Why the Ukraine conflict isn’t a new Cold War | HistoryExtra - "‘[Russia is still] you know, from our perspective, of course, still a Eurasian empire, it reaches still in its smaller form. You know, from the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait to the Pacific, it's still the biggest country in the world, it has the biggest nuclear arsenal. And yet, a man like Putin, from the security services, experienced himself by being in East Germany, a sense of humiliation, a sense of, you know, a trauma that this empire fell apart and was allowed from his perspective, that Gorbachev allowed this to happen. He has no sentiment for the fact that, you know, Western leaders also feared the collapse of the Soviet Union, they feared anarchy, that, in fact, they actually clung on to Gorbachev. He has no feeling for, you know, in the way Yeltsin emerged that, Yeltsin was a parade of sovereignty, and just declaring Russia sovereign, in some ways, opted out of the Union and destroyed the Union, for his own power hunger. That is completely left outside the story. I think but what it's really important to, to also see historically, that Russia has always grappled also with its identity. What is it to be Russian? To be Russian Orthodox? To hark back to the Kievan Rus? To, to think about, you know, these Russian values that he declared in his Millennium manifesto that were so important, this is a strong state and a leader that serves that strong state, and that Russia has about, Russia deserves to be, you know, a great power, perhaps even a world power. And that doesn't want to have anybody above it, it has to be recognized as equal. And he really sensed that, you know, what happened through the collapse of the Soviet Union was, in that sense, a humiliation for Russia, and he needed to revise it. So what we see is, first, he dealt in his first eight years, with the consolidation of his own authority, of creating stability and also retiring auspices in Russia politically, he stabilized the economy, because that had been in complete freefall. But of course, after that little changing of chances, Medvedev, when he came back the second time, it was about the foreign policy agenda. And that was about putting Russia back at the top table in international diplomacy. And that's why he took so much offense, you know, when Obama said that Russia was a regional power, not a world leading power. And of course, equally we see why is there the sort of awkward, unholy alliance emerging between China and Russia. Lover [sp?] has declared, you know, that Russia wants the post-west world order, Putin speaks about the liberal order being obsolete. He hates any references to unipolarity. He said so in 2007. He said, so again in 2019, in this famous Financial Times interview, and the Chinese want to be a world order and world power by 2050. So they both come together by saying, we want recognition of multipolarity and we want, you know, to undo that normative structure that has been binding us since 1945. And certainly since 1991, we perceive that as a Western dominated world order and we don't want this anymore, so that needs to be challenged and changed and TVC, you know, the reversion to the old power political tools where if you don't get by diplomacy, what you want, you apply force...
[In Ukraine] there was an independence referendum in December 1991, where even Crimea, more than 50%, more than 80% in the Donbass, more than 80% in general in Ukraine, voted for independence from the Soviet Union. And by default, also had made clear that didn't want to go into Russian dominated union, with Belarus and Kazakhstan... Ukraine also joined the Non Proliferation Treaty under the Budapest Memorandum by getting security guarantees from Britain, America and Russia for its territorial integrity and security by giving up its nuclear weapons arsenal, which was the former 1/3 of the Soviet arsenal...
The fact that it's turned to China, to look, you know, for military material, for financial aid, and done so openly, in defiance of that, the Americans, of course, have told the Chinese that they shouldn't do this. But of course, and Russia is looking east, not west. And it's the first time in a long time history since Peter the Great that the Russians are really doing this. And that is a completely new situation, you sort of wonder, this such, two different narratives, two realities, the Russians are fed a completely different reality and history by Putin, especially now, also, this, all the censorship. And, you know, we have to not forget the Gallup show that more than 60% of Russians say that they support this, in fact, Putin's popularity has gone up since the warfare in Russia. And that's, from our perspective, truly shocking’"
Mobilised Russians call hotline to ask how to surrender
Number of Russians Fleeing Draft Bigger Than First Invasion Force: UK - "Since Putin announced on September 21 that he would call up 300,000 reservists, there has been a mass rush for the border as Russians attempt to evade being sent to the front lines. Putin had pledged in March not to introduce conscription, a move that has helped to keep Russian civilians removed from the realities of the invasion of Ukraine. That was sharply interrupted with last week's announcement. The Associated Press reported that as of Wednesday, at least 194,000 Russians had fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland alone. Bloomberg, citing data from the European Union, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, put the figure at 200,000. Those estimates exceed what the US had estimated to be a 190,000-strong invasion force that massed at Ukraine's border just before the invasion. On Monday, the satellite-imaging company Maxar shared pictures of huge traffic buildups at Russia's borders with Georgia and Mongolia. Ten thousand people have crossed into Georgia each day since the announcement, double the normal traffic... Plane tickets to countries with friendly visa agreements with Russia sold out almost immediately after Putin's announcement, with seats on private jets going for up to $27,000... "The better off and well educated are overrepresented amongst those attempting to leave Russia.""
