https://x.com/InfoAgeStrategy/status/1995301253333545142

The core of the problem is that Vladimir Putin, along with a majority of the Russian people, simply can't get over the fact that the demise of the Soviet Union allowed 14 previously-captive nations to become sovereign, independent states whose territorial integrity and right to self-determination was protected under international law.

https://x.com/evo1tactical/status/1995326417962221904
(T.C.A.G.) Commander Brad Crawford
Colonel, here is the reality that many avoid saying directly.

Putin and a large part of Russian society are not upset about the fall of the Soviet Union because of economics or politics. They are upset because their empire collapsed.

Fourteen nations broke free from Moscow's control, reclaimed sovereignty under international law, and chose independence. Russia has never accepted that loss, and that resentment has fueled every act of aggression they have taken since.

The historical facts are not complicated. The Soviet Union did not unite these nations through cooperation or shared values. It absorbed them by force. Entire populations were subjected to repression, deportations, engineered famines, and the destruction of their national identities.

Ukraine lived through the Holodomor. The Baltic states endured mass arrests and the removal of their leaders. Georgia, Moldova, and the nations of Central Asia were stripped of political autonomy and ruled directly from Moscow.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, each of these nations held democratic referendums where overwhelming majorities chose independence.

Their borders were recognized by the international community, and Russia itself signed the Belavezha Agreement, the Alma Ata Protocols, and the Budapest Memorandum, all affirming their full sovereignty.

Russia's refusal to accept this history is the center of the problem. This has nothing to do with NATO expansion or security concerns. It is about a political mindset that cannot tolerate its former colonies choosing their own future.

Ukraine stands at the front of that fight, and the rest of the world must understand the weight of the history behind it.

Slava Ukraini. Heroiam Slava. 🇺🇦

https://www.facebook.com/volunteerinfo1/posts/pfbid02bpkXiskjgEZtuQfUVybLawx8woFcrVCshEmSrTQUjSv38Dwzt22n7rwuNKsB7SSil

Russian Colonel-General Andrey Kartapolov's statement that Europeans will have to kneel before Russia reflects a confrontational and expansionist aspect of Russian foreign policy.
This rhetoric signals Moscow's aspiration to impose its will on Europe, demanding apologies, renewed energy supplies, and the withdrawal of NATO forces, portraying a vision of dominance and coercion over European countries. This statement aligns with a broader aggressive Russian foreign policy framework centered on undermining Western influence, particularly that of the United States and NATO.
Russia's current official foreign policy documents and strategic outlook frame the West as the main threat to Russia's security and emphasize the goal of dismantling Western dominance in global affairs. Moscow also seeks to strengthen ties with non-Western powers like China and India to offset Western pressure and sanctions.

https://uhgi.org/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Ukrainian History Global Initiative

   
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Ukrainian History Global Initiative
The Creative Humanities During a War of Destruction
Timothy Snyder
Dec 6








Amidst a war of aggression, scholars in Ukraine have undertaken one of the most ambitious knowledge projects of our time. Over the course of three years, more than a hundred Ukrainian and international scholars are together creating a long-durée history of the lands and peoples of the territories of today's Ukraine from the formation of the earth to the present. The goal is to bring together knowledge about a crucial part of the world, and make it accessible to everyone in the world.

This endeavor, Ukrainian History Global Initiative, recalls some of the great encyclopedic ambitions of past centuries -- while bringing to bear the technological advances of our own. It's an attempt to write interpretive history that people will want to read, made possible by the findings, sometimes quite spectacular, of recent decades. The goal is to bring knowledge about some of the great themes of the past to a very large global audience. At a time when specialization can separate scholars from audiences (and from one another!), we are working together to bring knowledge to everyone.

I've been privileged to be involved with Ukrainian History Global Initiative from its beginnings. The thought process began back in 2019, well before the full-scale invasion of 2022. So it would be a mistake to think of this project as a reaction to the current war. But the fact that the project has proceeded, with two major conferences in wartime Kyiv in 2023 and 2024 as well as other meetings around the world, is a sign to me of how important the humanities are in a time of crisis.

We are told that, under stress, the humanities must be sacrificed -- of what use are literature, philosophy, and history when we have problems to solve right now? And yet colleagues meeting in wartime Kyiv have a clearer sense of purpose, more esprit de corps, , and a better instinct for the essential. And soldiers on the front (as they tell me) want to talk about history and culture. In traumatic conditions, people think about where they stand amidst larger forces -- and they think about the why as well as the how of life.

The humanities offer that. The more extreme the circumstances, the more important they are. Which is why, of course, the enemies of freedom are the enemies of history, and the enemies of the humanities generally -- an association that is on display, all too graphically, in Russian book burnings on occupied Ukrainian territories, Russian destruction of Ukrainian libraries, Russian bombings of Ukrainian publishing houses, and Russian looting of Ukrainian museums.

At the same time, Ukrainian History Global Initiative has taught me how much technology can aid us where the traditional tools of the humanities -- written sources -- fade away. In this project we have a biologist, paleontologists, and archaeologists. The technology applied today in archaeology has vastly improved our understanding of prehistory and early history. As a modern historian, I have been humbled to see how quickly discussions of the earlier periods have moved in recent years.

To an almost uncanny degree, the new technological methods and findings point us towards the centrality of Ukraine in world history, and thus the sense of Ukrainian History Global Initiative. Some of the methods are discussed in this video about the project. We are taking seriously the long-term ecological side of history: the specificities of Ukraine -- its rivers flowing southward to a sea that connects to the world, with its unusually fertile soil, with its mountains to the west and the steppe extending almost endlessly to the east -- have invited both innovation and invasion since pre-history. Perhaps by no coincidence, it was a Ukrainian scientist who invented the idea of the biosphere, a topic with which we begin the project.

It is far too soon to discuss findings and conclusions, as a hundred or so of us continue our research and writing. And I wouldn't want to give the impression that my own views as expressed here capture the ideas of my colleagues. But there is absolutely no doubt that this huge collaborative project will bring into focus some extraordinary findings of Ukrainian and international scholars, beginning from the deep past. There are extraordinary findings about history, including ancient history, known now only to circles of scholars. We aim to made this knowledge accessible to all. A few examples...

How did humans begin to build shelters for themselves? We know now of a Mezyrich culture, about twenty thousand years ago, that built dwellings from mammoth bones during the ice age. The houses themselves, as well as the artefacts within them, display a sense of symmetry that forces us to reflect on aesthetics and symbolic meanings. These are among the oldest known built dwellings in Europe. The people who built them seem to have cared about beauty as well as survival.

https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/5-198

20.000 BCE


Decorated mammoth tusk, Ukraine, c. 22,000 years old
The history of the city also seems to begin in Ukraine. Thanks to LiDAR and advanced carbon dating, we are now aware of a complex of ancient cities in what is now central Ukraine, Nebelivka and others, which are some six thousand years old. These seem to be the oldest large human settlements, older than ancient Mesopotamian cities which we have been taught to see as the cradle of civilization. Their arrangement suggests an interesting form of urban life -- no walls or temple or obvious centers of power, only avenues and gathering places and houses and lodges.

Even the communication between us now, the language on the screen that I write and you read, has to do with the lands of Ukraine. The words I am writing now, and the languages that half the world speaks, also, it appears, descend from the Ukrainian steppe. English is an Indo-European language. One of most important debates in the history of the sciences and the humanities is the origins of the Indo-European languages. The discussion of why we speak the languages we do and where they come from has been going on for well over two hundred years in a modern scholarly form, and of course for much longer. And now the Indo-European part, the biggest part, seems to have been settled. And as a result of evidence from ancient DNA, it is reasonable to conclude that the peoples who spread Indo-European languages, now spoken by about half the world, originated some five thousand years ago in the south Ukrainian steppe.

Although all of this is still in discussion, and I certainly won't claim that all involved in the project hold the same views as I do on all these questions, it appears that he encounter of the people who generated the languages with the people who built the cities seems led to a synthesis that is at the very foundation of European history -- thousands of years before the Romans and the Greeks and everything that is more familiar. If you did not know these things, you are not alone -- I didn't know them when this project started. The point is: when you look hard at the Ukrainian past, the history of the world starts to make more sense.

Starting from the deep past shows how the sciences and the humanities work together. It also helps us to see the global relevance of what might seem like local events. From a Ukrainian perspective major traditions that might seem familiar, like the ancient Greek and the Viking Nordic, take on a new and unfamiliar form, before resolving themselves into something more interesting -- and more plausible.


Hilt of a Viking Sword, Ukraine
Everything that we know of Greek civilization depended on contacts with the northern coast of the Black Sea, which fed Athens, and provided Athens with the basis of foundational stories that we still tell. We talk about Amazons and make movies about them -- but only if we learn about the Ukrainian past do we realize that such women actually lived. Thanks to Ukrainian archaeologists (and ancient DNA technology) we can now say with confidence that the Scythian warriors of the Ukrainian steppe did include biologically female mounted archers.

The same holds for the history of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The history of each is enriched when Ukraine is included. In important respects Ukraine also sits at the center of the imperial period of modern history, the time of enormous land empires, expansive maritime empires, and their totalitarian challengers. Ukraine is central to the history of both world wars. These are themes that I picked up in my own books, Bloodlands and Black Earth; thanks to colleagues in the project, I am coming to understand that the centrality of Ukraine in global conflicts begins well before the twentieth century.

The national history of Ukraine is fascinating. National activists always go looking for a past; what the Ukrainians encountered was spectacularly rich. When the Ukrainian ethnographers went to collect folk tales and songs in the late nineteenth century, they found incredible layers of memory: vampires and werewolves that likely connect to Viking or perhaps slavic pagan beliefs; dualist ideas of Christianity that draw on apocryphal texts that themselves go back all the way to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia; stories of creation that invoke common Indo-European themes and perhaps still older layers than that -- there are intriguing commonalities, as the ethnographers noticed back then, between Ukrainian and indigenous North American creation stories. What's more, the scholars doing the ethnography, and national activists generally in the late nineteenth century, were intensely aware of these layers of the past. They could recognize them because they already saw the history of their land in people in multiple contexts and ancient settings. And so when we engage in the history of the formation of the Ukrainian nation, we do not leave behind the ancient past -- instead, we find it again.

The Ukrainian nation emerges therefore within settings that are both ancient and global. As a national movement it was quite typical; what was unusual was the difficulties it faced in the twentieth century. It is hard to speak of the Ukrainian nation, especially today, without speaking of war. I was tempted to start this little note by mentioning that the public sessions of both Kyiv conferences were interrupted by Russian missile attacks. I could have mentioned that the panels at the Kyiv conferences take place underground, or that colleagues often have to get to work after spending a night in a bomb shelter. It matters, of course, and deeply, that some colleagues in the project are in active military service, sometimes on the front.


