Europe War in Ukraine - Thread 2

[Gethelred]

This is a sensitive area for some. With that in mind, I'm going to remind a few posters a few things:

• personal attacks are against forum rules. From this point, any attacks that are directed at another poster will be treated with a warning, then infractions and threadbans if it continues.
• the spread of misinformation is also against the rules. This is taken very seriously by moderation, and you will be asked to support your opinion from time to time. If you cannot satisfy this, you will be provided an opportunity to retract your post; if you do not, you will receive an infraction and a threadban on that basis.

This is a forum for adults, and I'd appreciate you all treating each other appropriately.

 

[BATTERY]

 

[Mobbs]

According to Trukha Ukraina, another Russian ammunition depot (this time in Kherson) is now reporting.

In Kherson now fierce "‎fireworks"‎. Looks like another Ork ammo dump is on fire.

 

[Aussie in exile]

One of the most reported court proceedings in Russia right now is the recent decision to sentence Alexei Gorinov to 7 years prison for calling the war a war. From my viewpoint, this was always going to happen, the RF do not care (or understand?) how nonsensical their approach to this appears. Or, more likely, they do know, but don't care, as simply repeating the lie over and over is their m.o. They truly do think nobody anywhere else will ever do anything, or that they cannot.

A municipal deputy from Moscow, Alexei Gorinov, called the war a war. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for this

Муниципальный депутат из Москвы Алексей Горинов называл войну войной. За это его приговорили к семи годам колонии «Медуза» рассказывает о первом реальном сроке по статье о «фейках» — Meduza

8 июля судья Мещанского районного суда Москвы Олеся Менделеева признала 60-летнего муниципального депутата Алексея Горинова виновным в распространении «фейков» о российской армии. Причиной стало то, что на одном из заседаний совета депутатов Горинов назвал войну войной. Он настаивал, что все...

meduza.io

Full Article from Meduza's mailouts (it's big):


View attachment 1442308
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How Russians hate the truth

 

[Aussie in exile]

Adolf Putin this is war you can't win. Engage the brain if you have one

Ukraine round-up: Putin dares West as Zelensky pays tribute to Johnson

Russian forces push into the eastern Donetsk where one civilian died on Thursday after a missile strike.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[jatz14]

production facilities aStill wish we were doing more. This is where our complete absence of manufacturing costs us. We should be able to provide more equipment to them...

Its a bit hard, when we would have to buy equipment from other countries, in order to provide it to Ukraine, when that country in most cases, is already sending it to Ukraine.

I suspect some of the slow delivery of weapons is due to the fact that production capacity is maxed out. They aren't easy to make, and it isnt easy ramping production up either. So Australia buying from other countries, to send to Ukraine, or even just offering to pay another country to produce weapons for Ukariane doesn't help, if production rates are already maxed out

Ukraine asking for Bushmasters makes a lot of sense in this regard. They asked for something they need, that we make here, which therefore doesn't cannibalise what another country is already making.

Its a pity the Boxer and K9 production facilities aren't up and full steam yet. They would have an impact.

 

[TedDougChris]

Its a bit hard, when we would have to buy equipment from other countries, in order to provide it to Ukraine, when that country in most cases, is already sending it to Ukraine.

I suspect some of the slow delivery of weapons is due to the fact that production capacity is maxed out. They aren't easy to make, and it isnt easy ramping production up either. So Australia buying from other countries, to send to Ukraine, or even just offering to pay another country to produce weapons for Ukariane doesn't help, if production rates are already maxed out

Ukraine asking for Bushmasters makes a lot of sense in this regard. They asked for something they need, that we make here, which therefore doesn't cannibalise what another country is already making.

Its a pity the Boxer and K9 production facilities aren't up and full steam yet. They would have an impact.

Yeah - the lesson here is that we need to be able to build and supply our own equipment.

Loyal Wingman drones - must be made here and all componentry as well.

Same with destroyers, submarines, long range artillery, etc

 

[Aussie in exile]

 

[Mobbs]

Municipal elections come to Russia in September, so they are busy finding small crimes to attach to any non-narrative potential candidates. If they can give someone a criminal record, even for the smallest thing, then that person is not permitted to run for a political post. This is how they do it.

“Don’t give everything into the hands of United Russia”
In Moscow, hundreds of independent politicians want to participate in the municipal elections on September 11, despite the repression and war

From Novaya Gazeta:

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novayagazeta.eu

On September 11, municipal elections will be held in Moscow. Municipal deputies have not so many powers, but hundreds of Moscow politicians, activists and residents of the capital decided to oppose United Russia on a single voting day.

Many of them already at the very beginning of the campaign faced pressure from the authorities, in particular, with the deprivation of the right to be elected. The score in administrative cases against the Mundeps and Moscow activists is already reaching dozens.

Simultaneously with these elections, on a single voting day, according to RBC and Kommersant, the Kremlin is preparing "referendums" on joining the LDNR.

