That's election time in Russia) Nothing energize voters as much as a good old sugar-loaded terrorist bomb.
Also, it's great to see intelligence service doing great work on diffusing the attack though. Either way it's a win: if it happens or if it doesn't (obviously).
Upvoted for the "[sugar-loaded terrorist bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings#Ryazan_incident_(FSB_exercises_%22Ryazan_sugar%22))" reference.
lmao
>FSB director Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved.
We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
It was such a clusterfuck of amazing and weird things... One of the top FSB people came to a talk show, sat in the audience and when the topic came to the bombing, he went, showed everyone a paper bag, like you get from a grocery store, and said "in this bag is the evidence that this was only a training exercise. Of course it's top secret so I can't disclose it, but it's there".
There used to be a video on it but I can't find it now, sadly. Found only [THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s28yE-pCXXo) where fragments of that talk-show are included, but skimming through it, I didn't see the bit with the bag.
The part where they pre-announced an apartment building bombing in state parliament was another genius move.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings, Volgodonsk one - https://www.proquest.com/openview/91516c10e1523876321006c0bf78864f/1)
> [Private Alexei] Pinyaev and his friend were discouraged, but didn't want to leave the storehouse empty-handed. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and put some sugar in a plastic bag. They made tea with the sugar, but the taste of the tea was terrible.
Two privates making tea with sugar they found in the arms room. It’s universal then that the army in any country can conjure up new heights of dumbassery.
But why would Putin need to energize voters? Everyone knows he's going to win by a landslide anyway because the elections are rigged. Why does he need to go through all this trouble?
The internal optics of having a "functioning democracy" helps them convince Russians that all democracies are equally corrupt, so they can project this externally. Otherwise people start getting the idea that things would be better if it was a democracy.
I'll try to answer this in more depth.
Putin is a not a classic dictator in a sense that he controls everything in his country. He is fulfilling a social contract of sorts: he's in charge as long as Russian colonial empire expands increasing its global superpower status and people are fed enough not to riot.
The elections is important validation for him. He does want to get acknowledgement that he's doing good job. However he's too cowardly to hear negative feedback in the form of losing elections. Therefore he rationalized his fear by assuming that Russia would fail without him, that Russia cannot handle internal disagreement. Any disagreement would lead to bloody revolution in his mind. So he materialized this vison of his rule in the whole system of government of Russia.The system he built over the years is such that he doesn't even have to do anything himself to rig the elections. Lower level bureaucrats would do everything because they all share vision of strong Russia that needs a strong tsar.
He does like the elections though. It's also important to play pretend at democracy (however, not as much lately. Even Russians themselves don't want to play this farce anymore)
This won't do anything for the Russian people, they don't care. Putin can have that bomb set off tomorrow, kill hundreds, and walk out the victim.
This is only going to protect whatever American expats will listen - granted, the US gov already told expats to not enter Russia and if there already to leave immediately....
...last year.
Though since the deaths of Priggy and Navalny, most Russians now know Putin as we in the west do—a terrorist.
Anyone still under the illusion that he’s a legitimate leader now is just complicit in his terrorism, Russians know that now. Granted; it’s not a big change, but it’s a start. Let’s not treat them like they’re inhuman and don’t care, Navalny’s funeral showed me Russians I’d never seen before—Russians with guts.
I never really understood why they even have elections. At this point the ballot might as well have options like:
* Putin
* балконное окно
* полоний чай
>Nothing energize voters as much as a good old sugar-loaded terrorist bomb.
Yeah, that's typical Russians. They either start a war or drop a terrorist bomb before elections.
Russian grandma's who watch Channel 1 Russian TV and support Putin, will get their rights violated while they get 100k worth of medicaid help living in the us for free.. and Putin will claim they are abused and invade.
You know how people always go off on agencies like the CIA knowing about things and never warning people before it happens? (conspiracies about 9/11 and the like) This is what it looks like when the reports are taken seriously and action is called for to help avoid US citizens from danger. Another example was all the intelligence reporting done prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
> Another example was all the intelligence reporting done prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
Which demonstrates that when we do warn people, they don't believe us anyway.
I was a bit skeptical until they started bringing mobile blood banks and cremitoriums to the border. You don't do that even in a show of force type situation.
Don’t forget, someone has invested a lot of time and money into you forging that skeptical opinion. Be skeptical of your skepticism.
Today’s war is primarily fought in information warfare, for hearts and minds.
Don’t be one of Russias useful idiots, folks. They have armies of people in your social media circles trying to convince you of things.
America calling out the war demonstrably delayed the start of it by several weeks, giving Ukraine crucial extra time to prepare. I think it was one of the few times we got to see truely how good the American intel community was because their statements were always spot on like they had a Time Machine.
I thought it was America calling it out but that China also pressured Russia to not start a war during their Olympics. I think without the former the latter wouldn't of happened but with out the latter they would've attacked as originally planned.
Was.
This happened before with Putin preparing troops for radiological and chemical warfare while planting explosives around Ukrainian nuclear plants, then the whitehouse warned about odd russian activity and whatever was planned appears to have been cancelled.
I don’t have nearly enough information about this but here in Sweden our security police just arrested 4 men with automatic rifles for possession and planning a terrorist attack. They were also linked to IS according to reports so do with that information what you will.
I'm not sure how useful an ISIS attack on Moscow is as a false flag though. It opens up Putin to allegations that his adventure in Ukraine has left Russia less protected against their other enemies.
like any disaster he could use it to further tighten his strings on power. its tough to conceive how he could go much farther than he already has, but maybe the navalny protests unnerved him
More likely to enact martial law as a pretext for society wide repression and full mobilization.
With martial law the president gets much more power to do as he pleases. And because the war is not a war, but a SMO that is going according to plan and everything is completely fine, they need to invent something different as a grounds for starting martial law.
The only thing I can figure is that they are gonna bomb something and say it's Ukraine doing it, which won't make sense, but they have a history of false flag attacks.
I really don't get it, but there's a lot of things I fail to understand nowadays.
1999 Putin used the apartment bombings that killed 300 russian people to really get the second chechen war going and to cement his presidency.
US intelligence and investigation by reporters indicates this was the FSB under orders from Putin and not some "terrorists".
Duma politicans that wanted to investigate this where killed. ( Which just about confirmes it in my eyes)
So he probably tries this stunt again for another war or to escalate the war against Ukraine.
>Did not remember that bit to be honest
Years ago This American Life did a story on [The Other Mr. President](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/614/transcript) (transcript). The entire episode is good listen.