Part of the display at the public event of Ukrainian History Global Initiative, Kyiv, September 2023. There is no one between the photographer and the objects because of the missile.
In this war, Russia is trying to kill a culture. But what is far more interesting is the work that is being done within that culture -- which has implications for all of the rest of us: in the form of self-organization, as well as in the products, which in our case should be a vast public digital resource and a shorter book or two. During the war we have seen a renaissance in Ukrainian film, music, art, and publishing. Ukrainian History Global Initiative began before the full-scale invasion, but working in Ukraine I feel the warm support of energetic friends in neighboring pursuits.

Speaking of film: I was prompted to write about Ukrainian History Global Initiative because of this video,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuWhVyhu6oQ

which emerged from our September gathering in Kyiv. It might give you a sense of the significance of the project, and of the work of some colleagues. I hope you enjoy it, and pass it on to others who might be interested.

https://x.com/DevanaUkraine/status/1997685782799057220
 An interesting observation that Russians somehow ignore
 If the Russian Federation is the "legal successor" of the USSR (as they love to repeat), then be honest for once in your life and fulfill your obligations:

➤ Return to Ukrainians all savings stolen in 1991–1992 (over $140 billion at the exchange rate back then). With interest for 33 years it's close to a trillion. Cash or gold — we don't mind.

➤ Pay reparations for the Holodomor (recognized as genocide by 30+ countries), for the Executed Renaissance, for the deportation of Crimean Tatars, for all NKVD torture chambers, and for every ton of grain, gold, and black soil looted from Ukraine.

➤ Give back Kuban, Starodub region, Slobozhanshchyna, Taganrog, Belgorod, Kursk, and all other ethnic Ukrainian territories that Stalin cut off from the Ukrainian Republic and attached to the RSFSR.

➤ Compensate for 100,000+ Ukrainians killed since 2022 and the trillions of dollars in destroyed infrastructure. The invoice will be issued separately.

And if you, suddenly, are NOT the legal successor of the USSR (which would actually be more honest), then:

➤ Immediately vacate the permanent seat in the UN Security Council (because it belonged to the USSR, not the "Russian Federation").

➤ Hand over the entire Soviet gold reserve, all foreign assets, the space program, nuclear weapons, and the seat in the G8/G20.

➤ Recognize the independence of all 14 republics you still consider "yours" within the Russian Federation.

Choose any option.

Just quickly — because Ukrainians' patience has already run out.

And Trump won't be protecting you forever.


https://vk.com/wall-63628701_323700
✅MIGRATION FROM SIBERIA OF THE ANCESTORS OF THE SLAVS... 

According to the German fantasy of G. Miller (the creator of our official false history), Siberia "does not eat historical winter," and was always in the Stone Age, right up until the 17th century.
As early as 1516, the rector of Krakow University, Jesuit and ardent Russophobe Matvey Miechowski (1457–1523), published a brochure, "Notes on Two Sarmatias," in which he suddenly began to caricature Siberia: "In these (Siberian) countries they do not plow, do not sow... they live in wicker huts. Forest life has made people resemble unreasonable animals: they dress in rough animal skins, sewn together haphazardly..."
Unfortunately, the strengthening of G. Miller's Russophobic views in Russia was also facilitated by the Westernizer N.M. Karamzin in his "History of the Russian State": "This great part of Europe and Asia, now called Russia, in its moderate climates was originally inhabited, but by wild peoples, plunged into the depths of ignorance, who did not mark their existence with any of their own historical monuments."
But the Icelander Snorri Sturlusson (skald-prose writer-historiographer, 1179-1241) wrote something else:
"From north to east and all the way to the south stretches a part called Asia. In this part of the world, everything is beautiful and lush, there are possessions of the fruits of the earth, gold and precious stones. There is the center of the earth. And because the land itself is there in everything more beautiful and better, the people who inhabit it also stand out for all their gifts: wisdom and strength, beauty and all kinds of knowledge" (geographical treatise "Circle of the Earth").
The great Mikhail Lomonosov wrote about the early Slavs, "...that they migrated from the east, from Asia to Europe, and to the west at different times along different routes; the same is evident from the above and following descriptions of the Russes, the Slavic Varangians." Or, "That the Slavic people existed within the current Russian borders even before the birth of Christ can be irrefutably proven."
Large-scale archaeological excavations in Siberia were never conducted, either during the Romanov or Soviet eras. Never!
And even the facts today require a very long search. But even what has been accidentally unearthed speaks volumes. In Omsk, three underground passages running beneath the Irtysh River were discovered, and burial mounds were excavated. During the construction of a heating main near the Old Omsk Fortress (now the Flora pavilion), an ancient necropolis (underground city) was discovered, predating the Egyptian pyramids (see I. Solokhin's "Where Ancient Iry Carries the Waters"). During the demolition of an old thermal power plant in the same area, a network of underground passages even older than the necropolis was discovered (TV6-Moscow broadcast).
Old data is being falsified, for example, Semyon Remizov's statement from his drawing book on page 21 about the city.In Omsk, historians translated it from Old Russian as "A city will be created again on the edge of the Kalmyk steppe" instead of "A city will be created again on the right bank of the river next to the steps of temple buildings made of stones laid on stones" ("kamyk" - stone).
The archaeological discoveries of recent years in Siberia are so significant that they allow us to take a completely different look not only at the history of China, supposedly 8,000 years old, but also at world history.
And this is what all pro-Western officials fear, because it will reveal that the Slavic Proto-Civilization stood at the origins of all ancient civilizations. The Great Turan of Siberia, from which the Rus' peoples subsequently migrated to the Iranian Plateau, Hindustan, Egypt, Eastern and Western Europe, has no connection to China or to today's Turks.
It was from Siberia that the powerful first migration streams of Aryan-Indo-Europeans to Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, the Northern Black Sea region, and India originated. "...it was precisely the north of Asia that was the extratropical homeland of humanity" (Moritz Wagner, 1813-1887, German anthropologist). And the north of Asia is our Siberia.
The last to leave Siberia were the Slavic-Scythians, alongside whom, in the swamps of "Vasyugan" (Western Siberia), lived the proto-Germans, known as the Goths.
"The Europeans created a great northern civilization in Siberia, but the history of this civilization is the history of a consistent exodus, a migration to the southern and western regions of Eurasia. Among the peoples who migrated from Siberia were the Hittites, Pelasgians, Wends, Indians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Celts, Goths, Slavs, and many others. Almost everywhere, the arrival of Siberian migrants was accompanied by the establishment of new centers of civilization (Crete, Harappa, the Hittite Empire).
In Siberia, the departed peoples left behind the ruins of cities. These cities were described by Arab and European travelers and writers, and in recent years, archaeologists have begun to discover them. Such is Chicheburg in the Novosibirsk region" (N. Novgorodov). "The Mayan priests received all the necessary information from a highly developed civilization—the Slavs, the ancestors of the Russian people living in Russia today" (Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University).
The answer to "Where did they come from?" is given in the chapter "Distant Beginnings...". But with the exodus of any people (regardless of the reasons), some part of it remains...
Ancient cities of Siberia... Alas, "no more is known about ancient Siberia today than about the Moon or Mars" (historian Nikolai Novgorodov).
But information about the vanished ancient Siberian cities is abundant: they are mentioned in classical, Arabic, Central Asian, Chinese, Norman, Western European, and Slavic sources.
Some travelers, such as the Arab Tamim ibn Bahr al-Muttawai, Salam at-Tarjuman, Abu Dulaf, Chang Chun, Willem Rubruck, Plano Carpini, and Marco Polo, who visited southern Siberia in the 9th-13th centuries, personally witnessed both flourishing and ruined cities. It is noted that the later the traveler visited Siberia, the more ruined cities he saw.
The Chinese sage Chang Chun, who visited Genghis Khan during his Central Asian campaign in 1222, wrote that they rode for many days past completely destroyed cities. Siberian cities were also written about by Diodorus Siculus, Pomponius Mela, Claudius Ptolemy Flavius ��Arrianus, Pausanias, Tamim ibn Bahr al-Muttawai, Ibn Khordadbeh, Ibn Rustah, al-Maqqadassi, al-Idrisi, al-Garnati, Tahir Marwazi, Abu'l-Ghazi, Snorri Sturlusson, the Iranian chronicler Rashid ad-Din (1247-1318), Sigismund of Herberstein, Milescu Spafari, and Nicholas Witsen.
Medieval geographical maps by Fra Mauro (1459), the atlas of Abraham Ortelius (1570), maps by Gerardus Mercator (1585, 1595), I. Hondius (1606), G. Cantelli (1683), G. Sanson (1688), I. Magin, A. Jenkinson, N. Witsen, Cantelli, and Herberstein show cities that had already disappeared by the time Yermak's Cossacks arrived.
When the Cossacks arrived in Siberia at the beginning of the 17th century, they no longer found large cities. However, they did encounter numerous small forts, called gorodki. According to the Ambassadorial Prikaz, 94 cities in the Ob region alone were subject to fur tax at the end of the 17th century.
The following names of vanished large Siberian cities have come down to us: Inanch (Inandzh), Kary-Sairam, Karakorum (Sarkuni), Alafkhin (Alakchin), Kemijket, Khakan Khirkhir, Darand Khirkhir, Nashran Khirkhir, Ordu-balyk, Kamkamchut, Apruchir, Chinkhay, Kyan, Ilay, Arsa, Sakhadrug, Ika, Kikas, Kambalyk, Grustina, Serponov, Kossin, Terom.
In fact, sources speak of hundreds of cities, including those located on the Siberian coast of the Arctic Ocean. The size of some cities and their age are staggering: from 5 to 30 km in diameter, from 22 to 100 km in perimeter, with 12 to 40 gates within their walls. Accordingly, the population of these cities was large.
Research by G.A. Sidorov. (the book "Chronological and Esoteric Analysis of the Development of Modern Civilization") are unambiguous: "...In Siberia, there was a large kingdom of the blue-eyed and fair-haired strong Endri people. The Endri came to the Amur River after the Great Calamity from somewhere in the north. Legends say that they also had a kingdom there, but it was swallowed up by the advancing cold waters... People are strong and kind. With white skin, fair-haired... The legends of shamans say that the Endri lived along the banks of rivers. On high ravines they built large cities. Houses were made of logs with stoves, they bred in the south, where there are no white mosses, cows and horses, and to the north there are moose and deer. Their nomadic roads crossed all of Siberia from south to north and from east to west... Along the banks of the rivers, here on the Ket, on the Syma, on the Vakha, Ob and Yenisei and further to the east, All the way to the Great Lama, hundreds of abandoned cities stand. Cities of a great people who fled south. It is not we, the Evenki, nor the Yakuts, who are the masters of this land. We are all guests here. Only guests who were once allowed to live here. The true masters of Siberia are you, the people—the direct descendants of the great Endri. But you know nothing of this!
Marco Polo lived in this land for 17 years during the reign of the Great Khan Kublai Khan. He describes Cathay (now Kuzbass) as a well-developed land. Cathay was never identified with China; it was Siberia! Today, the city of Kataysk stands on the Katayka River (a tributary of the Iset River) in the Kurgan Region. There is also a Katayka River in Bashkiria. The names come from the Kara-Khitan tribes. Cathay existed until the 17th century—see maps, Mercator's letters, etc. There were 200 towns and numerous villages near Kambalyk. The towns were connected by paved roads, which provided postal and huntsman services, and trees were planted along the roads every two meters.
Post stations with replacement horses were established along the roads. These stations were called yamas (hence the Russian word "coachman"). The word "yam" is considered Turkic, but it also appears in Sanskrit, indicating its far greater archaism. Large rivers were connected by long, wide shipping canals. The mouths of many tributaries were dammed, creating large artificial reservoirs.
Artificial reservoirs near Grustina and Kambalyk are clearly visible on medieval maps. Bridges were built across the rivers. One of them was mentioned by Marco Polo; it was located very close to Kambalyk, to the southwest. The bridge was built of magnificent gray marble, decorated with lion sculptures, and stood on 24 polished marble arches, with 24 mill wheels rotating between the supports. It was later destroyed. Rivers were dammed, creating large ponds. The dams were equipped with mills, and ships were towed over them using winch lifts.
In his "Practice of Commerce" (written around 1335), the Florentine merchant Francesco Pegolotti, describing the route from Tana (at the mouth of the Don) to Khanbalik, describes a huge floating bridge near the town of Sarakanko (Saraichuk) on the lower reaches of the Yaik.
In 1999, Tomsk archaeologist Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pletneva (born in 1936), excavating burial mounds on the Tugoyakovka River, noted a striking feature. None of the unearthed mounds contained actual burials; all were cenotaphs. Beneath each mound were burnt-out areas treated with ochre, but no bodies were found. Yet, this very same Slavic burial rite was described by Arab authors of the 8th-10th centuries. The deceased was cremated at the stake, the ashes and cinders collected in a jug and placed under a tree, and the relatives of the deceased built a burial mound and feasted on it, drinking mead.
Ostrogard-Artania-Zhong Guo... This country is the state of the Slavic Rus' in Siberia, also known as the Middle Kingdom, known in Chinese as Zhong Guo and in Arabic as Artania. The northern Germans called this Siberian (eastern) Rus' "Gard" or "Ostrogard," in contrast to Novgorod-Dnieper Rus', which the Normans called Gardarika.
V.N. Tatishchev called it "Ostergard", i.e. Eastern Gards, and explained it by the fact that Ostergard was located far to the east in the lands of the Yurga, Huns, and Avars (as is known, both the Huns and Avars came to Europe from Siberia). The 11th-century cartographer al-Idrisi described it under the name "Turkic Russia". But the Rus' themselves, who lived in Siberian Rus', called it Lukomorye. This is confirmed by all medieval maps of Siberia by Western European authors, which include the toponym Lukomorye. The country of Lukomorye is found on the maps of G. Mercator - Lucomoria (1595), I. Hondius - Lucomorre (1606), G. Cantelli - Locomoria (1683), G. Sanson - Lucomoria (1688). On G. Sanson's map (Rome, 1688), Lukomorye is located on the right bank of the Ob River in the basins of the Tom, Chulym, and Ket rivers. Here are fragments of two maps of Tartaria with Lukomorye: on the left is a 1676 map by the English cartographer John Speede, on the right is a 1606 map by Hondius:

