Kamil Galeev Profile picture
May 21 16 tweets 3 min read
The defence of Mariupol seems to be unprecedented in the recent military history. Some pro-Russian pundits claimed that defenders were "hiding" in the catacombs of the Azovstal. That's factually wrong. They repeatedly counterattacked ambushing Russian soldiers on the city streets
Mariupol is a key industrial center located almost on the Russian border. It was besieged on the very first day of the war and completely surrounded by the early March. Still, its defenders continued resisting till the late May in the deep rear of Russian forces Image
Defenders of Mariupol achieved two objectives. First of all, they deflected the Russian attention. Azovstal becoming an Alcazar-like symbol, Russians had to keep on attacking the plant which remained in their rear instead of just pushing forward. That helped Ukraine to buy time
With every new week of the war the balance of power is changing in favour of Ukraine, not only due to narrowly defined "military" but also due to material factors. Ukraine is getting lend lease, while Russia is getting sanctions burden which amount to an anti lend lease program
I'll cover the logic of sanctions (as I see it) later. For now I would like to say that they look like an almost exact reversal of the lend lease program of WWII. Russian industries are being turned off now roughly in the same order as they were turned on in the 1940s
Some perceive Hitler's decision to invade the USSR as madness. I'll however argue that it was a very well-thought decision. Hitler assumed that the German advance would break the Soviet supply & technological chains thus undermining their military capacities. That was correct
What Hitler didn't take into account however, was the gargantuan scale of the American aid, which specifically targeted all the gaps in Soviet supply chains created by the German advance. The US targeted bottlenecks in the Soviet supply chains turning industries on one by one
Right now Russian industries are being turned off one by one in roughly the same order as they were turned off in the 1940s. The effect of sanctions was very much visible since the 2014 (just read the interviews with engineers and technologists of the military plants)
Still, both the aid to Ukraine and the anti lend lease program for Russia need time to produce a significant effect. And the resistance of Mariupol was one of important factors in gaining this time for the rest of Ukraine
Defenders of Mariupol achieved one more objective. They destroyed a significant number of Putin's subjects: both the Russian regulars (possible to estimate) and the Donbass levy (impossible to estimate right now), depleting the quickly shrinking manpower that Putin can employ
The Russian advance slowed significantly. They retreated from the North (Kyiv, Cherhnihiv). Ukrainians are now successfully counterattacking in the Northeast (Kharkiv). Still, the war will continue and probably continue for long. So the material help is needed urgently
Their website have links for donating in crypto:

BTC (Bitcoin):
17C55k8KftKbovKb789e4diBHjyk4kXyF5
ETH (Ethereum):
0xa8d4c3aa7c6e44a4c414db03e9b03de99f82b3b0
LTC (Litecoin):
LiCAiuXKXhYSCmnr4XhunHHfFnxqRD4opr
BNB (Binance Coin):
0xa8d4c3aa7c6e44a4c414db03e9b03de99f82b3b0
Bank transfer

ГО «ФЕСТИВАЛЬ ФАЙНЕ МIСТО»
ЄДРПОУ/ДРФО 39215950
в АТ КБ «ПриватБанк»
МФО 338783

UA063387830000026004055129490 — UAH
UA063387830000026007055136178 — USD
UA373387830000026003055124504 — EUR
UA183387830000026002055125656 — GBP
UA073387830000026004055144798 — PLN
A bit later I'll publish a larger thread with links for donating to the specific detachments of the Ukrainian military, including the army, the territorial troops and the national guard. End of thread

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More from @kamilkazani

4h
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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