Anonymous has been around long enough some of their members might be working at various intelligence agencies as their day jobs. So… maybe? With or without government sanction.
AFAIK, anyone can claim to be Anonymous. There’s no way to know whether someone is actually a member of the “organization”, or a government agency pretending to be one.
A Moldovan ship has been hit by the Russians.
While Anonymous is taking down the Kremlin, Elon Musk just tweeted that Starlink is up and terminals are en route. That could be a huge help to the citizenry and the militia.
PornHub is blocking Russian logins.
Bummer.
A large oil terminal and a gas pipeline are reported to be on fire tonight near Kiev.
There are a couple of major gas pipelines that go via Ukraine from Russia to Europe. Ukraine probably wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of the EU by sabotaging these, but it it might be something they decide to do. Not sure what the gas pipeline on fire is tonight.
EDIT: sorry these aren’t near Kiev. The oil terminal is is Vasylkiv in central Ukraine and thought to be due to a Russian attack.
The gas pipeline is in Kharkiv.
At least two non-Ukrainian freighters have been hit b missiles. One Moldovan, one Japanese.
There’s no “the west quietly drops sanctions, opens the pipeline, and pinky-swears not to expand NATO” ending to this war.
Russia is the new North Korea.
I suspect the international fury at this incident is greater than Putin banked on, especially after the relatively mild response to the 2014 invasions.
I greatly admire Ukraine’s stubborn resistance and refusal to roll over and play dead. But the fact remains that Russia, the largest country in the world (in land area) has the available resources to reduce, without nuclear weapons, the entire capitol to scorched earth with not a single building standing, merely at the wave of a dictator’s hand. That does not bode well for Ukraine or other living things.
I suspect that the relatively bloodless and painless (for everyone but the Ukrainians) nature of the 2014 take over of Crimea was responsible for the relatively mild response. I think Putin has badly gauged the current audience, especially wrt the fact that this is anything but bloodless and painless. And the naked aggression here is really, really not playing well with the world looking on. You also have the fact that Biden et al have been sharing intelligence data with the press, basically pointing out what Russia was doing…and, have been vindicated that this is, in fact, what Russia was doing all along. On several other discussions I’ve seen there were a bunch of jeers about how western media and US intelligence was just playing this up and how they missed the date it was supposed to happen. Those folks all seem to be singing a different tune now.
Could they? Certainly. But let me ask you…what would be the possible reaction, especially in Europe right now, if they did? What do you suppose they would think of the Russians reducing Kyiv to smoking ruins, and all of the civilian deaths that would entail? I don’t doubt that Russia…or any superpower…could reduce a city like that without ever even thinking about nuclear weapons. But the backlash would be bad…worse than what we are already seeing with the Europeans looking at a list of which Russian banks will get tossed out of SWIFT, as well as what new sanctions they will be imposing. You already have Sweden and Finland seriously considering joining NATO, and this despite naked Russia threats to them both.
No, I don’t see Russia doing anything like that (i.e. reducing Kyiv to ‘the entire capitol to scorched earth with not a single building standing’). I guess we shall see, but I think if Putin does that, there will be no going back, and no reconciliation down the road. It would be one of the greatest humanitarian disasters since WWII, and it would be squarely on Putin and his band of cut throats heads.
I am sure Russia could unleash devastating bombing on Ukraine.
However, in the speech Putin recently made, he suggests he wants it to be part of Russia. This will not simply be to annex it, he wants to completely eliminate the state called Ukraine and purge the all Ukrainian nationalists, or de-Natzify it.
Would it make much sense to destroy all the buildings? There many religious sites that are important to the Russian Orthodox church, the resting place of saints, and are regarded as important parts of the Russian identity.
He is unlikely to want the building and monuments blown to bits by high explosives. Anyone who opposes him, however, will be de-Nazified. I hate to think what that means in practice.
In a televised speech on Monday, Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine is an inalienable part of Russian “history, culture, and spiritual space”. He portrayed Ukrainians as a mere sub-group of a larger Russian nation, stressing that people in Ukraine have called themselves Russian “since time immemorial”.
This vision of a great Russian people comprising all East Slavs, including those who identified as Ukrainian or Belarusian, has a history.
First, it was invented to justify Tsarist rule in the 19th century. Then, it formed the cornerstone of Soviet national policy.
Today, it is used to justify Russian ambitions to destroy the state of Ukraine. Emphasising that Ukraine “never had stable traditions of real statehood”, Putin’s speech on Monday portrayed the very existence of the country as an aberration because, in his view, all Slavic peoples are “bound by blood”.
He strikes me as being so narcissistic that he masturbates to pictures of himself.
Maybe someone can slip some polonium 210 into his hand lotion.
I assume this was planned to hurt Ukraine 's economy.
From the Guardian live feed
It won’t be the first absolutely nasty environmental disaster the Russian’s have perpetrated. Sadly, it probably won’t be the last, either…
That reminds me of a Henry Rollins routine. [Paraphrased]] ‘I masturbate in front of a mirror. You know what I think of? A bald guy masturbating.’
Just as an information aside, I look at https://planefinder.net/ a lot, and right now as I type this (9:41pm), all air traffic (at least those with active transponders) are giving Ukraine and Moldova a wide berth…except for an Aeroflot flight from Istanbul (Flight SU2135) to Moscow…
Also, there is a KC-135 tanker circling in Northern Romania, but no other military planes seem to be around it…at least none with active transponders… I’ve also spotted several C17’s transports operating in Europe, none near the battle zone but one heading into Poland…
Don’t know about any USAF transports heading from the USA, it’s crowded this time of night heading to Europe, but there may be a few.
Just an FYI–stuff is happening.