Daily reminder that Putin's army of invasion was trained on the Rheinmetall-built training centre Mulino. In 2014 they "left" and construction was finished by "Гарнизон" company, probably a proxy. 100% of its imports came from Germany, last Rheinmetall shipments coming in 2019
In 2011 Rheinmetall got a contract for building a training center in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. They modelled it after the training center of Bundeswehr in Altmark. They planned to build "the most advanced system of its kind worldwide"
Mulino started in 2011 was the high point of Serdyukov's reforms. Two things you must understand about Serdyukov ministry:
1. No other minister of defence made such a big focus on the land army 2. No other minister of defence was so eager to import ready solutions from the West
Russian media was pretty open about it back then. See an article from 2011 kp.ru/daily/25636.4/… Now their straightforwardness may sound weird. Back then it was normal. Russia really started to hide its degree of cooperation with Western (German mostly) partners only after 2014
They say that Rheinmetall "rebuilt" it. Not quite true. Gorohovetsky centre in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast is the largest in Russia. But it got obsolete. So new German-built Mulino was created very close to it, but on a new field. It was easier to build from scratch than modernize
In September 2021 Vladimir Putin visited Mulino to see the main phase of the Russian-Belarusian strategic manoeuvres "West-2021". Few months later the same troops were sent in Ukraine. Check Kremlin's website kremlin.ru/events/preside…
Mulino was finished in 2020 (FYI: the last Rheinmetall shipments are dated by 2019). My sources say though that Mulino doesn't meet the planned standards. Russian proxies were stealing too much. Otherwise Russians might have the NATO-level training centre
(Putin in Mulino, 2021)
You see Putin coming to the West-2021 manoeuvres with Minister of Defence Shoygu and the Chief of General Staff Gerasimov
The sign says: "Putin came to the main phase of manoeuvres in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"
Indeed. The only modern Western built centre Mulino is located here
That's Klaus Eberhardt who signed the deal to build Mulino in 2011 as the CEO of @RheinmetallAG
I urge the media to question this person regarding his role in building the Putin's war machine. He started construction of the centre to train the future Russian army of invasion
I urge the media to question this person regarding Rheinmetall's ties with the Russian "Гарнизон" company that finished Mulino after Rheinmetall "left" in 2014. Did he supply them with equipment to finish Mulino *after* 2014?
We urgently need the investigation of @RheinmetallAG involvement in building Mulino, the only modern Western-standard training centre that Russia has. That's where Putin's army of invasion was trained. That's where he launched his last strategic manoeuvres before marching West
@mentions@RheinmetallAG CEO Klaus Eberhardt started building the Truppenübungsplatz Altmark-modeled training centre for Putin in 2011. And there are strong indications that the CEO Armin Papperger continued the project *after* 2014 through via a Russian proxy "Гарнизон". See data for 2019
Until a few days ago a press release about the @RheinmetallAG winning "a major order in Russia" (=Mulino) was still on their website rheinmetall-defence.com/en/rheinmetall…. It was there on July 5 when I wrote a thread on their role in building the Putin's war machine
Well, I knew that the @RheinmetallAG are gonna to delete the article on their involvement in building Putin's best training centre where the Russian army was preparing for their march west
That's why I screenshoted it
Once again, I urge the media to investigate the @RheinmetallAG role in preparing the Putin's army for the war. That includes their connections with the Гарнизон company which was finishing the construction after the Rheinmetall "left" Mulino in 2014. Question CEO Armin Papperger
I also urge the media to investigate:
1. Other (German) suppliers of "Гарнизон" which was building Putin's training Mulino 2. German politicians who allowed this to happen. Did they do it knowingly? That must be investigated
Putin's war machine is fully import dependent. It was supplied from all over the world. In very rare cases it had such exotic equipment suppliers as Turkey, Brazil or China. Most equipment however is Western/Japan/Tigers. It's *not* Chinese. And most importantly, German
No other nation bears so massive and so direct responsibility for preparing Putin's army for this war as Germany. In this regard I find German stance quite cynical. It were your companies that armed Putin and your politicians that allowed it to happen. Investigate them. The end🧵
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
If you want to understand *modern* Russian culture, don't read 19th c. aristocrats. They're all dead and their world is dead, too. Read the "Twelve Chairs" and "Golden Calf" instead. Picaresques on Ostap Bender's adventures may be two most influential books of the Russian 20th c
And they are certainly the most quotable in normal talk, in every day situations
I think this interpretation may lack cultural context. In Russia an official getting a monetary token of gratitude for allowing the project to proceed is normal. It's called "откат" (something that rolls back). It's not a "bribe", more like tribute. Not demanding откат is unusual
That's why "Serdyukov was ousted for corruption" argument is dumb. It's not "corruption", it's just normal rules of the game. When a high official falls "corruption scandal" is just a pretext. You must charge them with something so you pretend they did a "crime" by taking откат
When Ulyukaev was jailed that was seen as a result of his personal conflict with Igor Sechin. When Serdyukov was fired, this was seen as погорел на бабах. I don't think that either of this interpretations is exhaustive. But those with half a brain know it's not about "corruption"
One point: Draft plays a major role in Russian stealth mobilisation. First you need to get them into army, even as conscripts. Then you force/persuade them to sign a contract and now it's legal to send them to Ukraine
And my earlier comment. Serdyukov tried to modernise the land army, equipping and training it according to the NATO standards (= context for the Rheinmetall story). But he made enemies, was ousted from power and his successor dismantled much of his legacy
The Rheinmetall-built Mulino training center modelled after a Bundeswehr center in Altmark may be the biggest achievement of Serdyukov. No wonder that manoeuvres West-2021 which prepared the Russian land army for Z-invasion opened and closed in Mulino
Historically this has been (largely) correct. With major and important exceptions science used to be a business of the idle rich and weirdos till around WWII*. In the last decades though it taylorised so much that I'm not sure if we can view it as the same institution as before
* Of course I'm generalising. Some disciplines (chemistry) could have more potential for practical applications and thus earning potential than others (physics). But the science itself transformed into a somewhat normal industry with somewhat normal career potential only recently
I'd even argue that the post-WWII world when academia was indeed a normal career track, was a historical aberration mistakenly taken for a new norm. Under normal conditions you either have some other means of income or you starve. Now we're simply returning to the historical norm
Researchers studying regionalism and diversity in Russia produced tons of great books on Caucasus but very few on Volga region. This is by far the best book on Tatarstan that I know. She:
1. Has actually learnt the language 2. Lived into the culture rather than merely studied it
What makes Faller's book special is that she tried to grasp the conceptual framework of a culture she studied rather than apply her own. That's very rare. That requires lots of intellectual humility and the great language fluency. Unfortunately, too many researchers have neither
Helen Faller focuses on cultural politics. Unlike many others though, she has actually learnt the culture she's writing on. She raises tons of minor questions most researchers would never ask. Like, what constitutes a well-organised domestic space in Russian and in Tatar culture?