Ukraine Update 21 February

Russian Farmers, Film Festival, Grammar Notes, Stephen King

Like most countries, Poland has restrictions on freedom of speech, and the “farmer’s” protest has gone outside of those restrictions. These protests are fueled by Russian agents of influence and disinformation, and a day of reckoning will come for these protests. I honestly thought it would take months of investigations to prove these allegations that I’m making, but here we are.

The sign on the left is a copy of the sign above the gates of Auschwitz, “Farmers, Work Will Set You Free.” On the right, the white text reads, “In service to Great Russia.” On the upper right in the car window is “We Remember Volyn,” in reference to the Volyn massacre during World War II, which was carried out by the Ukrainian nationalists led by Stepan Bandera. In comparison, between 3–6 million Poles were sent to forced labor and concentration camps by Russia, and 585,000 were killed. The same Russia that signed an agreement with Germany to divide Poland between them. In 2010, Russia murdered Polish President Lech Kaczynski while he was in Russia. Kaczynski had a long history of working with pro-democratic forces and the solidarity movement in Poland, which played a large role in the fall of the USSR.

On the blue tractor in the lower left is “End of your stay (in Poland), you unfortunate sons of bitches” with a graphic taken from a Russian nationalist website. On the lower right, the sign reads, “Putin will sort out Ukraine, Brussels, and our rulers.” The driver of the green tractor has been arrested for violations of Polish law by spreading communist propaganda and inciting aggression toward the Polish state by foreign powers.

We’ve had “Freedom Convoys,” “Brexit Britain First,” “What about Burisma?” and now “Polish Farmers.” No, these are not organic protests. Yes, they are instigated by Russia. We might not be at war with Russia, but Russia is at war with us.

The grain is transiting Poland, not being sold there. They are blocking trucks going into Ukraine that are not carrying grain. They are blocking the border with Ukraine, a country that has no authority to make any of the changes that the farmers are supposedly seeking. They are helping Russia by blocking humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine — and yes, they are blocking military aid as well. NATO and EU aid can get through, but trucks full of medical supplies, uniforms, boots, rifle sights, flashlights, drone parts, and trucks and vehicles themselves, like ambulances, are being blocked.

Can you, reader, imagine protesters blocking the fire department from extinguishing a fire in a burning building because they are angry with public school teachers? That is what is going on here. Their actions on the border have nothing to do with the results they claim to be seeking. This is very similar to the GOP in Congress saying, “We can’t help Ukraine until we fix the border,” and then refusing to fix the border. They may as well say, “We can’t help Ukraine until we cure cancer.” The point is to help Russia, and they will use any excuse to justify it.

The support of these fascist farmers is not universal in Poland — the Polish consulate in Lviv issued a statement, “I thought that only Russians could behave so shamefully.”

Poland’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture Michał Kołodziejczak confirmed that the Ukrainian grain due to which farmers are blocking the border does not remain in the country and that “it would be possible to protest at another border.”

Film Festival

Ukrainian director Oksana Karpovich presented a new short film, “Intercepted,” at the Berlin Film Festival. It features phone calls between Russian soldiers and their friends and family. Examples follow.

“Mom, I enjoyed torturing so much! I can tell you what tortures I learned about and participated in (he goes on to detail how he tortured Ukrainian civilians). — Son, it’s normal. Me too; if I ended up there, I would have felt pleasure; how else?”

“- No, I didn’t become hostile here; I just killed Nazis. Yesterday, we were walking, and a woman with two children came towards us, and we killed them. — Well, they are our enemies. — Yes, I don’t feel sorry for them. — Right, don’t pity them. Kill them.”

“Have you seen NATO bases there? — No. — Don’t lie to me — there are (NATO)bases at every step; they tell us so on TV. — Don’t watch TV, mother, they tell lies. — How can this be a lie? Of course, it’s the truth. That’s why they sent you there, to protect us from NATO.”

Grammatical Notes

Russian volunteer Andrai “Murz” Morozov “has been shot himself.” Such a sentence makes sense only in the Russian world. On 18 February, he released a lengthy blog post revealing the true losses of the Russian military in Avdiivka, claiming that the number of dead soldiers exceeds the pre-war population of the town and that the entire operation was a stunt for Putin’s election. Romanov_92, another Russian blogger, reported the death on Telegram. Murz announced that he had been forced to delete the post shortly before he “was suicided.”

An Interview with the “Governor” of Zaporizhzhia

Russian collaborator and occupation “governor” of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, tells about what was happening to Ukrainian residents of the region during the early stages of the invasion. Note, this was before any of the fake referendums were held.

No More Stephen King

King, along with Dostoevski, Proust, and dozens of other authors have had their books removed from Russian stores in accordance with the law against LGBT propaganda. We need some kind of award for authors who get banned in Russia and Florida. Any ideas?

On the Front

Russia has now lost seven fighter/bomber aircraft in five days, which are probably the victims of the German mobile PATRIOT battery. Unlike the American batteries sent to Ukraine, the German launcher is truck-mounted, giving it the element of surprise. The latest was a Su-35 in the skies near occupied Mariupol, which may have been shot down by friendly fire.

A group of Russian soldiers was hit by a presumed HIMARS strike and killed as many as 65. The photos of the strike are disturbing. These were fresh troops who were supposed to meet their general for the first time, standing in formation. Outside. In a field. Within HIMARS range. This occurred near 0900 local on the 20th of February near Trudovskoe, occupied Donetsk region, and has been reported by both UA and RF sources.

The Economist

It is heartening to see that Western media is slowly emerging from their Moscow-centric view of the world. The Economist has published an article about Russian spies in Western countries, “Russian agents are creating armies of bots in social networks, fake websites, conducting cyberattacks, running information campaigns against European authorities, establishing channels for supplying equipment to Russian arms manufacturers, embedding their agents in various institutions, undermining European support for Ukraine and destroying NATO from within.”

Too bad they didn’t realize that this has been the case for the last 20 years.