Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 #3

[sunshineray]

I'd rather not see this plane doing it's "practice" flights but it is in the air now. I'm going to take a break from monitoring airspace for a bit.

America's $200m 'Doomsday' plane was sent on a four-hour training flight after Putin's threats | Daily Mail Online

So same day President Biden said ...

Biden says Americans should not worry about nuclear war after Russian actions

Biden says Americans should not worry about nuclear war after Russian actions

 

[Bit of hope]

I'm going to snuggle up against my bf and my cats...Still persons I love are welcome but not longer here...but they are with me in my mind. I will think of all the devastation in the Ukraine...the pain, the desperation, the loneliness.....and probably wont sleep. At the same time remembering the very few times in my life I felt absolute in peace and at the right place at the right time. May peace come swift. I feel so very sorry for all those involved.

 

[sunshineray]

Perhaps Biden needs to be more public and direct about his offering the 0pportunity for US oil companies to increase production, as they are willing to step up and do this. I wish he would have stated this in his State of the Union address last night, if he is serious about this.

White House Quietly Calls On U.S. Oil Companies To Increase Production

In a move that likely angered his environment-conscious base, the White House has issued a muted request for U.S. oil companies to increase crude oil production in the wake of high crude oil and gasoline prices.

“Prices are quite high, the price signal is strong. If folks want to produce more, they can and they should,” White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti said in an interview today.

But U.S. oil companies have long held that while the Administration hasn’t directly restricted U.S. output, the energy policies flowing out of the White House have put a damper not only on the attitude involving crude oil production but has made it far more difficult for oil companies to ramp up.

Oil companies such as Devon Energy have said they have been perplexed that the White House has not called on them directly to ramp up oil production. And Ramamurti’s comments today still do not rise to the level of asking U.S. producers for more oil.

Oh he's very serious about it, IMO It's a hard pill to swallow for some and it was done on the low down to not make headlines. AJMO

 

[Willow Knight]

Oh yeah, he must be so pissed. He didn’t expect that the world will react in such a strong manner and that people in Ukraine will stand up to him. His own people are risking their lives and freedom but are still protesting. Zelensky is a hero and Putin is just a coward who is willing to bring his own country down with him.

I fully understand now the reason Putin did not want to lose his friendship with an American president.

 

[Pet woman]

I'm going to snuggle up against my bf and my cats...Still persons I love are welcome but not longer here...but they are with me in my mind. I will think of all the devastation in the Ukraine...the pain, the desperation, the loneliness.....and probably wont sleep. At the same time remembering the very few times in my life I felt absolute in peace and at the right place at the right time. May peace come swift. I feel so very sorry for all those involved.

I want to thank all the wonderful folks, here at Websleuths, for providing my go to place, for info about our current geopolitical climate. I’m so touched, by this community, providing support for our Ukrainian friends, and educating me, on this unprecedented challenge. You all rock!

 

[sds71]

@kaitlancollins

Secretary of State Blinken will travel to Belgium, Poland, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia starting tomorrow amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"One of Russia's methods of war is to be absolutely brutal in trying to cow the citizenry of a given country & that includes, at the very least, indiscriminate targeting & potentially deliberate targeting," Blinken says. US is "looking closely" at what's happening to Ukrainians.

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1499108549556899841
"The numbers of civilians killed and wounded, the humanitarian consequences will only grow in the days ahead," Sec. Blinken says about the war in Ukraine. "The courage of the Ukrainian people is inspiring the world." https://abcn.ws/3C4R9oh

 

[Herat]

I see the Forte10 drone has been monitoring the area. Hmmmm. It's made several passes along the northern coast

Um, northern coast of what?

The aforementioned Italian, Irish, and USAnian military planes were in Poland, if I hadn't made that clear.

 

[CSIDreamer]

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1499114843441410048?t=KRdxKDc9BEbjYKf3MjpKEQ&s=19

️Abramovich to sell Chelsea, says that he has told the team to set up a fund to deliver all net proceeds to “benefit all victims of the war in Ukraine.”

 

[Scrapper18]

A nuclear attack would most likely target one of 6 US cities. Simulated images show how a Hiroshima-like explosion would affect each.

