Although this is old news by now on MoA, Military Watch Magazine has an interesting article about the Ukrainian drone attack yesterday on the T22 bomber on the Soltsy-2 airbase at Novgorod:
My sources say the drone destroyed some pavement….
Nothing else….
Photo is a fabrication….
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Aug 22 2023 22:06 utc | 103

You don’t seem to have much of an ear for semantics. “More peaceful” implies a degree of peacefulness. That would be a false implication. Perhaps you meant “less warlike.”
Above Posted by: malenkov | Aug 22 2023 21:30 utc | 92
You don’t seem to accept correction gracefully. Perhaps you meant to suggest that your personal understanding of what constitutes actual implication should be accepted as a general rule and/or that your understanding of the occasional admittedly modestly peaceful actions that Trump engaged in is seriously deficient.
Do try to keep your inflated ego at bay and your posts more significant.

Posted by: StirThePot | Aug 22 2023 22:08 utc | 105

Surovikin was in charge of a defensive structure which succeeded in blocking the criminal kiev regime hordes from advancing. He was extremely successful. Job Done as they say.
The job now is the offensive. For this a new commander with attack experience will be replacing Surovikin.

Posted by: HERMIUS | Aug 22 2023 22:11 utc | 107

Meanwhile, “Kyiv has almost completely banned foreign journalists from traveling to the front line”, writes the Swiss edition Temps.
In OT, BRICS bank to accept 5 new members, writes RT.

Posted by: Suresh | Aug 22 2023 22:17 utc | 109

unimperator @ 107

Horrific Confession: ‘Poland Lost 10,000 Soldiers and Officers in Ukraine’

They would want to understate the number.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 22 2023 22:29 utc | 111

The T22 bomber picture doesn’t hold up.. or why was it totally on the ground? Nope, can’t cure stupid.

Posted by: T S | Aug 22 2023 22:32 utc | 113

ive been seeing an awful lot of NATO troll types lately, wonder if it has something to do with declining support for the war in the US?

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 22 2023 22:37 utc | 115

ive been seeing an awful lot of NATO troll types lately, wonder if it has something to do with declining support for the war in the US?
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 22 2023 22:37 utc | 114
Us dept of commerce deplatformed a bunch of sites like southfront and strategicculture in the past few days, so the trolls migrated here.

Posted by: UWDude | Aug 22 2023 22:41 utc | 117

How will Russia de-Nazify the Ukraine ?
Rostislav Ischenko says when Russia gets control of Ukraine, the RF will simply apply current practice for its many national minorities, and the Ukies will have the same rights as everyone else under the Russian constitution. The RF will pay for education in Russian. If the locals want to spend their local budget on Ukie schools, that’s their right.
But there is just one little catch.
“I have repeatedly said and written that there is no single literary norm for the Ukrainian language. The one that was created by the Bolsheviks on the basis of the Poltava dialect has been lost — it was canceled by the Ukrainian nationalists themselves as ‘too Russified’. Numerous recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which should have formed a new literary norm, are not being implemented by anyone.”
Odessa Surjiki differ from Vinnytsia, and from Kharkiv. Zhytomyr Surzhiks differ from all those described, and the further to the west, the Surzhiks become more, and the more they differ from the Surzhiks spoken in the east, south and center of Ukraine.
If there were a single Ukrainian political structure, it would prescribe a literary norm and force everyone to learn a single Ukrainian language. But there is no single [Ukrainian] structure, there are [will become] Russian regions within Russia. Moscow should not, and cannot, define a literary norm for them, since they each have their own Ukrainian.

Politically, Ischenko says, no one city will become the capital of a “post-SMO Ukraine”, so there will be no authority to define Ukrainian. No one outside Ukraine will have any use for workers who only speak Ukrainian, and we will be back to the situation of the 1970’w and 80’s where Ukrainians in Russia had to become fluent in Russian to get a decent job. Just like Latvians in the EU. No specific law, no presidential decree, it’s just the marketplace “doing its thing”. Ukrainian schools will teach various dialects, if the locals want that burden in their local budgets. So the Ukrainian languages, which didn’t exist before Shevchenko’s poetry circa 1865, will slowly fade away like obscure languages always do.
Ischenko implies this decentralization will apply for more than just language and education, to prevent any competing center of power arising in opposition. If Poland or Hungary get pieces of “404”, then this will only apply to the parts which go to Russia.
The error of perception of post-Ukrainian reality
IMHO, Ischenko is the most consistently worth-reading writer in the Russian alt-media.

