The brutal reality is that Putin’s Russia embodies everything the Trump Republicans dream of for America: a boundlessly corrupt, white supremacist, ethnonationalist fascist state whose oligarchs possess limitless power so long as they obey The President.

They call themselves the “party of Reagan”, while they trip over themselves to sell the geopolitical future of Europe down the river to Moscow…

“Chinese officials visibly nervous at the outpouring of public praise for dead leader [who they had sidelined and demoted].”

Русский, no — Российский, yes.

Well, it’s a good thing that the Bad Foreigners are to blame for the issue — otherwise the Kremlin might be forced to engage in critical thinking over the implications of their incessant agitprop for the stability in minority regions, and we can’t have that.

Here is a bypass.

This article has confirmation from the GUR, Ukrainian military intelligence, that Kadyrov is critically ill. There are no exact details on what he has other than that it’s related to a chronic health condition, potentially kidney failure given his facial swelling. It’s also long been reported that he’s an addict.

I also call attention to the fact that Kadyrov allegedly had his personal physician executed in suspicion that the latter was poisoning him. It would truly be poetic justice if denying himself that medical treatment in a fit of paranoia precipitated this (hopefully terminal) episode.

“Great Patriotic War” is the fine conceit of historical revisionism that lets the Russians neatly overlook the unpleasant little detail that WW II started with the Soviets fighting as cobelligerents with Nazi Germany to invade Poland.

Found an article (in Georgian) with a photo.

Upvote for a sincere question. Here’s the wiki article on its use as a fascistic pro-war symbol. Kazakhs are unhappy with it because they too are a country that Russia makes territorial claims against and are thus largely opposed to the war and its symbols.

It seems implausible in the short term, but if statements like these are in any way reflective of long term strategic goals, or even official rhetoric, it’s still ominous. Of course, given the fact it’s state TV, it could be the General purely reciting the party line to give the public the impression that the war is going vastly better than it really is. But it also reminds me of what were purported to be strategic planning documents leaked by FSB sources early in the war, from when Russia still believed they’d take Kyiv in three days. It described a plan to conquer the country in weeks, then present their army on the Polish border as a fait accompli and declare a no-fly zone over the Baltics as an ultimatum to NATO.

Whether that’s true or not, subsequent events showed that the ZSRF was incapable of even that plan, as you say. But the very level of disparity between nominal and actual capabilities that led Moscow to believe such a thing was possible to begin with certainly doesn’t speak to their ability to make accurate estimations of what their forces are capable of.

Potemkin military.

Speculation runs that Dimi has been told by the Tsar that if he acts like the tough guy he isn’t with enough bravado, he’ll be allowed to sit in the big boys’ chair and pretend to be president again.

More recent updates from RU state media report 4 damaged, so a nominal pricetag of $200m USD in hardware — though it may be less to repair, depending on the degree of damage. A great success, in any event.

Yes, and the watermark on the video is “total Ulan-Ude”, which is a town in Buryatia, so it fits.

Here’s a post with more details - yes, seems like the post I quoted is just people making a joke out of the original Latin phrasing of the payroll, which for some years was written “to the custodians and the cat” rather than the presumably intended “to the custodians for the cat”.

True haha. Here’s a post with more info - I take it the original wording from the Mastodon post I quoted was just being cheeky about the cat technically being on the payroll. One supposes that the cat’s human aide took the money on behalf of their illustrious master ;)