Fogbow

The claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking the "denazification" of Ukraine clashed with reality after video showed a pro-Russian soldier wearing neo-Nazi symbols while being awarded a medal for fighting in the city of Mariupol.
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Video shared by Storyful shows a soldier, named as Lieutenant Roman Vorobyov from the "Somalia" motorized rifle battalion, receiving the "St. George's Cross II" award while wearing far-right insignia.

Receiving the award on Sunday from Denis Pushilin, who is the Putin-sponsored head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, two patches are visible on Vorobyov's right arm.

One is a modified version of a skull-and-crossbones emblem used by Nazi Germany's 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf, an elite division of the Waffen-SS. The other is the Valknut, or Odin's knot, which is a symbol of interlocking triangles from Norse mythology commonly used by neo-Nazis.

Atticus Finch wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 5:11 am Haiku

Putin misjudged them
They are not a flock of sheep
But a swarm of wasps

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence service, has acquired gruesome new insights into the atrocities committed by Russian military forces in the town of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. DER SPIEGEL has learned that the BND intercepted Russian military radio traffic in which the murder of civilians in Bucha was discussed. Some of the intercepted radio traffic can apparently be directly linked to dead bodies that have been photographed in Bucha.

The intercepted comments now appear to completely refute Russia’s denials. DER SPIEGEL has learned that the BND briefed parliamentarians on Wednesday about its findings. Some of the intercepted traffic apparently matches the locations of bodies found along the main road through town. In one of them, a soldier apparently told another that they had just shot a person on a bicycle. That corresponds to the photo of the dead body lying next to a bicycle that has been shared around the world. In another intercepted conversation, a man apparently said: First you interrogate soldiers, then you shoot them.

The radio traffic intercepted by the BND makes it seem as though the atrocities perpetrated on civilians in Bucha were neither random acts nor the product of individual soldiers who got out of hand. Rather, say sources familiar with the audio, the material suggests that the troops spoke of the atrocities as though they were simply discussing their everyday lives.

Frater I*I wrote: ↑Thu Apr 07, 2022 7:04 pm Well I guess Red Dawn is now a documentary...



I'll see myself out....

Atticus Finch wrote: ↑Fri Apr 08, 2022 2:41 pm The Chinese built the Great Wall to keep out the barbarians. Europe should do the same with the Russians.

According to Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko, all the soldiers who have been to the Exclusion Zone have received large doses of radiation, and their military equipment has also been contaminated, the Ministry’s press service reports.

"The Russian soldiers’ ignorance went as far off the scale as the dosimeters we used to check the background radiation in the places where the invaders were deployed. They dug into contaminated soil with their bare hands, put radioactive sand into bags for fortifications, and inhaled the dust. After a month of that kind of exposure, they have at most a year to live. Or rather, they won’t be living, but slowly dying of their illnesses," said the minister.

He said the Russian military had looted the plant and the administrative offices, taking everything from crockery to spare parts and instruments.

"It’s not just all of the occupiers’ troops and their ‘trophies’ that are contaminated. So is all the military equipment that has passed through Chornobyl – about 10,000 items. Every Russian soldier will bring a piece of Chornobyl home, whether he’s alive or dead," Galushchenko said.

Germany has started working on strengthening its basement shelters as well as building up crisis stocks in case of war, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported on Saturday, citing the country's interior minister.

After decades of attrition of Germany's armed forces, Russia's war in Ukraine has led to a major policy shift with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledging to increase defence spending and injecting 100 billion euros ($109 billion) into the army.

The government is also looking into upgrading its public shelter systems and will increase spending on civil protection, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the newspaper.

"There are currently 599 public shelters in Germany. We will check whether we could upgrade more of such systems. In any case, the dismantling has stopped," Faeser said.