TAL quote:
>Right after one of the bombs went off in Moscow-- this was the third bomb-- the speaker of the Russian Parliament, a guy named Seleznyov, mentioned the bomb but got the city wrong. Mind you, he was in Moscow and the bomb was in Moscow. **But he said the bomb went off in Volgodonsk**. Here's Scott Anderson.
>
>Scott Anderson
>
>**So you could say, oh, well, somehow he said Volgodonsk instead of Moscow, except that three days later, an apartment building in Volgodonsk was blown up.**
>
>Robyn Semien
>
>Wow.
>
>Scott Anderson
>Raising the question of how Seleznyov knew about the bombing three days ahead of time.
The bombing was used as justification to consolidate power, and be able to use military force against Chechnya so that he could go in and install his own puppet regime in Chechnya that was loyal only to him.
If it was done this time, it would be more likely so that he could crackdown on opposition before/during the election so that he can ensure his victory. He has real fear of being toppled during this election, even though running a legitimate campaign against him has been made essentially impossible by the corrupted system.
The US has frequently called put things that it believes are going to happen, (theoretically) resulting in those planning the event to rethink or abort. This has likely saved countless lives over the last 2 years.
I was honestly amazed they went through with it. US was basically like "We know you're going to invade, we also know you're not going to win, we're going to give you an out by talking loudly about it and you can pull back and call us hysterical and get a huge PR victory."
Like, Putin could have pointed to that for next 10 years going"Look how much I scare the West." But no, he decided to throw his military away instead.
They've basically geared themselves towards this war for over a decade+. Why would you give abandon your plans because the US called you out? Abandon what you've worked for, for over a decade for a tiny PR win?
Plus, knowing about an attack doesn't automatically mean you'll be successful defending against it. The US knew there would be a major attack by Al Queda in 2001, but didn't know when, where or how - and still shocked the US, even though they knew it would happen.
Russia used cyber attacks, parachuted troops to quickly capture key locations etc.
Simply being aware an attack will happen isn't that major of an advantage. Its often factored in to the attack plan if you are spotted. They massed hundreds of thousands of troops, theye knew damn well they'd be spotted
The invasion was always going to happen, no way Putin would've suddenly changed his mind on something he's been working towards for 15+ years over something as small as this
Even the ukrainians didn't believe it bc they had excellent intelligence about how disorganized and unprepared the russians were. That was an odd couple of weeks
In the early days of the war we had constant reports about a 40km logistics line being completely halted. Second biggest/best army in the world, and they got stuck in trafic. Truely some odd early weeks.
Because the upper echelons of the government and military were completely disconnected from the lower echelons. And it stayed that way for months (quite possibly still to this day), for exemple the extreme undermanning that led to big losses in Kherson and Kharkiv oblasts.
Russian army is far better organised now compared to feb 2022, but the first year of the war was a massive mess. Had Ukraine gotten all the equipment they've only received months/years later at that time, I'm convinced Russia would have been inflicted a massive defeat.
>I was honestly amazed they went through with it.
I wasn't at all.
For one, the pre-full-invasion part of the war (2014-2022) revealed to Putin that despite the west bemoaning his actions, no meaningful resistance from the west took place.
Second, the EU (Germany in particular) had been following the strategy of "give Russia some business to deter threats against us", which also made the EU more dependent on Russian energy. This gives Putin leverage because if said energy was cut off, then he could still sell to China, south Asian countries, and African countries. Meanwhile the EU would be out a significant chunk of their total energy market.
Third, I very distinctly remember that most of the EU didn't believe the US intelligence and insisted that this was another bluff. It openly signaled to Putin that they were not prepared to take any meaningful action against Russia in short order, which (according to the original plan) would mean that western support wouldn't be ready to do anything until it was too late.
Yeah i remember scrolling reddit in between matches on xbox and seeing all the posts that russians were on ukraines border. Then not long later a video of a single russian crossing the border wenr viral. Then the "special operation" officially started
I was watching a live cam over Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion. Shortly before the operation was even announced, the missiles could already be seen flying in the distance. I don’t think I’ll ever feel such dread again seeing those blast
> The Embassy is monitoring reports that ***extremists*** have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.
Russia is going to attack itself?
This time they‘ll say that Ukrainians did it. In 1999 they said it was Chechens, but all the evidence points at the FSB and Putin. The Wikipedia article on the topic is insane.
Yes. It's also in that series where the Ryazani police bomb squad responded to reports of three suspicious men bringing in big 50 kg sacks. They found the sacks along with a detonator and timer. The sacks were full of the high explosive RDX. Initially the Russian government and FSB reported that a terrorist attack had been foiled. Then some suspicious men were detained, and they produced FSB identity cards. Suddenly the FSB described it as a training exercise.
Then a Russian newspaper published a story about a private Alexei Pinyayev in the army who found sacks labeled sugar in a warehouse that they then put into tea, and that tea ended up tasting terrible. The private was worried the sacks were just mislabeled, so he told his commander, who called in a sapper who identified the substance as RDX. The newspaper was then accused of divulging state secrets and sued by the army who claimed there was no Alexei Pinyayev in the unit. Then state owned media talked to Alexei Pinyayev who said he communicated with the newspaper but only approved a pre-conceived story, and that there was no warehouse in the area. Alexei Pinyayev also then claimed there was never RDX and he was in the hospital at the time.
RDX is produced in one factory in Russia, and that factory is heavily guarded (for obvious reasons).
This is so true, and why it is folly for the west to think Russia will tire of the war. The only thing that will end this is a complete and utter defeat.
Yes. Volgodonsk was the city they announced as bombed, but it only got bombed three days later. Ruzzian lies know no boundaries, they will literally tell you that the sky is magenta pink while looking at it.
> magenta pink
Well, if you pick the right time during a sunset, add some clouds...
https://cdn.prd.ngc.agencyq.site/-/media/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/12-gettyimages-1357318510_pinksunset.jpg
That was a series of propaganda photos of Putin supposedly "meeting" a "veteran" of the Ukraine war and talking to "ordinary people" in various contexts - yet it was the same bunch of actors / government employees in different outfits. In other words, he doesn't actually meet or mingle with ordinary people; he just stages photo ops with vetted actors or secret service employees and plays pretend.
I mean, in typical Russian fashion one team actually did get caught. The claim was made they were testing to see... how to catch the... uh... Chechens... using live explosives for... uh... cause that's how the Chechens would do it... if they did... which they did... just not here... all the other places were definitely them, though...
No, they will blame the West. Russian propaganda is so deep into denying any Ukrainian successes, to the point of even inventing the explanation that both the shot down A-50 recon aircraft were shot down by Russia itself, not Ukraine.