Correspondent for Novaya Gazeta. Europe” tells how and why the Russian authorities clean up the Moscow municipal elections, and also analyzes the projects that are still going to nominate alternative candidates.

Protocols against Mundeps
On the morning of June 14, the municipal deputy of the Cheryomushki district, Yulia Shcherbakova, was going to take her child to kindergarten. On the floor next to her apartment, the security forces were waiting for Yulia - in civilian clothes and in uniform. One of them was the detective of the Center for Combating Extremism (Center "E"). The other, the Mundep believes, is a district police officer. Employees invited the woman to drive with them to the department as soon as she got to the elevator.

- I ask them: how is it to "drive"? I have a child. How do you imagine it?, - Yulia is indignant in a conversation with Novaya Gazeta. Europe". “But it didn't bother them. They answer me: "let's go with you, and then we'll go." So I went to the garden with an escort, left my daughter there, and then went to the Department of Internal Affairs for the South-Western Administrative District of Moscow (ed.).

At the Internal Affairs Directorate, Shcherbakova was accused of violating the administrative article on “demonstration of extremist symbols” (part 1 of article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The attention of employees was attracted by the post of the Mundep from 2019, which mentioned the “Smart Voting” strategy of the politician Alexei Navalny, since last year the Russian authorities consider his structures extremist. According to Yulia, in the police department, a policeman showed her screenshots of a Facebook post that got into the case file, asked if this page was hers and if she published such information. After the mundep wrote that she did not agree with the accusations, she was taken to the Cheryomushki police station, where they kept her for another six hours. During this time, the public defender was not allowed to see her. The court session was scheduled for July 18, more than a month later.

- Of course, it's not about the fine, it's a thousand or two thousand rubles. The article is needed in order to prevent me from running in the municipal elections this year,” says Shcherbakova. - You cannot be elected with a criminal record under this article. Now there is a “cleansing” of the field from active deputies or activists. [The security forces] are digging up old posts and trying to pull them in.

Yulia Shcherbakova is far from the only one who is being tried to deprive her of the right to vote in municipal elections through administrative protocols. At the time of writing, more than ten people were already “disenfranchised”.

On the same day as Shcherbakova, under the same article, another municipal deputy of Cheryomushki, Elena Selkova, was attracted. Later, similar protocols were drawn up for the mundeps of the Akademichesky district Levon Smirnov and Nodari Khananashvili , the mundep of the Otradnoye district Ruslan Borovsky , as well as the mundep of Zyuzino Alexander Zamyatin.

Accusations of displaying extremist symbols have affected not only current municipal deputies, but also other Moscow politicians and activists, some of whom have already announced their ambitions for the day of the unified vote. So the court appointed 10 days of administrative arrest for politician Nikolai Kavkazsky for last year's publication with the symbols of "Smart Voting" after Kavkazsky announced that he was going to become a candidate in the Basmanny district. Ilya Seliverstov , Kirill Suvorov (for the "demonstration" he was assigned 15 days), Elena Karavaeva , Lyudmila Khairova and Andrey Natalchuk also became "disfranchised" .

On July 8, the court also found Marina Litvinovich, ex-candidate for the State Duma and former member of the PMC , guilty of “demonstrating extremist symbols”.

“The fact that this is extremism is evident from the context”
Meduza's sources close to the presidential administration and the Moscow mayor's office said that the authorities are not going to let oppositionists in the municipal elections in Moscow and are ready to bring all those who are objectionable to administrative and criminal liability . The mass nature of the “administratives” is also confirmed by the lawyer of the OVD-Info project, Mikhail Biryukov. As the lawyer explains, the "formal" reason for the security forces for the same demonstration of extremist symbols is most often publications of past years, to which images with Navalny's symbols are attached. For example, Khananashvili was attracted for the picture of an Easter egg with the letter "H".

At the same time, even during the last wave of protocols for demonstrating extremist symbols (the last time Moscow activists were so massively detained under the article in early February of this year - ed.), human rights activists noted that such cases are quite controversial even under the current legislation. Legally, there is no reason to punish people for pictures with the letter “H”, an exclamation point or the “Smart Voting” logo, because when Navalny’s structures were recognized as extremist, there was no talk of any prohibited symbols in court. In Krasnoyarsk and Voronezh, such cases have already been terminated due to the lack of corpus delicti.

Now it is almost impossible to challenge the decisions. Mikhail Biryukov complains that in court now the answer to all objections is quite simple: "the fact that this is extremism is clear from the context."

The lawyer also insists that the pressure on the municipalities before the elections is now much wider than the attraction under the article, which deprives a person of the right to vote for a year. The security forces are trying to discourage the desire to participate in elections from politicians with other articles that do not imply such a sanction: discrediting the Russian army (Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), as well as extremism (Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). In sum, dozens of politicians and activists have already been found guilty of these offenses.

Among them is State Duma candidate Mikhail Lobanov, who at the end of May launched the Nomination platform to help independent candidates. On June 24, he was arrested for 15 days because of a post about Ramzan Kadyrov, and later he was fined 45,000 because of an anti-war poster that hung on his balcony for 100 days.