The toponym "Lukomorye" is indisputably of Russian origin and has no even close equivalents in any other language. The translation of Lukomorye from Sanskrit (according to A.A. Loktyushin) means "land of the dead," "land of ancestors" (loka means "localization," and mara, morena means "death"). This translates as "ancestral homeland."
The contours of Artania can be delineated by the location of Artan rivers and the distribution of Artan toponyms. The Artan rivers trace the contours of a gigantic country that occupied all of Western Siberia from southeast to northwest, the entire Ob River basin from source to mouth. In 1830, the sinologist N.Ya. Bichurin published a calendar of this Middle Kingdom, which was used in the 23rd-18th centuries BC. The calendar mentions frosts, ice on rivers, deep snow, and the thawing of the ground after winter. There's no mention of rice; millet, barley, peas, and winter wheat are mentioned. Animals mentioned include sables, beavers, bears, and ferrets; fish—sturgeons; plants—poplars, maples, sour peaches, and chestnuts. Historians lie that the Middle Kingdom is China. Ah, sturgeons, sables, and bears in China? Nonsense... The Artan Rus' called their king Khakan (and even when they went west, they continued to call him that). Turkic peoples in Siberia also called their rulers Khagans: the Rouran (Avars), the Yenisei Kyrgyz, the Uighurs, the Pechenegs, and the Khazars.
The first mention of a trade campaign by Russian merchants along the Ob River dates back to 1139. Then, Andriy of Novgorod sailed to the mouth of the Ob and brought back a large cargo of furs. Interestingly, he discovered a Russian (!) settlement at the mouth of the Ob River, which had a trading post where, as it turns out, Russian merchants had long been exchanging their goods for Siberian furs. There is scant evidence that Russian merchants traded with the cities of the Kyrgyz Khaganate in the 12th and early 13th centuries (see Leonid Kyzlasov's book "Ancient Cities of Siberia").
The claim that Russians appeared in Siberia after Yermak's campaign of 1581-1585 is a 17th-century German lie. Even officially recognized chronicles record the arrival of Vyatka-Novgorod ushkuiniks (under the command of the governors Alexander Abakunovich and Stepan Lyapa) on the Ob River in 1363. Here their army split – one part went to fight down the Ob River all the way to the Arctic Ocean (the Cold Sea), while the other wandered along the upper Ob at the junction of the borders of the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Ulus, and China.
But campaigns (Abakunovich and Lyapy) and conquests (by the Cossacks of Yermak of the Sibir Khanate) are one thing, and the existence of Russians in Siberia is quite another. Slavs have lived beyond the Urals for decades, since the time of the Aryans. Many names of rivers and settlements in Siberia have Russian and Slavic roots long before Yermak's conquests of 1581-1585, and many words used in everyday life by the Chaldons date back to the time before Genghis Khan's campaign.
Travelers of the 17th and 18th centuries even had a saying: "The further north you travel through Yakutia, the more often you encounter Russian."
At the end of the 16th century, Tsar Boris Godunov sent a reconnaissance force to Siberia led by Fyodor Dyak, who reported: "...There, in the unknown eastern lands, there are plenty of Russian people. What kind? All kinds... Some have been trading there for a long time, some hunting, and some thievingly extracting tribute from the Samoyeds for their own benefit."
Even the German forger G. Miller was forced to confirm the presence of many Russians in pre-Yermak Siberia and adds that they had cities: "...it is confirmed that Surgut was built instead of a former Russian town..."
An interesting fact: ten generations before Yermak's arrival, "a large mass of Russian people" numbering 10,000 families, living "beyond the Don by the warm sea" on the Samara River, migrated to Siberia in the 14th century (Tomsk ethnographer G.I. Pelikh, "The Kayalovs"). The local population called the native Russians who did not leave Siberia "padzho."
It was in this Middle Kingdom that the compass, paper, sericulture, malleable cast iron, the plow, the cardan, the stirrups were invented...

Five Misunderstandings That Almost Destroyed the World

1. A cheap computer chip declares nuclear war.

At 2:00 a.m. on June 3, 1980, a staff member at the North American Regional Air Defense Command (NORAD) was checking his instruments and discovered that the instrument, which had always previously shown "0 attacking missiles," now showed "2 attacking missiles." This was enough to cause panic, but the next second, the instrument reported "220 attacking missiles."

Five Misunderstandings That Almost Destroyed the World

Alarms blared across America. Bombers carrying atomic bombs began taking off one after another. The command to prepare for launch was given to intercontinental ballistic missile launchers. For ten minutes, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear apocalypse.
Fortunately, before the Americans could press launch, someone noticed that hundreds of suspected warheads had not appeared on radar screens. The alarm was declared false, the bombers returned to their bases, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
It took three days to determine the cause of this strange incident. It turned out that a defective computer chip, worth 46 cents, was to blame.
2. An accident at a telephone exchange nearly led to a nuclear war.

Five Misunderstandings That Almost Destroyed the World

In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force built a network of early-warning radar stations designed to report incoming Soviet missiles as early as possible. These stations were connected via dedicated communication lines to the Air Force Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska, Air Force bases, missile bases, and the North American Joint Air Defense Command in Wyoming.
So, when communications with the air command and the radar stations suddenly went down on November 24, 1961, panic ensued. It was as if someone had suddenly wiped these stations off the face of the Earth.
They tried to contact the stations through a backup line, but it was useless. They tried calling regular landline phones, but they got a long ringing tone and no answer.
There could only be one logical explanation for all this: the Soviet Union had bombed all the radar stations, including the air defense command center, and this was, in all likelihood, the first wave of deadly attacks that could only lead to the end of the world. B-52 strategic bomber crews across America boarded their aircraft. For the next 12 minutes, the US Air Force awaited the order to begin the global extermination of the human race.
Fortunately for future generations, one of the B-52s was already in the air at that moment, flying over one of these radar stations. Instead of the expected smoking ruins, it saw a normal, peaceful landscape with intact radars in their usual locations. The pilot immediately reported this to the appropriate authorities, and everyone calmed down.
What happened was this: For some ridiculous technical reason, absolutely all telephone lines connecting the air command with the aforementioned bases and stations, including backup and civilian ones, were served by the same relay station located in Colorado. That night, an accident occurred there, and all possible lines of communication between those who held the nuclear weapons and those who could order them not to use them were severed.
3. The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) informs America of the end of the world.

Five Misunderstandings That Almost Destroyed the World

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is typically used to warn citizens of impending dangers like hurricanes or tornadoes. In the United States, such a system was created during the Cold War in the event of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Every Saturday, it was tested by sending meaningless teletype messages to every radio station in America—simply to check that communication was up and running. This was common practice, and no one paid much attention to these messages until...
on February 20, 1971, at 9:33 AM, an ordinary civilian radio operator, Weiland Eberhard, absentmindedly sent the wrong message into the EAS. Instead of saying, "This is just a test," NORAD sent a chilling message to cities and towns across America: the President himself would address the nation in a few minutes.
To the average American during the Cold War, there was only one reason why the president would interrupt a show beloved by millions with an urgent message. It could only mean one thing: atomic bombs were already flying from Russia.
Radio hosts across the country repeated the announcement of this mystical emergency, and people rushed to call family and friends, uttering all sorts of apocalyptic phrases, and begging each other for forgiveness for all manner of sins.
NORAD staff realized what had happened almost instantly, but despite their desperate efforts to cancel the alert, they were unable to find the necessary code to authenticate the cancellation message for a long time. So, for about 45 minutes, the nation braced for imminent doom.
Eventually, the code was found, a message about the error was sent, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
There was another serious danger in this story. The fact is that the USSR and the United States were closely monitoring each other for any signs of a possible nuclear attack. If, for example, the Americans suddenly, out of the blue, started shoving their citizens into bomb shelters, Russia could easily interpret this as a sign of ill intentions and respond accordingly. So, if the panic had lasted a little longer, things could have truly ended very badly.
4. A virtual war is mistaken for a terrifying reality.