Damn CIA, faking satellite photos!
Ukrainian refugee slams 'liar' security guard who 'treated her like a dogsbody' - "Tony has now also ended their relationship amid a furious bust-up in which he accuses her of not being able to handle alcohol and using a knife to damage a wall at their rented home... Meanwhile, Lorna said a reconciliation with the father of her two daughters, Tony, was not on the cards after he dumped his new lover... Lorna has accused Sofiia of flirting with Tony during the ten days they all lived together... Tony moved out with Sofiia in May this year just ten days after she moved into live with him and his partner of nearly ten years Lorna at their home in Bradford, West Yorkshire. He ended his four-month relationship with her after a furious bust-up last Saturday when she allegedly used a knife to stab the wall of their rented home in Bradford. She was arrested and taken away by police who warned her not to go back to the property. But MailOnline told exclusively yesterday how Sofiia went back to the cottage they used to share and kicked the door on Monday evening while screaming: 'Tony, I love you'. Police were called again by neighbours and she fled by jumping over a wall before officers found her hiding under a nearby hedge and arrested her for a second time, but she was released without charge... Lorna revealed that she saw early signs that Sofiia was a heavy drinker on their first trip together to a supermarket, when she put a bottle of wine and four beers into her basket She also bought a bottle of whiskey and drank it in two days. The empty bottles were left under Sofiia 's bed. Lorna added: 'She is a very flirty woman 100 per cent and clearly likes a drink too. 'She would brush up against Tony and the way she had a laugh with him was different and she had more eye contact with him... 'I love Tony because he the father of my two kids, but I'm not in love with him anymore... 'When we were going to court, the judge said to us that if there were any more articles, then we could be fined or jailed. 'A few days later, I walked into our local Asda and Sofiia was on the cover of two magazines. She had sold her story... Heavily-tattooed Tony said: 'We need to put this whole episode behind us and be great parents for our girls. 'I just need some time for me now as well. To evaluate what is going on. 'I'm not going to get into a relationship with anybody, although I've had quite a few offers on the Internet with people even sending me nude pictures of themselves."
‘Putin Is a Fool’: Intercepted Calls Reveal Russian Army in Disarray - The New York Times - "The calls, made by dozens of fighters from airborne units and Russia’s National Guard, have not previously been made public and give an inside view of a military in disarray just weeks into the campaign. The soldiers describe a crisis in morale and a lack of equipment, and say they were lied to about the mission they were on — all conditions that have contributed to the recent setbacks for Russia’s campaign in the east of Ukraine. The conversations range from the mundane to the brutal, and include blunt criticisms of Mr. Putin and military commanders, remarks that may be punishable under Russian law if they were publicly expressed at home... Previously published security camera footage from a shipping company in Belarus and shipping documents obtained by The Times confirmed that soldiers from the 656th Regiment of the National Guard, the same unit identified with some of the call intercepts, sent packages home in the days after withdrawing. The documents record at least one soldier, Aleksandr, whom The Times identified in the intercepts as an owner of one of the cellphones used, shipping clothes to his wife on April 4. Cut off from the outside world and frustrated by commanders who the soldiers say keep them in the dark, the soldiers rely on the calls home for updates on the war they’re fighting. But what they hear from their families — a rosy picture propagated by Russian state media — is often at odds with their reality."