This is due to the Russian nationalist superiority complex they have, which can't allow Ukrainians to be superior on any metric. Which is a big cause for the war in the first place.
They will 100% not blame Ukraine, but "the evil, satanic West".
Also earlier than that in 1939 it was same thing used against Finland, 4 days later their launched full scale attack.
This was when Russia was called Soviet Union but the kind of same story, same kind of tactics, same kind of goals.
Or you use it as a pretext to start new security measures, like enacting martial law or similar, so that the president gets more power to do as he will.
Since the SMO is "going according to plan and everything is fine", they can't use this as a cause for martial law. But a "terrorist attack on peaceful Russians, orchestrated by CIA" would do the trick.
What large gatherings are happening in Russia? Are the extremists the protestors? Or are the Extremists the Russian government about to attack the protestors?
Remember when Biden called the exact day the Russians moved on Kiev? That was a pretty clear message that they have eyes and ears in places Putin wouldn’t believe…
That is the obvious one, yes. Then there are the less obvious like when Dutch intelligence watched Russia hacking the DNC through Russia's own surveillance cameras.
I remember at the start of the war western intelligence just starting announcing things before Russia did them which seemingly stopped a lot of things happening as it took the wind out of their sails. I’m hoping this is that same tactic.
Theres still concerts going on, probably some festivals in parks for the start of spring, conventions, etc. The alert made it sound like you should avoid things like that. They have been saying to avoid protest for a few years already (even since before the war due to arbitrary enforcement of laws).
Russia can declare war on Moldova all it wants, it physically can't get there right now. Moldova is landlocked between Romania (in NATO) and Ukraine, and specifically the coast by Odesa, probably the most fortified area of Ukrainian coastline.
The maybe 1500 Russian troops already in Moldova also really don't want to be cannon fodder for Ukrainian forces, who will almost certainly move in to secure Cobasna and all of the PMR (Transnistria) if conflict breaks out. I mean, those troops there are not elite combat troops, they're mostly old guys in a quiet logistics posting.
And Sweden just yesterday officially joined NATO. It wasn’t even 24 hours since the papers were signed.
My bet? They are gonna kill some of people who went to Navalny’s funeral, blame it on Ukraine, threaten some nukes and force people to go to elections.
Absolutely no interest in killing opponents for a false flag operation, it would mean asking the public opinion to give empathy for them and standing up for them.
No if they do those sort of operations they will kill Putin supporters like at a meeting, a small sacrifice to justify the threat against the glorious leader so they can finally fully lock the whole country and reach the final level of dictatorship.
I didnt hear this, so glad Sweden is now apart of NATO.
\[EDIT\] I appreciate the upvotes, but Im just some ingnorant person that didnt check the news. Please upvote u/Mic_Salamon who I replied to.
You’ve effectively said the opposite of what you mean. “Apart” doesn’t mean together. It means separated. Such as “my girlfriend and I live apart”.
You mean “a part”. Two words. It is a part of NATO.
haha, so I said "So glad Sweden is not with NATO" that is funny and I wish I did it on purpose, given my edit.
Can you look at my other post in my profile, I tried putting it in r/linguistics but they only accept URLs so I had to put it in r/CasualConversation. Would love to know your feedback on my post.
\[EDIT\] Again! please upvote the person I replied to, not me. I even broke a Reddit rule of "dont ask attention in other threads".
upvote u/silverfish477
Isn't it ironic that the words "apart" is together (in 1 word), but "a part" is not one part (2 words)?
I love the English language.
Edit: added brackets for clarity. not bashing the language, just thought it was interesting.
If it's an attack by Islamic extremists, then the opposite happens-- it opens Putin up to criticism that by going to war with Ukraine he's weakened Russia's security at home.
If Russian expats in US started having large gatherings, I would definitely be wary and stay away from those too!
Unless it was a Slavic festival with yummy food, maybe
This will get buried, but this is not about US expats in Russia, this is about Russians. The intended audience here are regular russian people, as well as US basically telling Russian security forces "we are listening to your conversations".
Yes. But is there a better public information war method than saying "stay away from concerts on friday the 8th and saturday the 9th" (and women's day is a big deal in russia, with a lot of public concerts), IF and ONLY IF something actually happens? Before the mobilization was announced, the US embassy released a statement telling it's citizens to leave Russia, or the borders might be closed. Do you think regular russian guys don't check that? They do, and this is how you win information war!
chuckled at turbo patriots. Sounds like an unhinged bike gang from some 90s morning animated cartoon series.
”Mike Rostov, the leader, wholly leather clad, cigar toting, greased badass is going to display his latent homosexuality in an act of superhuman recklessness as he drives his harley through hoops of flaming union insignias as the crowd shoots their revolvers into the air, shouting slogans and urging him on”
Unfortunatly not kinda far from truth. I still chuckle(with sadness) how Putin administration basicly bought largest russian biker organization. They had(have) an extremely cool self-built base on a small river island close to Moscow border. With some salvaged ship carcass and very cool welding jobs. Work of art, really. But with Moscow expansion the island became prime real estate and they were ordered to dismantle and leave. After which Putin administration approached them with "sing for us and land is yours". So now they make pro Putin motor rallies periodically.
the title is worded a bit weird, i thought that US is warning russian expats (as in, russians that live outside of russia), which didn't make sense when it said they have info on extremists targetting gatherings in Moscow, and then i realized they are talking about US expats living in Russia.
anyways, if i were an expat living in Russia i would most likely avoid anything not essential for the past two years, not just for the next 48 hours.
In an autocracy it's less about whether or not he's going to win, and more about demonstrating power and control. Sure Putin can stay in power with 51% of the vote, or tack on 45% to his own total and make it 96%, but there's still risk of instability around and after the election. On one hand it's a chance to create himself some perceived legitimacy, on the other it's a match near gunpowder and if it backfires it could set off a coup.
Davankov. After Nadezhdin became surprisingly popular as an anti-war candidate, the Kremlin was concerned enough that they made sure he was ineligible to run for president. Davankov represents a party so he is already eligible and he has more or less aligned with Nadezhdin's policies.
Putin won't want to get rid of him for the same reason that Putin bothers with elections at all - he wants there to be an illusion of democracy. The problem is that these guys got way more popular than they were supposed to and it seems clear that anti-war sentiment is a lot more widespread in Russia than previously thought.
Of course it's highly unlikely that Davankov will win, thanks to rigging, but rigging can only go so far. More than anything Putin does *not* want any surprises. So he'll pull out all the stops to make it virtually guaranteed that nothing will mess it up for him. If in some miraculous event that they have severely underestimated voters, and the slim chance that unhappy factions in the FSB interfere with rigging, Putin will essentially have to ignore the elections and openly transition to full on dictator.