Posted by: JessDTruth | Aug 22 2023 22:46 utc | 119

Puh my 2 cents for the actual thingy
if you are exhausted and have to step back – what do you do? You Bluff – this thing is not only murrican 😉

Posted by: Macpott | Aug 22 2023 22:56 utc | 121

Hey ! Some bastard’s nicked me coat !

Posted by: Sarlat La Canède | Aug 22 2023 23:03 utc | 123

SCCC | Aug 22 2023 22:58 utc | 121
Let it go. The Tu-22M is now a scorch mark on the dispersal area. By the way it was not a Tu-22, very different aircraft.
Big article in the Drive on it with current before and after satellite pictures. Plus all the others aircraft scarpered for safety.
Incidentally, everyone seems agreed that it was a Russian based attack team not a drone from long distance.

Posted by: JohninMK | Aug 22 2023 23:09 utc | 125

To anyone interested http://www.southfront.press appears to be the new url for http://www.southfront.org which finally had its ICANN registry revoked.

Posted by: Philo67 | Aug 22 2023 23:24 utc | 127

“…Whatever, the USA has too many prisoners….” LightYearsFromHome@105
It certainly does. And most of them ought never to have been put in prison. A large number of them were convicted on concocted evidence by police and prosecutors who are rewarded for every one jailed. The Vice President, for example, made a career out of putting innocent people in jail, thus proving her mettle to the oligarchy. The President, in collaboration with his predecessor and friend Bill Clinton, provided the legislation which, together with corrupt officials (from cops to prosecutors to judges) enormously increased the number of people in the US jailed. Most of their victims were black and poor people.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 22 2023 23:40 utc | 129

Military summary had some details of Robotyne. RU left some/central part of the village and drew AFU deeper into it, and then bombarded everything to pieces. Then they counter-attacked and kicked AFU out of the central part. Also the flank attacks of AFU to the east with vehicles weren’t successful, and Ka-52 continues working.
Also there has been a lull when it comes to released videos or news, probably due to BRICS summit getting all the media attention, which also affects releases in Ukraine.

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 22 2023 23:43 utc | 131

I’ve been seeing an awful lot of NATO troll types lately, wonder if it has something to do with declining support for the war in the US?
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 22 2023 22:37 utc | 114
Us dept of commerce deplatformed a bunch of sites like southfront and strategicculture in the past few days, so the trolls migrated here.
Posted by: UWDude | Aug 22 2023 22:41 utc | 116″
Ya gotta think, what were those 10,000 that were laid off at twitter and 10,000 at fb doing. Implementing the social narrative. Like the paid trolls here and elsewhere.

Posted by: osi | Aug 22 2023 23:52 utc | 133

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 22 2023 21:30 utc | 92
########
Don’t be like that. It’s not fair to the bar if you’re going to flaunt your pedantry.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Aug 23 2023 0:03 utc | 135

A column of smoke is rising between the skyscrapers in the center of Moscow.
Pinprick, nothing to worry about, this is daily life from now on, move on.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Aug 23 2023 0:10 utc | 137

Horrific Confession: Poland Lost 10,000 Soldiers and Officers in Ukraine
10K dead would imply 30K wounded to various degree. Stats is stats, 10k is a large sample, most soldiers don’t get killed or wounded, so Poland must have at least 50K in theater, granted not all at once but rotated in and out. Wow, but I can’t imagine they have more than that involved and 10K dead out of 50K suggests they are getting slaughtered. Anyone with military knowledge have any ideas???
This is interesting, it could suggest country 404 is about to go blue screen:
Sensational Shift In UK’s Policy British Officials Banned From Calling Russia Hostile State

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 23 2023 0:20 utc | 139

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 23 2023 0:17 utc | 137
How would losing the war in Ukraine even begin to endanger the survival of the Russian nation, language and people?

