April 12, 2022
He doesn’t need peace
The battle is coming
Ban, kick, and fire
Oligarchs have to pay
Top secret
Collapse is coming
Nuclear crash
Cosmonauts looking for victory
Don’t expect peace
Vladimir Putin made several statements whose meaning can be summed up very briefly: Russia intends to continue the war in Ukraine without clearly defined limits.
The Russian leader, convincing himself, repeated the mantra that Ukraine had been preparing to attack Russia. In doing so, he implicitly stated that the U.S. was engaged in spreading Nazi ideology in Ukraine.
Ukraine began to be turned into an anti-Russian springboard, began to grow the sprouts of nationalism and neo-Nazism that had been there for a long time... The neo-Nazis were specially cultivated, and a clash between Russia and these forces was inevitable; they only chose the time to attack.
Speaking about the goals of military aggression, Putin said that the priority for him was to help people living in Donbas, to help the people of Donbas. At the same time, the Kremlin is “taking measures to ensure the security of Russia itself.
Obviously, we had no other choice; this is correct. And the fact that the goals [of the special operation] will be achieved, there is no doubt... The goals are apparent; they are noble... The main goal is to help people in Donbas; the people of Donbas, which we recognized, had to do because the Kyiv authorities, pushed by the West, refused to implement the Minsk agreements aimed at a peaceful solution to Donbas problems.
Lest anyone be suspicious that he was willing to accept (at least) a truce, the Russian leader made it clear that the war would continue and that Ukraine was to blame.
[In Istanbul] Ukraine requested rigorous security guarantees but agreed they would not extend to the territory of Crimea, Sevastopol, and Donbas. Our actions to create conditions for the continuation of the treaty process followed. Instead, we faced a provocation in Bucha, and the Ukrainian side backed away from its agreements in Istanbul. The security requirements are one thing, and the issues of regulating relations regarding Crimea, Sevastopol, and Donbas are taken out of the table. In other words, [the negotiations] are back to a deadlock for themselves and all of us…And until that [final agreements] are reached, the military operation will continue until it is fully completed and the tasks set at the beginning of this operation are resolved.
A decisive battle
The Russian and Ukrainian armies continue to prepare for the inevitable large-scale battle in eastern Ukraine. The aggressor’s plans are obvious: By strikes from the north (the city of Izyum) and south (the town of Donetsk) to break through the defense of the Ukrainian army and surround its most combat-ready units.
Experts’ assessments do not precisely predict the outcome of this clash. The Russian military has an undoubted advantage in the quantity and quality of weapons, but it does not have the necessary superiority in the number of personnel. The Ukrainian army has far fewer weapons and is inferior to the Russian army in many qualitative respects. Still, it has Carl von Clausewitz on its side, who said that “so-called mathematical factors never find a firm basis in military calculations.” On the side of the Ukrainian army is the courage shown in the previous days of the war, the extraordinary pride in their country and the desire to defend it, and the categorical rejection of the civilizational choice that the Russian imperial mindset is once again trying to impose on Ukraine.
The battle for Donbas, the name under which it will probably go down in history, will be a crucial episode in this war, regardless of the outcome. But I believe: Ukraine will win!
Ban, kick, and fire
The Russian authorities continue to tighten the screws inside the country, limiting access to information for Russians. The State Duma intends to consider a bill in mid-May which will provide for the extra-judicial closure of media outlets in Russia. The Prosecutor General and his deputies will have this right if they consider that the media discredit the Armed Forces, disseminate false information about their use abroad, call for hindering the use of the Armed Forces to protect Russian interests, provide incorrect information capable of causing mass unrest and disturbing transport and financial infrastructure, spread information with evident disrespect for the authorities, call for sanctions against Russia to be imposed on the Russian government, etc.
Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin proposed to introduce in the Russian legislation a norm allowing the deprivation of citizenship and the introduction of a ban on entry to Russia for those Russians who do not “support the special military operation in Ukraine, [do not] understand its need for the safety of the country and people.”
The norm of deprivation of citizenship existed in the Soviet Union and was repeatedly applied to dissidents. In the 1970s and 1980s, writers Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Eduard Limonov, Aleksandr Zinoviev, Viktor Nekrasov, Vasily Aksyonov, Vladimir Voinovich, director Yuri Lyubimov, singer Galina Vishnevskaya and musician Mstislav Rostropovich, chess player Viktor Korchnoi, and many others were deprived of Soviet citizenship.