Naturally, there're Russia shills who claim this is fake
Lawrence Freedman: ‘Autocracies tend to make catastrophic decisions. That’s the case with Putin’ - "Russia’s war against Ukraine has been hampered by failings experienced by autocratic states during conflict, according to a far-reaching new study of command in war by one of the UK’s most prominent academics in the field. Command, a wide-ranging analysis of post-second world war conflicts by the leading strategic studies expert Lawrence Freedman, examines a series of well-known conflicts, from the Cuban missile crisis to the French defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, through to the Falklands war and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, up to the present war in Ukraine. “The big theme,” said Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, “is that autocracies are very bad at this. A lot of most catastrophic decisions come from autocratic decision-making. That is certainly the case with Vladimir Putin but also Saddam Hussein and even [the Argentine military dictator Leopoldo] Galtieri during the Falklands war.”... in key interactions between military and political leaders – which even in the best circumstances can be characterised by tensions and personal conflicts – it is the lack of open and often critical feedback that leads to bad decision-making. “Autocracies don’t have the feedback mechanism, and dig themselves in by believing that the advantage of autocracy is bold and decisive decision-making... And while Russian military operations for more than a century have often relied on using overwhelming numbers (often with little consideration for losses), in Ukraine, Russia appears to have been constrained by domestic political considerations from introducing a general mobilisation, which has limited the scale of forces it can deploy. One issue that has intrigued Freedman, as well as other analysts, is why Putin – whose use of force had been limited in scope before Ukraine – embarked on such a dangerous and badly prepared-for gamble in Ukraine. “Military force had been quite good for Putin up until now. He used it effectively in Chechnya, Crimea, Georgia and Syria. He used it in quite a limited fashion in Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014 where those doing his dirty work wanted him to take an even more aggressive approach. “But his approach to the current Ukraine conflict has clearly been deluded."... A key failure, in Freedman’s view, was that while Russian intelligence had widely infiltrated Ukraine – as even Kyiv has acknowledged – the key figures around Putin either did not understand Ukraine or acted as an echo chamber for him... Even now, six months into the war, Freedman struggles to understand the logic of the Kremlin, not least its tactic of creating a wintertime energy crisis in Europe to undermine support for Kyiv. “I think the only ‘theory of victory’ the Kremlin has at the present is that the west turns on Ukraine because of the energy crisis. But the surprise there is that Moscow has not asked for a ceasefire now. That would put Zelenskiy on the spot because he couldn’t agree to one. “Instead, Putin is still acting as though he expects more from this war than he has already got. Why I think there are some signs of desperation on the Russian side is that some are beginning to recognise that an energy crunch is not going to lead to a betrayal of Ukraine. In the long term, that signals the risk of deep damage to Russia’s economy.”"
Russian gas exports slump by a third in blow to Putin - "Production has slumped at Russia’s state gas giant Gazprom as it struggles to replace European buyers... Fields that supply Europe are not currently connected to China, meaning supplies not sent to Europe cannot easily be diverted elsewhere... If it cannot sell the gas, Russia may have to shut down fields, which may affect future production... The fall in Russia’s gas exports has pushed gas prices in Europe and the UK to record levels, triggering a major cost of living crisis and soaring inflation... Gazprom claimed gas prices in Europe this winter could climb above $4,000 per 1,000 cubic metres, which would equate to about €372 per megawatt hour – about 40pc higher than current high prices."
Julia Davis on Twitter - "Meanwhile in occupied Crimea: *old men as soldiers*"
Meme - "I would rather not be murdered by russia for no reason."
Chomsky: "Have you considered that the United States has also done bad things? I am a Linguistics Professor"
Facebook - "John Mearsheimer, on why Ukraine, NATO and the west are responsible for the Russian invasion: "It’s not imperialism; this is great-power politics. When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate."
Also John Mearsheimer, on the Israel-Palestine conflict: "There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the lobby of the United States it has become the de facto enabler of Israeli occupation in the occupied territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians."
This is the great scholar people hold up to 'prove' that NATO and Ukraine was so aggressive against those peaceful Russians and brought this upon themselves. What a joke, lol."