Posted by: Inkan1969 | Aug 23 2023 0:22 utc | 141

Echo Chamber —
Have to say that I pretty much agree with you. Using low-status people to do the dirty work is both common and despicable. Feels like Russia was pretty unconcerned about the Donbass militia’s causalities as well.
But it is understandable — the Kremlin needs to worry about internal pressure to stop the war and thus minimize main army losses. It is certainly less problematic that the UA shelling civilians for years. Without knowing the real reasons behind the SlowMo military action, I can’t tell where the morale balance lays. War is Hell. I don’t think we can expect anything good or morale out of it.
Your critics seem unhinged. LoveDonbass feels like someone who would defend the “Reign of Terror” of the French Revolution as necessary. At some point, the ends doesn’t justify the means. The Dr. seems at least grounded in the particulars but appears to want to pretend that the ‘volunteers’ knew what they were signing up for.
Perhaps we will find out in a couple of years that the professional military in Russia shares your viewpoint and that is the other reason they took control of Wagner (the first being that large private armies are coup-capable). I suspect that the losses on the Wagner side were a side-effect of getting into a harder fight than expected with less support than they needed. I don’t get the feeling that it was designed to be a slaughter like a lot of the UA actions.

Posted by: je | Aug 23 2023 0:47 utc | 143

We don’t need more than 20 million people in Ukraine – Brzezinsky.
The first Prime Minister of Ukraine (1991-1992), Vitold Fokin, recalls meeting Zbegniew Brzezinski, former US national security advisor, who said Ukraine needs no more than 20 million people (at the time, 50+ million) to be controlled by the US.
Back in 1997, Brzezinski wrote his book “The Grand Chessboard” in which he calculated the future conflict in Ukraine, calling it a “pivot state”. Wherever it pivots will decide the balance of power.
🤷‍♀️It wouldn’t need to pivot anywhere at all, if the US minded its own sphere of influence. Interview is dated before the Special Operation, 13.01.2022 – if anyone has a longer outtake, send my way.
https://t.me/BrexiteersforTrumpChat/27988?single

More evidence piling up of Ukraine as a prostitute state, not that any more would be needed.

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 23 2023 0:56 utc | 145

@inkan1969
”
How would losing the war in Ukraine even begin to endanger the survival of the Russian nation, language and people
”
Why the war doesn’t stop at ukraine. Did you think the us will spend hundreds of billions just to win ukraine? Jesus they bought it for 5 billion in 2014 with the maidan coup.

Posted by: Neofeudalfuture | Aug 23 2023 1:12 utc | 147

The talk of abrams tanks and f16 fighters like all this assortment of nato yardsale rejects is being done so nato can delay recognizing defeat. I doubt the tanks and fighters will make it to Ukraine – will only compound the humiliation.

Posted by: jared | Aug 23 2023 1:21 utc | 149

LightYearsFromHome | 125

you either succeed with a breakthrough or we’re going to wind this down…

I suppose there was nothing left to be sold in Ukraine by 2019. And so the new party was formed calling itself “The Servants of the People”, with the name modeled on Gebirgsknechten (“The Servants of the Mountains”) and Landsknechte (“The Servants of the Land”)… two most notorious mercenary armies, Swiss and German, operative in the mid-15th century. It was the time when Europe was full of superfluous people: all the land was owned by someone else, very few could subsist on their inheritance, workshops in the city made it impossible for independent artisans to start their own businesses… Soldiering was the only opportunity for all the “losers”, often paid by Kings from all over with a chance to plunder other states. Sometimes their own…

Posted by: Nomad | Aug 23 2023 1:30 utc | 151

RT News reported another Ukro drone strike at Moscow’s financial hub :
https://www.rt.com/russia/581678-drones-strike-moscow-city/
These drone strikes deep inside Russian homeland have now become regular incidents. Strategic bombers had been destroyed in previous drone strikes.
The Russian MOD appears to be clueless to prevent these asymmetrical attacks.
Moscow has come under many rounds of drone strikes recently and yet there appears to be no reciprocal strikes hitting Kiev.
Just wonder what kind of military strategy is this ?