The Russian Constitution, adopted in 1993, forbade stripping citizenship from those who received it at birth on Russian territory. Last December, Vladimir Putin introduced a bill that proposes to reinstate the rule on the possibility of depriving Russians of citizenship for committing severe crimes, among them: terrorist crimes, crimes against the state, drug crimes.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, more than 700 Russian artists signed a letter calling for a halt to the war, which included the following lines: “In each of us lives the genetic memory of the war. We don’t want another war; we don’t want people to die. The previous century has brought too much grief and suffering to humanity. We want to believe that the twenty-first century will be a century of hope, openness and dialogue, human-to-human conversation, love, compassion, and mercy. We call on all those affected to stop the hostilities, pull back the troops, and sit down at the negotiating table.”
Among those signing the letter was an actor and director Konstantin Raikin. Today he was dismissed from his post as artistic director of the Higher School of Stage Art, which he created 10 years ago and headed (formerly the Konstantin Raikin Theatre School).
An oligarch’s money instead of the budget
In the suit of the West-Siberian transport prosecutor’s office, the Arbitration Court of the Krasnoyarsk region decided to confiscate Norilsk railroads from Norilsk Nickel in favor of the state.
The arbitration decision states that the privatization of Norilsk Nickel was carried out based on the presidential decree issued in 1993. Meanwhile, the law forbade the privatization of railroads, facilities, and property of railway transport involved in transportation. In 2001, Norilsk Nickel registered its title to the railway facilities. The Federal Property Management Agency argued in court that the company had done this “without the federal agency’s consent and knowledge.”
The company stated in court that at the time of privatization, the railroad was an integral part of the single complex of the concern. Historically, it was a technological part of it, not engaged in the transportation of passengers. The Norilsk railroads transported no passengers.
The court considered these arguments erroneous and did not entertain the lawyers’ argument that the statute of limitations had expired.
Therefore, the court decided to “expropriate from unlawful ownership” the facilities of Norilsk railroads.
This “elegant combination” was dreamed up by the Kremlin, which was tired of finding money in the budget every year to plug the holes in the Russian Railways budget. After this court decision, Russian Railways will be granted the right to set high freight tariffs for Norilsk Nickel, which will relieve the pressure on the budget.
The largest shareholder of Norilsk Nickel is Interros of Vladimir Potanin 35.95%) and EN+ of Oleg Deripaska (26.25%).
The most important secret
Following the Bank of Russia’s decision to stop publishing statistics on foreign trade, the Ministry of Energy has decided to stop providing information on the oil industry’s performance. Since April 8, it stopped providing data on production dynamics, domestic supplies and exports of oil, and domestic and export supplies of motor gasoline.
The economy is going to collapse
A new official forecast on the dynamics of the Russian economy in 2022 will include an 8%-10% decline, said Head of the Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin at a meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets.
different official bodies have forecasts of about 10%, lower, and higher... from 8% with a little to more than 10%.
At the same time, he added that some experts involved in preparing the forecast give a higher rate of economic decline.
The Russian economy fell by 10% in the crisis of 2008/09, from the peak in the middle of 2008 to the bottom at the end of March 2009.
Unexplained crash
On Monday, power unit No. 5 at the Leningrad nuclear power plant ceased operating due to an automatic shutdown of electric pumps. Today, the nuclear power plant management said the power unit will be offline until April 15. During this time, experts must determine the cause of their pumps’ shutdown.
The power unit was shut down in a safe mode, and the radiation situation at the plant is within the natural values.
On February 25, the power unit was brought back to full power after a scheduled midlife overhaul that lasted 44 days.
Cosmonauts support the war
Cosmonaut Aleksandr Skvortsov, to whom Vladimir Putin presented the award today, asked the President to give the commander of the special operation in Ukraine the Victory Banner that has been in orbit.
Every crew before their flight can take something dear and valuable to them into space; our crew took the Victory Banner with them... We met Victory Day together with this banner, paying tribute to the respect that our great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers earned by fighting the German-fascist invaders against fascism... Let me fulfill the wish of the leadership of Roscosmos, the cosmonaut squadron, all those involved in space activities and ask you to pass this banner to the commander of the special military operation that is now taking place and to wish all those who are now involved in carrying out those special tasks that the word ‘victory’ be heard as often as possible when carrying out their activities.
Skvortsov made three space flights for a total of 545 days. On the last flight in the second half of 2019, his partners were Italian Luca Parmitano and American Andrew Morgan.