well, this is an unbelievably important text by @EwaThompson1 on subject matter at hand!

It took the Russian-Ukrainian war and its “uncontrollable consequences” to make acceptable the idea of placing Slavic Studies under the microscope of decolonization.

🧶 The war in Ukraine began to tear off the curtain that obscured a world of which American and European students of things Slavic have had no idea.

'To show a Leopard on the battlefield at such an early stage was probably intended to draw a lot of attention to that area, perhaps as a decoy. I cannot know that, but it's sth I would have done, given all the attn in the media about these excellent tanks' - @general_ben 'The destruction of a single Leopard caused a lot of excitement on Twitter, but it was actually recovered from the battlefield so that it could be repaired and put back in the fight. That's impressive.' - @general_ben

problem is that deep down the US is still not thinking abt Ukraine as abt country which is there to stay forever.

"Kiev chicken" has a long & smelly aftertaste.

Ukraine was seen from the very beginning as sth which will wane over time, and the U.S. adms were helping with it.
1/

https://twitter.com/timothydsnyder/status/1652759414116327426

hence the "Kiev chicken speech" in 1991
George Bush then made a fool of himself by denying Ukraine independence, insisting that Ukraine should stay in what was known then as the "ussr"... literally 3 WEEKS before putsch happened in moscow and Ukraine declared Independence.
2/

Friends of Ukraine, F-16s

Dems:
Mark Kelly, Arizona,
Jared Golden, Maine
Tammy Duckworth, Illinois,
Tim Kaine, Virginia,
Martin Heinrich, New Mexico,
Jacky Rosen, Nevada,

GOP:
Lisa Murkowski, Alaska,
Tommy Tuberville, Alabama,
Ted Budd, N.Carolina

Gen. Christopher Cavoli

this is Yuri Shvets.
yet another "interesting" russian guy, who tries to be instrumental creating russian narratives in "all things Ukraine" -- mostly criticizing Ukrainian leadership, calling Ukraine corrupt, nepotistic and unprofessional.

short 🧵 the guy has a Youtube channel with more than a million subscribers and posts his video there.
again, mostly about Ukraine.

to me the guy has a strong Kashpirovskiy vibe, the popular medical figure in the late Soviet Union era, who used to play a role of a "magical healer" on TV.

I agree with @bctallis.
Germans want Ukraine stay weak and in the stay of endless war with russia.
why?
🧶 first, because weak Ukraine weakens Poland and all the CEE countries too, which, in turn, gives time to Germany-France axis to crystalize.

read an interesting text by @Dr_Ariel_Cohen, has quite a few gems inside, which I will quote here in 🧶 below.

first of all, while I agree with the headline, worth to be mentionned that Europe is winning battle, but war is not over... 'russia was hoping, especially as winter approached, increasing home heating and industrial energy demands from the West would give russia political leverage.
General Winter fought russia this time, as Europe enjoyed one of its warmest winters on record.'

read a piece by Petr Pavel, former NATO’s Military Committee chair, Czech Army chief of staff:

Russian revanchism runs deeper than Putin. The West should be extremely cautious about welcoming Russians now trying to flee Putin’s mobilization order — they pose a security risk.

🧵 Worth mentioning Mr. Pavel is now a leading candidate in the Czech Republic’s presidential election in 2024.

Interview is in @POLITICOEurope:
politico.eu/article/russia…

great example👇 of what is wrong w/ certain Western news orgs.

- a Ukrainian kid speaks Ukrainian and in shock after bombing of his beloved playground,
- a German journo, who asks him questions... in russian,
- this journo finds nothing strange abt it and puts it on twitter.

https://twitter.com/vassiligolod/status/1580852478547197952

total lack of empathy and compassion... total lack of even simple understanding of the context -- kid stubbornly speaks Ukrainian, he seemingly feels as if it is his position against the russia, which actually shelled this playground.

this interview gives me chills, seriously

putin is a master of hybrid warfare and reflexive control.
mass mobilisation is a hybrid operation with a different use cases of reflexive control, not only military.