The attention of the security forces was also attracted by the head of the Yakimanka urban district, deputy chairman of the Moscow Yabloko, Andrey Morev. At the end of June, an administrative case was opened against him under Art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (“discrediting the army”). On July 7, he was sentenced to a fine of 50 thousand rubles.

“Of course, these articles do not restrict the right to be elected, but where extremist symbols were not found in publications, they are used,” Biryukov explains. “An administrative case is a clear indication of the boundaries for it, that any previous or subsequent publication [about the war] can become a criminal case. It's a black mark, a clear signal.

Two municipal deputies from the Krasnoselsky District are already under criminal prosecution: Elena Kotenochkina and Alexei Gorinov. Both are “about fakes” about the Russian army (paragraphs “a”, “b”, “d” of part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, up to ten years in prison) for talking about the war at a meeting of the council of deputies (the recording of the meeting was posted on YouTube) . By the time the criminal case was opened, Kotenochkina had managed to leave Russia. On July 8, a court in Moscow sentenced Gorinov to seven years in prison.

But pressure does not stop the election campaign in Moscow. Even after the mass drafting of protocols and the threat of criminal cases, hundreds of Moscow politicians and activists want to oppose United Russia in the municipal elections. Some repressions even force them to reconsider their view of the elections.

“For the last five years I have been involved in social work. This is quite tiresome, especially when you are in the council of deputies not in the majority, but in the minority. The work is proceeding with a creak,” says Yulia Shcherbakova. - But this story with the detention touched me very much. If they [the security forces] hadn't touched me, I wouldn't have done anything. Since they think that it is necessary to do such a disgusting thing, with all the humiliations, then you need to move forward.

On the wave of thought
Despite the fact that, according to the law, municipalities have a fairly wide range of rights and opportunities, they do not have much political influence. In Moscow and other cities, local governments deal mainly with local problems: overhaul, landscaping, organizing regional holidays. Among other duties of local deputies is the distribution of money that the mayor's office allocates for the development of the district (for the same improvement).

Municipal deputies take really significant political participation in mayoral elections:

According to the law, each candidate for mayor of Moscow must overcome the municipal filter and collect 110 or more signatures of municipal deputies. But in Russian realities, it is difficult to influence anything here either. Even after a successful municipal campaign in 2017, in which 266 opposition candidates won in 63 out of 146 municipalities in Moscow, their distribution by districts did not allow three-quarters of the municipalities to be closed to overcome the filter. As a result, only agreed candidates appeared on the ballot. The opposition politicians failed to collect the required number of signatures: neither Ilya Yashin, nor Dmitry Gudkov, nor Sergei Mitrokhin.

Preparations for the municipal elections in Moscow began long before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. A significant part of Moscow politicians began to make plans for the fall elections immediately after the end of the 2021 Duma campaign. Both the founders of the association to help independent deputies “Choose Neighbors”, Marina Litvinovich and the ex-municipal deputy of the Timiryazevsky district Yulia Galyamina, and the founders of the platform with a similar purpose “Nomination”, Mikhail Lobanov and Alexander Zamyatin agree on this. At the beginning of June, the projects merged .

According to Marina Litvinovich, during her Duma campaign she was able to meet a large number of people who are ready to deal with the problems of their district with pleasure. It became clear that they needed to be “pushed” somehow. Thus, their municipal project was born. His main idea was to oppose the “habit” of the Moscow authorities to make people little known in the region as Mundeps: employees of polyclinics or some petty officials. Litvinovich is sure that “neighbors” should become municipal deputies - interested people whom the inhabitants of the district know well. To be a little more specific, politicians want to oppose United Russia and the public association My District, which nominates candidates loyal to the Moscow mayor's office.

We do not elect officials, let them work for themselves. We choose active local residents. The essence of the entire project is quite simple: to help them orient themselves, reduce their campaign costs by reducing some resources, educate them, build the very strategy of the election campaign, prepare campaign materials,” Litvinovich lists the tasks of the project.

Politicians are focused on work in the Northern Administrative District. The first meeting of the “Choose Neighbors” participants took place in November last year, when 60 people came to it. There was no special screening of candidates in the project. As Galyamina explains, mostly people they already knew came to them, and in general for them there are no “completely new people” in the district. When you work a lot in the districts, you know everyone, because there are not so many active people, but “in general, a percentage” are so active. True, since then the number of potential candidates has almost halved. According to Marina Litvinovich, about 20-30 people are currently working with them.

- Someone dropped out, because he nevertheless realized that he needed to work all summer, go from apartment to apartment, campaign, give all the best. Not everyone is ready for this. Many fell off when the war began. People are demotivated, upset. Some fell into a kind of depression,” Litvinovich explains the trend.