Five Misunderstandings That Almost Destroyed the World

This story began on November 9, 1979, at 9:00 a.m. A low-ranking Air Force officer sat down at his computer and loaded a training program that simulated the launch of a thousand Soviet nuclear missiles. Heading for America, naturally.
Unbeknownst to the officer, the computer was linked to the Air Defense Command's central control room. When he launched his program, computers from NORAD to the Pentagon began reporting that all Russian nuclear bombs were already en route to America. "They were absolutely certain the missiles were about to arrive," recalled Senator Charles Percy.
Attack messages and orders to prepare for launch were sent to every missile silo in America. Military aircraft began scrambling, preparing to shoot down the Soviet bombers. The presidential airborne command post was ready to depart, and it couldn't take off only because no one could find Jimmy Carter.
Fortunately, the NORAD commander decided to double-check the information about the reality of the Soviet attack before giving the go-ahead and initiating Armageddon. He called the radar stations and inquired about what was going on. They reported nothing suspicious and all was clear.
It was a great relief that at least the phones were working properly that day.
5. Russia Mistaken Scientific Experiment for the Start of World War III

Five Misunderstandings That Almost Destroyed the World

On January 25, 1995, scientists from Norway launched a completely harmless rocket to study the northern lights. Although the Cold War had already ended several years ago, panic ensued when Russian radar detected something resembling an American ballistic missile.
According to a scenario developed for such an event, then-President Boris Yeltsin had 10 minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike against the United States. As is well known, the Russian president always carries a nuclear briefcase with a secret code, which he can use to cause the end of the world at any moment. This was the first time the briefcase had been opened.
Fortunately, Yeltsin was unable to believe the threat was real and was in no hurry to press the red button. A few minutes later, a message came in that the missile had fallen harmlessly into the ocean.
It was later revealed that Norwegian scientists had warned 30 countries, including the Russian Federation, of the planned launch three weeks in advance. However, this information went unheeded.

https://vk.com/wall-107396459_1035255

"In the year 839 from the Incarnation of the Lord" - an analysis of the message about the people "Ros" and "Sveons" in the oldest information about Rus'

The Annals of Bertin, which report the arrival of a "Russian" embassy to the Frankish Emperor Louis I in 839, is the oldest precisely dated account of Rus'. This account of the ambassadors of the "Khakan of the Rus" is often interpreted to imply the established identity of the Swedes with the ethnonyms "Rus" and "Rus."

It's difficult to find another example where the direct and clear meaning of a source has been misunderstood and interpreted as misleadingly as in this case. Let's begin by examining the passage in question:

"In the year 839 from the Incarnation of the Lord... Greek ambassadors also arrived, sent by Emperor Theophilus... With them (the ambassadors) he sent some other [people] who claimed that they, that is, their people (gens), were called Ros (Rhos) and that their king (rex), called khakan (chacanus), sent them to him, as they assured, for the sake of friendship.

In the said letter he (Theophilus) asked that by the mercy of the emperor and with his help they would be able to return safely through his empire, since the route by which they had come to him in Constantinople lay through the lands of barbarian and, in their extreme savagery, exceptionally fierce peoples, and he did not want them to return by this route, so that they would not be exposed to any danger if the occasion arose.

Having carefully investigated [the purpose] of their arrival, the emperor (Louis) learned that they were from the Swedes (Sueones) and, considering them to be scouts in both that country and ours rather than ambassadors of friendship, he decided to detain them until he could ascertain for certain whether they had come with honest intentions or not.

He did not hesitate to inform Theophilus of this through the aforementioned ambassadors, as well as through his own letter, and also that out of love for him he had received them kindly and that if they proved worthy of trust, he would let them go, providing them with the opportunity for a safe return to their homeland and assistance; if not, then he would send them with our ambassadors before his eyes, so that he himself would decide what should be done with them.

So, in May 839, a Byzantine embassy arrives at the court of the Frankish Emperor Louis. It includes certain individuals claiming to be ambassadors of the "Ros" people and the Khagan who ruled them. But Louis, for some reason, is unwilling to believe them and orders an investigation, which reveals that the individuals, supposedly representing the "Ros," are in fact "Swedes," or Swedes.

As we can see, the main focus of the investigation was the ambassadors' ethnicity. Louis's suspicions were aroused precisely by the discrepancy between the "Sweons"' assertion that they belonged to the "Ros" people and the knowledge of the Rus' that the East Franks possessed at the time—the inhabitants of the eastern (future German) part of the Frankish kingdom, where Ingelheim was located, knew the Rus' firsthand.

Thus, research in the field of philology notes that "the inevitable conclusion is that the name Rus' must have been borrowed into the southern German dialects no later than the 9th century... linguistic observations and the chronology of the first mentions of Rus' in German sources independently lead us to an important conclusion: the beginning of fairly intensive contacts between the bearers of the name Rus' (after all, only under the condition of intensive contacts could the borrowing of the ethnonym into the spoken language have occurred) with representatives of the southern German dialects dates back to the 9th century" (Ancient Rus' in Light of Foreign Sources. Moscow, 2000).

Moreover, it is concluded that the representatives of the Rus' people, who had contact with the Germans in the 9th century, used a Slavic self-designation: "the original borrowing was the Slavic form of the ethnonym—Old Russian Rus' from East Slavic, and not its hypothetical Scandinavian-language prototype rops. This means that already in the first half of the 9th century, the bearers of the ethnonym "Rus'", whoever their ethnicity, used a Slavic-language self-designation" (Nazarenko A.V. Ancient Rus' on International Routes: Interdisciplinary Essays on Cultural, Trade, and Political Relations of the 9th-12th Centuries. Moscow, 2001).

In turn, the Raffelstetten Customs Regulations (early 10th century) testify that the Rus' came to Bavaria from the Czech Republic as peaceful merchants, so the Franks had the opportunity to study their customs and traditions well.

Clearly, it was their intimate acquaintance with the Rus' people that allowed the Franks to identify the ambassadors as "Sweden." This was especially true because by that time the Franks had also become quite familiar with the Swedes. In 829-830, the monk Ansgar was sent to the court of the Sweden king, Björn, with the aim of spreading Christianity. He baptized several pagans and even left a bishop. The Swedes soon expelled him, but the Franks' acquaintance with the Sweden continued. This explains the successful exposure of the people, supposedly from the "Ros," as Sweden.

So, according to the Annals of Bertin, certain ambassadors "called themselves, that is, their people, Ros," but "the emperor learned that they were of the Swedes." Thus, the meaning of the "Russian" passage in the Annals of Bertin boils down to the fact that the Rus' and Swedes were two distinct ethnic groups and that Westerners were able to distinguish between them.

Illustration: A page from the Annals of Bertin with a report on the "Ros" people. The highlighted fragments contain the words: Rhos, Chacanus, Sueones.
https://vk.com/wall-110942671_552172

https://x.com/DevanaUkraine/status/1997685782799057220
 An interesting observation that Russians somehow ignore
 If the Russian Federation is the "legal successor" of the USSR (as they love to repeat), then be honest for once in your life and fulfill your obligations:

➤ Return to Ukrainians all savings stolen in 1991–1992 (over $140 billion at the exchange rate back then). With interest for 33 years it's close to a trillion. Cash or gold — we don't mind.

➤ Pay reparations for the Holodomor (recognized as genocide by 30+ countries), for the Executed Renaissance, for the deportation of Crimean Tatars, for all NKVD torture chambers, and for every ton of grain, gold, and black soil looted from Ukraine.

➤ Give back Kuban, Starodub region, Slobozhanshchyna, Taganrog, Belgorod, Kursk, and all other ethnic Ukrainian territories that Stalin cut off from the Ukrainian Republic and attached to the RSFSR.

➤ Compensate for 100,000+ Ukrainians killed since 2022 and the trillions of dollars in destroyed infrastructure. The invoice will be issued separately.

And if you, suddenly, are NOT the legal successor of the USSR (which would actually be more honest), then:

➤ Immediately vacate the permanent seat in the UN Security Council (because it belonged to the USSR, not the "Russian Federation").

➤ Hand over the entire Soviet gold reserve, all foreign assets, the space program, nuclear weapons, and the seat in the G8/G20.

➤ Recognize the independence of all 14 republics you still consider "yours" within the Russian Federation.

Choose any option.

Just quickly — because Ukrainians' patience has already run out.

And Trump won't be protecting you forever.


https://x.com/DevanaUkraine/status/1998073336547672482
(A message from a Ukrainian who has seen too much)

Many will laugh at the title. 
"Ukraine is bleeding, how can Russia have lost?" 
Give me 4 minutes and I'll prove – even to the most stubborn tankie – that Russia is already dead. It just hasn't fallen yet.

1. We've always fought alone – and we've always won in the end 
For 400 years Russia tried to erase us: 
– serfdom (slavery) 
– engineered famines 
– banning our language 
– burning our books 
Nobody ever helped. No weapons, no allies. 
And yet: 
1612 – Ukrainian Cossacks took Moscow 
1921 – we bled the Red Army white 
1942-1956 – UPA fought both Nazis and Soviets in the forests 
1991 – we buried the USSR despite Bush Sr flying to Kyiv to beg us to stay in the empire 

We have never surrendered. Ever. 
We don't know how.

2. Today Russia is paying a price that even the Soviet Union never paid 
– 1,200–1,500 soldiers lost every single day (British MoD & Russian Mediazona numbers) 
– Over 800,000 killed or maimed in three years 
– More than the USSR lost in 10 years of Afghanistan 
– They take one burned village and celebrate like it's Berlin 1945 

Russia is spending $300 million a day on this war. 
Their own economists say the economy is overheating and will crash by 2027 latest. 
Oil & gas – their only real export – are slowly becoming yesterday's news.

3. Even if Russia somehow occupied all of Ukraine tomorrow... it would be suicide 
40+ million people who hate them with every cell. 
Permanent insurgency. Explosions in Moscow every week. 
Sanctions forever. 
In 10–15 years Russia would collapse exactly like the USSR – only faster and bloodier. 

"Victory" for Russia = national suicide with extra steps.