🧵 to understand how reflexive control works ask yourselves:

what is the 1st reflex of the Western intellectual, when seeing mass mobilisation of the mainly unprepared russian men?

blanket visa ban for russian tourists is a security measure for the EU russians think of Ukraine as of their russian land.
same pattern applies about Europe, only to lesser extent: "we liberated them from fascism/nazism, they will always owe us".

while we are rightfully angry with Rand Paul, lest we forget those who created Ukraine this👇 image.

the first, who comes to mind, is ex-Ambo of U.S. Masha Yovanovitch, who created Kolchuga scandal in the early 2000s & Hladkovsky scandal just before the Presi elections in 2019. not only Rand Paul is russian asset.
Masha is one of the best placed asset, who was very instrumental in complete international sidelining of Kuchma back in early 2000s with the Kolchuga scandal (she used to work in the @USEmbassyKyiv then) and in defeat of @poroshenko in 2019,

in order to understand the mindset of the archenemy of the civilized world, this is the required reading 👇

and yes, for the first time I have read it 23 years ago, in summer 1999.

🧵
1/ just a glimpse of this Dugin "seminal" book "The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia", written in 1997.

yes, it is the map of the cordial geopolitical divide of zones of influence in Europe between two best friends: Russia and Germany

2/

We are grateful for the humanitarian aid, for sheltering our people. Very grateful. However ... baby food will be unnecessary if children die. Diapers - it would be good if mums could change them not in basements. What we need is weapons. Yes, mothers, children and the elderly in Ukraine need weapons - which will be taken by their defenders who will drive the enemy away from the borders of Europe. Ukraine needs weapons so that Ukrainian refugees can return home and rebuild the economy.

this is interesting...
Sergey Lavrov, who recently made quite a few anti-Semitic statements, has been overheard admiring certain actions of Nazi Germany at an informal CIS meeting.

thread
1/ In the tape recorded during Lavrov's informal talks with the CIS diplomats he emphasizes that successes of East & West Germany at the Olympic Games (as he thinks) resulted from the correct doping system, based on Nazi research in concentration camps.
and he admires it.
2/

#Izyum'inka will follow 1 general

so,
-- russia commits inexcusable war crimes in Ukraine;
-- the West squandered 8 years to not preparing Ukraine's air defense to this war;
-- Ukraine paid a bloody price;
-- the West's and russia's inexcusability creates a cognitive dissonance (both in the West and in russia) meaning that the Western elites are reluctant to admit that they fucked Ukraine up so catastrophically, while russians they try to deflect blame personally on putin.

not surprisingly, the West buys this idea. why?
because it helps the West with its own cognitive dissonance.

And a few words about #TerroRussia official status.
Lord Alex Carlile, a member of @UKHouseofLords of the @UKParliament said in an interview to @TMokliak for @Guild__Hall that Western high-ranking politicians are already openly comparing Russian gov to al-Qaeda and ISIS.
1/4 Lord Carlile thinks that separate parts of the Russian State (Army, Navy, Air Forces, Putin’s political Party) should be designated separately as terrorist actors and included on banning lists held by countries such as the U.K. and the USA:
ghall.com.ua/2022/03/18/bri…
2/3

looks like China really stepped in & de facto backed Ukraine in this war for the survival of Ukrainian nation. Lumping russia and China together is wrong and I warned about the shallow mindedness of this approach a long time ago:
motychak.substack.com/p/kazakhstan-c…

Xi kicked putin out of KZ, reversed the invasion and Tokayev even appointed "anti-russian Kazakh nationalist" as one of his ministers

simply #mustread on the #RussianWarOnUkraine:
chicagoboyz.net/archives/67331…

Russian Army columns North of Kyiv decaying into immobile blobs due to the mud season, poorly maintained Chinese truck tires and shear “follow the plan” Russian incompetence. 2/ all the columns’ heads are now out of fuel and battery power and they can’t move north, south or sideways... everything behind them is stuck because of the mud, and rapidly running out of fuel and vehicle battery charge too (assuming they haven’t already).

The Jewish people know all too well the threat of being eradicated. Today, Ukraine is Israel. Ukrainians are falling victim to Russia’s evil war just as the Jews fell victim to Nazis who wanted to eradicate all Jews. -- @AndriyYermak

#StopRussiaNOW "The Russians can destroy us and our country, but they cannot unmake Ukraine. They do understand it – and try to blackmail Ukraine, Europe and the world with the specter of nuclear disaster as they pound powerplants with shells and bombs." - @AndriyYermak