As a result, "Choosing Neighbors" decided to join their efforts together with the platform of Mikhail Lobanov and Alexander Zamyatin "Nomination". As the founders of the project explain, at one point they simply realized that in a situation of lack of resources, it makes no sense to work separately, especially when their work largely coincides. All candidates need training and almost the same teachers go to both projects. Everyone needs a photographer and campaign materials.

We have our advantages, they have theirs. If you combine efforts, it will be more effective. I'm more about meanings, about brands, about learning. The guys are more about administrative tasks and specific assistance. Together we create a synergistic effect. The unification took three minutes, - Galyamina laughs.

"Nomination" also appeared on the wave of the Duma company. It was based on the campaign headquarters of Mikhail Lobanov - the politician could not get into parliament, having lost in his constituency according to the results of the DEG to the candidate from United Russia, TV presenter Yevgeny Popov. According to Alexander Zamyatin, for the headquarters participants, going to the municipal campaign seemed like a logical continuation: over the summer everyone worked well together, and after the voting day, many participants said they would like to somehow speak together from their districts.

Despite the fact that the creators of the platform also faced demotivation among activists and the departure of many from the country, now the "Nomination" is supported by almost more than 60 candidates who have already begun collecting signatures in their districts (these elections usually require a small number of signatures, ranging from 10 to 60 - ed.). In total, more than 100 potential mundeps participate in the project. All of them are interviewed.

According to the municipal deputy, there are now two main selection criteria. For starters, this is the attitude towards the war (officially, this provision is not included in the program). Then the candidate is asked about his attitude to the Moscow City Hall, the politics of Sergei Sobyanin, United Russia, and other political preferences.

- Even if a person scolds United Russia, but, for example, is a nationalist, he does not suit us.

If he scolds Sobyanin for a too soft migration policy, then he should go to other nationalists, they have their own party there,” says Zamyatin.

Although candidates from parties (for example, from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation or Yabloko) can participate in the platform, Zamyatin and Lobanov did not manage to agree on cooperation with any leadership of the systemic opposition. Moreover, according to Zamyatin, some party candidates are prohibited from cooperating with the platform and politicians have to remove their data from the site. The politician says that until February they wanted to find some kind of sound coalition relations with the Communist Party, but after the war began, their paths diverged, and he himself now has no desire to cooperate with them.

- Of course, since the beginning of the war, our idea of the upcoming elections has changed a lot. Back in winter, we thought that there would be several resource projects that would nominate more than 1,000 candidates for municipal deputies. Now, for the whole of Moscow, there will be 200 candidates at most, and there are no resource projects other than ours. Among those who still want to be elected, heavy moods prevail. It is difficult in such a context to go into the yard and talk to people about shops,” Zamyatin sums up.

"Apple" from "Apple"
The Yabloko party now holds the record for the number of alternative candidates in the elections. Maxim Kruglov, one of the leaders of the municipal campaign and Moscow City Duma deputy, says that the party is ready to nominate about 450 candidates in these elections. Candidates from Yabloko are nominated not only by its members, but also by applicants who have passed the interview.

We have a tough selection. First of all, we see that those who want to be elected from us have an anti-war position. We cannot now promote those who would fight for shops, but supported the hostilities in Ukraine, - says the Moscow City Duma deputy. - Our task is as follows: within the framework of a legal procedure, which is municipal elections, to show our position and somehow influence the surrounding reality.

According to Kruglov, Yabloko is the only association of independent candidates that, after February 24, experienced an increase in the number of people wishing to be elected in the elections. As the politician explains, now young people come to them, who mainly work in medium-sized businesses or in conditional Yandex. “They were well educated, they were not interested in politics before, but now they could not stay away,” Kruglov describes the candidates.

At the same time, last year Yabloko underwent massive “cleansings”: in the Moscow Yabloko alone, almost 600 people were expelled from the party lists,

about 200 more were deregistered. The management explained the massive change in the composition of the Moscow branch by getting rid of "dead souls", however, it was possible to lose registration from the public support of "Smart Voting" and Alexei Navalny, as well as the director of "City Projects" Maxim Katz. All this happened after the party won a record low percentage of votes in the Duma elections - 1.34%. Kruglov finds it difficult to describe the significance of these processes for the current municipal elections.

- Well, they influence somehow. It is clear that those whom we have expelled now do not really want us to run. But what to do? Kruglov sighs. “We have no plans to team up with anyone yet. Our task now is to nominate candidates from Yabloko with an anti-war position. If someone wants to unite, then let them come.

The crisis in Yabloko led to the emergence of another deputy association - the Candidate Headquarters. It is led by a Moscow activist, former Yabloko member Dmitry Kisiev. According to the founder of the Candidate Headquarters, he and other expelled Yabloko members thought about the municipal campaign in December last year. According to him, in total, about 100 people gathered to discuss the campaign. However, these conversations never came to fruition. Later, the ex-"Yabloko" decided to organize a separate project himself in order to still speak on a single voting day.

- I then decided that it was still important to continue this initiative. Voters should be given the opportunity to vote for candidates of their views. Democratic, liberal. Let them choose their representative,” Kisiev says.

