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#1161
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08-10-2023, 04:53 PM
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 My Rank: PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Poster Rank:3867 Male Join Date: Sep 2022 Posts: 84 Mentioned: 0 Post(s) Quoted: 32 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
“Yandex co-founder Volozh slams Russia's 'barbaric' invasion of Ukraine By Alexander Marrow August 10, 20235:16 AM EDT REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Aug 10 (Reuters) - The co-founder of Russian internet giant Yandex (YNDX.O), Arkady Volozh, on Thursday condemned what he described as Russia's "barbaric" invasion of Ukraine, days after criticism in Russia over his apparent efforts to distance himself from the country. Volozh described himself as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur" on a personal website, drawing some criticism in Russian media and on the Telegram messaging platform for apparently playing down his links to Russia. He has also been criticised by those opposed to Russia's actions for not speaking out more forcefully against the war. "Russia's invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it," Volozh said in a statement. "I am horrified about the fate of people in Ukraine – many of them my personal friends and relatives – whose houses are being bombed every day. "Although I moved to Israel in 2014, I have to take my share of responsibility for the country's actions," wrote Volozh, who holds both Russian and Israeli passports. Volozh developed Yandex in Russia, creating the country's largest tech company and ultimately taking it public on the U.S. Nasdaq stock exchange in 2011. He stepped down as CEO and left the board of directors after the European Union included him on its list of sanctions against Russian entities and individuals in June 2022. Volozh called the EU's decision "misguided". Yandex is pursuing a corporate restructuring that should ultimately see its main revenue-generating businesses inside Russia spun off from its Dutch-registered parent company, Yandex NV. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yandex has sought to balance domestic pressure on one side with its Western investors on the other. Volozh said his focus since the start of the war had been on supporting Russian engineers wanting to leave the country. "These people are now out, and in a position to start something new, continuing to drive technological innovation," Volozh said. "They will be a tremendous asset to the countries in which they land." Reporting by Alexander Marrow; editing by Jason Neely” |
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#1162
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08-10-2023, 05:31 PM
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 My Rank: MASTER GUNNERY SERGEANT Poster Rank:369 Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 3,202 Mentioned: 4 Post(s) Quoted: 553 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
With a bit of luck this guy will push the Anti russian agenda through his web & associates webs, so long as he doesn't get too close to any windows.  |
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#1163
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08-10-2023, 06:40 PM
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 ♚ Legacy Gold Member ♚ Poster Rank:207 Former US Soldier Join Date: Aug 2019 Posts: 7,267 Mentioned: 65 Post(s) Quoted: 3248 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
If Volozh gets too loud about his anti-Rus imperialism I hope he has a good pair of running shoes. Putin and his crew tend to hold quite the grudge
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#1164
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08-10-2023, 07:24 PM
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 ☾ Administrator ☽ Poster Rank:76 ஜᎻᎬᎩᎾᏦᎪஜ Join Date: Dec 2011 Posts: 19,525
Contributions: 32
Mentioned: 173 Post(s) Quoted: 6845 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
This Yandex news gives me a bit of relief. I use that site several times a day to translate images and always wondered if the stuff I translate was turning any heads. 
__________________ 💜🧿See Human | Be Human🧿💜 (War Section Hashtags) |
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#1165
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08-10-2023, 08:57 PM
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 My Rank: FIRST SERGEANT Poster Rank:474 Join Date: Apr 2013 Posts: 2,271 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 572 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
https://www.washingtonindependentrev...nya-to-ukraine  Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine By Mark Galeotti Reviewed by Chris Bort What fuels the Russian ruler’s thirst for conquest? Of all the questions hanging over Russian president Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, one stands out: What was he thinking? How could Putin have believed that subjugating a country of Ukraine’s size and population would be a cakewalk? That its capital, Kyiv, with nearly 3 million residents, would simply capitulate to Russian invaders? Only Putin knows for sure. The rest of us resort to guesses: Putin, isolated during covid, fell victim to dreams of grandeur and his advisors’ echo chamber; he assumed Ukrainians would greet invaders as liberators; he was so intent on secrecy that he left troops and even commanders in the dark about the operation they were to carry out. The conjecture seems reasonable enough. Mark Galeotti, one of the world’s foremost experts on Putin’s Russia, raises such theories in Putin’s Wars: from Chechnya to Ukraine. He admits he did not think an invasion was likely. And yet Galeotti himself supplies perhaps the most persuasive answer as to why Putin no longer wanted or felt he needed to haggle with the West for a few unsatisfying concessions on Ukraine and European security, and simply invaded instead. In short, he felt he was on an epic winning streak, and he had his military to thank. Putin’s Wars is not nearly as much about the conflicts themselves — in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and Ukraine again — as the title implies. Rather, it is a thoroughly researched accounting of Russia’s hard power. We get everything from Russia’s nuclear weapons to its cyber and intelligence assets to its lots of conventional weapons and equipment in the aerospace, ground, and naval domains to its forces of domestic control. It’s all here. To be sure, Galeotti recounts each of Russia’s post-Soviet conflicts and the lessons it learned, or didn’t learn, from each. The Georgia War in 2008, against a much weaker foe, revealed so many shortcomings that it jolted Russia’s leadership into reforming and rearming the military. That military eventually transformed itself from a mass-mobilization organization into something more professionalized, with small, mobile brigades instead of big, mechanized divisions. The architect of the