This is a good article explaining the effects of a nuclear bomb. Yes, it would be devastating. No, a single nuclear bomb would not take out a whole city, unless it was pretty small. Hubby is retired USAF. This article matches up with what he has told me.

 

[dotr]

March 2, 2022 2:44PM EST
Prime Minister Trudeau says solidarity of Western sanctions a surprise to Putin after Ukraine attack | CP24.com
''OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he thinks Russia's Vladimir Putin is surprised by the strength and unity of Western sanctions in retaliation for his invasion of Ukraine.

Trudeau says Putin likely never imagined that Germany would freeze its lucrative Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia or decide to send anti-tank weapons and surface to air missiles to Ukraine.

"For countries like Canada and the U.K. to be forward leaning on pushing on sanctions, Putin probably expected," Trudeau said Wednesday.''

"For Germany to cancel Nord Stream, to talk about shipping weapons … to Ukraine? These are things that I think has definitely taken aback the Russian system because we are so united in standing up, not just for Ukraine, but for the principles of democracy that matter so much."

 

[Amonet]

This is the first I see of an assassination plan against Zelensky.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Ukrainian television on Tuesday that his country received information about a planned assassination attempt on President Volodymyr Zelensky from agents of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB).

“I can say that we received information from representatives of the FSB, who today have no desire to take part in this bloody war,” said Danilov, who claimed that the Chechen special forces sent to kill Zelensky had been “eliminated.”

“The Kadyrovites’ elite group, which came here specifically to eliminate our president, was directly destroyed,” he said. Kadyrovites refers to a Chechen paramilitary group accused of a number of human-rights violations and abuses. They serve at the pleasure of Razman Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and a close ally of Vladimir Putin.

Russian Hit Squad Sent to Assassinate Zelensky ‘Eliminated,’ Ukrainian Official Says
Assassination Attempt on Volodymyr Zelensky Foiled: Ukrainian Defense Head | National Review

We pretty much knew about that Chechen squad already...but what interests me is this Ukrainian claim that there are people in the FSB who are sending them information as they are against the war?

 

[Herat]

Four of the top 5 most watched flights on Flightradar24 are all NATO allied large military planes.

It looks like the 4 of the 5 are doing patrol flights along the eastern borders of Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.

RAF flight is doing an interesting series of loops over Romania, about 100 km from the Moldovan border and 300 km from the Ukraine border.

 

[dotr]

March 2, 2022, 3:47 PM ET
Russia-Ukraine live updates: 3rd world war would be nuclear, Lavrov warns - ABC News (go.com)
''At least some of the losses the Russians acknowledged Wednesday were due to weapons the U.S. provided Ukraine, acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Kristina Kvien told ABC News.

The U.S. has supplied defensive weapons to Ukrainians including anti-tank Javelins and anti-aircraft Stingers, along with ammunition and other supplies.

"We don't know which individual piece of hardware did which individual thing, but let's just say my understanding is Javelins have been extremely effective against Russian onslaught," Kvien said.

"When you see on television some of these Russian tanks or planes blowing up that's partly due to the weapons we have been able to provide," she added.

Kvien told ABC News the U.S. would continue to push weapons and ammunition into the hands of the Ukrainians, but declined to discuss how they are getting into the country.''

 

[Herat]

There's an Air Ambulance Lear Jet from Luxembourg headed toward Iasi, in eastern Romania, almost in Moldova, not really in the area the where the RAF looks like it's monitoring eastern Romania, Moldova, and that part of the Black Sea

 

[Yesiamapirate]

There's an Air Ambulance Lear Jet from Luxembourg headed toward Iasi, in eastern Romania, almost in Moldova, not really in the area the where the RAF looks like it's monitoring eastern Romania, Moldova, and that part of the Black Sea

Thank you for the air updates!

 

[dotr]

Children from Ukrainian orphanages among nearly 1 million refugees fleeing country | CBC News
''Some of the nearly one million people who have fled Russia's devastating war in Ukraine in recent days are among society's most vulnerable, unable to make the decision on their own to flee and requiring careful assistance to make the journey to safety.

At the train station in the Hungarian town of Zahony on Wednesday, more than 200 young Ukrainians — residents of two orphanages in Ukraine's capital of Kyiv — disembarked into the cold wind of the train platform after an arduous escape from the violence gripping Ukraine.