Facebook - "Leftists are more upset about imperialism that took place over half a century ago than the blatant, flagrant, open imperialism happening in Ukraine literally right this second, being forced upon them by the barbaric Russian state"
Where’s the Peace Movement When You Need It? - "Almost exactly 19 years ago, some of the biggest demonstrations in modern history were held across the world. Millions of people in Europe, America, and elsewhere went out into the streets to protest against the coming invasion of Iraq. Peace movements across the world were mobilized and left-of-center political parties were inflamed. Now, as Russia masses troops and warships near Ukraine on a scale not seen since the Cold War, there is an eerie silence in the West. How can this be? Russia has already waged war against Georgia in 2008 and has been fighting against Ukraine since 2014. It is a known aggressor. Why are there no mass protests in the West?... A unifying feature among self-described peace activists is an unwillingness to place the sovereignty of small or newly restored countries on a par with that of larger and longer-established entities, a view succinctly put by Putin to President George W. Bush in 2008 when he said, “George, you have to understand Ukraine isn’t even a country.” It is a statement now widely repeated in the West. This indifference to the fate of a major European state is not new. It dates back to the Cold War era when the student rebellions of the1960s were deeply influenced by socialism and Marxism, and linked to anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. Less well-known, Soviet and satellite intelligence services worked hard to use, and sometimes even control parts of the Western left and the peace movements. When students rebelled against a conservative society, they did so under red flags, buying into a view of the world that described the US as the home of capitalism, imperialism, and unjustified warfare. As far back as 1945, George Orwell noted one of the key distinguishing markers of Western pacifists was apportioning blame for international crises “almost entirely against Britain and the United States.” Such people did not “as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of the western countries.” While the Warsaw Pact invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia (which also drew some protests), as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, made clear that the Cold War was not a battle of good Soviet vs. the bad US, it did little to alter a seemingly instinctive response from the European left. That was reinforced by Ronald Reagan’s rearmament program in the 1980s and the positioning of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe following Russia's deployment of SS-20s. This spawned a new era of protests in Germany and the UK. The Cold War ended, but much of the far-left has struggled to understand Russia’s evolution into a murderous kleptocracy where social justice is not a goal of state policy. Putin’s use of military and intelligence services for state-sanctioned acts of aggression abroad — think Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, Salisbury, Berlin, plus numerous other attacks — dovetails with a domestic social conservatism designed to make life difficult and dangerous for liberals, gay people, and others, while sanctioning a raw form of capitalism which rewards super-rich individuals closely tied to the Kremlin. Russia might be different from the Soviet Union in many ways, but its security services are not."
From February
Jeremy Corbyn urges west to stop arming Ukraine - "Jeremy Corbyn has urged western countries to stop arming Ukraine, and claimed he was criticised over antisemitism because of his stance on Palestine, in a TV interview likely to underscore Keir Starmer’s determination not to readmit him to the Labour party. “Pouring arms in isn’t going to bring about a solution, it’s only going to prolong and exaggerate this war,” Corbyn said. “We might be in for years and years of a war in Ukraine.”... “What I find disappointing is that hardly any of the world’s leaders use the word peace; they always use the language of more war, and more bellicose war.”... Corbyn also suggested that he had been criticised over antisemitism because of his stance on the Middle East. “I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that my clearly stated support for the right of Palestinian people to be able to live in peace free from occupation, free from being under siege as in Gaza, and for those living in refugee camps … played a factor in all this. Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t wait to condemn me for my support for the Palestinian people.”... In a Guardian article earlier this year, Starmer said of Stop the War: “At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever.”"
Turns out he's not anti-"Imperialism" - he's just anti-West
If someone points out that global support for Palestine isn't going to bring about a solution, but just prolong and exaggerate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
Facebook - "It was once said, when history supposedly ended decades ago, that no two countries with a McDonalds has ever gone to war. It was meant as a celebration of the supposed forever peace that would come with globalization. That observation has been ripped to shreds by the war in Ukraine. Perhaps instead the unintended consequence of globalization was that we got so fat and happy that nefarious enemies could use our fatness and happiness as a weapon against us. Both unintentionally, but also by design, Europe got used to Russian gas, and now that is simply another weapon Putin can wield to try to break the will of NATO from preventing him from remaking Eastern Europe just as he desires.  Even if this war ends in a negotiated settlement, every western country is better off divorcing itself from Russia. We were fools to think countries like Russia or China would get nice as they got rich. We should have used the immense leverage we had in the 1990s to really demand these be different countries before we let them in to this billionaires club. It’s too late to replay that scenario, but we certainly don’t have to grant them membership in the future, and whatever temporary sacrifices we have to make now to make that a reality will be far smaller than if we continue to put this off till a later, seemingly more convenient date"
Russian energy executive who worked under Putin dies after falling off a boat at full speed - "Ivan Pechorin, 39, was the managing director of the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic... In February, 43-year-old Igor Nosov, the corporation's former CEO, reportedly died suddenly from a stroke... Ukrainian officials said on 10 September that their armed forces had retaken the city of Kupiansk, which had been an important supply hub for Russian troops. In response, Russia's defence ministry announced they were pulling back forces from parts of Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region."
