The Ukraine news overnight

[Heikki R]

In Belarus, there are presently at least 1050 political prisoners. Since
the electoral farce of 2020 and the consequent uprising, more than 40000
political arrests have been made. Almost 5000 political trials have been
conducted. All of this has been made possible by Putin’s support. Some
observers were not totally certain whether Putin would continue supporting
the unpopular and heavy-handed Lukashenko. Well, he did, and now we are
witnessing the main reason why he did.

In November 1939, Putin’s idol Stalin staged a pretext to start a winter
war. (Finland was included in the USSR’s “sphere of influence” in the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed three months earlier.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila

Now pretexts for another wintery war are in the making.



For melancholy reasons, I’m withdrawing from this list for an indefinite
time.

On Sat, Feb 19, 2022 at 1:10 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sources within Russia report that Russian media are reporting more and more
> often
> on aggressive acts toward Russians in Ukraine. The creation of a defense
> for the invasion is
> escalating. There was a major shelling in the Donbass region which resulted
> in one publicly proclaimed
> slow death of a Ukrainian soldier. There was a planned film of an exploding
> pipeline, Russian news trucks
> just happened to be there to film Ukraine's surprise explosion. Open source
> analysts prove metadata shows Russia
>  filmed scenes of "the evacuation" two days ago, 16th. The day before they
> stepped up shelling and before
> the evacuation was announced.
>
> Others say that Russian actions, firing, along the border toward Kiev are
> up. Way up. No movement into Ukraine yet.
> Most say Kiev being targeted. Rockets to ground troops very active.
> Movement likely along a river to it. New: Russian backed puppet governments
> in Donbass announce mobilisation. All men 18-55 barred from leaving.
>
> When a Ukrainian evacuation of a major dangerous area was asked for, only
> 3400 left. Social media posts of
> many, many, who said they would stay and be ready to fight. The Daily Beast
> spoke to the head of an orphanage
> responsible for 225 children as they made the dangerous journey to a
> Russian checkpoint.
> “[It’s] a very tiring and stressful day and it is not even over,” Olga
> Volkova said, exasperated.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>