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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Mar 28 24 tweets 9 min read
Some advice to Ukrainians:

1. Ukrainian hackers post Russian casualty numbers on Russian official websites and social media accounts. That's not bad. A better idea - post instructions for sabotage. For example, if you burn trackside relay cabinets, it will lead to huge delays🧵 Image
Russia is heavily reliant on railways. Russian autoroutes have always been of low quality (with few exceptions) and thanks to sanctions Russia will face difficulties with producing and repairing trucks. Railways sabotage will heavily undermine logistics and supply of Z-operation Image
Railways sabotage in Belarus is already so widespread that it's severely undermining supply of a northern Russian Z-army. In Russia it's less common. And yet, that's exactly what's happened yesterday - someone attempted to blow up a relay cabinet with a handmade bomb near Kaluga Image
Railway sabotage is great idea. First, it's small scale action which a regular guy can do. Just go and burn a relay cabinet. Second, it can inflict enormous damage. Third, railways are so long, it's just impossible to properly guard them all. Which makes them easy to attack Image
Consider that Russian military industry is very heavily concentrated in a few clusters. For example, MLRS systems like Grad are produced on Motovilihinskiye Zavody plant in Perm. Just one major production center in entire Russia - makes it easy to sabotage Image
Ofc this MLRS plant uses imported instruments. Their technologist mentioned Seco, Sandvick, Walter, Iscar, Mitsubishi, Ghuring, Botek and Tungaloy. He mentioned only one Russian plant which produces instruments of high enough quality - KZTS in Kirov. It's apparently a bottleneck Image
Btw: this also shows how important it is not to allow technological import into Russia. Polish activists did a great job blocking the trucks leaving to Belarus. Belarus has been the main hub for Russian smuggling since 2014. Now as it's blocked, they'll try to use Georgia I think
Transsiberian railway is a highly vulnerable communication line. It's the only viable way connecting European Russia with Siberia and with China. Thus it'll be highly important for smuggling and technological import Russia can't do without Image
On July 23, 2021 flood damaged a railroad bridge on the Transsiberian. As a result, 500 trains were delayed. Trade flows were disrupted: companies had to reduce their shipments by the railway by 50% between July 26-28. They didn't restore the normal schedule till mid August. Image
That shows how vulnerable is the critical infrastructure in Russia. My advice - make concise instructions with sabotage, especially railway sabotage, and post them on Russian official websites and social media accounts. It's way more efficient than posting casualty numbers Image
Not everyone in Russia agrees with Z-campaign. Here you see people in St Petersburg beating up a truck driver who put Z onto his truck
A guy in Voronezh tried burn down a military commissariat (recruiting station). He failed - they put the fire down, but his choice of aim was emotionally motivated and inefficient. Infrastructure sabotage is much better. Make instructions with visuals and post on official media Image
2. If possible, target Russian military and National Guard on social media and send them standard instructions on how to avoid being sent to Ukraine. Which pretexts you can use, what instruments you have. No moral preaching, just - you can tell them A, B, C and they'll fuck off
3. Make public pressure on Western companies that refuse to leave the Russian market. French supermarket chain Auchan, and German Globus told they aren't leaving. Pressure them publicly, make it impossible for them to remain. That's important for increasing the systemic shock Image
4. Make pressure on European governments to stop railway shipments from Europe to China through Russia. Yeah, they're still going, though their number decreased. And I strongly suspect they'll be used for smuggling vital European components for Russian military industry Image
5. It's time to start talking with minority POWs, check their views and recruit those who could potentially change sides. Russian army heavily relies on minorities as cannon fodder. You know which region drafted the most people in Central Military District in 2021? Bashkortostan Image
In 2021 when they lacked few hundred recruits to meet the quota, local ruler (a Kremlin man) ordered not to break "old traditions of military draft". They'd broke the law in every way forcing recruits into the army. That's how Moscow is getting cannon fodder for its imperial wars Image
Moscow is using quite a wide range of minorities in Ukraine. Some examples of soldiers who are either KIA or captured, I'm not always sure. This guy is either a Tatar or a Bashkir from Bashkortostan Image
This one is a Kazakh from Astrakhan. Despite being just 14% of Astrakhan Oblast population, ethnic Kazakhs comprise 86% of Astrakhan casualties in Ukraine. Being a poor rural minority they naturally become a cannon fodder Image
A soldier from Tuva KIA ImageImage
A captured Crimean Tatar serving in the Russian army. Crimean Tatars are heavily oppressed in Russia. After annexation new authorities started destroying their houses, disappearing their activists and random people. Their position is way worse than that of Kazan Tatars Image
My advice - approach minority POW and check their views. Then choose those who can change sides and train them in special companies/batallions. With Russia spiralling to chaos, their impact can be huge. Remember, without Czechoslovak Legion there would be no Civil War in Russia Image
Apart from recruiting minorities according to ethnic principle, it might make sense to use regional one. Identify critical regions in Russia that are weak links in a chain and create companies out of their recruits. My advice - Far East and South (Krasnodar, Rostov, Stavropol) Image
Let me quote Guicciardini