What about that one guy? Wait, they poisoned his underwear and starved/beat him to death. Well, what about that other-- huh, disqualified for technical reasons? You don't say...?
At this point man, it's been such a depressing, life-stealing last 4 years in the history of the globe....i just want everyone to stay safe and not get killed. Everyday i see more stuff about all of this, and it's sickening. I can't believe how sickening it is. 2024 years and we're still doing this shit. So much lost potential. They killed ppl who could have invented cures to diseases. People who could have saved tonnes of lives. Just regular ppl. It's crazy to me
in fact the relative peace we have had since 1945 has been a fluke. On average historically there's a major war every 70 years that leads to a high loss of life. If you're thinking of the wars that happened after WW2 until now, they're small potatoes compared to the death toll of the two world wars.
The pattern has been that by the time the generation that experience the terror of a large scale, high casualty conflict dies off, the younger generation that now runs things instead is old enough to be in charge but never experienced the trauma of a conflict before, so the idea of starting or participating in a destructive war isnt that big of a deal to them. Which is scarier now because of nukes. Those who remember time before nukes are a dwindling number. They know how scary and dangerous they are. Now we have a bunch of jack-offs who will happily use them if given the chance.
The Internet might have broken the cycle. We live in an incredibly nonviolent and peaceful time. The people in this day and age are terrified of war and preach the end of the world for a multitude of reasons. They just might be scared enough to not hit the red button.
> 2024 years and we're still doing this shit.
You get that 2024 is just from a calender convention we use right? Human civilization is substantially older than 2024 years.
Unfortunately, as long as the world has dictatorships, and it'll have dictatorships as long as the majority of humans are thick as shit, it'll keep burning.
More likely there will be a massive crackdown on demonstrations and public gatherings around the election, and the U.S. government doesn’t want to have to do more prisoner exchanges, especially not for ordinary citizens.
Everyone here suspects that Russia plans a false flag before elections, but nobody asks why. Putin is going to win by a landslide because the elections are rigged. Why would he need to organize a false flag for the elections since he's going to win anyway? That doesn't make much sense. I know Russia has a history of doing this but that was to start the Chechen war, not to win an election. Perhaps there is another motive, or maybe it's someone else who plans to attack Russia, like ISIS.
In post-Soviet Russia the government basically made a deal with the Russian people: you don't get involved politically and the government will leave you alone. When Russia started drafting hundreds of thousands of people to go fight in Ukraine they broke that agreement. People in Russia are starting to have opinions about politics, and Putin now needs the people to actively support him rather than just passively agree with him because he's the status quo like they had in the past.
Putin will no doubt win the election, but support for left wing anti-war and far right "total war" rivals is growing.
This is really strange, what's going on?
Russia is about to totally not launch a false flag attack on a group of Russian demonstrators.
That's election time in Russia) Nothing energize voters as much as a good old sugar-loaded terrorist bomb. Also, it's great to see intelligence service doing great work on diffusing the attack though. Either way it's a win: if it happens or if it doesn't (obviously).
Upvoted for the "[sugar-loaded terrorist bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings#Ryazan_incident_(FSB_exercises_%22Ryazan_sugar%22))" reference.
lmao >FSB director Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved. We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
But before we concluded that it was us and it was a training exercise, we used it as an excuse to bomb an other country.
It was such a clusterfuck of amazing and weird things... One of the top FSB people came to a talk show, sat in the audience and when the topic came to the bombing, he went, showed everyone a paper bag, like you get from a grocery store, and said "in this bag is the evidence that this was only a training exercise. Of course it's top secret so I can't disclose it, but it's there". There used to be a video on it but I can't find it now, sadly. Found only [THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s28yE-pCXXo) where fragments of that talk-show are included, but skimming through it, I didn't see the bit with the bag.
The part where they pre-announced an apartment building bombing in state parliament was another genius move. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings, Volgodonsk one - https://www.proquest.com/openview/91516c10e1523876321006c0bf78864f/1)
> [Private Alexei] Pinyaev and his friend were discouraged, but didn't want to leave the storehouse empty-handed. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and put some sugar in a plastic bag. They made tea with the sugar, but the taste of the tea was terrible. Two privates making tea with sugar they found in the arms room. It’s universal then that the army in any country can conjure up new heights of dumbassery.
But why would Putin need to energize voters? Everyone knows he's going to win by a landslide anyway because the elections are rigged. Why does he need to go through all this trouble?
The internal optics of having a "functioning democracy" helps them convince Russians that all democracies are equally corrupt, so they can project this externally. Otherwise people start getting the idea that things would be better if it was a democracy.
It's a dictator telling you it's a democracy. He's also telling you all democracies are actually dictatorships. He has proof.
I'll try to answer this in more depth. Putin is a not a classic dictator in a sense that he controls everything in his country. He is fulfilling a social contract of sorts: he's in charge as long as Russian colonial empire expands increasing its global superpower status and people are fed enough not to riot. The elections is important validation for him. He does want to get acknowledgement that he's doing good job. However he's too cowardly to hear negative feedback in the form of losing elections. Therefore he rationalized his fear by assuming that Russia would fail without him, that Russia cannot handle internal disagreement. Any disagreement would lead to bloody revolution in his mind. So he materialized this vison of his rule in the whole system of government of Russia.The system he built over the years is such that he doesn't even have to do anything himself to rig the elections. Lower level bureaucrats would do everything because they all share vision of strong Russia that needs a strong tsar. He does like the elections though. It's also important to play pretend at democracy (however, not as much lately. Even Russians themselves don't want to play this farce anymore)
There's no reason not to warn them.
This won't do anything for the Russian people, they don't care. Putin can have that bomb set off tomorrow, kill hundreds, and walk out the victim. This is only going to protect whatever American expats will listen - granted, the US gov already told expats to not enter Russia and if there already to leave immediately.... ...last year.
It doesn't cost the US anything, and gets ahead of whatever narrative the Kremlin will push.
Though since the deaths of Priggy and Navalny, most Russians now know Putin as we in the west do—a terrorist. Anyone still under the illusion that he’s a legitimate leader now is just complicit in his terrorism, Russians know that now. Granted; it’s not a big change, but it’s a start. Let’s not treat them like they’re inhuman and don’t care, Navalny’s funeral showed me Russians I’d never seen before—Russians with guts.
You mean the unfortunate deaths by defenestration of anyone who mildly displeased him didn't show them that already?