4. Ukraine is the wild lion 
Russia is the drunk idiot hitting the lion on the nose with a stick, thinking it will obey. 
The US and Europe are holding the lion by a rope, whispering: 
"Please don't eat him yet, we still need Russian gas..." 

Question is: how long will the rope hold?

I don't see a single scenario – not one – where Russia comes out of this alive, rich, or respected. 
Not military victory. 
Not frozen conflict. 
Not "saving face" like Scholz and Macron wanted to give them. 

Russia is finished. The only question is how many more graves it digs before it admits it.


https://www.decodingtrolls.net/p/podcast-pensees-122?utm_source=substack&publication_id=1168327&post_id=180565679&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1kglih&triedRedirect=true

from https://vk.com/wall-219560484_284661 The names of American states can help you learn the language of the Native Americans, the country's original inhabitants.
After all, half of the US states, namely 26, have names associated with Native American peoples.
Alabama: Named after the Alabama or Alibamu tribe, who spoke Muskogean languages. There are different versions of the meaning: "brush clearers" or "herb gatherers."
Alaska: The name comes from the Aleut word "alaxsxaq", which means "mainland".
Arizona: The name comes from the O'odham word "alĭ ṣonak", meaning "small spring".
Connecticut: The name comes from the Mohican word "quonehtacut", meaning "place of a long tidal river".
Hawaii: The original word in the Hawaiian language meaning "homeland".
Illinois: The name comes from the word "illiniwek", meaning "people".
Iowa: Named for the Ioway tribe, whose name translates as "gray snowflake."
Kansas: Named for the Kansa tribe, whose name translates as "people of the south wind."
Kentucky: Origin unclear, possibly from the Iroquois word "Kentake," meaning "in the meadow."
Massachusetts: Named from the Algonquian word "Massadchu-es-et," meaning "big-hill-small-place."
Michigan: From the Chippewa word "Michigama," meaning "big lake."
Minnesota: Named from the Dakota word "Minisota," meaning "white water."
Mississippi: Named for the river so named by the Choctaw, meaning "great water" or "father of waters."
Missouri: Named for the Missouri tribe, whose name translates as "those who have canoes."
Utah: From the Ute tribe. Translates as "living above" or "living in the mountains."
Oklahoma: A Choctaw word meaning "red people."
Dakota: A Sioux name meaning "friend, ally."
Idaho: In the Shoshone language, idaho means "mountain gem."
Arkansas: From the Quapaw word akakaze, meaning "lower river people" of the Kansa tribe.
Wyoming: The word "Wyoming" comes from a corruption of xwé:wamənk from the Munsee language and means "in the large river valley."
Wisconsin: The word "wisconsin" comes from the Algonquian languages. Scholars still debate its meaning because the native tribes were decimated long before the United States emerged. It most likely meant "red rocks" or "place of red rocks" (the bottom of the Wisconsin River is red).
Indiana: This one is simple – as recently as the 1760s, this state was inhabited exclusively by Native Americans, so Europeans called it "Indian land," or "Indiana."
Nebraska: This Oto word, Ñí Brásge (or Omaha Ní Btháska), means "flat water" – referring to the Platte River, which flows through the state.

New Mexico: Named after the country. Mexico is a place name from the Aztec language Nahuatl, meaning "city of the Aztecs." It may also refer to Mextli, the Aztec god of war.

Ohio: derived from Ohiyo, "beautiful," which is the Seneca name for the Ohio River.

Oregon: Derived from oolighan, the Chinook name for a small fish found in the state's waters.

Tennessee: Derived from Tanasi and/or Tanaski, names thought by some to be two separate Cherokee towns in the region, but may in fact have been dual names for the same town.

Texas: Comes from the Caddo Indian word Taysha, which means "friend" or "ally."

And the city of Miami: comes from Mayaimi, one of ten words recorded from the language of the now-extinct Mayaimi people, meaning "big water," referring to the large lake on whose shores they lived.

Archætyping and the "Weakness" Narrative. National Security Strategy and Media Narratives. Marshall Plan for Russia Troll. Korea Scenario. Elections and Sovereignty. Civilizational War and Druidy Don.
https://www.disinfolklore.net/p/archtyping-in-daily-newsdisinfolklore?utm_source=substack&publication_id=1445587&post_id=181305288&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1kglih&triedRedirect=true

https://www.decodingtrolls.net/p/podcast-pensees-123?utm_source=substack&publication_id=1168327&post_id=181295404&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1kglih&triedRedirect=true

https://robinhorsfall.substack.com/p/destroying-the-usa-and-the-western?utm_source=substack&publication_id=3041702&post_id=181255153&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1kglih&triedRedirect=true

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4068179-permafrost-thaw-threatens-russias-economy-intelligence.html

https://x.com/Kasparov63/status/1998386128219439527
Most importantly, Crimea is Ukraine.

https://x.com/rshereme/status/1998898195884060690
You want to calculate what Ukraine "costs"?
Fine. Let's calculate what the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum owe Ukraine. People who complain about "how much the West spends on Ukraine" forget one thing:

Ukraine has already paid the highest possible price for promises that were never fulfilled.

⸻

What Ukraine gave up under the Budapest Memorandum
Ukraine surrendered the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal: •1,900 strategic nuclear warheads •176 ICBMs •44 Tu-160 / Tu-95MS strategic bombers •Full launch, storage, and command infrastructure

Current value: $2–4 trillion. Yes — trillion.

Ukraine traded this arsenal for security guarantees from the US, UK, and Russia. Guarantees that cracked in 2014 and completely collapsed in 2022.

⸻

How much the US has spent on Ukraine
In 11 years of war, the total US support amounts to:

$80–90 billion.

For comparison: Ukraine gave up a nuclear deterrent worth 30–50 times more.

⸻

How US support has been restricted
For years, Ukraine was denied critical tools needed for survival: •ATACMS long-range missiles •F-16 fighter jets •Adequate Patriot air-defense systems •Permission to strike inside Russia (only partially allowed in 2024–25)

These delays cost thousands of Ukrainian lives and entire cities that could have been saved.

⸻

The real cost of war for Ukraine
In 11 years: •450,000+ killed and wounded •Over 50% of energy infrastructure destroyed •Trillion-dollar economic losses •Factories, investments, and human capital wiped out •A development trajectory comparable to Poland's — shattered not only by Russian missiles but also by Western hesitation

⸻

So who really owes whom?
Ukraine never asked for charity. Ukraine asked its guarantors to honor their own signatures.

While the US and UK insisted the Budapest Memorandum "was not binding," Russia prepared for a full-scale invasion.

Today, Ukraine is defending: •NATO's entire eastern flank •Europe's energy routes •The Black Sea •The global security system the United States built after WWII

Ukraine is presenting the real bill: for cities erased, for millions of lives broken, for decades of development stolen — and for the security guarantees that existed only on paper.

And that bill is not for Ukraine to pay. It is for those who promised protection — and failed to deliver it.

Author: Yuliya Azizova

https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1998811185806749774
Those who believe or claim that "if Ukraine gives up part of its territory - or even the whole country - peace will come" either do not understand how the Russian state operates or are deliberately misleading others.

It's enough to look at what Russia does wherever it manages to entrench itself: each occupied territory is turned into a space where land, infrastructure and people are either destroyed or repurposed to serve Russia's economy and war effort.

And this is not a "new course" for the Kremlin.

Historically, Russia has never stopped at what it seized: it incorporated, subdued, and exploited. In the early 20th century, during the civil war and "Sovietization" of Ukraine, the same pragmatic formula applied: control of territory = control of the population. Registration, coercion, mobilization, repression, "re-education." The war was not only for land - it was to turn society into a resource.

Russia's wars in Chechnya demonstrated the very same logic: the defiant were killed, the rest became fully controlled.

Today, in the occupied Ukrainian territories, we see the same steps:

▪️ First, "legalization" of control through passportization: a Russian passport equals survival.

Access to healthcare, employment, property, social benefits, education, and even movement is tied to having Russian documents. This is not bureaucracy, it is a mechanism to force people to "fit into" the occupation order.

A century ago, the Bolsheviks used registers, commissariats, certificates and supply control for the same purpose: if you wanted to survive, you had to be registered and kept under the system's control.

▪️ Second, the repressive framework.

Occupation brings with it filtration, detentions, torture, "cases" for disloyalty - and systematic hunting for those capable of organizing resistance: veterans, activists, journalists, civil servants, teachers.

In 1918-1921, the Bolsheviks consolidated power in exactly the same way - not through persuasion, but through punitive infrastructure: first crush the elites and alternative institutions, then "rewire" society.

▪️ Third - the most terrifying: turning people into "human resources" for war.

In the occupied territories, Russia is pulling Ukrainians into its draft system through registries, military commissariats, and forced "status changes"; expanding contract enlistment through blackmail and dependency; and using places of detention as channels of coercion.

According to data from the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, presented by Dmytro Usov at Crimea Global, from February 2022 to July 2025 Russia forcibly mobilized 46,327 Ukrainian citizens from the occupied territories; it was also reported that former Ukrainian servicemen were being used, that units were formed (two battalions and two detachments), and that 62 contracts had been signed.

The historical parallel is direct: in 1918, the Red Army quickly became a mass conscription machine, and the Ukrainian population was used as a mobilization reserve for the imperial center; even during the Winter War of 1939-1940, formations from Soviet Ukraine (notably the 44th and 70th divisions) were sent to the Finnish front, and Ukrainian sources estimate up to ~40,000 Ukrainians killed in that war.

▪️ Fourth, long-term planning - children and identity.

Under Russian occupation, "patriotic" and military upbringing, cadet programs, preparation for service in Russian structures, and pressure on the Ukrainian language and curriculum are launched.

Early Soviet rule operated in exactly the same way: to raise a "new person," impose one history, one loyalty - and create a generation more easily mobilized and controlled.

▪️ And finally - economy and territory as a staging ground.

Occupied lands are reconfigured to fit Russian supply chains and wartime needs, while the territory itself is repurposed for military logistics and basing.

A hundred years ago, the imperial center viewed Ukraine the same way - as a critical resource base for grain, industry, transport hubs - and subordinated all of it to war.

Today the principle is the same, only the tools are more modern.

‼️ This is why the occupation of Ukraine that Russia dreams of is not the "end of the war" for Russia. It is a resource that Putin wants to obtain for future wars:

• human (draft and contracts);
• territorial (a forward operating platform);
• economic (restructured production and logistics);
• ideological (re-educating children and normalizing violence).

History shows a simple truth: when Russia gains control of a territory, it converts it into control over people - and into the capacity to wage further wars.

https://x.com/shanaka86/status/1999015750942732381
THE GREAT ASSET HEIST

While you were sleeping, the economic map of Europe was being redrawn in Miami.

Not Brussels. Not Geneva. Miami.

