March 31, 2022

The Russian defense ministry announced a local ceasefire on Thursday to allow civilian evacuated

The Russian defense ministry announced a local ceasefire on Thursday to allow civilians to be evacuated from Ukraine’s besieged port city of Mariupol, according to Agence France-Presse.

A humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia, via the Russian-controlled port of Berdiansk, would be opened from 10am (7am GMT), the ministry said on Wednesday.

“For this humanitarian operation to succeed, we propose to carry it out with the direct participation of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross,” the ministry statement said.

The Russian ministry asked Kyiv to guarantee the “unconditional respect” for the ceasefire through written notification to the Russian side, the UNHCR and ICRC before 6am (3am GMT) Thursday.

per the guardian


well, we will see if this is another pootie trick or not.

March 31, 2022

The Russian rouble has recovered to its pre-war value despite western sanctions on the country's

exports and financial systems. The currency was trading at 75.5 to one US dollar on Thursday morning, compared with almost 140 to the dollar at the beginning of March when it crashed with the onest of sanctions. That is actually better than it was on 22 February, two days before the invasion, when it was at 80 per dollar.

Russia has bolstered the currency by raising interest rates to 20% – therefore encouraging investment in the rouble – and imposing capital controls which mean that people cannot swap roubles for other currencies.

The Kremlin’s threat to make European gas importers like Germany pay for their supplies in roubles – thus boosting the currency’s value – has also helped. More help has come from China and India, which have increased the amount of Russian oil they are buying thanks to generous discounts from Moscow.

Per The Guardian




basically using voodoo economics to artificially prop up its currency. So their currency is back up to Angel soft TP value instead of the dollar store TP value.

March 30, 2022

Well, so much for a pootie peace deal, it was all a lie:

In a call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday night, Vladimir Putin said Russian shelling of Mariupol will only end when Ukrainian troops surrender, the Kremlin said. per : the guardian

and this little bit of news:

Vladimir Putin’s advisers are “too afraid to tell him the truth” about how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Westerns sanctions have been to Russia’s economy, according to a US official.

Reuters quotes the official, speaking on condition of anonymity:

We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth.

March 29, 2022

A dozen members of the US Senate foreign relations committee urged Joe Biden's administration to

push for Russia’s removal from the United Nations Human Rights Council, citing its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.

March 29, 2022

The United States is seeing Russia beginning to withdraw some of its forces from the Ukrainian

capital, Kyiv, in a sign of a change in Russian strategy in Ukraine, senior US military officials said.

From CNN’s Jim Sciutto:

March 28, 2022

The billionaire Roman Abramovich and a Ukrainian peace negotiator suffered poisoning symptoms

The billionaire Roman Abramovich and a Ukrainian peace negotiator suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning earlier this month, according a source with direct knowledge of the incident.

Abramovich was taking part in informal peace negotiations in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early in March when he began to feel ill, the source told the Guardian. Ukrainian MP Rustem Umerov was also part of the negotiation, and the men later left Ukraine for Poland, and then flew to Istanbul, where they received medical treatment.

“It was during his first trip to Kyiv. Roman lost his sight for several hours. In Turkey, they were treated in a clinic, together with Rustem,” said the source.

The account backs up the claims of a potential poisoning first reported in the Wall Street Journal and by the investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat.

The Guardian live feed

March 24, 2022

per Guardian: video of US volunteers on the frontline fighting to retake Russian held area

https://twitter.com/jmvasquez1974/status/1507054421334757382?

US volunteers have surfaced in video footage from the front lines in the Ukraine, suggesting that the international legion fighting alongside the Ukrainian army is playing an increasingly active role.

Two video clips appeared in Twitter on Thursday: one showing an American in combat gear posing in front of the burnt remains of what he said was a Russian tank. Off camera, a Ukrainian shouts “Welcome to America!” and the American repeats the phrase.

In the other, narrated by a different soldier with an American accent, shows a detachment of soldiers taking cover by a wall alongside a road, in a village the narrator claims they have recaptured from the Russians.

The first video was posted by James Vasquez, a US army veteran and building contractor from Connecticut, who according to his Twitter Feed, arrived in Poland on 15 March, crossed into Ukraine the next day, bringing with him several surveillance drones. He was sent to the front lines from Lviv on 18 March.

March 24, 2022

AP: Ukraine's navy reported Thursday that it had sunk the Russian ship Orsk near Berdyansk

https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1506906749286158336

March 19, 2022

the intensifying anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians that is directed at the average Russian,

Journalist Neil Hauer, a freelancer journalist reporting in Kyiv, has an interesting Tweet thread about the intensifying anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians that is directed at the average Russian, not just Vladamir Putin.

@NeilPHauer
Something I've noticed over the past week or so here: almost every Ukrainian I spoke to has made it clear that they blame not only Putin, but the average Russian as much (or more) for this war. The view is: we overthrew our corrupt government, and they accept their murderous one.

The amount of animosity from the average Ukrainian towards the average Russian is already huge and growing more with every single new airstrike, every new civilian death. The effects of this war will last for generations.

And I'm saying this from Kharkiv. I think I saw more virulently anti-Russian views here than anywhere else in the country. The sense of betrayal here, of 'how could they possibly do this to *us*', is incredible.

The people we watched crawl out of the rubble today told us their relatives in Moscow didn't believe them. Videos of their destroyed home were met with 'it's a fake' or 'Nazis did it.' *Every* bond between Ukrainians & Russians - familial, cultural, historical - is being broken.

March 15, 2022

Rep. Lauren Boebert says in a video that a mother of a 'lieutenant corporal' reached out to her

after her interruption of President Biden's State of the Union speech and many point out that the military ranking does not exist: Twitter is having fun with it

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1503777835655254028


Reminds me of the MASH corporal Captain episode