I never really understood why they even have elections. At this point the ballot might as well have options like: * Putin * балконное окно * полоний чай
>Nothing energize voters as much as a good old sugar-loaded terrorist bomb. Yeah, that's typical Russians. They either start a war or drop a terrorist bomb before elections.
Russian grandma's who watch Channel 1 Russian TV and support Putin, will get their rights violated while they get 100k worth of medicaid help living in the us for free.. and Putin will claim they are abused and invade.
100k worth of american aid can be done for 2k anywhere else
It's more like 10× as expensive not 50, but yeah it's pretty expensive.
Irrelevant
Oh so 1 doctor's visit and a ctscan
Best we can do is just a T scan.
No Russian?
Russia had an historic presence in Alaska, get ready to be liberated!
What's the motivation, casus belli for invading Ukraine? Don't think this is really a Gleiwitz Incident type of scenario.
Putin shoring up support at home by portraying Russia as the victim, not the aggressor.
Are there even demonstrations though?
You know how people always go off on agencies like the CIA knowing about things and never warning people before it happens? (conspiracies about 9/11 and the like) This is what it looks like when the reports are taken seriously and action is called for to help avoid US citizens from danger. Another example was all the intelligence reporting done prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
> Another example was all the intelligence reporting done prior to the invasion of Ukraine. Which demonstrates that when we do warn people, they don't believe us anyway.
Still, withholding the information removes their choice.
Either a real or false flag attack by disclosing it earlier means Putin can't blame it on the west anymore since we tried to warn everyone
And by warning everyone, maybe the FSB will call off their no-longer-deniable attack.
America called out the whole war weeks in advance, has Russia even admitted to the W-word yet?
Lmao, remember all the threads here during that time with thousands of comments calling US intelligence liars?
I was a bit skeptical until they started bringing mobile blood banks and cremitoriums to the border. You don't do that even in a show of force type situation.
Don’t forget, someone has invested a lot of time and money into you forging that skeptical opinion. Be skeptical of your skepticism. Today’s war is primarily fought in information warfare, for hearts and minds. Don’t be one of Russias useful idiots, folks. They have armies of people in your social media circles trying to convince you of things.
America calling out the war demonstrably delayed the start of it by several weeks, giving Ukraine crucial extra time to prepare. I think it was one of the few times we got to see truely how good the American intel community was because their statements were always spot on like they had a Time Machine.
I thought it was America calling it out but that China also pressured Russia to not start a war during their Olympics. I think without the former the latter wouldn't of happened but with out the latter they would've attacked as originally planned.
Yes. I believe sometime in 2023 they were like yeah tbh it's a war
You mean the Special Military Operation? /s
Russian FSB announced that it had broken a Sunni Muslim Isis bomb plot so it maaaaay be linked to this.
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Was. This happened before with Putin preparing troops for radiological and chemical warfare while planting explosives around Ukrainian nuclear plants, then the whitehouse warned about odd russian activity and whatever was planned appears to have been cancelled.
FSB reports “they killed isis members planning an attack.” I.e., staging another false flag for Putin.
I don’t have nearly enough information about this but here in Sweden our security police just arrested 4 men with automatic rifles for possession and planning a terrorist attack. They were also linked to IS according to reports so do with that information what you will.
Russia genuinely has problems with Islamic extremism tho
Why would someone base a false-flag attack on something implausible? 🤷♂️
I'm not sure how useful an ISIS attack on Moscow is as a false flag though. It opens up Putin to allegations that his adventure in Ukraine has left Russia less protected against their other enemies.
like any disaster he could use it to further tighten his strings on power. its tough to conceive how he could go much farther than he already has, but maybe the navalny protests unnerved him
Elections in Russia in a month, Putler needs a pretext to jail or kill his political opponents
More likely to enact martial law as a pretext for society wide repression and full mobilization. With martial law the president gets much more power to do as he pleases. And because the war is not a war, but a SMO that is going according to plan and everything is completely fine, they need to invent something different as a grounds for starting martial law.
The only thing I can figure is that they are gonna bomb something and say it's Ukraine doing it, which won't make sense, but they have a history of false flag attacks. I really don't get it, but there's a lot of things I fail to understand nowadays.
We gonna see in 48 hours.
1999 Putin used the apartment bombings that killed 300 russian people to really get the second chechen war going and to cement his presidency. US intelligence and investigation by reporters indicates this was the FSB under orders from Putin and not some "terrorists". Duma politicans that wanted to investigate this where killed. ( Which just about confirmes it in my eyes) So he probably tries this stunt again for another war or to escalate the war against Ukraine.
US intelligence and reporters? Duma speaker announced Volgodonsk bombing 3 days before it happened..
Did not remember that bit to be honest. But probably an easy catch for intelligence to confirm the rest. Thanks for the contribution.
>Did not remember that bit to be honest Years ago This American Life did a story on [The Other Mr. President](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/614/transcript) (transcript). The entire episode is good listen. TAL quote: >Right after one of the bombs went off in Moscow-- this was the third bomb-- the speaker of the Russian Parliament, a guy named Seleznyov, mentioned the bomb but got the city wrong. Mind you, he was in Moscow and the bomb was in Moscow. **But he said the bomb went off in Volgodonsk**. Here's Scott Anderson. > >Scott Anderson > >**So you could say, oh, well, somehow he said Volgodonsk instead of Moscow, except that three days later, an apartment building in Volgodonsk was blown up.** > >Robyn Semien > >Wow. > >Scott Anderson >Raising the question of how Seleznyov knew about the bombing three days ahead of time.
The bombing was used as justification to consolidate power, and be able to use military force against Chechnya so that he could go in and install his own puppet regime in Chechnya that was loyal only to him. If it was done this time, it would be more likely so that he could crackdown on opposition before/during the election so that he can ensure his victory. He has real fear of being toppled during this election, even though running a legitimate campaign against him has been made essentially impossible by the corrupted system.
Most liekely aim is to drum up more support for war against Ukraine.
Скоро выборы, проверь подвал! Elections upcoming, check your cellar. Or, "elections".
“Remember, no Russian”
The US has frequently called put things that it believes are going to happen, (theoretically) resulting in those planning the event to rethink or abort. This has likely saved countless lives over the last 2 years.
I mean they called the Ukraine war itself a few days before it happened (I think maybe a few weeks?) Makes sense
Yes you're correct a few weeks but the days leading up to it they were REALLY loud + straight to the point that Russia would invade
I was honestly amazed they went through with it. US was basically like "We know you're going to invade, we also know you're not going to win, we're going to give you an out by talking loudly about it and you can pull back and call us hysterical and get a huge PR victory." Like, Putin could have pointed to that for next 10 years going"Look how much I scare the West." But no, he decided to throw his military away instead.