"I often noticed during the wars that people didn't carry out necessary actions thinking it's too late. And yet, later it would turn out, it was the high time for it. Things go much slower than we expect. That should serve as a warning"

End of 🧵 Image

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More from @kamilkazani

3h
Regarding the video with a castration of a Ukrainian POW, comments from the Russian ДШРГ Русич may give some context to the story:

"I have seen up to ten such clips. They're usually published 1-2 years after the events though to make perpetrators more difficult to identify" ImageImage
Русич (Rusich) is a Russian Neonazi group fighting in Ukraine. They're reportedly closely associated with the Wagner mercenary company Image
A Rusich fighter who told he had seen "up to ten such clips" is Evgeny Rasskazov (Topaz). Here you see his post commemorating Hitler's birthday:

"Today is birthday of out comrade who became example for many of us... his Word and Deed inspires us to beat the Ukro-Bolshevik scum" Image
Read 14 tweets
Jul 27
Die Fürstenstadt

There was a Soviet joke:

- What is long, green and smells with sausage?
- Moscow-Tver train

Why? Well, under the USSR provincials had to go shopping to Moscow. Their shops had no food, often very literally. Today we'll learn an expression "supply category"🧵
Under the centrally planned economy it was the state which supplied food to the localities. It would assign each city one of four "supply categories" determining how much food there will be on shelves. Moscow was supplied far better than anyone while cities like Tver - horribly
Provincial Soviet cities of the lower supply categories might have no food on the shelves at all. Sometimes very literally. Sometimes they would have only the scraps from the table of the higher status city: like some algae, or the disgusting paste "Ocean"
Read 26 tweets
Jul 25
I find this line of argumentation illustrative of the general state of Russian discourse, whether "patriotic" or "liberal". Everything Turkic occupies the same place in the Russian debates as everything Irish in the Imperial British. The Inner Other and the source of all the evil
Reading the Russian-Ukrainian debates with both sides accusing each other of racial impurity and having too many Steppe admixtures or influences, I noticed that their argumentation is mirroring each other. See this Russian nationalist material for example sputnikipogrom.com/history/15934/…
This mutuality and almost exact symmetry of Russian-Ukrainian accusations reminds me of a brilliant thread on the British rule over the Ionian Isles. Bach then the discourse was similar. Brits and Greeks were constantly accusing each other of Irishness
Read 14 tweets
Jul 24
Russian bureaucracy is *massive*. It's also diverse. Judging from my observations, it's less integrated than let's say the apparatus of the U.S. federal bureaucracy. Different agencies have different cultures and operate by different rules. Avoid sweeping generalisations (not🧵)
I see a very common attitude among the Russian pro-war community. It can be summarised this way:

"We expected dumb and incompetent bureaucrats to destroy our economy. But our glorious army would prevail against all odds. It turned out we were wrong. It's the other way around"
Now much of the Z-community argues that they greatly overestimated the Russian army (and the military apparatus). It's very, very much worse than anyone thought before. But they underestimated the economic bureaucracy. Which is very much better than they could have thought
Read 22 tweets
Jul 23
No. Describing Russian regime as "kleptocracy" is misrepresentation. It's not technically false, just absurdly reductionist. Let's be honest, if Putinism was *entirely* about stealing it would not be able to wage wars or produce armaments. And it produces hella lots of them
Keep in mind that public rhetorics work according to the rhetorical logic. Public position doesn't have to be factually accurate, it has to be rhetorically advantageous for it to work. They talk about "corruption" so much because it's rhetorically advantageous. That's it
When you don't have a positive agenda/vision of future or it's too hideous, you talk about "corruption". Examples - Lukashenko or Yeltsin. "Anti-corruption fight" is an ideal topic for a power hungry politician. Because talking about corruption = avoiding the actual conversation
Read 19 tweets
Jul 23
Kremlin may not have a grey cardinal. But it has a bald engineer. The Kinder Egg is a major architect of Putinism. In 1998 he made Putin the FSB Chief. In 2000s he dismantled the regional autonomy imposing the centralised rule. Now he manages Putin's domestic policy and Ukraine🧵
Sergey Kirienko was born as Sergey Israitel in a mixed Russian-Jewish family. After the divorce his mother changed his surname from father's "Israitel" to her own "Kirienko". That could be a pragmatic decision. A boy with a Slavic name would have better career chances in the USSR
In childhood Kirienko lived with his mom in subtropical Sochi. Here he started the bureaucrat career as a Komsomol manager (комсорг) of his high school class. NB: the role of Komsomol in Soviet to post-Soviet transition is underrated. Komsomol management were its main benefactors
Read 35 tweets

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