Posted by: NGWY23 | Aug 23 2023 1:43 utc | 153

Posted by: Inkan1969 | Aug 23 2023 0:22 utc | 140
Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 23 2023 0:17 utc | 137
How would losing the war in Ukraine even begin to endanger the survival of the Russian nation, language and people?
========================================
Misunderstanding:
Shadowbanned described shellings in Moscow from Ukraine as pinpricks, nothing to worry about it.
I was both concurring and adding that such attacks also serve to rouse further support for the SMO on the part of Russian civilians who then share a sense of being in a historic war for the survival of their nation and destiny resulting in greater feeling of patriotic solidarity with the troops and Putin thus raising rather than lowering their morale.
And come to think of it also: creating those Nazi units in Ukraine serves to motivate the Russians to fight because the sight of them recalls the the Great Patriotic War which is the seminal event binding the Russian peoples together again after the brutal murder of the Tzar and the horrific violence and instability which followed. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that these Jewish Oligarch and CIA sponsored Nazi units weren’t developed precisely in order to bait the Russians into military engagement in Donbass.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 23 2023 1:45 utc | 155

Echo Chamber is right to point out that it is a morale failing that so many prisoners died and hope that it doesn’t repeat.
Posted by: je | Aug 23 2023 1:23 utc | 149
Why is a prisoner soldier more valuable than a regular one? Are regular soldiers dying in war a moral failing, or just prisoner soldiers?

Posted by: UWDude | Aug 23 2023 1:48 utc | 157

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 23 2023 1:45 utc | 154
——————————————————-
It may not be said in open so much today, but most workers and peasants supported the “the brutal murder of the Tzar.” He was a cruel and ruthless Tyrant who served the interest of a Feudal class (i.e. a small minority class). Stalin was a Tyrant for the working class and the peasant class (i.e. the majority). You can say but, but, but all you want to, that was the reality at the time.

Posted by: Ed | Aug 23 2023 2:05 utc | 159

Russia is weak. That’s all. American and Russian officials initially had red lines in this proxy war but American officials saw that Russia was weak and incompetent, decided then to break all of red lines. There’s nothing Russian officials could do to stop the war without losing Crimea, paying a trillion of dollars in war reparations and handing Vladimir Putin over now.
What a fucking joke is Vladimir Putin.
Posted by: Kaly | Aug 23 2023 2:02 utc | 157
————————————————–
Sorry Kaly, but you are the stupid fuck.
Why do you think the Russians called it an SMO? It was full of redlines from the beginning, as required by UN protocols. Also, the war is taking place in the pro-Russian Donbass and other pro-Russian Oblast in eastern and Southeastern (formally) Ukraine. What do you want Putin to do, drop tactical nukes on the very people who asked Russia to help them gain their independence and sovereignty, and defend them against the US/NATO supported Nazis?
So, now stop being a stupid fuck and ask yourself why would Russia bind itself to limitations set by the UN? Perhaps a study of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999 would help.

Posted by: Ed | Aug 23 2023 2:23 utc | 161

Posted by: Ed | Aug 23 2023 2:05 utc | 158
You can say but, but, but all you want to, that was the reality at the time.
================================
I do indeed say: “But, but, but….”
If it was indeed ‘the reality at the time’ as you fantasize, the brutal murder of his family, without due process, in secret, hidden from the nation, their bodies cast down a mine shaft, would not have taken place that way. Ever. That it did tells any decent and honorable person all they need to know…
Of course ideologues throw morality, decency and honor to the wind to realize their concept-laden cause. No amount of violence, murder and mayhem will deter them from imposing their fabulous dreams of utopia on their victims. They even praise atrocities executed in furtherance of their cause – as do you.
“The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions.” Though I doubt a single one of those bloodthirsty Jewish Bolsheviks had good intentions. Again as evidenced by the vicious, dishonorable secretive murder of the Tzar and his young innocent children in which they all rejoiced, as do you.
Noble people prosecuting a just cause would never have murdered innocent young children that way. Never. Ergo, it was NOT a just cause, rather a Big Lie, one over a century later you still buy into.
There’s just no getting around the cruel injustice; nor the obvious conclusion to be drawn: the entire movement was evil from top to bottom.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 23 2023 2:26 utc | 163

