There are a lot of things in play. Another optional goal is to tighten up the local russian backgarden. Just like it was before Crimea snatching, population was rather frustrated with the powerholders, some bigger protests brewed in capital cities, and although they were even smaller than back then pre-Crimea, I see it as a sub-motivation, and them freely killing Navalny just after that, rolling out laws groving in their restrictiveness - I think these were their goals all along.

I want to live long enough to see a well-sourced documentary about reasons behind such decision. We know what it ended up being, and that by now it flowered with reasoning models from profit, to counter-defence against the united west, to a revenge narrative of ‘we are already balls deep, can’t stop now’. But I feel that there’s a good place for a movie, that ends just there, on cold 24 Feb night, when the hell gates opened. And the centerpiece are the decision-making, the preparation and media campaigns to muddy the water, the arguments, the denial it’s gonna happen, the corruption and a race to cover it’s traces by the time every system gets to the test, the misinformation that led to guys smelling their own farts. Let it be the Ocean Eleven heist prep part, let it show just how it’s not evil-first - although it’s useful for a counter-narrative - but how cynical, mismanaged, inheretly degraded, plain disfunctional this machine was. To see not a brutal dictatorship, but a gang of protection-racket thugs who thought they could, like Igor of Kiyv (supposedly) to collect twice on same folks, that they thought it should’ve been easy and were fixated on local politics, international standing than on themselves and their own ridiculousness, like Nicolas the 2nd starting the infamous ‘Little victorious war’ with Japan. Not to seed empathy, or wonder what it would be if this campaign wasn’t met with a worthy resistance, but to show the endgame of fascism. That it is the russian world that is to be exported elsewhere. That it is the object of pride to western contrarians, and to the US admin that is running fast to achieve the same. That speech, when the SMO was declared, and everyone nodded, could’ve been a fine ending that leaves the audience speechless and the whole theater unnervingly quiet.

I know my fellow countrymen are nearly unpenetrateable, but I feel like a bootleg of such a movie could’ve made a lot of crimethoughts.

I wish him getting frequently egged in public.

Better safe than fucked up so check in with a psychologist.

We’ve seen Mad Max, but what about Reasonable Max, Supply-Side Max or even Opportunistic Max? Or, in this particular case, Grimes-please-call-me Max? That’s a whole different story.

Watching that inteview and remembering the first Zelensky’s adresses to his and even my russian people early in the war, I was pretty occupied with an idea of how these two numbheads would be good punching bags once I put a trash bag on them and use a duct tape to ensure their breath doesn’t leave it, and hitting them repatedly with a fist or some blunt and heavy object. I don’t usually accept or encourage violence, but I felt lost watching this shit piece of negotiations and also very, morbidly angry. I couldn’t avoid thinking of going physical with them and it probably took a year and a half from Zelensky’s tired neurons to keep himself contained until the meeting ended. I’m pretty sure he kicked something after leaving it. I’m sure I would’ve if I has been him.

To add, if you didn’t know that, Zelensky and Putin are both Vovas, but the start of their names are spelled a bit different, Volodymyr vs Vladimir, volo vs vla, following ukrainian and russian takes at the same root name. The thing that doesn’t make sense tho is that the end of their names, dymyr\dimir is spelled exactly the same, and is not a marker of dialects, but rather Putin having an old soviet-like transliteration of a slavic name while Zelensky has a more modern one that follows the actual way it’s spelled. A probable reason for why the old version is like that is that russian and ukrainian have their У sounding very different to English Y, like ‘ugh’, and using ‘I’ avoided such association. I’m not a linguist at all, so take it with a grain of salt.

If only we all could.

In the 90s media were completely uncut though, especially their coverage of the first Chechen war. Some openly satyrized Yeltsin and he was kinda ok with it. Toying the line started with overtaking НТВ under Putin, the major divide between pro and anti-state stances and publications then happened around demonstrations in early 2010s, and in the end of the decade the latter started to be pushed out until ouright bans and suppression in 2022-.

There were, like, some guidelines, but when coffins of young boys started to arrive in droves and people protested against the war, print media was there to cover it, and this better-to-be-forgotten page of our history is now set in stone and I occasionally see publications from that period, no way to purge them all. Compare it to today, when mothers’ union not against war, but for better treatment of their sons got quietly put down, and the existing media are just a surrogate tightly governed by statesmen.

On the initial question about Yeltsin vs Trump, it’s hard for me to compare them for their context is inescapably different. Boris was, like, the first real elected pres, and a populist at that, and while Trump is tasked with just not fucking things too much, Yeltsin took a wheel in a harsh transitional period. And as two populists they share a lot of what makes their public image. But, call it naive and biased, Yeltsin sounded humble and honest when he talked about what he does, like he believed in it. It felt like he cared, but was a wrong person to be there from the very start, and drunk himself to death some eight years after passing the wheel to Putin being still influenced by that. With Don getting prezzed in after neolibs Obama then Biden and actually doing worse than if he did nothing at all, with empty waving like with the wall on the Mexican border, I perceive him significantly worse, more dishonest than Boris. Even knowing now that two were deeply pocketed by oligarchs (first time, eh?), I’m still find some sympathy towards our drunkie and find some personality and struggle within him, that I can’t say I see in Trump.

IIRC Vivaldi and Brave promised to prolong it for a year.

February 2022 Part 2: Electric DOGEloo

The monks aren’t druggies

One of them’s called Meth-odius

It’s a classic blunder of any war on drugs at that point.

And the name of the place they were produced in can be adapted to English as Fuckyoursk.

Trains: exist.

If you have set destinations for years to come, you don’t need a driving wheel.

After the ability to bring them up got taken away by the big capital.

Look, washing myself was never an option.

I’m still a bit nauseous hearing about their ethernal reich myth.

Is that what your momma called you?

WHO, governments, responsible media lost the war about representing and reacting to the pandemic right in most places and there weren’t much pushback against misinformation.

Salting the wound: after antivaxxing became a part of people’s identity, got coupled with their political views, the critical mortality rate to sober up the majority only grew higher.

That’s what this racoon could’ve being doing if it was him.