Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign

By Dilip -

Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion. He was met with silence. A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state television to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right to exist.

Putin’s double bill, which was immediately followed by the signing of an agreement on Russian recognition of the two proxy states in east Ukraine as independent entities, is likely to go down in history as one of the major turning points in his 22-years-and-counting rule over Russia. This was not a politician convening his team for discussions, this was a supreme leader marshalling his minions and ensuring collective responsibility for a decision that, at minimum, will change the security architecture in Europe, and may well lead to a horrific war that consumes Ukraine….

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/21/putin-angry-spectacle-amounts-to-declaration-war-ukraine


रूस ने गुलाग इतिहासकार की सजा और बढ़ाई / Gulag historian, activist Yuri Dmitriyev sentenced to 15 years


Mauritius formally challenges Britain’s ownership of Chagos Islands


Robert Reich - Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist, nationalist populism


Book review: Peter Pomerantsev's 'This Is Not Propaganda' is quietly frightening. By Steve Bloomfield


Andrew Roth - The problem is Putin: protesters throng Russia's streets to support jailed Navalny // Russia’s courageous historic protests against Putinism


Navalny’s new YouTube video sensation: Putin’s secret palace, and “the biggest bribe in history”.


Solidarity with Memorial: Russia’s most prominent civil rights group in danger


STANISLAV MARKELOV - Patriotism as a diagnosis


Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war


Book review: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev - Putinism and the oil-boom years


Russian Justice: Sergei Magnitsky’s Torture and Murder in Pre-Trial Detention


Nick Hopkins and Luke Harding - Intelligence sources vouch for credibility of Russia dossier author / Mark Sumner - Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses


The destruction of society EUROZINE REVIEW


British banks handled vast sums of laundered Russian money


Lawyer For Russian Whistleblower’s Family Falls From Building One Day Before Hearing


Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition figure, unconscious in hospital


Simon Tisdall: Putin, a criminal and incompetent president, is an enemy of his own people


Diego Garcia: the Chagos Islands 40 years on remain a black mark on Britain


Britain 'attempts to censor' US report on torture sites


Is the United States about to lose control of its secretive Diego Garcia military base?


Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands: A Chronology of Events


The Nuclear History Of Bikini Atoll (PHOTOS)


Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes


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