Bubbles @ 94:
I agree with your comments, but, if you’re implying that George W was not a draft dodger, you are incorrect on that point. Daddy George pulled strings with the Texas National Guard commander to get W into the Air NG. During ‘his’service, he attempted a practice landing on a carrier in the Gulf in his F-102. Almost nailed the stern, turned back to base, and went AWOL for a year. One of his few intelligent acts, as the F-102s were given to the ANG to get them the hell out of Viet Nam.

Posted by: Paul Spencer | Aug 23 2023 2:44 utc | 165

I may have mis-worded my earlier item about the drone strike near Novgorod. I should have said the photo “apparently” shows a Ty-22’s nose protruding out of the fire. I have no way of knowing whether the photo was photo-shopped or not. There seems to be some disagreement on the subject. Military Watch Magazine, however, strikes me as a relatively neutral, balanced, objective publication; so they may have thought it real when they published it. The meat of the article, however, was about the effect of the strike on Russia; about how anything in Russia was becoming vulnerable if within drone distance of the Ukraine (especially of a Ukrainian city, where a drone could easily be concealed, and could take off on city streets). Apropos of distance, Wikipedia gives distances of 800 km for the Ukrainian UJ-22 drone, and 600-1000 km for the Bober (Beaver) drone, both kamikaze.

Posted by: Seward | Aug 23 2023 2:56 utc | 167

Posted by: Robert Hope | Aug 23 2023 2:58 utc | 168
Indeed, today’s troll grouping is particularly transparent and pathetic. And unfortunately Idiocracy comes to mind almost daily these days in the Empire of Narrative. :/

Posted by: HD | Aug 23 2023 3:06 utc | 169

@ TruthCanHurt | Aug 23 2023 2:22 utc | 160
The Russian MOD and Putin have an obligation to explain to the Russia people why these frequent drone attacks which most likely took off inside Russia homeland could not be prevented. I wonder whether there are “oligarchs” in the Russian military like in the commercial sector that are beyond the supervision of Russia people and constitution.

Posted by: NGWY23 | Aug 23 2023 3:12 utc | 171

If so, it’s sweetly ironic – remember Nuland’s assessment in the leaked cellphone convo with Ambassador Pyatt in 2014? Remember her assessment then? “I don’t think Klitch should go in the government”. She actually preferred zigging lunatic Oleg Tiyahnibok back then.
Posted by: Mark | Aug 23 2023 3:11 utc | 170
######
Lol. Ah ha. But remember, Nuland’s assessments would not have been made from the pov of who would make the best gvt or Pres for Ukraine for Ukraine’s sake, but who would make the best corrupt puppets towards the US’s own nefarious goals… ie, to piss off Russia into entering a war! I wouldn’t trust Klitchko to straighten out Ukraine. Bit of a nazi nationalist. Ukraine will need 1000% fresh blood from the ground up.

Posted by: SCCC | Aug 23 2023 3:26 utc | 173

Maybe the “Wagner prisoners” dissenters should look at USA prisons for leadership in morality. Companies complain they cant compete with prison labour, costs grants the endless “jobseekers” who work for a dollar a day or a few smokes or days off sentences. The alternative like refusing to work is added time less privileges etc. so is there even a choice there. concrete products nearly every bullet proof vest made in usa etc are all prison employed companies.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2020/09/30/private-prisons-vs-public-prisons-and-its-application-in-networks/
15k a year profit to be sent to a private prison to work as opposed to a public prison. how many holidays and fancy cars do these companies gift the judges to keep their occupancy rates up to max profitability

Posted by: hankster | Aug 23 2023 3:31 utc | 175

One of the odd feature of Russian feudalism was that the rural villages were often run as communes. Typically there would be a landlord-owner who would demand they pay up on their rents for the use of the surrounding farmland, but otherwise was not very involved in running the villages. Internally in Russia the villagers would get together once a year and allocate out the use of the land to their own population. In many areas private and individual control over individual fields was not common. An irony of communism was that the communists didn’t form communes, they broke communes up when they forced the population to shift to urban manufacturing.
The Tsar was part of the power structure that kept the landed nobles in power, but owing to the pure vastness of Russia and the lack of good roads, the central government had little to do with the rural population, and almost everybody was rural.