Here is what just leaked:

The Trump administration has proposed that Wall Street tap $200 billion of frozen Russian sovereign assets to fund U.S. managed projects in Ukraine. Including a data center powered by a nuclear plant still under Russian military occupation.

Read that again.

American firms would invest in Russian Arctic oil drilling and rare earth extraction. Russian energy flows to Europe would be restored. U.S. companies would take 50% of reconstruction profits.

One European official who saw the documents said it plainly: "It is like Yalta."

The 1945 conference where world powers carved up postwar Europe. Without Europeans in the room.

Eighty years later, history rhymes.

December 10, 2025: Zelensky held his first reconstruction meeting with Treasury Secretary Bessent, Jared Kushner, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

December 18, 2025: The EU votes on whether to seize these same assets themselves.

Belgium holds $183 billion at Euroclear. Its Prime Minister calls the competing EU plan "fundamentally wrong" and warns Russian litigation could "mean bankruptcy for Belgium."

The math is brutal:

Europe froze the money. America wants to spend it. Russia wants it back. Ukraine needs it to survive.

Four parties. One pot. Zero trust.

What you are witnessing is not a peace negotiation.

It is the largest sovereign wealth transfer negotiation in modern history.

The question is not whether Ukraine gets rebuilt.

The question is who owns the rebuild.

And who owns the rebuild owns the next fifty years of European energy, security, and sovereignty.

The post 1945 order took decades to construct.

It is being renegotiated in weeks.

Watch December 18.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukrainians-are-proudly-democratic-but-resoundingly-reject-wartime-elections/?utm_source=chatgpt.com


https://www.intellinews.com/us-security-strategy-contains-more-concerning-material-for-europe-than-was-made-public-media-claim-in-disputed-report-416124/

https://www.foxnews.com/world/melania-trump-olena-zelenska-spotlight-billion-dollar-russian-plot-abduct-indoctrinate-ukrainian-kids

Melania Trump, Olena Zelenska spotlight billion-dollar Russian plot to abduct, indoctrinate Ukrainian kids Bring Back Kids UA has verified 9,221 cases of children taken to Russia and subjected to identity-erasing propaganda

from https://vk.com/wall-219560484_284661 The names of American states can help you learn the language of the Native Americans, the country's original inhabitants.

https://vk.com/wall-185318752_134234
In 1811, Napoleon conquered the Netherlands and immediately demanded that all residents of the country have surnames, just like the French.

In fact, the Dutch didn't always use surnames. They might be named after the city they lived in, or after a river...
They might use their father's names (something similar to our patronymics) or go by nicknames. But the French emperor was adamant: let them have surnames!

Believing the annexation to be temporary and that these unnecessary names would be abolished after liberation, the Dutch took a humorous approach to complying with the order.
Many chose to adopt a bizarre name, such as Rotmensen ("rotten people") or Naaktgeboren ("born naked").

https://vk.com/wall-107396459_1036099
5 laws of stupidity

Article from the famous economist about what idiots are and whether it is possible to be with them.

Italian historian and economist Carlo Cipolla has taken a profound approach to the question of the nature of stupidity. Years of research led him to formulate five universal laws that apply to any society. It turns out that stupidity itself is far more dangerous than we're accustomed to thinking.

The First Law of Stupidity

People always underestimate the number of idiots around them.
It sounds like vague platitudes and snobbery, but life proves its truth. No matter how you evaluate people, you will constantly encounter the following situations:

A man who always appeared intelligent and rational turns out to be an incredible idiot;

Fools always appear in the most unexpected places at the most inopportune times to ruin your plans.

The Second Law of Stupidity

The likelihood of a person being stupid is independent of their other qualities.
Years of observation and experience have confirmed my belief that people are not equal; some are stupid, others are not, and this quality is determined by nature, not by cultural factors. A person is a fool just as they are red-haired or have O blood type. They were born that way by the will of Providence, if you will.

Education has nothing to do with the likelihood of a certain number of fools in society. This has been confirmed by numerous university experiments on five groups: students, office workers, support staff, administrative staff, and faculty. When I analyzed a group of low-skilled employees, the number of fools turned out to be larger than I expected (First Law), and I attributed this to social conditions: poverty, segregation, lack of education. But going higher up the social ladder, I saw the same ratio among white-collar workers and students. Even more impressive was seeing the same percentage among the professors—whether I was at a small provincial college or a large university, the same proportion of faculty turned out to be idiots. I was so astonished by the results that I decided to conduct an experiment on the intellectual elite—Nobel laureates. The result confirmed the superpowers of nature: the same number of laureates were stupid.

The idea expressed by the Second Law is difficult to accept, but numerous experiments confirm its ironclad truth. Feminists will support the Second Law because it states that there are no more fools among women than fools among men. Residents of Third World countries will take comfort in the fact that developed countries are not so developed. The implications of the Second Law are frightening: will you move in British high society or move to Polynesia and befriend the local bounty hunters; Whether you lock yourself away in a monastery or spend the rest of your life in a casino surrounded by prostitutes, you will always encounter the same number of idiots, which (First Law) will always exceed your expectations.

The Third Law of Stupidity

A fool is a person whose actions lead to losses for another person or group of people, and at the same time do not bring benefit to the actor himself or even turn out to be harmful to him.

The third law suggests that all people are divided into four groups: simpletons (S), smart guys (S), bandits (B) and fools (F).

If Petya takes an action that results in losses for him and benefits Vasya, he is a simpleton (zone P).
If Petya does something that benefits both him and Vasya, he is a smart guy because he acted smartly (zone U). If Petya's actions benefit him, but Vasya suffers, Petya is a bandit (zone B). And finally, Stupid Petya is in zone G, in the minus zone on both axes.

It's not hard to imagine the scale of damage fools can inflict when they gain positions of power and wield political and social authority. But it's worth clarifying what exactly makes a fool dangerous.

Stupid people are dangerous because rational people have difficulty understanding the logic of irrational behavior. A smart person can understand the logic of a bandit because a bandit is rational—he only wants more benefits and is not smart enough to earn them. Bandits are predictable, so you can build a defense against them. It's impossible to predict a fool's actions; they'll harm you without reason, without purpose, without plan, in the most unexpected place, at the most inopportune time. You have no way to predict when an idiot will strike. In a confrontation with a fool, a smart person completely surrenders to the fool's mercy, a random creature with no rules the smart person understands.

Such an attack of stupidity usually leaves one in shock.

Even when an attack becomes obvious, it is difficult to defend against because it does not have a rational structure.

This is what Schiller wrote about: "Even the gods are powerless against stupidity."

The Fourth Law of Stupidity

Non-fools always underestimate the destructive potential of fools.

In particular, non-fools constantly forget that dealing with a fool, at any time, in any place, and under any circumstances, means making a mistake that will cost you dearly in the future.

Simpletons from Zone P are usually unable to recognize the danger of fools from Zone G, which is not surprising. What is surprising is that fools are also underestimated by both smart guys and bandits. In the presence of a fool, they relax and enjoy their intellectual superiority, instead of quickly mobilizing and minimizing the damage when the fool does something.

A common stereotype is that a fool only harms himself. No. Fools should not be confused with helpless simpletons. Never form an alliance with fools, imagining that you can use them for your own gain—if you do so, it is obvious that you do not understand the nature of stupidity. So you yourself provide the fool with a field in which he can roam and cause more damage.

The Fifth Law of Stupidity

A fool is the most dangerous personality type.

Investigation:
A fool is more dangerous than a bandit.

The result of the ideal bandit's actions is a simple transfer of wealth from one person to another. Society as a whole benefits neither from this. If all members of this society were ideal bandits, it would quietly rot, but the catastrophe would not have occurred. The entire system would boil down to a wealth transfer for the benefit of those who undertake it, and since everyone would be a perfect bandit, the system would enjoy stability. This is easy to see in any country where the government is corrupt and citizens constantly circumvent the law.

Whenever the dupaki come out on stage, the captain changes at midnight. They inflict damage, not extracting benefits. They destroy good, society suffers.

History confirms that in any period, a country progresses when there are enough smart people in power to restrain the active fools and prevent them from destroying what the smart ones have created. In a regressing country, there are just as many fools, but among the elite, there is an increasing proportion of stupid bandits, and among the rest of the population, naive simpletons. Such a change in the balance invariably increases the destructive consequences of the actions of fools, and the whole country goes to hell.

https://x.com/DevanaUkraine/status/2000188929056596244
Hitler: 11–12M
Punished at Nuremberg — Nazism disappeared for decades.

Lenin: 3–8M
Stalin: 9–20M
Not punished — monuments instead.

Putin: 1M+ (official data only, without Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Crimea), Genocide in Ukraine, 1999 apartment bombings, murdered journalists, terror in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria)

Pattern is obvious:
When evil is punished — it ends.
When evil is not punished — it returns with a new face.
🍞 Artificial famine
🧠 Executed intelligentsia
🚆 Deportations of children
📢 Lies about a "single people"

Germany paid for Hitler with blood, shame, and trillions — and recovered.
Russia paid nothing for Stalin — and keeps spilling blood.

That's why Ukraine fights.
Against Russia — and its allies: China, North Korea, Iran.
Even if alone. Because stopping means death — for us and for others.
And neither Trump, nor Orban, nor Fico can force good to kneel before evil!
https://x.com/DevanaUkraine/status/2000259298413183033
More Striking Footage from the 2014 War.Residents of Donetsk noticed that Russians were firing simultaneously at Ukrainian Army positions and at the city of Donetsk itself at the same time.
In the second video, a Russian soldier admits in an interview that Russians deliberately shelled Luhansk, because the population supported Ukraine and they wanted to turn people against Ukraine.

In the third video, residents of Donbas say they personally saw that the city was being intentionally shelled by the Russian army, not by the Ukrainian army, as Russian propaganda claims.

I remind you that already in 2022, Russians were openly celebrating the terror against Ukraine, claiming it was "revenge" for Ukraine allegedly bombing Donbas — which is clearly false. And Russian bots still spam this lie in comment sections to this day.
https://x.com/lana_s2022/status/1702227566776447280

cause imperial russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 &2022, cause Ukraine is the real RUS, and Ukrainians are the REAL Russians, and "russians" are just Moscovites of which Herodotus sais they are just butchers(katsaps) and cannibals and it SHOWS
https://x.com/provemewrong411/status/2000319389237919980

https://uhgi.org/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Ukrainian History Global Initiative



https://x.com/Sunnymica/status/2000603426384720172

Quick question for every journalist covering the Ukraine/Berlin talks:

Have you read Section 257 of CAATSA?

It's current US law. Trump signed it himself in 2017. It says the US will NEVER recognize the separation of ANY Ukrainian territory through military force.

Never. That's what it says. Still in effect.