“For most citizens, the opportunity to come to the polls and vote for their candidate is now the only way to govern their city.

The Candidate Headquarters, like other projects, offers those wishing to become Mundeps training in election campaigning, assistance from lawyers who prepare documents, and verification of collected signatures. According to Kisiev, now about 45 people in different districts are ready to nominate from the “Headquarters” (the activist takes into account the candidates who at least once turned to them for help). They are also selected quite carefully: according to Kisiev, Stalinism and any form of discrimination are not tolerated in the Candidate Headquarters. In addition, it is important for the project that candidates want to nominate from the team, and not use their resources for their own purposes.

The work of the candidates is supervised by about seven people: Kisiev himself, three managers, a political strategist and an expert in collecting signatures. In the public field, the Candidates Headquarters is not yet very active - the progress of almost all the work is still published only on Kisiev’s personal pages, as well as in activist chats (the Headquarters also has a separate website for collecting donations). According to the founder of the project, this was done in order to “not show” the faces of the candidates until the moment of registration. Active agitation "staff officers" are going to start only closer to the elections.

“I am not yet ready to say who and where are being nominated, because [the authorities] will exert pressure,” Kisiev explains. — We have internal resources, our organizational chats, where we communicate with supporters, collect money for the campaign. This is about a thousand people: people who have already gone through election campaigns worked with us. Through them we advance and look for candidates. As soon as they register, we will start working more media. While saving resources.

Despite the fact that the funds of the project are quite limited (the "Headquarters of Candidates" has so far collected about 40 thousand rubles from donations), activists are wary of cooperation with other associations. According to Kisiev, Yabloko is ready to nominate one of the candidates for the elections. In addition, the activists communicate with the founders of the "Nomination", though only to monitor the distribution of candidates by district (the activists do not want a complete unification, since the platform helps the communists, whose views are not shared in the "Headquarters"). Ideological differences also arise with some other projects that are going to oppose United Russia in these elections. With the same Society for the Future, founded by ex-candidates for the State Duma Roman Yuneman and Danil Makhnitsky.

“Imperial views and discriminatory policies promoted by the Future Society are unacceptable for us,” Kisiev explains.

Not everyone will be taken into the future
The movement of the politician Roman Yuneman “Society. The future” (“OB”) in these elections really stands apart from everyone. The reason is in relation to the war in Ukraine. The conduct of hostilities in the neighboring country seemed to be condemned by politicians and called a strategic mistake. But unlike most other oppositionists, they supported Russia in this war, and also supported the recognition of the independence of the “DPR” and “LPR” even before the invasion began. On February 22, supporters of the Society of the Future posted a post on their Telegram channel with the following content:

- The Russian people of Donbass finally got a chance to have their voice heard. We got what we wanted for so long - a chance for a normal life. <...> It was necessary to recognize the Republic in the spring of 2014, and then completely include it in the country as Crimea: do everything to save people. The leadership of the Russian Federation did not dare to do this for 8 years, the consequences of this suspiciousness will haunt us more than once. But the Russians do not give up and always go only forward! — wrote in the channel.

Since the beginning of a full-scale invasion in the "Society. The Future" collect and distribute humanitarian aid to Ukrainians who find themselves in Russia, as well as help Russian soldiers they know with medicines and equipment.

In order to use the resources of the Society. Future”, the candidate must accept the memorandum- in fact, the movement program. Despite the fact that now there are no items in it that relate to military actions by Russia in recent months, the position of the Society. The Future” on some political issues caused wide discussion in other election campaigns, even before the start of the war. In addition to agreeing that it is necessary to build democratic institutions and a free market in Russia, supporters of the movement are asking their candidates to recognize that Crimea “was, is and will be” Russian, and the Crimeans in 2014 “made a conscious choice in favor of joining the peninsula to Russia.” ". In addition, the program has a point on tightening migration policy. Supporters of "OB" call for the introduction of a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus and a strict accounting of migrants. As the authors explain in the paper, this is necessary because of the corruption and "ethnic crime" that migration breeds. Also, supporters of the movement insist that the most important task of the state is to protect "the protection of Russians and Russian culture."

One of the founders of the Society. The Future Roman Yuneman calls this year's municipal campaign a school for future candidates. The issue of participation in the elections for "OB" was difficult. According to Yuneman, there were arguments for and against. On the one hand, there was some "stoic" motivation - in politics, perseverance and the number of attempts are important. On the other hand, participation in elections in an aggressor country is the legitimization of its regime. And in general, one could make a claim to "OB" why they "raise money for elections, and not for quadcopters." Several other factors also played a role.

— There are claims and risks on both sides, so we thought for a long time. But at that time we already had 40 candidates who did not fall off and wanted to be nominated. We can’t leave them, Yuneman argues.

- In addition, political changes will take place in Russia sooner or later. They can be associated at least with a biological change of power on the horizon of 10 years, maybe earlier.

At the time of the change of power, even in the most conservative version, elections will matter. You need to prepare for this, you need to learn from them to win.