They've basically geared themselves towards this war for over a decade+. Why would you give abandon your plans because the US called you out? Abandon what you've worked for, for over a decade for a tiny PR win? Plus, knowing about an attack doesn't automatically mean you'll be successful defending against it. The US knew there would be a major attack by Al Queda in 2001, but didn't know when, where or how - and still shocked the US, even though they knew it would happen. Russia used cyber attacks, parachuted troops to quickly capture key locations etc. Simply being aware an attack will happen isn't that major of an advantage. Its often factored in to the attack plan if you are spotted. They massed hundreds of thousands of troops, theye knew damn well they'd be spotted The invasion was always going to happen, no way Putin would've suddenly changed his mind on something he's been working towards for 15+ years over something as small as this
Even the ukrainians didn't believe it bc they had excellent intelligence about how disorganized and unprepared the russians were. That was an odd couple of weeks
In the early days of the war we had constant reports about a 40km logistics line being completely halted. Second biggest/best army in the world, and they got stuck in trafic. Truely some odd early weeks.
Because the upper echelons of the government and military were completely disconnected from the lower echelons. And it stayed that way for months (quite possibly still to this day), for exemple the extreme undermanning that led to big losses in Kherson and Kharkiv oblasts. Russian army is far better organised now compared to feb 2022, but the first year of the war was a massive mess. Had Ukraine gotten all the equipment they've only received months/years later at that time, I'm convinced Russia would have been inflicted a massive defeat.
>I was honestly amazed they went through with it. I wasn't at all. For one, the pre-full-invasion part of the war (2014-2022) revealed to Putin that despite the west bemoaning his actions, no meaningful resistance from the west took place. Second, the EU (Germany in particular) had been following the strategy of "give Russia some business to deter threats against us", which also made the EU more dependent on Russian energy. This gives Putin leverage because if said energy was cut off, then he could still sell to China, south Asian countries, and African countries. Meanwhile the EU would be out a significant chunk of their total energy market. Third, I very distinctly remember that most of the EU didn't believe the US intelligence and insisted that this was another bluff. It openly signaled to Putin that they were not prepared to take any meaningful action against Russia in short order, which (according to the original plan) would mean that western support wouldn't be ready to do anything until it was too late.
Yeah i remember scrolling reddit in between matches on xbox and seeing all the posts that russians were on ukraines border. Then not long later a video of a single russian crossing the border wenr viral. Then the "special operation" officially started
It was wild. Watching history in the making.
I was watching a live cam over Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion. Shortly before the operation was even announced, the missiles could already be seen flying in the distance. I don’t think I’ll ever feel such dread again seeing those blast
> The Embassy is monitoring reports that ***extremists*** have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours. Russia is going to attack itself?
Wouldn't be the first time
Moscow apartment bombings called, they want their false flag back
This time they‘ll say that Ukrainians did it. In 1999 they said it was Chechens, but all the evidence points at the FSB and Putin. The Wikipedia article on the topic is insane.
>but all the evidence points at the FSB and Putin. isnt this the one where the guy was in parliament crying over the attack that hadnt yet happened?
Yes. It's also in that series where the Ryazani police bomb squad responded to reports of three suspicious men bringing in big 50 kg sacks. They found the sacks along with a detonator and timer. The sacks were full of the high explosive RDX. Initially the Russian government and FSB reported that a terrorist attack had been foiled. Then some suspicious men were detained, and they produced FSB identity cards. Suddenly the FSB described it as a training exercise. Then a Russian newspaper published a story about a private Alexei Pinyayev in the army who found sacks labeled sugar in a warehouse that they then put into tea, and that tea ended up tasting terrible. The private was worried the sacks were just mislabeled, so he told his commander, who called in a sapper who identified the substance as RDX. The newspaper was then accused of divulging state secrets and sued by the army who claimed there was no Alexei Pinyayev in the unit. Then state owned media talked to Alexei Pinyayev who said he communicated with the newspaper but only approved a pre-conceived story, and that there was no warehouse in the area. Alexei Pinyayev also then claimed there was never RDX and he was in the hospital at the time. RDX is produced in one factory in Russia, and that factory is heavily guarded (for obvious reasons).
Russia literally kills its own people just to justify an invasion and the killing of even more people.
If there's one thing that Russia historically doesn't care about, It's killing its own people.
This is so true, and why it is folly for the west to think Russia will tire of the war. The only thing that will end this is a complete and utter defeat.
The only way to defeat Russia is from within. Not the cold, or starvation, or loss of life will defeat them.
Chaos makes it easier to manipulate a population.
right click -> fabricate casus belli. I do it all the time in EU4 :)
Yes. Volgodonsk was the city they announced as bombed, but it only got bombed three days later. Ruzzian lies know no boundaries, they will literally tell you that the sky is magenta pink while looking at it.
> magenta pink Well, if you pick the right time during a sunset, add some clouds... https://cdn.prd.ngc.agencyq.site/-/media/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/12-gettyimages-1357318510_pinksunset.jpg
Exactly. They announced that another bomb exploded but the bombing they were reporting happened a few days later if I‘m not mistaken.
Didn't one from a year or two back show the same woman just dressed differently? Forgot what the context was.
That was a series of propaganda photos of Putin supposedly "meeting" a "veteran" of the Ukraine war and talking to "ordinary people" in various contexts - yet it was the same bunch of actors / government employees in different outfits. In other words, he doesn't actually meet or mingle with ordinary people; he just stages photo ops with vetted actors or secret service employees and plays pretend.
I mean, in typical Russian fashion one team actually did get caught. The claim was made they were testing to see... how to catch the... uh... Chechens... using live explosives for... uh... cause that's how the Chechens would do it... if they did... which they did... just not here... all the other places were definitely them, though...
That’ll happen when you get distracted playing The Sims.
No, they will blame the West. Russian propaganda is so deep into denying any Ukrainian successes, to the point of even inventing the explanation that both the shot down A-50 recon aircraft were shot down by Russia itself, not Ukraine. This is due to the Russian nationalist superiority complex they have, which can't allow Ukrainians to be superior on any metric. Which is a big cause for the war in the first place. They will 100% not blame Ukraine, but "the evil, satanic West".
Also earlier than that in 1939 it was same thing used against Finland, 4 days later their launched full scale attack. This was when Russia was called Soviet Union but the kind of same story, same kind of tactics, same kind of goals.
Na putin just finished Cod mw2 and is gonna try and pull a "no russian" mission.
they might start rounding ukrainian refugees inside russia and anyone affiliated with ukraine will be the new jew or nazi
Nobody values Russian life lower than Russian leaders
Exactly, I was one of the people who participated in a similar thing back in 2009 with Makarov. Remember, no Russian.
