I remember this recruitment drive last year. Most people considered the recruits cannon fodder. Apparently that wasn’t entirely true.
It’s smart PR to fulfill the pardons.
AND, they are killing little old ladies holding strawberries with axes.
A surge in local violent crime would normally create headlines in the papers. But Putin has shut any criticism down.
He might have shut down the newspapers, but I don’t think that even Putin can shut down the gossiping babushkas.
Who could have predicted that giving a bunch of convicted criminals PTSD and then letting them loose with no oversight would have negative consequences?
When you allow strawberries to obtain axes, there is sure to be trouble.
And these were the ones mean enough to survive.
Belgorod was partly evacuated after an explosive device was found.
Don’t know if it has the news elsewhere: the Chinese ambassador in France was answering questions on TV and let slip, on the subject of Ukraine, that Ukraine, as all the others nations issued from USSR, had no legal existence. All the European nations, especially Baltic, are really upset, to say the least.
Sorry, French link only.
From the Guardian.
I can’t think that this was an accidental statement or slip of the tongue by the Chinese, so why say it?
I’m not sure, but maybe a person with a screen name of FrenchDunadan, who links to a French based source might not have English as their first language?
If so, his English is certainly better than my French.
Sorry, I misspoke. I meant “why would the Chinese mention it”, not why the poster said “slip of the tongue.” It seemed pretty deliberate in their case.
I read it as saying that the Chinese envoy said the quiet part loud. « Let slip out » is not the same as « slip of the tongue »
yeah, it doesn’t seem like a quality ambassadors exactly cultivate, blurting out whatever they’re thinking in public places.
Sure, China cares about nothing in this conflict except how they can profit, and they’re making lots of profit by trading with Russia, but I wonder how long it’ll be before they realize that they could make even more profit by just annexing huge swaths of Russian land, and that in the current climate, nobody would even particularly object.
Well, except Russia, I’m sure they would object, but it’s becoming quite clear that they’re not in any position to do anything about it.
A few months into the war, I was reading Daily Kos every day as they were doing by far the best job of covering it. Kos himself is a vet with a strong interest in military logistics. I wrote (here, I think) that Russia was heading toward being a satellite state of China. Nothing has developed to change my opinion as yet.
But they still have nukes. Sure, everyone is now wondering if the state of their nukes mirrors that of all their other military equipment, but even if only 10% of their known arsenal is functional, that gives them more working nukes than China.
China might offer to buy a big chunk of Siberia, and Russia might accept that offer, but there won’t be anything like even a mildly-hostile takeover. No one wants to roll those dice.
Russia would not be foolish enough to sell off any land that it has now, due to the vast raw material resources that continue to be uncovered due to global warming. China would have to take it by force becasue Russia doesn’t care if its people suffer.
oh, we’re not buying, we’re just investing . . .
oh, we’re not invading, we’re just moving our workforce in to those factories we invested in . . .
oh, we’re not taking over, we’re just setting rules for this area that now has so many of our citizens in it, and this is only so few kilometers over your border, you’re not going to start a nuclear war over that, now are you? . . .
(rinse, repeat)