According to the co-founder of OB, even a municipal campaign can make it clear who is inside and who is not, who knows how to lead well, and who simply cannot collect a package of documents. Now accompanied by the Society. The Future” about 60 people are ready to advance in Moscow. The average age of candidates is 27 years.

The main difference between Society. Future” from other municipal coalitions Yuneman calls the great involvement of the project participants in the election campaign of the nominees. The OB team not only advises candidates and their lawyers, but also prepares all documents of participants for registration, helps collect signatures from the base of supporters and teaches fundraising (contributing your own funds is an important condition for continuing participation in the OB program). Campaigns of registered supporters are planned to be conducted at the level of daily support.

- The work of the headquarters is provided by about 20 people. We have a large legal department. We have a diplomacy department that oversees candidates. They are like mothers and fathers to them. Each curator has from 2 to 5 candidates,” Yuneman explains the structure of the headquarters and the organization of processes. - We interviewed candidates for compliance with a political position. We consider the war a mistake and a tragedy, but if we get stuck in it, then we must win. At the interview, the candidate should have understood this. Plus, we screened candidates using open sources. Sometimes you find a smart candidate, and then you see his reposts of the “Young Guard of United Russia”. What it is, he cannot explain.

In the elections "Society. The Future" believes to cope on its own. At first, the movement negotiated the nomination of its candidates from the New People party. But the politicians did not come to an agreement.

Elections during the war
At the autumn elections in Moscow, they are going to play mandates in 125 out of 146 districts of the capital (in total, there are 1,735 mandates for Mundeps in the city). At the same time, this is far from the only campaign for Russia, and definitely not the most important one. In addition to elections in the regions, the Kremlin is now discussing the holding of "referendums" in the occupied territories, in the "DNR" and "LNR", sources of RBC and Kommersant report. According to RBC, while the Russian authorities do not set themselves the task of holding simultaneous referendums on joining Russia in all territories of Ukraine that are controlled by the Russian military. However, the annexation of the "LNR" and "DNR" can happen on the same day, as the Kremlin believes that "the Russians perceive them as a single entity."

According to the holding's sources,

The "LPR" and "DPR" have already prepared the regulatory framework, voter lists are being compiled, people are being selected for election commissions, and Russian political technologists have begun to work.

According to Kommersant, the Central Election Commission will train employees of the election commissions of the self-proclaimed republics. The referendums are planned not to be combined with a single voting day, but to be held earlier - in August.

Despite the larger-scale “expression of will” procedures taking place in the background, the authorities have already begun to prepare for the municipal elections, and not only with the help of administrative offices. According to Meduza's sources, the Moscow administration has already begun to build "agreeable" relations with parliamentary parties, hinting to them that the real opposition should not get into the elections and that the selection of candidates should be treated very carefully. They are also working on turnout. Last week, Kholod magazine found out that employees of some metropolitan media have already been asked to find three people each who will participate in remote electronic voting in municipal elections. Journalists from Moscow 24 and the Moscow City News Agency faced such a request.

Golos co-chairman Stanislav Andreichuk recalls other strategies that the authorities used to help control elections. The expert predicts that candidates will probably have problems with registration. At the same time, they can start withdrawing from the elections at any moment, simply pointing out the imaginary "involvement" in "extremist" organizations. Although the law says that this requires a court decision, practice shows that election commissions need only a simple certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor's office, or even the Ministry of Justice. In addition, according to Andreichuk, one should not forget about the practice of "culling" according to signatures. The chances of winning are reduced by the appearance of online voting, multi-day voting, further restrictions on the rights of observers and members of commissions, and the destruction of many media that remained independent of the state.

Network Freedoms lawyer Stanislav Seleznev suggests that candidates can be put under pressure by being included in the registers of foreign agents, or in the register of persons affiliated with foreign agents (after the adoption of the law on foreign agents in a new edition).

Despite the fact that the powers of local self-government are small, the loss of the municipal campaign for the authorities will have an important symbolic meaning, political strategist Abbas Gallyamov explains the close attention to the elections by the Moscow authorities this year. According to him, when the mayor's office almost lost the 2017 elections, the system was much stronger, so it withstood and did not react strongly to the opposition municipalities. Now the system is much weaker, and you need to understand that “the disease that the body did not fall down in youth can already fall down in old age.”

“For the authorities, it is fundamentally important that the opposition does not have any assembly point, an institutional base, around which they could carry out their activities.

The real revolution begins when the opposition seizes some institutions. This is all for the future - the Kremlin does not know how the situation will unfold in the coming years, - Gallyamov argues. - You also need to understand that it is easier for the authorities to lose municipal elections, since it is always more difficult to falsify in small districts. So candidates can cover districts simply at the expense of relatives and friends.

Street protests in case of non-registration, according to Gallyamov, should not be expected - the authorities suppressed them at the very beginning of the war. However, the protest may be reflected in the ballots, the political strategist believes that opposition residents can come to vote even for the Communist Party, despite the fact that the party supported the war. In local issues, their members are still quite oppositional.