reforms, then Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, made so many enemies in modernizing and right-sizing the military that they forced him out on the pretext of a scandal that, by Russian standards, was ordinary. Serdyukov’s successor, Sergey Shoigu, undid some of his predecessor’s reforms. But the Russian military had been remade enough to give Shoigu’s boss every reason to expect success after success, like Russia’s relatively light-footprint interventions in Crimea and Syria. Galeotti, who finished this book before the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, depicts Shoigu as popular and effective, which indeed was his image before the debacle. In text added after the invasion, the author acknowledges that Shoigu’s reputation “is now getting distinctly tarnished” and that “Putin himself may have become over-confident precisely as a result of the military’s apparent progress.” Yes, that’s the point. It’s too bad, then, that Galeotti gives these updates such short shrift because they stand in contrast to his overall theme and merit more consideration. Galeotti is at his best when explaining Russian narratives, including via vignettes from his own experience in country dating from 1991. Some of these, such as a story of a down-on-his-luck veteran in the Soviet Union’s dying days predicting the rise of a strong leader, illustrate Russia’s resentments of its lost superpower status and dreams of revanche. They help explain not only Putin’s motivations, but why Putin’s militarism has resonated with so many Russians. The author is also to be applauded for exposing some popular but misplaced obsessions about Russian hard power. Regarding the war in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014, for instance, Galeotti writes that “[f]or all the attention paid to so-called ‘grey zone’ or ‘hybrid operations’ in Ukraine — the cyber attacks and electronic mischief-making, the propaganda and subversion,” the kind of war that really matters remains conventional and kinetic. Galeotti is much less engaging when listing Russian order of battle, including units at each level and the arms and equipment they are allotted. Such enumerations run throughout. “The 22nd [Army Corps] is technically part of the Black Sea Fleet,” he notes with regard to Russia’s forces in Crimea in 2014, “and comprises the 127th Independent Reconnaissance Brigade, the 15th Independent Coastal Rocket Artillery Brigade, the 8th Artillery Regiment…” And so on for several more lines. It’s hard to know what even an order-of-battle wonk (such people exist) is to do with this information. Such passages produce the impression that Galeotti obtained a General Staff directory and is relating its contents. At times, he does so too uncritically — for instance, taking at face value Russia’s claims that it is not fielding intermediate-range missiles in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Russia’s cheating was the reason for U.S. withdrawal from the INF in 2019. Buying Russia’s claims is odd given that elsewhere, the author scolds Westerners “who would still believe Putin over their own press and leaders,” as happened amid Russia’s attempts to deflect blame for the 2014 shoot-down of a civilian airliner over Ukraine. Notwithstanding such occasional nods toward Russia’s narratives, Galeotti is not enamored of its military. He is careful to critique its failures and chronic limitations: its “green-water” (as opposed to “blue-water”) navy, good at most for sailing not far from Russia; and its ground forces’ over-reliance on railways for transport and logistics, limiting the time and distance they can be deployed. Some of its advanced weapons, like the nuclear-powered ICBM that Putin proudly touted five years ago, sound like hazardous white elephants. Still, Putin’s Wars paints a picture of a military that had been on the march. For anyone who wants to understand what Putin was thinking, Galeotti supplies the answer. The Russian leader was seduced by his military’s new capabilities and his own lengthy winning streak. And he wasn’t wrong: Russia’s military had in fact become steadily more capable on Putin’s watch. It was better trained, better armed, and — seemingly — better led, right up until the day he, Shoigu, and company sent it off into disaster. Chris Bort was National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council from 2017-2021. |
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#1167
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08-11-2023, 09:45 AM
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| My Rank: STAFF SERGEANT Poster Rank:786 Join Date: Jun 2020 Posts: 1,000 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 422 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
These Russians need to stand against their asshat of a leader and out him. I read he is now blocking the internet. So he’s clearly controlling what the public can see. I bet if the Russian people really knew what was going on they would turn against him in a flash. The man’s clever. He’s a good orator. I actually sued to think what he said made sense and even supported some of what he said. Now. He’s just another scumbag who’s slowly increased his grip on the country. I feel sorry for the ordinary russians. Victory Ukraine. Never give up.
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#1168
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08-11-2023, 11:12 AM
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 ✝Mudderator from Hell✝ Poster Rank:10 e-mail Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 95,107
Contributions: 817
Mentioned: 472 Post(s) Quoted: 10108 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
Exchange rate 1 Dollar to Rubbish. 1 year ago $1→60 RU, now $1→100 RU means 66.6% less. https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB |
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#1169
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08-11-2023, 11:36 AM
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 My Rank: STAFF SERGEANT Poster Rank:719 Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 1,140 Mentioned: 2 Post(s) Quoted: 572 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
Clever little bastard. He blames the central bank and not the führer. He is tip-toe'ing near a window.
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#1170
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08-11-2023, 11:53 AM
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| ✝Mudderator from Hell✝ Poster Rank:10 e-mail Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 95,107
Contributions: 817
Mentioned: 472 Post(s) Quoted: 10108 Post(s)
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Re: Russian/Ukraine War Discussion Thread V
"Without a Russian passport, residents won't receive insulin and other medications" - so-called "head" of a town. in the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region. Alexander Dudka. They are blackmailing people with their lives and health to give up Ukrainian passports and get Russian ones. |
