Putin's fantasy as of isolating Russians via propaganda from the realities of his invasion of Ukraine takes hit as Kyiv strikes back. War undeniable

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This is from a post which I am making a copy of

RIGA, Latvia — Apparent Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil in the past week highlight how the conflict has spilled across the border, threatening to upend President Vladimir Putin’s effort to insulate his citizens from the fighting he started.

In the wake of the shellings and strikes, local authorities are calling for evacuations as they contend with the growing peril.

The attacks which one senior adviser winkingly described as “karma" suggest that Kyiv is increasingly able to reach into Russian territory as the war continues. Empowered by NATO’s military aid, Ukrainian troops are hitting infrastructure, military targets and at least some villages. Russian citizens are now waking to the same explosions that Ukrainians have faced for more than two months

At least 11 hits appear to have occurred since late last week. Most seem to have involved shelling or triggered Russian antiaircraft weaponry. A handful were suspicious explosions at Russian military facilities near the border.

“I think this is coming here,” one anxious witness can be heard saying, along with an expletive, in a video showing intense flames and a massive plume of thick smoke billowing over the city of Belgorod.

In another video filmed several hours later, what is described as a Russian humanitarian convoy comes under fire as it speeds across open fields in the afternoon sun.

“We are riding here, they are shelling us, we are trying to escape,” Alena Berezovskaya, a pro-Kremlin activist and journalist, The convoy was said to have come under attack in Zhuravlyovka, less than a mile into Russia, after delivering supplies to Russian-held territory near Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv.

With large portions of Russian border territory feeling a sense of vulnerability, local leaders have had little choice but to acknowledge what is happening to their residents. Early this month, authorities declared the second-highest terrorist threat level. They advised residents to avoid gathering in large crowds.

Belgorod’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said Wednesday that he was woken up at 3:35 a.m. that day “from a loud noise, like an explosion.”

The governor of neighboring Kursk, Roman Starovoit, explained the loud banging sounds Kursk residents had heard as the work of Russian air defense equipment. On Monday, two Turkish-made Bayraktar drones were shot down over the region, RIA Novosti reported, raising the possibility of serious danger for residents since the drones can be equipped with powerful weaponry.

Some expect that in the next stage of the war, attacks could be a near-daily occurrence.

“We assume that … some kind of missiles or Bayraktars will now be flying in and strike almost every day, and we will see many more such reports,” said Ruslan Leviev, founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team

Few Ukrainians offer any sympathy, with an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky saying Russians should not be surprised to find themselves targeted.

This is from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/28/ukrainian-attacks-bring-war-home-russia-fraying-civilian-nerves/

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In short this is happening while

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"Let’s start with perhaps his most basic rhetorical tactic. Putin commonly accuses his victims of his own crimes to deflect attention from his real objectives. Hence, he accuses the Jewish Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a Nazi while behaving curiously like Hitler; and he speaks of denazification in Ukraine when Russia is arguably the most fascist state in the world. Like Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, Russia is ruled by an authoritarian strongman with a cult of personality, who hypnotizes his followers through the endless repetition of lies. Russia is similarly dependent on extralegal militias, which it uses to indoctrinate the youth and to police protests.

This above is from

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/breaking-putins-rhetorical-code.html

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Whereas as to the frenzied howling from Putin as to nuclear war, we should keep this in mind, namely

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/29/the-guardian-view-on-putins-nuclear-threats-russia-is-losing-in-ukraine

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The Guardian view on Putin’s nuclear threats: Russia is losing in Ukraine

Editorial

With 2,000 tactical warheads at his disposal, we must hope the Russian president’s warnings are tactical

‘Vladimir Putin could be using nuclear rhetoric to give the appearance of being unstable.’?Photograph: Sputnik/AFP/Getty

Fri 29 Apr 2022 13.29 EDT

As the war in Ukraine and its consequences weaken Russia’s conventional military, Vladimir Putin’s government has?resorted to nuclear threats?designed to project strength. Mr Putin wants to intimidate his opponents. But his strategy is failing. Instead of Ukraine’s allies backing down, they are?stepping up?their support. The US Congress this week approved $11bn of arms to Ukraine,?three times?the total military aid Washington has so far given.