The refugees, most of them children with mental and physical disabilities, were evacuated from their care facilities once the Russian assault on the capital intensified.''
''Alina Onica, a 41-year-old Red Cross volunteer in Siret, said that the freezing weather and snow are only adding to the challenges and needs of the refugees being displaced by war.

"It made it more difficult because many left their homes a couple of days ago, and all they had was the clothes on their backs," she said. "They have been asking for gloves, hats, and blankets. It's a humanitarian crisis and we're hoping it will end soon."

 

[nhmemorymaker]

This is sort of what I was thinking too. Who can/will step up. Sort of reminds me of the 2017 movie, "The Death of Stalin."

Ahhhhhh.... and filmed in Ukraine!

 

[sds71]

Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov was sanctioned by the European Union on Monday. Two days later, Forbes has learned from three sources in the yacht industry that one of his prized possessions—the 512-foot yacht Dilbar, valued at nearly $600 million—has been seized by German authorities in the northern city of Hamburg.
He’s not the only Russian billionaire with a mega-yacht: Forbes and yacht valuation experts VesselsValue [URL='https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/03/01/biden-and-allies-are-coming-for-russian-billionaires-yachts-forbes-tracked-down-32-heres-where-to-find-them/?sh=6f4ccf303dd7']tracked down 32 of them. Despite being hit by EU sanctions on Monday, Usmanov is yet to comment on them or on the war in Ukraine.
[/URL]
Germans Seize Russian Billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s Mega-Yacht

 

[Amonet]

Bumbling Belarusian leader lets slip Vladimir Putin’s secret plan for more attacks

Moldovia has the breakaway, Russian supporting republic of Transnistria/Transdnieper.

This seems logical that after sorting out the Donbas and Crimea regions that Putin would dream of also sorting out Transnistria. (saying that from his perspective, but obviously from our perspective, we see what the effects of his methods are in Ukraine, so I guess we might assume that same planned fate for Moldova?).

I hope Putin can be stopped before he spreads this war even further afield

If Putin wanted a diplomatic solution for those people in those regions where he thinks they would prefer to be aligned with Russia or part of Russia, why didn't he go to the UN asking for free and fair elections to be held in those regions on secession?

That suggests to me that supporting those regions isn't his actual goal, his goal is to take over more of the former Soviet republics. Have any of them ever really been safe from Putin since the fall of the USSR?

 

[dotr]

Ahhhhhh.... and filmed in Ukraine!

Feb 24 2022
5 Recent Ukrainian Films That Explore the Human Toll of Russia’s Aggression – The Hollywood Reporter
-Reflection' (2021), by Valentyn Vasyanovych
''Ukrainian multi-hyphenate Valentyn Vasyanovych’s latest feature, Reflection, was one of the critical favorite’s of last year’s Venice Film Festival. With staggering visual restraint and artistry, Vasyanovych uses a sequence of fixed mid-range shots to tell a wrenching story about a cosmopolitan young doctor (Roman Lutskiy) who volunteers to care for the wounded near the battle zone in Ukraine’s Donbas region, only to get captured almost immediately by Russian-speaking soldiers who are pretending to be natives but are really Russian mercenaries shipped in to aid the invasion.''

-'Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom' (2015), by Evgeny Afineevsky

-'Homeward' (2019), by Nariman Aliev

-'The Earth Is Blue as an Orange' (2020), by Iryna Tsilyk
''Iryna Tsilyk’s inventive meta-documentary The Earth Is Blue as an Orange is both a meditation on the redemptive power of cinema and an interrogation of the plight of the women and children living amid Ukraine’s multi-year war in Donbas. The film follows a Ukrainian single mother named Hanna and her four children as they try to keep their home a safe haven full of life and levity as the bombs fall and chaos unfolds around them.''
-Atlantis' (2018), Valentyn Vasyanovych

-''Extra Viewing: 'Servants of the People' (2015-2019), starring Volodymyr Zelenskyy
The United States isn’t the only nation to vote a colorful TV star into its highest office. Ukraine’s current president Volodymyr Zelenskyy famously rose to public prominence in the country thanks to the wildly popular political comedy Servant of the People, a TV series he created, starred in and produced via his production company Kvartal 95.''