quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
WTG, any news from Lithuania? Do you keep in touch with people there?

How are they reacting to all of this?

quote:

Oleksandra and her four rescue dogs have been sheltering in the bathroom of her flat in Kharkiv since the shelling began.

"When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs from their enclosures outside. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. I was so scared," she says.

The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.

"I didn't want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying," she says.

"But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it's Ukrainians who're killing their own people."

It's common for Ukrainians to have family across the border in Russia. But for some, like Oleksandra, their Russian relatives have a contrasting understanding of the conflict. She believes it's down to the stories they are told by the tightly-controlled Russian media.

Oleksandra says her mother just repeats the narratives of what she hears on Russian state TV channels.

"It really scared me when my mum exactly quoted Russian TV. They are just brainwashing people. And people trust them," says Oleksandra.

"My parents understand that some military action is happening here. But they say: 'Russians came to liberate you. They won't ruin anything, they won't touch you. They're only targeting military bases'."

quote:

China has refused to supply Russian airlines with aircraft parts, an official at Russia's aviation authority was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying on Thursday, after Boeing (BA.N) and Airbus (AIR.PA) halted supply of components.

Russia's aviation sector is being squeezed by Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine, with Russia's foreign ministry warning this week that the safety of Russian passenger flights was under threat. read more

Agencies including Interfax quoted Valery Kudinov, a Rosaviatsia official responsible for maintaining airplane airworthiness, as saying that Russia would look for opportunities to source parts from countries including Turkey and India after a failed attempt to obtain them from China.

quote:

Life must have looked so sweet to Chinese President Xi Jinping in early February. He had just cemented ties with China’s most important strategic partner in the world, pledging a friendship with “no limits.” China was about to host the Winter Olympics. As Russian President Vladimir Putin started putting the screws on Ukraine, European leaders were expressing some qualms about U.S. intelligence and reservations about how to sanction Russia in a post-invasion scenario.

Six weeks later, it is safe to say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic disaster for Russia and a strategic setback for China. Ideally, revisionist world powers would like other actors to perceive them as possessing increasing capabilities but unclear intentions. This kind of rising power can incentivize some states to bandwagon and others to pass the buck. Russia has managed to reverse this equation. It is now perceived as a great power with overhyped capabilities but aggressively revisionist intentions. Little wonder that Russia’s actions have triggered the worst of all worlds for Putin: a quagmire in Ukraine and a balancing coalition.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not been great for China either. Sino-Ukrainian economic ties were pretty decent before the war, and that has obviously taken a hit. More importantly, it is easy for external observers to conclude that Xi gave his blessing for Putin’s invasion. Beyond the Feb. 4 summit, there is the awkward fact that Russia waited until just after the Winter Olympics ended to launch his invasion.

quote:

It is interesting to note that U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan will be meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome today and, according to a senior administration official, Ukraine will be a “significant topic.” On Sunday, Sullivan said some interesting things on CNN’s “State of the Union” to Dana Bash. That included a warning on sanctions: “We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them.”

Sullivan also included an interesting out, however: that China “may not have understood the full extent of it because it’s very possible Putin lied to them the way he lied to Europeans and others.” Sullivan is clearly trying to offer China a graceful pathway to change its position on Ukraine — and, in the process, allow Beijing to escape from a strategic bind of its own making.

quote:

Originally posted by jodi:
PD -

quote:

‘They’re lying to you’: Russian TV employee interrupts news broadcast

Marina Ovsyannikova ran on to the set of the Channel One transmission shouting: ‘Stop the war. No to war’

quote:

Originally posted by RealPlayer:
Just saw on TV:

A Russian citizen being interviewed on Russian TV about the war said “I have two words,” and then held up a sign reading “dva slova” — literally, “two words.” She was hauled off by police.

Then another Russian woman approached the interviewer asking why they don’t interview pro-war citizens. The TV guy said they interview anyone, so go ahead and speak. When she started talking, police came and took her away too!

quote:

Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia's post-Soviet economic reforms, has quit his post as a Kremlin special envoy and left the country due to the war in Ukraine, two sources told Reuters, the highest profile protest by a Russian figure against the invasion.

Chubais, who once served as former President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff, left his post as Vladimir Putin's special representative for ties with international organisations, one of the sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

He was appointed to the post, which was charged with "achieving goals of sustainable development", in 2020, days after resigning as the head of state technology firm RUSNANO, which he had run since 2008.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Chubais left due to the conflict in Ukraine. He does not intend to return to Russia, one of the sources said.

quote:

NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where fierce fighting by the country’s fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.

By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan.

quote:

The NATO official said 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.