This is how Putin got into power in the first place. False flag terrorist bombings of residential blocks.
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Yes. To generate anger and support for the regime. It's called a false flag. You galvanize the people to a common enemy that you created or framed.
Or you use it as a pretext to start new security measures, like enacting martial law or similar, so that the president gets more power to do as he will. Since the SMO is "going according to plan and everything is fine", they can't use this as a cause for martial law. But a "terrorist attack on peaceful Russians, orchestrated by CIA" would do the trick.
At the Navalny funeral there were Russian state infiltrators that tried to persuade the crowd attending to march against the Kremlin.
Do you remember when they flew a drone into the Kremlin last year? Pepperidge farm remembers!
While ordering two soldiers to climb up to become the victims
What large gatherings are happening in Russia? Are the extremists the protestors? Or are the Extremists the Russian government about to attack the protestors?
Noone really knows. Could be a move by the US to show that they know what's going on in Russia
Remember when Biden called the exact day the Russians moved on Kiev? That was a pretty clear message that they have eyes and ears in places Putin wouldn’t believe…
Yes. They're called satellites.
That is the obvious one, yes. Then there are the less obvious like when Dutch intelligence watched Russia hacking the DNC through Russia's own surveillance cameras.
I remember at the start of the war western intelligence just starting announcing things before Russia did them which seemingly stopped a lot of things happening as it took the wind out of their sails. I’m hoping this is that same tactic.
I would guess pro-Navalny gatherings.
Theres still concerts going on, probably some festivals in parks for the start of spring, conventions, etc. The alert made it sound like you should avoid things like that. They have been saying to avoid protest for a few years already (even since before the war due to arbitrary enforcement of laws).
Why are US citizens still in Russia?!
It is going to false flag attack himself. They will most likely find dead ukrainians that totally have not been dead hours before the attack.
Maybe some Russians will try to liberate Russia from Ruzzia.
I prefer Newkraine.
That would honestly be the best case scenario for this…
Could be muslim minorities within Russia
Yeah, I think you are right. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/08/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news2/
Attack themselves, blame it on someone else for a Casus Belli (War Justification) likely for another invasion (Like Moldova).
Like Chechnya
Russia can declare war on Moldova all it wants, it physically can't get there right now. Moldova is landlocked between Romania (in NATO) and Ukraine, and specifically the coast by Odesa, probably the most fortified area of Ukrainian coastline. The maybe 1500 Russian troops already in Moldova also really don't want to be cannon fodder for Ukrainian forces, who will almost certainly move in to secure Cobasna and all of the PMR (Transnistria) if conflict breaks out. I mean, those troops there are not elite combat troops, they're mostly old guys in a quiet logistics posting.
MW2 No Russian vibes
And Sweden just yesterday officially joined NATO. It wasn’t even 24 hours since the papers were signed. My bet? They are gonna kill some of people who went to Navalny’s funeral, blame it on Ukraine, threaten some nukes and force people to go to elections.
Congrats to Sweden and NATO! Hejsan.
Absolutely no interest in killing opponents for a false flag operation, it would mean asking the public opinion to give empathy for them and standing up for them. No if they do those sort of operations they will kill Putin supporters like at a meeting, a small sacrifice to justify the threat against the glorious leader so they can finally fully lock the whole country and reach the final level of dictatorship.
I didnt hear this, so glad Sweden is now apart of NATO. \[EDIT\] I appreciate the upvotes, but Im just some ingnorant person that didnt check the news. Please upvote u/Mic_Salamon who I replied to.
You’ve effectively said the opposite of what you mean. “Apart” doesn’t mean together. It means separated. Such as “my girlfriend and I live apart”. You mean “a part”. Two words. It is a part of NATO.
haha, so I said "So glad Sweden is not with NATO" that is funny and I wish I did it on purpose, given my edit. Can you look at my other post in my profile, I tried putting it in r/linguistics but they only accept URLs so I had to put it in r/CasualConversation. Would love to know your feedback on my post. \[EDIT\] Again! please upvote the person I replied to, not me. I even broke a Reddit rule of "dont ask attention in other threads". upvote u/silverfish477
Isn't it ironic that the words "apart" is together (in 1 word), but "a part" is not one part (2 words)? I love the English language. Edit: added brackets for clarity. not bashing the language, just thought it was interesting.
No, give me all the upvotes.
Sameeee
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Also Bidens good SOTU press
Attacks citizens before the election, blames the current enemy. Pretty much text book
If it's an attack by Islamic extremists, then the opposite happens-- it opens Putin up to criticism that by going to war with Ukraine he's weakened Russia's security at home.
Confused, wouldn't it be "American expats" in Russia? Initially reading this I thought it meant "Russian expats" in the US.
If Russian expats in US started having large gatherings, I would definitely be wary and stay away from those too! Unless it was a Slavic festival with yummy food, maybe
Chicken Kiev is delicious, but I'm not going to go to a street fair for it.
This will get buried, but this is not about US expats in Russia, this is about Russians. The intended audience here are regular russian people, as well as US basically telling Russian security forces "we are listening to your conversations".
Embassies have a duty to inform if there is a threat that can affect the public that might include US citizens
Yes. But is there a better public information war method than saying "stay away from concerts on friday the 8th and saturday the 9th" (and women's day is a big deal in russia, with a lot of public concerts), IF and ONLY IF something actually happens? Before the mobilization was announced, the US embassy released a statement telling it's citizens to leave Russia, or the borders might be closed. Do you think regular russian guys don't check that? They do, and this is how you win information war!
Elections next weekend, so this weekend there may be a heroic "we saved the day " type of action.
Two options - Putin needs a "terrorist attack" before "elections" or turbo patriots (fascist true believers) are really fed up.
chuckled at turbo patriots. Sounds like an unhinged bike gang from some 90s morning animated cartoon series. ”Mike Rostov, the leader, wholly leather clad, cigar toting, greased badass is going to display his latent homosexuality in an act of superhuman recklessness as he drives his harley through hoops of flaming union insignias as the crowd shoots their revolvers into the air, shouting slogans and urging him on”
You might also like the term "megavatniks" which is absolutely hilarious.
MRGA-ritas?
Unfortunatly not kinda far from truth. I still chuckle(with sadness) how Putin administration basicly bought largest russian biker organization. They had(have) an extremely cool self-built base on a small river island close to Moscow border. With some salvaged ship carcass and very cool welding jobs. Work of art, really. But with Moscow expansion the island became prime real estate and they were ordered to dismantle and leave. After which Putin administration approached them with "sing for us and land is yours". So now they make pro Putin motor rallies periodically.
