western curators put an ethnic Jew in charge of today’s Ukraine. In so doing, I believe, they are covering up the anti-human essence that lies at the Ukrainian state.”

Abhorrent even by his standards.

https://twitter.com/holodmedia/status/1699070152569151883

This is the ideology of the Russian state. Attack, dehumanize, destroy. You cannot make a durable peace with a nation whose leaders see other human beings in these terms.

If the peace plan for 🇺🇦 is to give up parts of Ukraine, then what is the mechanism for ensuring the safety of the conquered citizens living under Russian rule?

Peacekeepers?
Observers?
A gentlemen’s agreement?

Seriously, what’s the answer? Because life under Russian rule is not the multiethnic lovefest Putin claims it will be. news.yahoo.com/united-states-…

Russia isn’t a mafia state. It’s a fascist state. Mafia organizations are all about money and power for the boss. Russia isn’t that. The spectacular public assassination is part of the death cult that’s grown up around power and the war. In a fascist state, the boundary between war and peace, enemy and friend, fluctuates.

I see a lot of enormous logical leaps being made in response to clips from Russian propaganda shows and social channels.

I give you: "Understanding Russian propaganda: a few simple rules." ⬇️ 1. One swallow does not make a summer. Seen a propagandist mention something once? A lone critic of a particularly policy speak out on TV? Without more evidence, it doesn't indicate a shift in policy or the beginnings of a "real debate."

The state released a special video for Russia Day and it is QUITE the festival of fascism. A play by play to break it down for you ⬇️ Our story begins in fascist dreamland with our ideal white ethnic Russian family (sorry, ethnic minorities, you're not welcome on Russia Day)

Reality: Russia getting attacked by Russians in Russia
Pravda headline: We're going to annex Kharkiv province! You've got to hand it to them, nobody does outrageous BS like Russian propagandists.

Russia's favourite military pop star, Shaman, has gone full-on fascist in his latest video, "Us", a hymn to "Us: the great strength that has united our country for a thousand years!"

Just look at this. Fucking bonkers. Shaman's previous stuff was all blood and soil native conservatism - "I am Russian" has become something of an official soundtrack to the war - but this is next level.

Ukraine subverts Russia's mobilization advert: "I don't want to kill kids. I don't want to cut heads off. I don't want to be responsible for Putin's war crimes. You're a human. So be one."

Once again, they're so, so good at this. The Ukrainian response inverts Russia's absurd, toxic masculinity-packed original, replacing violence with humanism. The divide between the two country's images of their selves and their futures in a 30 second video.

https://twitter.com/kirlant/status/1648748484055425033?s=20

One of the shittiest guys in Russia (stiff competition, I know) has been assassinated. No accident: the cafe he was speaking at regularly hosted events run by Cyber Front Z, a Kremlin-sponsored patriotic hacking/shit-stirring group.

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1575931295854919680

The event Tatarsky was speaking at was well publicized online, with this digital poster being shared widely. There’s a chance Tatarsky wasn’t the target, as the group was at the cafe pretty much every weekend with a whole host of unpleasant folks.

🧵 Lowlights of Russia’s new national Foreign Policy Concept, aka a journey into the eighth circle of hell ⬇️ Most important: there is just ONE mention of Ukraine in the thousands of words of text. Russian Foreign Policy isn't, apparently, focused on Ukraine. It's targeting something bigger: an imagined version of the West that is the villainous anti-Russia.

The arrest of an America journalist, @evangershkovich, is yet another chilling day for media freedom and for hope itself in Russia. Nobody is safe from the regime’s wars against reality.

https://twitter.com/moscowtimes/status/1641347341499215872

In practical terms, it’s going to become ever harder for Western journalists to visit and/or work effectively in Russia. That means what we see of the country will increasingly be the Kremlin’s version of reality, projected through its media empire.

Russia’s fantasy version of what Crimea has been like since they invaded is something to behold. Life is joyous, citizens! Kerch Bridge in propaganda vs Kerch Bridge in reality

“Hands off Putin, yanks!” Russia is really, really not taking the arrest warrant for Putin well.

A few of the highlights, starting with words from House Chair Vyacheslav Volodin ⬇️ “Washington and Brussels know what while there’s a Putin, there’s a Russia - and that’s why they attack him. Putin’s strength is in the support of the people.”

"I want Kiev to look like this tomorrow": a post circulating on Russian Telegram shows up the war as nothing more than a fantasy of destructive revenge against a country that rejects Russian imperialism. The comments are, of course, a trove of awful: "Beautiful words!"; "Lots of us want that!"; "Everybody wants it except the people making the decisions". Note the dominant Russian nationalist talking point today: it's time to do the war properly, to really destroy everything.

🧵 Some disappointingly lazy historical writing fuels support for “statesmanship” - whatever that means - rather than arms for Ukraine in this Guardian piece. theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Russia “has a historic sense of insecurity, not without justification, from which it has never fully been able to escape.” Historic “senses” are learned cultural phenomena, not jail cells. They don’t change the facts: Russia’s the aggressor, driven by expansionism not insecurity.