So why is no one asking why the President is demanding Ukraine do exactly what US law says America will never recognize? This isn't obscure. It passed 419-3 in the House, 98-2 in the Senate. Do your job.

https://x.com/yasminalombaert/status/2000732091965915606

Listen to Bernard-Henri Lévy—a philosopher who has not just witnessed the war firsthand but argues that Ukraine is actually Europe's most vital security asset.

 As BHL puts it, Kyiv has the continent's best army, full stop, with the high-intensity experience to prove it. This isn't just about winning; it's about making Ukraine the ultimate guarantor of European safety. Let's hear why he thinks bringing Ukraine into NATO isn't a risk—it's the only smart move against putin's global chaos.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: "For me, the security guarantees are not really NATO. If Ukraine were to join NATO, it wouldn't be NATO guaranteeing Ukraine's security. I believe it would be Ukraine that would be a security guarantee for Europe."

Host: "You wrote an editorial about that."

Bernard-Henri Lévy: "Yes, an editorial, because I think it is the best army in Europe. It is the only one that knows how to fight, it is the only one capable of deploying a significant number of men, and it is the only one that knows how to use our own weapons. The Caesar cannons, the .... , which are probably already in the field for some, and other sophisticated weapons. The only ones who know how to operate them today are the Ukrainians. So I think..."

Host: "French soldiers know how to do it too."

Bernard-Henri Lévy: "Well yes, they know how to do it, except they know how to do it in theory. Knowing how to do it as I have seen the Ukrainians do it... I saw a French Caesar cannon in operation in Pokrovsk, it's in my latest film, "Dans notre guerre" (In Our War). Well, the Ukrainians, they know how to do it in the snow, they know how to do it under fire, they know how to do it with attackers 2 km away. It's not quite the same knowledge. So, what I mean is that those who lose the most from this compromise are perhaps precisely the European countries and the NATO countries, because, even though the Americans will never let Ukraine join NATO (for now with Donald Trump it is impossible), well, it's a shame for us. There you have it. It's a shame for France, it's a shame for Poland, it's a shame for the Baltic States, it's a shame for the West. There, I'm telling you.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Secondly, regarding the security guarantees from the United States and Europe towards Ukraine... On that, I am, like the Ukrainians often are, extremely skeptical. Because they have had security guarantees, since the Budapest Memorandum, when they were told: "Be nice, we are going to consolidate the nuclear weapons, there is no reason to leave them in both Russia and Ukraine. We'll gather everything in Ukraine, but we will give you security guarantees."
The result was, a few years later, the shooting on the Maidan: 105 or 106 young people massacred in plain sight, without Europe lifting a finger, by militiamen in Moscow's pay, and so on.
So, the true security guarantee for Ukraine is its army, its president, its civilian population, the skill and the incredible intelligence and composure of this man. Honestly, I don't know how this man, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I don't know how he holds up. I don't know how he endures these trials, these humiliations, this... the stupidity that he is sometimes confronted with. I... he is a... there is heroism and there is saintliness in Zelenskyy. There is saintliness."

8,000 Years Ago Women Made a Choice That Erased 90% of Men Forever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=054XkNgMsWU

Why Putin Can't Stop: The Lie Keeping Russia Fighting in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bwid-03LBg&list=PL6d9EIByxz1AdkmIOYUlrDd0rmByq5zSN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iiU3EP6cFY&list=PL6d9EIByxz1AdkmIOYUlrDd0rmByq5zSN&index=3
The Real Roots of the Russia–Ukraine War No One Talks About

https://thinkdifferente.substack.com/p/why-is-jesus-birth-celebrated-on

all cultures in the world so nearly all people in old times and now celebrating the winter solstice, symbolizing the rebirth of the sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bZNvnYyrcA
HOW 99% of Ancient Human Population Wiped Out 900,000 Years Ago | HISTORY FOR SLEEP

1280 people only

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoTWPjh-fVg
The Legend of Krampus: Dark History of Christmas

https://thinkdifferente.substack.com/p/why-is-jesus-birth-celebrated-on
all cultures in the world so nearly all people in old times and now celebrating the winter solstice, symbolizing the rebirth of the sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bZNvnYyrcA
HOW 99% of Ancient Human Population Wiped Out 900,000 Years Ago | HISTORY FOR SLEEP

1280 people only

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoTWPjh-fVg
The Legend of Krampus: Dark History of Christmas

https://thinkdifferente.substack.com/p/why-is-jesus-birth-celebrated-on
all cultures in the world so nearly all people in old times and now celebrating the winter solstice, symbolizing the rebirth of the sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

https://x.com/yasminalombaert/status/2005086709705282004
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4AlCuANUag


Leonid Ivashov, a heavy-hitting retired Russian Colonel General, recently went rogue and started saying out loud what most people in the Kremlin only dare to whisper. He didn't hold back, basically calling things out for being a mess.
The Big Picture: "We're in Trouble"
Ivashov starts by basically saying Russia is a mess right now. He's not sugarcoating it: we're lonely on the world stage (only a handful of countries even talk to us at the UN), and we've lost our influence over our neighbors. He even compares putin's era to the start of the Soviet collapse under Gorbachev—lots of talk, but everything is breaking.

1. The "Broken Stuff" List

He goes through a laundry list of things that aren't working:

 * Planes: We can't build our own passenger jets. We're basically cannibalising old Boeings for parts.

 * Space: He tells a wild story about how the last working manned launchpad at Baikonur was accidentally torched because of poor maintenance. Now, Russia effectively can't send people to space.

 * Food: He warns that the food in the shops is becoming toxic garbage filled with palm oil because the economy is so squeezed.

 * Corruption: He mentions that 11 trillion rubles were allegedly stolen by the Ministry of Defense. He points out that almost every big corrupt official is a member of the ruling party.

2. The "Spectacle" (The Press Conference)

He calls putin's annual "Direct Line" a brilliant theatrical performance.

The Setup: Everything was staged—the suit, the tie, even the camera angles to hide putin's nervous leg twitching.

The Script: He says the questions were totally rehearsed.
putin knew what was coming. The few "real" questions from foreign journalists were just dodged with "whataboutism" or jokes.

 The "Reality Gap": While putin was smiling and talking about how great the economy is, the "ticker tape" on the screen was showing real people from the regions begging for water, roads, and enough money to buy medicine.

3. The War (Tactics vs. Strategy)

Ivashov is really unimpressed with the military leadership.

 * Small Thinking: He says putin is stuck at a "tactical" level—bragging about taking one tiny village or a single house.

The NATO Gap: He admits that Ukraine, backed by NATO tech and satellite intel, is hitting Russia where it hurts (oil refineries and airfields), while Russia is just throwing shells at the problem.

4. The Demographic "Cliff"

He's really worried that Russians are simply dying out. The birth rate is way below what's needed to survive, and putin's excuse is just "well, it's a global trend." Ivashov thinks that's a cop-out for a country that's literally shrinking.

The Verdict

Ivashov ends with looking pretty defeated. He basically says:
"Look, I've been a professor, a general, and a student of geopolitics for decades. I watched this whole 4-hour show, and I didn't see a leader, a commander, or a protector of the people. I just saw a guy living in a fairy tale while the rest of the country is struggling to survive on 16,000 rubles a month."

Basically, his message is: The "Spectacle" looks great on TV, but you can't eat a stage play, and you can't fly a museum piece to space.

Putin's achievements since 2022:
✅ To wake NATO from its lethargy
✅ To double the length of Russia's borders with NATO
✅ To lose most of the country's allies
✅ To lose 300+ billion dollars in gold and foreign exchange reserves and to deplete a decade's worth of savings
✅ To hand over the oil and natural gas markets to the US and OPEC
✅ To sell oil to China at one-third of the price
✅ To become a dependency of China by exchanging "beads" for the national wealth of his country and undermining future generations
✅ To exterminate or maim at least 1.5 million compatriots
✅ To lose the country's influence in the majority of the Caucasus, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia
✅ To become internationally wanted for war crimes
The next and last task: to dismantle Russia.
Source: https://x.com/Onisenko/status/2005533168690987191?s=20

Many, speaking "Glory to Ukraine", do not understand the full meaning of this saying.
Glory is the goddess of war victory and hunting luck. One of the main and oldest deities in the Ukrainians of Nadnipro. With her image on the shields of dew went into battle. Under the assumption of some scientists, from the name of glory comes the name of Slavs. ( For P. A little bit)
Our ancestors went into battle, shouting - Glory! , turning to the Goddess of glory for help and good luck in battle. In our time - Glory! , no longer has a direct relation to the Goddess of Glory, but the essence remains.
Therefore, when we say "Glory to Ukraine" - we wish Ukraine victory in battle, "Glory to Heroes" - victories of living heroes (as glorious participants) of the war, "Glory to the Nation" - victories of the nation. And even when we say "glory to God" - we wish God victory in the eternal war with darkness.
"Glory to Ukraine" is not an empty publicity or fanatic glorification of Ukraine as places on the map of the world. It's a battle, war cry charged by the power of our ancestors.
Glory to Ukraine!

https://www.facebook.com/leonid.polevoy.12/posts/pfbid08mXf5NTJx4UMzAnqUuvJugdRTQiBDtgYvVKTcnnvDXoLdRtuRmorao9LAj6ARRCHl