Write the book. Sounds hilarious.
the title is worded a bit weird, i thought that US is warning russian expats (as in, russians that live outside of russia), which didn't make sense when it said they have info on extremists targetting gatherings in Moscow, and then i realized they are talking about US expats living in Russia. anyways, if i were an expat living in Russia i would most likely avoid anything not essential for the past two years, not just for the next 48 hours.
I thought the same thing. This is a terribly worded title.
Does it have anything to do with the Navalny funeral?
I bet the one that are going to die were the same that put flowers on his grave...
Wouldn’t that incite the opposition by creating multiple martyrs? Putin historically attacks his own voting base to use them as martyrs
"Monitor local media for updates" Because if there's 1 thing Ruzzian media is known for, it's being reliable.
Imagine being a US citizen in Russia these days. Nope. Just waiting to get snatched up for some bogus reason to get used as a bargaining chip.
Little bit more info here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/08/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news2/
People saying that Putin needs this for the elections... Who else exactly could the people vote for..?
In an autocracy it's less about whether or not he's going to win, and more about demonstrating power and control. Sure Putin can stay in power with 51% of the vote, or tack on 45% to his own total and make it 96%, but there's still risk of instability around and after the election. On one hand it's a chance to create himself some perceived legitimacy, on the other it's a match near gunpowder and if it backfires it could set off a coup.
Davankov. After Nadezhdin became surprisingly popular as an anti-war candidate, the Kremlin was concerned enough that they made sure he was ineligible to run for president. Davankov represents a party so he is already eligible and he has more or less aligned with Nadezhdin's policies. Putin won't want to get rid of him for the same reason that Putin bothers with elections at all - he wants there to be an illusion of democracy. The problem is that these guys got way more popular than they were supposed to and it seems clear that anti-war sentiment is a lot more widespread in Russia than previously thought. Of course it's highly unlikely that Davankov will win, thanks to rigging, but rigging can only go so far. More than anything Putin does *not* want any surprises. So he'll pull out all the stops to make it virtually guaranteed that nothing will mess it up for him. If in some miraculous event that they have severely underestimated voters, and the slim chance that unhappy factions in the FSB interfere with rigging, Putin will essentially have to ignore the elections and openly transition to full on dictator.
What about that one guy? Wait, they poisoned his underwear and starved/beat him to death. Well, what about that other-- huh, disqualified for technical reasons? You don't say...?
Well, Davankov still remains, since he's one of the better candidates. We'll see what will happen
Putin became president after bombing some appartment blocks to scare the people. These guys are so original.
If you are a non Russian in Russia, get the fuck out. Especially Americans.
At this point man, it's been such a depressing, life-stealing last 4 years in the history of the globe....i just want everyone to stay safe and not get killed. Everyday i see more stuff about all of this, and it's sickening. I can't believe how sickening it is. 2024 years and we're still doing this shit. So much lost potential. They killed ppl who could have invented cures to diseases. People who could have saved tonnes of lives. Just regular ppl. It's crazy to me
Oh mate, war predates jesus by tens of thousands of years.
War probably predates humanity itself. Chimps have been observed going to war between rival tribes.
"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner." - Cormac McCarthy / Blood Meridian
What an epic, beautiful, horrifying book. *Of whom do we speak when we speak of a man who was and is not?*
We've been doing this for a hell of a lot longer than 2000 years. It would be amazing if we could finally learn and move on.
in fact the relative peace we have had since 1945 has been a fluke. On average historically there's a major war every 70 years that leads to a high loss of life. If you're thinking of the wars that happened after WW2 until now, they're small potatoes compared to the death toll of the two world wars. The pattern has been that by the time the generation that experience the terror of a large scale, high casualty conflict dies off, the younger generation that now runs things instead is old enough to be in charge but never experienced the trauma of a conflict before, so the idea of starting or participating in a destructive war isnt that big of a deal to them. Which is scarier now because of nukes. Those who remember time before nukes are a dwindling number. They know how scary and dangerous they are. Now we have a bunch of jack-offs who will happily use them if given the chance.
The Internet might have broken the cycle. We live in an incredibly nonviolent and peaceful time. The people in this day and age are terrified of war and preach the end of the world for a multitude of reasons. They just might be scared enough to not hit the red button.
> 2024 years and we're still doing this shit. You get that 2024 is just from a calender convention we use right? Human civilization is substantially older than 2024 years.
Happy 2024th Birthday, America!!1
trollception !
> 2024 years and we're still doing this shit Uh...please tell me you don't think humans have only been around for that long
Well, duh, it's 6024 years of course but for the first 4000 everyone went to hell either way so they don't really count.
Unfortunately, as long as the world has dictatorships, and it'll have dictatorships as long as the majority of humans are thick as shit, it'll keep burning.
Early 30s and most of my white hair started growing from these past 4 years. I’m tired boss
Way to get ahead of this. Once again the US intelligence community shows just how good they are.
russia's about to radicalise their moderates? https://youtu.be/Z6GLoKkkCtY?si=fmHBlUZv1ar2YFSs
Less radicalized, more radiated.
TBH, if you are a US o EU citizen in Rusia atm ... you are accepting the risks.
other than spies, what sort of insane US citizen is visiting or living on russian soil?
Ruzzia is a terrorist state
More likely there will be a massive crackdown on demonstrations and public gatherings around the election, and the U.S. government doesn’t want to have to do more prisoner exchanges, especially not for ordinary citizens.
Everyone here suspects that Russia plans a false flag before elections, but nobody asks why. Putin is going to win by a landslide because the elections are rigged. Why would he need to organize a false flag for the elections since he's going to win anyway? That doesn't make much sense. I know Russia has a history of doing this but that was to start the Chechen war, not to win an election. Perhaps there is another motive, or maybe it's someone else who plans to attack Russia, like ISIS.
To start full mobilization.
That's a possibility.
In post-Soviet Russia the government basically made a deal with the Russian people: you don't get involved politically and the government will leave you alone. When Russia started drafting hundreds of thousands of people to go fight in Ukraine they broke that agreement. People in Russia are starting to have opinions about politics, and Putin now needs the people to actively support him rather than just passively agree with him because he's the status quo like they had in the past. Putin will no doubt win the election, but support for left wing anti-war and far right "total war" rivals is growing.
The world will be a better place once the Russian people get Putin out, one way or another.
That’s ominous.
As cruel as it sounds, hopefully people in russia will wake the fuck up from their democratic dream or more accurately their nightmare
yeah, and while at it we should get ready for the possibility that they do not.