Posted by: Jmaas | Aug 23 2023 3:34 utc | 177

Posted by: Ed | Aug 23 2023 2:53 utc | 166
Based.
The tale of the last Romanovs always saddened me a little bit.
Then I realized they were the architects of their own tragedy.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Aug 23 2023 3:38 utc | 179

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Aug 23 2023 2:25 utc | 162

You can take the high road because there are men with courage willing to carve out safety for you in the world.

(“Echo Chamber” would do well to heed your words)
Or as a poet from a different era once said:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, “making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.”
— George Orwell

(Translation: People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.)
Or:

“You can only have Morales because he is the son of Im Morales”
— Arch Bungle

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Aug 23 2023 3:49 utc | 181

Posted by: Perimetr | Aug 22 2023 20:54 utc | 82

Indeed. Why is it that so many of the formerly anti-war people drank the Russophobic Kool-Aid? … The editors of Counterpunch bought into the “evil Russian” narratives and became quite intolerant of anyone who thought otherwise.

I understand their anti-war stance.
After all, “anti-war” is an absolute position: One must condemn all war, even the kind of war Russia is fighting.
The core premise of being anti-war is the kind of pacifism embodied by Christ’s statement:

To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.

This is unfortunately what it means to be “anti-war”.
Given this I would have expected Counterpunch to behave as they did during the Iraq and Afghan wars: Streams and streams of articles condemning America’s actions (rightly) and providing truthful analysis of the war. So it’s pages should have been flooded with articles condeming Russia’s war against Ukraine as well as NATO’s involvement in it.
However, Counterpunch is largely silent on the issue – even the few articles that appear in support of Ukraine and condemnation of Russia are rather watery.
This, to me, points to suppression of the narrative – and that is inexcusable for a publication with a motto like “Tells the Facts and Names the Names”.
So in the end it turns out they (their editors and owners) were never really “anti war” nor champions of “truth” but merely champions of a particular narrow ideology, discarding all moral obligation outside of that ideology.
Or, perhaps, they understand that even condemnation of Russia’s war would overlook the possibility that war may actually be Just at times.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Aug 23 2023 4:10 utc | 183

“The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions.” Though I doubt a single one of those bloodthirsty Jewish Bolsheviks had good intentions. Again as evidenced by the vicious, dishonorable secretive murder of the Tzar and his young innocent children in which they all rejoiced, as do you.
Noble people prosecuting a just cause would never have murdered innocent young children that way. Never. Ergo, it was NOT a just cause, rather a Big Lie, one over a century later you still buy into.
There’s just no getting around the cruel injustice; nor the obvious conclusion to be drawn: the entire movement was evil from top to bottom.
Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 23 2023 2:26 utc | 163

Injustice? The Tsar and the nobility were innocent, white and fluffy creatures who did no wrong ever?
Seriously?
Countless millions died so that parasitic class could continue to chase its western siblings (literal siblings indeed) in the competition of empty ostentatious displays of wealth looted from the commoners.
Over the years I have come to the realization that there is now so much separation in time and physical distance from the context of those events, that almost nobody has any idea what the conditions that gave birth to the Bolsheviks were like. There were very good reasons the masses supported them, and there were also very good reasons why the Bolsheviks killed so many people, and no, it wasn’t because they were all blood thirsty maniacs, but the reasons were to be found in what those people that got killed had been doing for decades and centuries prior.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Aug 23 2023 4:24 utc | 185