At the same time, Andreichuk expects a rather boring election. Largely because some of those Mundeps who were elected five years ago received mandates by chance and were not ready for parliamentary work, and did not really want it. Then there was another motivation - to provide a municipal filter in the mayoral elections for the opposition. After working for five years, they faced many problems (including the lack of budget and authority) and at the same time did not receive any bonuses, even the minimum wage. After February 24, the disappointment only worsened, and this does not play into the hands of the opposition.

“A lot of opponents of the authorities were demoralized, many activists left the country altogether, others do not see the point in municipal elections against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities,” Andreichuk says. “Although, in my opinion, the opposition could take advantage of the situation and perform very well. After all, the situation is similar in the ranks of power - the number of people who want to be associated with United Russia or the government as a whole has also decreased.

Motivation to go to the polls during the war can be different for independent politicians. For some, this is training for the upcoming elections, some want to make a pacifist statement out of the campaign.

Yulia Galyamina points out that local self-government is the only way to get people back into politics.

Zamyatin says that local self-government is the core of democracy, a complete antagonist to geopolitics, which led us to disaster. The “Principled Team” project to help candidates (its authors are activist Olga Turundaevskaya and municipal deputy Nadezhda Zagordan) wants to promote the environmental agenda and “create opportunities for choosing a new environmentally friendly mayor.”

Politician Konstantin Jankauskas, who has been a member of the Council of Deputies of the Zyuzino district for ten years, sees a rather applied sense in the elections: to keep his job.

— It demoralizes me myself that you have to do municipal work when people die every day in the war. When there are bombings, it’s hard to write about major repairs,” Jankauskas says. - But, it seems to me, the indirect task of this war, in addition to geopolitical goals, is to completely destroy civil society, so that we simply give everything into the hands of United Russia. That is, those who mocked us for 20 years. I would really hate to do this.

 

[Lethality]

Russia assembling forces on the border again. The advantage to Ukraine here is that the Russian forces are being assembled openly in big groupings so they will know what to expect. It looks like reserve troops and APCs so far.

Maybe they can be considered legitimate targets while still on the Russian side of the border this time. It sounds like some easy pickings for artillery, or aircraft fire.

Russia assembling reserve forces near Ukraine for future offensive, says British intelligence

Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, British military intelligence said on Saturday.

www.reuters.com

 

[Zidane98]

I don't think anyone is going to do that. Even a no fly zone over Ukraine would probably turn the tide in Ukrainians favour but the risk of direct confrontation between NATO and Russia has prevented that. Unfortunately Ukraine have to do the bulk of this on their own, show resolve, stay the distance like the Brits in WWII or the Vietnamese during the 'American war'. Obviously the west needs to keep up it's support.

Maybe not. But 2-300,000 "volunteer" troops from all over the world wouldnt go astray.

 

[Zidane98]

Fake Russian Maccas cant serve fries on their menu due to sanctions and a poor harvest.

 

[CD Xbow]

Maybe not. But 2-300,000 "volunteer" troops from all over the world wouldnt go astray.

They claim a million troops already, so they probably have enough bods. It's the supply of weapon systems and munitions which is probably more important.

 

[jatz14]

Yeah - the lesson here is that we need to be able to build and supply our own equipment.

Loyal Wingman drones - must be made here and all componentry as well.

Same with destroyers, submarines, long range artillery, etc

Not realistic unfortunately.

Even something as basic as microchips for a program like loyal wingman, need to be imported. A domestic chip manufacturing capacity would cost billions, is highly likely to fail, and if it doesn't, would need constant subsidies of billions more.

There are plenty of components in a loyal wingman type program that are fairly high tech, or specialised. Setting up the capacity to make them here, when we do not have a domestic, or international market for them outside those specific military programs is basically just driving dump trucks of cash up to a fire pit, and pouring it in.

There is a reason the paranoid Russian military industrial complex is so dependant on trade with the countries it most distrusts. Its import components, or go without, they haven't been able to create the capacity to make many of their weapons domestically, without relying on imported components. And I am pretty sure they would love to be entirely self sufficient, but they aren't, neither are we, we never will be.

 

[CD Xbow]

Duma press release from Putin, I'm sure it's everywhere but I saw it on Sibirmedia TG"

“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say here... Let them try (...) The West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian - this is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this. But everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t really started anything yet.”

Mr Putin was engaging in Dezinformatsiya. Indeed the opposite appears true. There have bee lots of posts documenting the Russian desperation for cannon fodder, including mobilising 'the whale' I think gear may be a more limiting factor than soldiers. I read somewhere they are taking MT-LB armored vehicles out of storage, vehicles first built in the 1950's with a dismal 7mm of armor. You wouldn't be using them unless you are really desperate. T62 tanks were being bought out of storage a month or so ago. There have been a number of missile misfires, perhaps related to using old stock, as well as claims they are using S300 air defence missiles in a land attack role. You wouldn't do that unless your surface to surface missile stocks were running low. It is going to very hard to keep up supplies of munitions if you are firing 6000+ artillery rounds a day, especially as it seems the Ukrainians are increasingly able to hit Russian ammunition dumps.