Looks like Russia's defence ministry is a victim of "psy ops"
Russian oil executive dies in fall from Moscow hospital window - "Ravil Maganov was chair of Russia’s biggest private oil company, Lukoil, which has criticised Ukraine invasion... Baza, a Russian news site with close ties to the police, suggested he may have slipped from a balcony while smoking and that no CCTV was available because cameras had been turned off for repairs... Half a dozen businesspeople with ties to the Russian energy industry have died in apparent suicides or in mysterious circumstances since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. None of the deaths have been classified as murders."
Are the West haters claiming the CIA did it yet?
Meme - "Russians, what we do to win this conflict?"
"More troops"
"Nukes"
"Just stop the war"
*defenestration*
Top Russian aviation expert dies after falling down stairs - "Anatoly Gerashchenko is said to have slipped and tumbled down the stairs - he is one of a number of Russian elites who have died in recent months."
Russia struggles to replenish its troops in Ukraine - "The prisoners at the penal colony in St. Petersburg were expecting a visit by officials, thinking it would be some sort of inspection. Instead, men in uniform arrived and offered them amnesty — if they agreed to fight alongside the Russian army in Ukraine... As Russia continues to suffer losses in its invasion of Ukraine, now nearing its sixth month, the Kremlin has refused to announce a full-blown mobilization — a move that could be very unpopular for President Vladimir Putin. That has led instead to a covert recruitment effort that includes using prisoners to make up the manpower shortage. This also is happening amid reports that hundreds of Russian soldiers are refusing to fight and trying to quit the military."
Ukrainian hackers created fake profiles of attractive women to trick Russian soldiers into sharing their location, report says. Days later, the base was blown up. - "Nikita Knysh, a 30-year-old IT professional from Kharkiv, told the FT that when Russia's invasion began in February this year, he wanted to use his hacking skills to help his country. He recruited other hackers and founded a group nicknamed Hackyourmom, which now consists of 30 hackers from across the country... "The Russians, they always want to fuck," Knysh told the FT. "They send [a] lot of shit to 'girls,' to prove that they are warriors."... Knysh told the FT that his team had participated in other hacks, including leaking the databases of Russian military contractors and tricking Russian TV stations into playing news clips about Ukrainian civilian casualties."
Kremlin's pro-war propaganda is so boring a quarter of Russian TV viewers are switching off - "The Moscow Times quoted a survey by the independent Rosmir polling centre which found that only 65 per cent of respondents said that they now watched Russian state-run TV stations, down from 86 per cent at the start of the war... It’s not unusual for the TV analysts to veer into racist diatribes, calling Ukrainians “sub-humans”. Analysts and commentators who appear on Russian state TV are all resolutely pro-Kremlin and pro-war. There is generally no debate during broadcasts save for criticism that the Kremlin is being too soft on Ukraine. It’s not unusual to hear the analysts, generally professors or journalists or retired military officers, talking up the prospect of bombing Britain for its support for Ukraine. But although the Kremlin may consider this to be a winning strategy, it has never had to maintain its iron grip over the TV schedule for such a sustained period and it seems to be wearing thin. Genuinely popular TV personalities such as talk show host Ivan Urgant have quit Russia because of their disgruntlement with the war... Opinion polls now suggest only 55 per cent of people in Russia saying that they are in favour of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, compared to 66 per cent a few months ago. This is partly because of general war fatigue that has set in and partly because Russia has become a more difficult place to live as a result of western sanctions. Another survey has said that the number of people dining out in Moscow restaurants has dropped to a five-month low because it has become too expensive and cinema owners have warned that without major state support, the sector is going to collapse. Hollywood no longer distributes its blockbuster releases to Russian cinemas."