One of the odd feature of Russian feudalism was that the rural villages were often run as communes. Typically there would be a landlord-owner who would demand they pay up on their rents for the use of the surrounding farmland, but otherwise was not very involved in running the villages. Internally in Russia the villagers would get together once a year and allocate out the use of the land to their own population. In many areas private and individual control over individual fields was not common. An irony of communism was that the communists didn’t form communes, they broke communes up when they forced the population to shift to urban manufacturing.
Posted by: Jmaas | Aug 23 2023 3:34 utc | 177

Not really true. It was the Stolypin agrarian reforms that directly attacked the communes, and they did so specifically in order to remove the communal aspect from peasant life and turn the peasants into capitalists. It looked too much like communism to his tastes.
Far from all communes were destroyed by that, but it was just no working out later on because agriculture had to be mechanized, and that required centralization too. A commune is not as good at procuring, operating and maintaining tractors and harvesters as the Kolkhoz and Sovkhoz would later be as the latter operated integrated with the system for production and distribution of such heavy equipment.
For the first ten years the Bolsheviks didn’t do collectivization, but it eventually became such an acute problem that they had no choice.
You will have Big Agriculture one way or another, the question is who will own it.
The other way to solve the mechanization problem is to have Big Agriculture in private hands. Which is not a good outcome. Here it is from the devil’s mouth:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/18/big-agriculture-is-best/

In the popular bourgeois imagination, the idealized farm looks something like the ones that sell produce at local farmers markets. But while small farms like these account for close to half of all U.S. farms, they produce less than 10 percent of total output. The largest farms, by contrast, account for about 50 percent of output, relying on simplified production systems and economies of scale to feed a nation of 330 million people, vanishingly few of whom live anywhere near a farm or want to work in agriculture.

That is not false. But why should it be in private hands when it can be in the hands of the state?
Collectivization was a great success in the end — famines, which had been a constant feature of life in Russia, ended with it.
P.S. Much of the resentment towards Moscow in the Baltics and western Ukraine arises from the fact that they never had communes in the former and only some in the latter. Russia itself was primed from communism by the long tradition of communal organization of labor which had only ended within living memory. BTW, so were the Balkans, for the same reasons, which is why communism worked so well in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Aug 23 2023 4:28 utc | 187

I could believe it; Klitschko has so far mostly avoided the taint of corruption, is a patriot without in any way sounding like a nationalist, and most importantly, might be someone the Russians would talk to in an otherwise wall-to-wall dickwad administration. Is it possible Nuland backs him as a Zelensky replacement because his pragmatism might cancel out Zelensky’s moonbat reality-challenged raving?
If so, it’s sweetly ironic – remember Nuland’s assessment in the leaked cellphone convo with Ambassador Pyatt in 2014? Remember her assessment then? “I don’t think Klitch should go in the government”. She actually preferred zigging lunatic Oleg Tiyahnibok back then.
Posted by: Mark | Aug 23 2023 3:11 utc | 170

Once a traitor, always a traitor, and someone who can not be trusted to have truly good intentions.
The Klitschkos aren’t even Ukrainian. Look up their biographies — some Jewish ancestry, born in Central Asia, raised there and in Czechoslovakia, and if the USSR had collapsed at a different moment in time, they may well have ended up in a different country (just as you see ethnic Russians like Sirsky in command positions in the AFU now, simply because they happened to be stationed in Ukraine at that moment).
If your father was a general in the Red Army, you just can’t be the mayor of Kiev replacing the Soviet coat of arms with the fascist trident, and generally behaving as top loyal Banderite. That is fundamental betrayal of your own heritage, and leaves no doubt that you are a lowlife and a scumbag.
P.S. Notice how his brother hasn’t changed the official English spelling of his name, while Zelensky did. But both have changed the Ukrainian spelling. Because his brother is way too popular already, and that’s a problem that might cost him some money. In the end that’s what they are loyal to.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Aug 23 2023 4:38 utc | 189

The core premise of being anti-war is the kind of pacifism embodied by Christ’s statement:
To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
This is unfortunately what it means to be “anti-war”.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Aug 23 2023 4:10 utc | 183https://www.redletterchristians.org/on-turning-the-other-cheek-and-how-it-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/

Thanks for getting me to re-find this analysis on ‘turning the other cheek’:
https://www.redletterchristians.org/on-turning-the-other-cheek-and-how-it-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/
tl;dr: looking at that quote in historical context, Jesus was recommending a novel and subversive response to a specific common situation for a Roman slave, not advocating blanket pacifism.