Added - Newsweek has an article about the old equipment Russia is being forced to use. Russia resorting to "obsolete" gear, "ad hoc" reinforcements in Ukraine: UK

 

[Mobbs]

Russians bombing themselves again.

In the Belgorod region, a bright glow and explosions are reported from the border village of Krasny Khutor (RF). It is possible that the Russian imbeciles bombed themselves. They launched rockets towards Kharkov, but not everyone was able to fly away. In Russia, it is reported that 3 missiles have collapsed.



...

This post claims that transport is currently possible from Ukraine via sea, following the abandonment of Snake Island. Seems they talk about Sulina which is right on the border of Ukraine and Romania, a channel of the mouths of the Danube. But unsure if they are even referring to Ukrainian cargo at this point.

In the Black Sea, a way has been opened for the passage of ships through the mouth of the Bystry, - the administration of the seaports of Ukraine. It became possible to use the channel after the liberation from the invaders about. Serpentine. The first ships have already taken advantage of the open route.


Also on [Facebook]

...

Also in passing news I heard a claim that the airport of Kherson has been hit again, Russian forces have now suffered 26 defeats at that one single location.

 

[Jello_B]

no one commenting on the UN report that Ukraine were using a nursing home (with immobile un-evacuated people inside) as a defence post which was subsequently bombed by Russia. War is crap and there needs to be dialogue not more bombs. Cheerlead for Ukrainian soldiers… nah they’re both doing awful stuff and it’s normal people that suffer. Zelenski should be active in dialogue for a ceasefire otherwise more Ukraine people are going to die.

 

[HavUEvaSeenTheRain]

no one commenting on the UN report that Ukraine were using a nursing home (with immobile un-evacuated people inside) as a defence post which was subsequently bombed by Russia. War is crap and there needs to be dialogue not more bombs. Cheerlead for Ukrainian soldiers… nah they’re both doing awful stuff and it’s normal people that suffer. Zelenski should be active in dialogue for a ceasefire otherwise more Ukraine people are going to die.

Ukrainian soldiers will always fallback on that they are doing this for the greater good, which I’m certain they believe, as I do that this is true.

 

[Hornberger]

Zelenski should be active in dialogue for a ceasefire otherwise more Ukraine people are going to die.

Still trying to push that utter bullshit Putin apologism? You are an absolute ****ing disgrace. In case you hadn't noticed, Ukraine is the country being invaded. They entitled to defend their country. The only country for responsible for the current violence is Russia.

 

[Jello_B]

Still trying to push that utter bullshit Putin apologism? You are an absolute ******* disgrace. In case you hadn't noticed, Ukraine is the country being invaded. They entitled to defend their country. The only country for responsible for the current violence is Russia.

Bullshit apologism my arse I have family from both countries. Again and again I’ll state Russia should not have invaded Ukraine and Putin is a war criminal. I’m trying to push people not losing their lives over a useless war.

 

[Jello_B]

Ukrainian soldiers will always fallback on that they are doing this for the greater good, which I’m certain they believe, as I do that this is true.

Using elderly citizens as human shields is not for any good. Why didn’t they evacuate them?

 

[Lethality]

 

[Mobbs]

no one commenting on the UN report that Ukraine were using a nursing home (with immobile un-evacuated people inside) as a defence post which was subsequently bombed by Russia. War is crap and there needs to be dialogue not more bombs. Cheerlead for Ukrainian soldiers… nah they’re both doing awful stuff and it’s normal people that suffer. Zelenski should be active in dialogue for a ceasefire otherwise more Ukraine people are going to die.

I don't understand. What has happened? Do you have any links?

 

[Jello_B]

I don't understand. What has happened? Do you have any links?

Here you go mate, I’m not very good at linking so if it doesn’t work just search for Un finds Ukraine responsible

United Nations says Russia and Ukraine are to blame for nursing home attack - ABC News

amp.abc.net.au

 

[Mobbs]

A few small tidbits I had read while too tired to grab links.

- There was a mention about a very large number of Russian tanks lost recently (last day or two) during an attempt on a push somewhere on the north of Slovyansk (Dovhenka? unsure) but I've lost the link. The number of tanks lost given was 35 which would be a record for a specific fight. I tried to find more info and saw this video showing a small few tanks lost, but dunno if the same thing at all.


- It was said by Serhiy Haidai recently that despite Russian murmurings about taking a break, the assaults on sovereign Ukrainian land do not seem to have slowed at all. The pushing is just as hard from the perspective of the defence reports.

 

[Mobbs]

Here you go mate, I’m not very good at linking so if it doesn’t work just search for Un finds Ukraine responsible

United Nations says Russia and Ukraine are to blame for nursing home attack - ABC News

amp.abc.net.au

Link works thanks.