From Russia with love..

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Belarusian police arrested opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, after forcing their Ryanair flight to land in the Belarusian capital, sparking outrage from European leaders, who have called the plane’s grounding a hijacking and act of “air piracy”. Belarus’s ambassador to the EU, Aleksandr Mikhnevich, was summoned on Monday for a dressing down by senior officials in Brussels over “another blatant attempt to silence the opposition”. In an interview on Newstalk Breakfast, the Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary, said that “it appears the intent of the authorities was to remove a journalist and his travelling companion … we believe there were some KGB agents offloaded at the airport as well”. O’Leary’s remarks were the first official confirmation of reports that four other passengers had disembarked in Minsk after the emergency landing, driving speculation that Protasevich was being shadowed by the security services before the plane was forced to land. O’Leary said he believed it was the first time such an incident had taken place with a European airline. On Monday, it was revealed that Sapega, a Russian citizen studying at the European Humanities University (EHU) in Lithuania, was forced off the flight along with Protasevich, whom Belarusian authorities have accused of fomenting the mass protests last year against the president, Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus KGB believed to be on plane forced to land in Minsk, says Ryanair CEO | Belarus | The Guardian

• Where there is trouble there is Russia..
  

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Myanmar’s junta chief on Tuesday thanked Russia, a major weapons supplier to the troubled Southeast Asian country, for strengthening the army which seized power in a coup earlier this year. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) government in February. Russia has backed its ally and warned the West against sanctioning the junta. “Thanks to Russia, our army has become one of the strongest in the region,” Russian news agency TASS cited Min Aung Hlaing as telling Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting in Moscow.

Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing thanks Russia for boosting its military | South China Morning Post

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, and Myanmar's junta leader committed to further strengthening security and other ties between the two countries at a Moscow meeting on Monday.

Russia and Myanmar junta leader commit to boosting ties at Moscow meeting | Reuters

• Where there are crooks and murderers in power, good chance Russia has their back..
  

[Admin]

A new BBC investigation has revealed the scale of operations by a shadowy Russian mercenary group in Libya's civil war, which includes links to war crimes and the Russian military. A Samsung tablet left by a fighter for the Wagner group exposes its key role - as well as traceable fighter codenames. And the BBC has a "shopping list" for state-of-the-art military equipment which expert witnesses say could only have come from Russian army supplies. Russia denies any links to Wagner. The group was first identified in 2014 when it was backing pro-Russian separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Since then, it has been involved in regions including Syria, Mozambique, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Wagner's fighters appeared in Libya in April 2019 when they joined the forces of a rebel general, Khalifa Haftar, after he launched an attack on the UN-backed government in the capital, Tripoli. The conflict ended in a ceasefire in October 2020. The group is notoriously secretive, but the BBC has managed to gain rare access to two former fighters. They revealed what type of person was joining Wagner - and its lack of any code of conduct. There is little doubt that they kill prisoners - something one ex-fighter freely admits. "No-one wants an extra mouth to feed." This supports other parts of the TV documentary - Haftar's Russian Mercenaries: Inside the Wagner Group - by BBC News Arabic and BBC News Russian. Its other revelations include evidence of suspected war crimes, including the intentional killing of civilians.

Wagner: Scale of Russian mercenary mission in Libya exposed - BBC News

• Where there is trouble, cruelty and war crimes usually there are Russians..
  

[Admin]

Russian opposition politicians are used to finding spoiler candidates with identical surnames running against them in order to confuse voters at the polls. Now it appears that the impersonators are changing their faces as well. That’s what Boris Vishnevsky, a senior member of the liberal Yabloko party, is facing in his district in St Petersburg before municipal elections later this month. Vishnevsky already knew that two of his opponents had changed their names so that they were also called Boris Vishnevsky, an update on the common tactic of nominating a “double” to split the vote and deliver victory to another candidate. But when a district voting poster was revealed on Sunday, it showed something far more shocking: three nearly indistinguishable Boris Vishnevskys, all balding, greying, and sporting matching goatees. As a Facebook friend of Vishnevsky’s pointed out, the simplest way to spot the real Vishnevsky is that he was the only one who bothered to wear a tie. “This is all done to disorient voters, so that they confuse the fake with the real, and instead of the real Vishnevsky they vote for one of the fakes,” said the real Vishnevsky in an interview. The fake, or at least newer, Vishnevskys could not immediately be reached for comment.

Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot | Russia | The Guardian

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Russian authorities have classified the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny a “terrorist” and “extremist”, according to a new social media post from the Kremlin foe. The opposition politician said he had been summoned to appear before a commission, which voted unanimously to change his status – and place a board above his prison bed calling him a “terrorist”. But Mr Navalny, who was arrested and imprisoned on returning to Russia in January, claimed the new label may turn out less onerous than a previous “flight risk” designation. That was accompanied by much more intrusive monitoring, he suggested. “I counted that I said ‘Navalny, Alexei, born 1976, illegally imprisoned in colony 2, section 2, reporting, 1669 times’,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “That’s what I had to do every two hours to prove that I hadn’t run away. And it got terribly annoying.”