Posted by: shoemaker | Aug 23 2023 4:43 utc | 191

“You can only have Morales because he is the son of Im Morales”
— Arch Bungle
Maaate – What a purler!
I wish you were my grandfather, but you wouldn’t like it because it would make you verrry old, and probably very sad also to witness such a catastrophic intellectual decline in just two generations.

Posted by: General Factotum | Aug 23 2023 5:16 utc | 193

(continued re: .org purge, while I try to evade typepad’s security)
You 104 need to know 17 the numerical (IP) 166 address for 134 this website, which are the four numbers in this sentence.

Posted by: shoemaker | Aug 23 2023 5:29 utc | 195

https://youtu.be/8UlaAHdcRMg
blackadder skit that sums up ukraine and the f16 pilot training saga. 20 minute pilots,

Posted by: hankster | Aug 23 2023 5:33 utc | 197

Posted by: shoemaker | Aug 23 2023 4:43 utc | 191

Thanks for getting me to re-find this analysis on ‘turning the other cheek’:
https://www.redletterchristians.org/on-turning-the-other-cheek-and-how-it-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/
tl;dr: looking at that quote in historical context, Jesus was recommending a novel and subversive response to a specific common situation for a Roman slave, not advocating blanket pacifism.

This, to me, is one of the many attempts to distort the message of Christ – to find a loophole which would reconcile violence with the very clear message Christ and Christianity taught.
It is like St. Augustine’s bellum iustum. A justification our rulers could use to keep ‘Christianified’ populations passive when they wished it but mobilized for war when necessary. A loophole in the ‘message of God’.
Christ’s message, throughout the Bible is clear, it is literal, it is lived out in the canonical story of Christ’s death and life (i.e “Letter and Spirit”):
1. Give to Caesar what is caesar’s and to God what is god’s (Do not resist (with violence) the Roman occupation – pay your taxes, worship God.)
2. God will protect you in the afterlife if you only do his will in this life – so no need to engage in violence or even defend yourself.
3. Thou Shalt not Kill … NOT Thou Shalt not Kill Except in Self Defense
4. Christ, and the Apostles never resist with Violence as they preach the word and are persecuted by The State.
5. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” — Matthew 26:52–53 (NRSVUE)
6. Jesus goes to the cross willingly, assumedly having the power to call down heavens angels in his defense he instead says “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do”
7. “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” – if this is not a message in favour of pacifism I don’t know what is.
The core message of Christianity is absolute in it’s pacifism:
You either believe in the Christian God and follow His very clear commandments, or you reject Christianity as the cognitively dissonant mess it is.
You do not seek to find loopholes in those commandments that would suite your humanly desires. One surrenders one’s fate to God, and thereafter await the coming of the Kingdom of Christ.
The early Christians were essentially a death cult. They were supposed to live out the rest of their lives in communes awaiting the coming of Judgement Day. There would have been no doctrine developed in Christ’s Christianity for “Just War”, “Resistance War”, no need for self defense as one was not meant to cling to this life, but aspire to the hereafter.
To plain man, a simple man, this reading of the New Testament would be clear: The defense of man is in God’s hands. If one should die by the hand of another, one would live on in Heaven, therefore there is nothing to fear, nothing to defend against – for logically, if Life is eternal then Death has no dominion but the commission of murder even in self-defense would be a violation of God’s commandment.
(Of course, this requires one to actually believe the message of Christ.)
To a wily individual seeking loopholes which will allow him to wear the Christian sheepskin while going about murder and violence to his heart’s content, sophisticated arguments can be found to make of Christ’s message whatever he desires (Like St. Augustine’s bellum istium).

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Aug 23 2023 5:43 utc | 199