This suggests that sanctions do work - one mechanism being that propaganda cannot spin changes you see in your daily life as not happening
Mikhail Gorbachev Reportedly "Upset" Over Vladimir Putin's War in Ukraine - "“Gorbachev’s reforms – political, not economic – were all destroyed,” Venediktov said. “Nilch, zero, ashes.”... “I can tell you that [Gorbachev] is upset,” Denediktov concluded. “Of course, he understands that […] this was his life’s work. Freedoms were brought by Gorbachev. Everyone forgot who gave freedom to the Russian Orthodox Church. Who was it? Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. The freedom of press, the first media law, who brought it? Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. Private property? Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. “So what would [Gorbachev] be able to say now?”"
Maybe that's why he died
The hard truth: Ukraine has left both the West and Russia reeling - "In the sixth month of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, it is timely to conduct an interim audit into the progress of the war. The question is often asked as to who is winning and who is losing, but such binary questions are confounded by the complexity of the situation. Indeed, one wonders whether winning or losing is a meaningful concept at all... With the obvious exception of the Second World War, most modern conflicts have ended in negotiation not outright victory on the battlefield. Ukraine will almost certainly follow this pattern... The Russians will not withdraw voluntarily, the Ukrainians are most unlikely to be strong enough to throw them out, and the West will never contemplate an Iraq-style operation to eject them."
Wrecked Russian fighter planes found with rudimentary GPS receivers ‘taped to dashboards’ - "British defence secretary Ben Wallace said a chargesheet of the Russian army’s failure, including poor battle preparation and inadequate equipment for its invasion in Ukraine, should be placed at the feet of Moscow’s General Staff of the Russian Army. Mr Wallace’s comments came after GPS receivers were allegedly found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian SU-34s... “As an aside, the sheer amount of footage from Ukrainian drones suggests to me that they also lack wider air defence and counter-UAV system”... many vehicles are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them... while “Russia have large amounts of artillery and armour that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms manoeuvre and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages.”"
Russian Oil Billionaire Dies of ‘Toad Poisoning’ - "Oil billionaire Alexander Subbotin on Sunday became the sixth Russian oligarch to die under mysterious circumstances since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. According to Moscow police, Subbotin was laid low by a toxic toad during a hangover cure administered by a shaman. Subbotin, 43, was formerly an executive with Lukoil, Russia’s largest privately-owned oil company, and was the owner of a successful shipping operation based in Finland called the New Transport Company. Subbotin’s body was recovered by police from the basement of a house in Mytishschi, a suburb of Moscow, on Sunday evening. The house is owned by a man named Aleksei Pindyurin, who claims to be a shaman with mystical powers working under the supernatural alias “Magua Flores.” (Not every sorcerer is fortunate enough to be born with a cool name like “Stephen Strange.”) Shaman Magua, along with his female partner Tina Cordoba (real name Kristina Teikhrib), offered their clients a variety of services, from communing with spirits to providing extreme alternative medical cures. Subbotin allegedly came to them looking for a hangover cure after overindulging in alcohol and drugs... The string of mysterious oligarch deaths began on February 25, the day after the launch of the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, when a top executive for Russia’s state energy company Gazprom named Aleksandr Tyulyakov was found hanged in his garage, a suicide note close at hand. Another Russian tycoon named Mikhail Watford supposedly hanged himself in his garage in the United Kingdom three days later. On March 24, medical supply billionaire Vasily Melnikov was stabbed to death along with his wife and two sons in their apartment in Russia. On April 18, financial tycoon Vladislav Avayev was killed in his Moscow apartment along with his wife and daughter. The police claimed Avayev shot his family and then turned the gun on himself. The billionaire death spree continued on April 21 with the alleged murder/suicide of 55-year-old Sergei Protosenya, who was found hanged in a villa near Barcelona, Spain with his wife and daughter stabbed to death beside him. A seventh billionaire death might be connected to the pattern, as top Gazprom executive Leonid Shulman was found dead along with a suicide note in his St. Petersburg cottage in January, a few weeks before the attack on Ukraine began."