When 740 children died at sea and every country said "no," one man - who had every reason to be silent - said "yes."
The year was 1942.
The ship drifted in the Arabian Sea, like a floating coffin.
There were 740 Polish children on board. Orphans. Survivors of Soviet labor camps, where their parents died of cold or starvation. They escaped through Iran, but a more terrible sentence awaited them.
No one wanted to accept them.
The British Empire - the most powerful force of its time - refused them to enter port-by-port along the Indian coast.
"It's not our responsibility . Sail on."
Almost done with food. There were no cure. Time's up.
Twelve-year-old Maria shook the hand of her six-year-old brother. She promised her dying mother to protect him. But how do you protect someone when the whole world turns its back on them?
And then the news came to a small palace in Gujarat.
Ruler was jam sahib digvijay singhji maharaja of navanagar. In the empire's system, he was just a small prince. The British controlled his ports, trade and army. He had every reason to obey and remain silent.
When advisers said 740 children were stranded at sea after Britain refused to take them to any port in India, he asked just one question:
"How many children are there? »
"Seven hundred and forty, Your Highness."
He paused and calmly said:
'The British can control my harbours. But they don't control my conscience. These children are docking in Navanagarh.
Advisors warned him:
"If you challenge Britain—"
"So, I'll quit."
He sent a message to the ship: you are welcome here.
When British officials protested, the Maharaja remained adamant.
"If the strong don't want to save the children," he said.
I, the weak, will do what you are not capable of.
In August 1942, the ship had difficulty entering the port of Navanagara under the blazing summer sun.
Children walked the trail like ghosts—exhausted, empty-eyed, many too weak to walk. They have learnt to expect kindness. Hope has turned dangerous.
Maharaja was waiting for them at the dock.
Dressed simply, in white, he knelt down to be at their eye level. Through the translators, he uttered words that they had not heard since their parents died.
"You are no longer orphans.
You are my children now.
I am your Bapu - your father."
Maria felt her brother's hand shake. After months of rejections, these words seemed unreal.
But he was serious.
He didn't build a refugee camp.
He built the house.
In Balachadi, he created something amazing - little Poland in India. Polish teachers, who understand trauma. Polish food with a taste of memory. Polish songs in Indian gardens. Xmas trees under tropical sky.
"Suffering tried to wipe you out," he said. —
But your language, culture and traditions are sacred. Let's save them here."
Children who were told they had no place in the world finally found a home.
They were laughing again. Once again they played. Back to school. Maria watched her brother chasing peacocks in the palace garden, and her body remembered again what safety means.
Maharaja used to visit them often. He memorized names. Celebrated the birthdays. Been watching high school plays. Comforted the children crying for their parents who will not return. He paid doctors, teachers, clothes and food - from his own wealth.
For four years, while the world was engulfed by war, 740 children lived not as refugees, but as families.
When the war was over and it was time to leave, many wept. Balachadi became the only house they really knew.
These kids have grown up and moved all over the world - becoming doctors, teachers, engineers, parents, grandparents. And they never forgot.
The Good Maharaja Square in Warsaw appeared in Poland. The schools are bearing his name. He was awarded Poland's highest awards.
But his real monument is not made of stone.
That's 740 lives.
Today, at the age of eighty and ninety, they are still getting together. They tell their grandchildren about an Indian king who refused to turn compassion into a political calculation.
In 1942, when empires closed their doors, one man - with no obligations and with every reason to remain silent - looked at the suffering and said:
"They are my children now."
And therefore the world has changed - quietly, forever and irrevocably.
From the internet

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

Jadeja is personally credited for saving around a thousand Polish orphans between 1942 and 1946, following the Invasion of Poland. While serving as the Hindu delegate to the British war cabinet he convinced members of the Red Cross and Anders' Army to transport the orphans to Jamnagar, where he provided them with food, shelter, clothes, education, and medical care in the nearby coastal village of Balachadi. Following the Surrender of Germany, the orphans were returned to Poland.[1][2]

In 2011, Jadeja was posthumously bestowed the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of Poland, and is honoured at the Good Maharaja Square in Warsaw.

https://www.facebook.com/marina.trattner/posts/pfbid0VLRztM4fNVnCmJckP845FZYPxcWhLze2eD4YMG6suVMBWuTm3mZxgKLEdmg4kMW7l

Out of context of the event do not give a full understanding of the gravity of our history. That's why we decided to create a chronology of three logical lines: the formation of the state, the struggle for the metropolis, and the participation of our regiments in the decisive battles of the past. We have added social dimensions to them to show under which conditions these or other events took place.
The first line demonstrates the actions of kings and princes who governed the state, protected our rights, formed alliances and held Europe's defense from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
The second line outlines the processes involved in the spread of Christianity in our lands and the struggle for the metropolis. She makes it clear to track who was really a defender of the Christian faith and who only falsified historical sources, blessed bloodshed, and plundered temples in Kyiv
The third line demonstrates what decisive influence our regiments had on victory in glorious battles. How they shaped the look of Europe. With this line, we return to ourselves the real history and the zvices of the past, which the enemies often attributed to themselves.
When you look at all these processes from aerial view, you can clearly see that the Muscovites were our eternal enemy, not the "leader of the three nations".
The focus of our exhibition is the Kyiv Principality. Therefore we found the best experts in their fields, analyzed everything and created for you a chronology of the major events in the historical context that existed Kyiv .
We started with the Crimea of the III century AD and the spread of Christianity. Exactly at this time in large city centers in Crimea - Khersones and Bosporus - appeared the first Christian communities. Since the fourth century, Christianity has actively spread among the Crimean Goths, the first diocese were formed and bishops were appointed. It is known that the Gothic Bishop Cadm of Crimea in 325 participated in the First Cathedral of Nicae, attesting his presence by signing the cathedral designations. During this period in Crimea, spiritual and enlightenment centers were created, most of which were cave monasteries and temples. At the beginning of the VIII century, in the Khozar period, there are Gothic Sugdei and Fulla diocese led by bishops. Later, the Bosporsk and Kherson Eparchies are formed, which obeyed directly the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Here is a brief overview of the most important events in Kyiv
In 860, the Askold baptism of Russia took place. In 988 - Vladimir's baptism of Russia. In 989-996, built the first murovanij temple in Kyiv - the Church of the Virgin of the Ten. November 4, 1011 - during the principality of Vladimir - the beginning of construction of Sofia of Kyiv. On May 11, 1018 , - for the principality of Yaroslav - completion of construction; the construction of the cathedral was carried out by the same masters from Constantinople invited by Vladimir, who built to this Decent Church.
We clearly showed what territory had the name of Russia and where it was located at the moment of 1154. It is perfectly visible on the map of al-Idrisi "Tabula Rogeriana". It was analyzed in his article Igor Poluektov in the book "Treasures of Swedish Archives".
This map was created at the request of King of Sicily Roger II by the Arab scientist Mohammed al-Idrisi.
In the area of the fall of the Don in the Sea of Azov is marked the country of Kumania, and already behind it begin the lands of Russia to the west. The center of these lands is "ard al Rusia" - the left and right banks of the Dnieper (signed here as danabris, dnabr) between Kiev and Kanevo. The northeastern border of Russia is "muttasil ard kumania" - "united land of polovcív". Northwest border of Russia - Carpathians. It contains the inscription "muttasil ard al Rusia" - "united land of Russia".
Further, we demonstrated what toponyms were used in relation to our lands and the Kiev principality from the beginning:
The name Rosia (Rossia), adopted from Byzantium, is found next to the forms Russia, Ruscia, Ruzzia.
The name is Micro Russia (Greek. старι у ráσ ράα - Mikrá Rhōsía; Little Russia) meant "Russia is older, primary, main, ancient". It belonged to the territory of Kyiv and Galician-Volyn principality.
The name Megale Russia (Greek. пε п уσ наα - Megálē Rhōsía; Great Russia) meant "Russia later, pohídna, newly created". She belonged to the territory of Zalissie and Novgorod region.
These names the Russians twisted to call themselves "big brothers", and Ukrainians - "younger brothers" and cause them a complex of inferiority. We are updating the memory of the correct use of these terms.
This is what we do with using titles.
The title with the pretext "all of Russia" is noted in the letter of the brothers Andriy and Leo Yurievich to the Master of the Teutonic Order (1316) - duces totius terrae Russiae, Galiciae et Lademiriae.
Prince Yuri Troydenovich (1335) - dux totius Russiae Minoris ("Prince of All Small Russia").
Year 1492 - Vilnius land privilege equated princes, lords and boyars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Zhomoytsky (VKL) with the path of the Crown of Poland.
1493 - Moscow prince Ivan decided he was special and began to use the title "lord of all Russia".
While in VKL there was a powerful authorized Kyiv principality of Olekovych, Muscovite-Ryurikovych did not dare to use this title.
Thank you for your great inquiry of the Андрій Байцар terms.
Thank you for this latest addition about the use of the title "All Russia", Dmytro Wyrskyj
Chronology of Princes created in collaboration with Oleg Odnorozhenko Image of the seals of the Dukes courtesy of Олексій Шереметьєв The metropolitan chronology was created in collaboration with Димитрій Рудюк
Information board design done by our wonderful Oleksiy Chekal

https://www.facebook.com/ukrainians2021/posts/pfbid0286S4JXvEXAAdDWhYzosYzxhi1GPcq8YWMev3Vwinaphocu66VxZaLoG8agXi92gkl

👑 When Europe was still learning to be Europe - Kyiv already raised queens
Did you know that over a thousand years ago the daughters of Kyiv Prince Yaroslav the Wise were crowned in the most powerful countries of Europe?
More than one. Not two of them.
Four crowns - from one Kiev house.
It's not a myth and not "transfer".
This is a recorded history.
👑 Kyiv princes on European thrones
🔹 Anna Yaroslavna - Queen of France, wife of Henrykh and
🔹 Anastasia Yaroslavna is the queen of Hungary
🔹 Elizabeth Yaroslavna is the queen of Norway, and later of Denmark
🔹 Agatha Yaroslavna - Mother of Saint Margarita, Queen of Scotland
When European royal houses were looking for unions -
they looked neither West nor South, but Kyiv .
Because Kyiv Rus was a state to be reckoned with.
🌍 Kyiv is the center of European politics of the XI century
It's not over yet.
▪️ Prince Iziaslav, the son of Yaroslav, was married to a Polish princess.
▪️ Prince Vsevolod - with the daughter of the Byzantine emperor.
▪️ And the mother of this entire dynasty is Ingigerda, the daughter of the King of Sweden.
That is:
👉 France
👉 Hungary
👉 Norway
👉 Denmark
👉 Poland
👉 Byzantium
👉 Sweden
All roads lead to Kyiv
📖 Anna Yaroslavna is the queen who brought to Paris Kyiv
Anna Yaroslavna was not just "the king's wife".
She:
— knew four languages,
- was more educated than most of French acquaintances,
- brought to Paris the gospel from Kyiv
on which king of France sworn all the way up to the XVIII century.
Her signature is on the state documents -
at the time her husband was putting up a cross.
👉 Her descendants are 18 kings of France.
👑 Kiev blood in the British crown
And now a fact that is especially annoying for those who try to erase our history.
Queen Elizabeth II, who has recently passed into eternity,
was the descendant of Agata Yaroslavna - the Kiev Principality.
Yes, the same one whose daughter became Saint Queen of Scotland Margarita.
Is it a coincidence that Britain is today one of the most reliable allies of Ukraine?
Or maybe history has a long memory?
⚔️ Queens with character
Kyiv princes were not humble dolls at the throne.
🔹 Elizabeth, the Queen of the Vikings, responded to the threats of the self-holders in a way that today it would be called the style of the "Russian ship".
🔹 She saved the English Princess Gita and married her to our Vladimir Monomakh.
It was not a weak blood.
It was the blood of statehood.
❓ So where is "Russian"?
Nowhere.
Because Russia is the Kyiv .
Because Russia is Ukraine.
When Anna Yaroslavna was crowned in Paris,
In the place of the future Moscow still wolves drooling holes.
🇺🇦 The conclusion is simple
While someone in Europe is "weighing",
whether to let Ukraine into the EU,
worth reminding:
👉 We were in Europe back then when Europe was looking for us itself.
Kyiv gave Europe queens, kings and dynasties.
Moscow is nothing but problems.
And when they try to take away our identity,
you should just open the story.
💙💛 Glory to Ukraine.
Glory to Kyiv - the mother of European crowns.