The US president, Joe Biden, was right to call out Mr Putin for making “idle comments” about nuclear weapons. It is unthinkable that blunders and miscalculations would take the world to the edge of the nuclear abyss. Yet that is where the world is heading. Whereas the?Cuban missile crisis?lasted 13 days, Russia’s war is already into its third month. With no clear end in sight, more deadly battles look inevitable – increasing the chances of mistakes.

Mr Putin could be using?nuclear rhetoric?to give the appearance of being unstable. His war is illegal and immoral. His justification for starting the invasion was macabre and ludicrous. However, this may be an act. Russia’s president could be trying to back coercive diplomacy with the “madman theory” of threatening excessive force, which includes the spectre of nuclear weapons. However disagreeable this might seem, a rational Mr Putin, with?2,000 tactical nuclear warheads, is preferable to an irrational one.

The concentration of such power in one man’s hands ought to make the world sit up. Russia has few mechanisms to prevent Mr Putin resorting to?nuclear weapons?if he decided he had nothing to lose. In the Guardian last month, Christopher S Chivvis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace?wrote that?in war game scenarios he had taken part in, which considered what would happen if Russia hit Ukraine with nuclear weapons, the only way of de-escalation was when “clear political off-ramps and lines of communication between Moscow and Washington have remained open. In all the other games, the world is basically destroyed.”

That is why the US president has been careful not to provide Russia with a reason to go nuclear. Mr Biden made it clear that the US would not place boots on the ground, establish a?no-fly zone?or conduct?intercontinental ballistic missile tests. What Mr Biden has shown is that conventional anti-tank and anti-aircraft technologies have reached a new level of capability, one which has rendered conventional invading ground forces – unless overwhelmingly massed – almost obsolete. Mr Biden has been shrewder than more gung-ho?Democrats?or their?ideological?soulmates found in Boris Johnson’s government.

Faced with costly military setbacks, Mr Putin has refocused Russia on tightening its hold in Ukraine’s east and south. The fighting might get worse before it gets better. Pursuing Kyiv’s?objectives?through relatively limited means has worked, though Russia has been able to target civilians indiscriminately. Ukrainians have every right to define their war aims. So do their Nato allies. One of their goals is not to increase the chances that the war becomes a potentially nuclear conflict. Western leaders should therefore reject provocative and escalatory requests out of hand. Nothing else could be more dangerous.

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Let me break all this down for you as to ascertain what is happening and why.

A. Putin tried to seal off the Russian public from battlefield loses and of collapsing conventional force options for his extremely corrupted military as it loses fight after fight. To an increasingly western oriented Ukrainian military which has Kyiv becoming the Western oriented state Putin swore he would overthrow by all means necessary

B. It is a tactic of long term standing, in Russian doctrine to threaten or to shake the saber of battlefield nuclear weapons to bail out a conventionally compromised Russian military losing by conventional battlefield metrics. The playbook of tactical nuclear threats has been upgraded as to Putin having his advisors threaten nuclear attacks upon the UK, as an example while the UK, and NATO has given BILLIONS of USD/EURO valued weapons which have helped Kyiv forces kill over 20,000 Russian servicemen/ servicewomen, in a blood bath of Putin's making.

C. Even more to the point, Putin's blackmail of EU member states via energy supplies was inadvertently highlighted when Putin directed a shut off of energy supplies to GERMANY non withstanding that GERMANY agreed to the Putin demand of Ruble payments for energy supplies

In a word, Putin cannot hide the catastrophe of this war from his own people,. The shut off of energy supplies to Germany, Bulgaria, and Poland will lead to a lower RUSSIAN federation GNP which will affect Russians, profoundly. No amount of mobile crematoriums to hide battle field deaths, from Russian civilians will be effective as deaths soar past 20,000 combatants. Whereas the increasing frequency of Ukraine attacks against supply depos on the explicit instructions of Kyiv, will make clear to Russians the following: " You reap what you sow". And with Le Pen no longer in a position to break the NATO alliance, on Putin behalf, Russians of all persuasions will feel a down turn in living standards, as the fortress state Putin tried to build up with parallel structures similar to SWIFT, fails abysmally

Andrew Beckwith, PhD

Andrew Beckwith, PhD