Mr Navalny was designated a flight risk even before being transferred to the notorious Pokrov prison colony 100km (62 miles) east of Moscow. That designation opened the door to a draining monitoring regime which he said amounted to torture. Extremism, in comparison, was “bliss”, he wrote. “I was worried they would demand I kiss Putin portraits and learn Medvedev’s speeches by rote, but it turns out that isn’t necessary," he wrote. "The only difference is that I now have a board above my bed.” Mr Navalny, 45, has been Vladimir Putin’s most prominent political opponent and survived a nerve agent attack in August 2020. A compelling body of evidence connects that apparent assassination attempt with Russian authorities. The Kremlin rejects the accusation. The opposition politician was imprisoned following a series of dubious trials, widely viewed as politically motivated and contravening legal norms, with the first of them even held in a police station.

Anti-Putin campaigner Navalny designated a ‘terrorist’ | The Independent

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Anger at Russia mounted this week with reports lawyers of the families of MH17 victims have been subjected to an intimidation campaign allegedly directed by Moscow. The reports, first carried by Dutch broadcaster RTL, said lawyers had been followed home after court hearings. Others had spotted “suspicious-looking men” in sunglasses loitering around their home addresses. Dutch authorities who offered the lawyers protection are said to have concluded Moscow’s spy agencies are behind the surveillance.

Lawyers contacted by The Independent said they had resolved not to comment on the incidents – even if asked to by trial judges. But one said they would “not be cowed” into changing course regardless of pressure. Russia has already been criticised for its refusal to cooperate with Dutch-led investigations into the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing flight over eastern Ukraine in July 2014..

‘Suspicious looking men’ in sunglasses: Claims that MH17 victims’ lawyers are being intimidated by Moscow | The Independent

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Ukraine has been hit by a “massive” cyber-attack, with the websites of several government departments including the ministry of foreign affairs and the education ministry knocked out. Officials said it was too early to draw any conclusions but they pointed to a “long record” of Russian cyber assaults against Ukraine, with the attack coming after security talks between Moscow and the US and its allies this week ended in stalemate. Suspected Russian hackers left a message on the foreign ministry website, according to reports. It said: “Ukrainians! … All information about you has become public. Be afraid and expect worse. It’s your past, present and future.”

Ukraine hit by ‘massive’ cyber-attack on government websites | Ukraine | The Guardian

• With 100K+ Russian troups at the border.
  
• Putin main policy objective trying to recreate the old SU and it's wider world influence and make Russia 'great again', preposterous for an economy not even the size of Italy's.
  
• Also prevent Ukraine from establishing a stable democracy which could serve as a role model for Russia itself.
  
• Nobody is going to invade Russia, to what end?? Also, Napoleon and Hitler tried, have we forgotten how that ended? These security concerns they cite are completely bogus.
  

[Admin]

When Russian politician Vladimir Kara-Murza landed in the hospital due to a sudden illness in 2017, news quickly spread that he believed it was a deliberate poisoning. Although there were alternative explanations for his critical condition, Kara-Murza suspects his and other opposition leaders' dire experiences were not 'strange accidents'. The Man Putin Couldn't Kill delves into the lives of some of Vladimir Putin's most outspoken crtics, particularly Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and explores their hospitalisations and deaths. Watch the full documentary on BBC Select

What it's like to be a 'traitor' of Vladimir Putin - BBC Reel

• Statistics don't lie, however bizarre the explanation for individual cases that the Kremlin puts out, taken together produces an alarming picture of attacks and assassinations of Putin critics. 
  

[Admin]

The recognition decision answers some questions but others remain. There is a chance Putin may simply recognise the two republics “as they are”. This, after months of apocalyptic scenarios, would probably be privately accepted as a good outcome by Ukraine and the west. But it seems likely that Putin has much more in mind than simply taking a nibble out of Ukraine’s east and taking formal responsibility for territories he already de facto controlled. Putin’s final words, that if Kyiv did not stop the violence they would bear responsibility for the “ensuing bloodshed”, were ominous in the extreme. It sounded, quite simply, like a declaration of war...

Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign | Ukraine | The Guardian

The whole thing was staged:

• Stumbling and uncomfortable members of his security council, and their wrist watches showed it wasn't a live event (with translation available instantly also suggests).
  
• And the signing ceremony, the leaders of these "republics" were already present.
  
• His rambling speech was ready already also (and here is a fact check of that speech)
  

Apart from the theatre, can anything be done to stop Putin?

• Heavy sanctions, like kicking Russia out of SWIFT, high-tech or even trade embargo, but there is a high risk of retaliation, which can seriously bite.
  
• Advanced weapons to Ukraine, increase the cost of occupation
  
• Cutting some of the oligarchs loose from Putin, as they are losing lots of money right now.
  

[Admin]

Putin is a liar and a ruthless dictator. Human rights groups have long documented his regime’s record of repression and terror. He is a kleptocrat; consider the plunder by him and his allies of Russia’s wealth. Some estimates say he has become the richest man on the planet. He has ruthless imperial ambitions, with his hankering to construct a “greater Russia”, with echoes of the old Soviet Union. He regularly resorts to excessive use of force. Witness the 334 hostages killed at Beslan school in 2004, including 176 children, or the 130 killed in the Moscow theatre siege. He understands only force, and a feather duster isn’t going to stop him.

These pathetic sanctions won’t hurt Putin. He’ll be laughing all the way to his dacha | Chris Bryant | The Guardian