🇷🇺🇺🇦 FORMER RUSSIAN SPY EXPLAINS THE WAR TOO HONESTLY
“We’re a thorn in their side. We’re changing the system in which they live very comfortably. Why would they need us?” - Andrey Bezrukov 🇷🇺
Former Russian spy Andrey Bezrukov just said the quiet part out loud: Ukraine is not the threat because it attacked Russia. Ukraine is the threat because it proves a different future is possible next door.
That is what Moscow fears most, not NATO slogans, not imaginary Nazis, not propaganda fantasies. A free Ukraine makes Russia’s prison of a system look exactly like what it is.
@NatalkaKyiv
No, sweetie.
Donetsk was a city of a million roses when its own Ukrainian flag flew above it.
Back then, it was also the fastest-growing and most rapidly prospering city in Ukraine -- home to what was the finest regional airport in Eastern Europe, one of the world's best football stadiums, a state-of-the-art railway terminal, and one of the cleanest, best-maintained cities in the region.
Its elites were running Kyiv, and every time I visited Donetsk as a student, riding the famous trolleybus Route No. 2 through the city, I was amazed by how many new office buildings were appearing, how much money was flowing into the city, and how many international companies were opening their doors there.
Fifteen years ago, to us kids from Donbas, Donetsk felt like the center of the universe because it had everything one could possibly dream of. It was a young city of universities and libraries, where the overwhelming majority of boys and girls from across Donbas went to study, including those from my own small hometown an hour away by bus.
Names like Liverpool or Detroit Rock City may mean nothing to you, but our Ukrainian Donetsk was a city of great rock clubs and unforgettable concerts. We traveled there to see Western bands perform.
We bought rock merchandise at the legendary Right House store near Krytyi Market. Scorpions, Rihanna, and Beyoncé performed at the famous Donbass Arena. Schoolchildren from across Donbas were bused in to watch Shakhtar Donetsk matches. The city even had a famous monument to The Beatles.
It was a city where we sang songs on guitars in its beautifully maintained parks and along the Kalmius embankment before heading out to buy the famous "green Donetsk burgers." Our older friends moved there after graduation, formed rock bands, recorded full albums, and held wedding celebrations in the squares around Donbas Arena. We traveled there to visit the legendary Radio Market in search of films, music, and books.
And then you arrived.
And you turned the wealthiest, most prosperous Ukrainian city into a piece of shit.
You deceived many of its people with sweet promises of Russian oil-fueled prosperity broadcast from television screens, but what you brought instead was war.
You transformed a thriving city into a criminal wasteland ruled by ethnic gangs from Russia, into a kingdom of Stalinist terror straight out of the 1930s, complete with torture chambers in the infamous Izolyatsia prison camp. You turned the magnificent Donetsk Airport into lifeless gray rubble, while the vast stands of Donbas Arena have spent a second decade slowly being reclaimed by weeds instead of hosting Champions League finals and Metallica concerts.
You swept away an entire generation of the city's men through your forced mobilization and threw them against Ukrainian machine guns until there were barely enough people left to keep basic municipal services running. Because of you, prosperous Donetsk became a withered desert without reliable water, because your war destroyed the canal system that carried water from the Siverskyi Donets River into Donbas. For years now, people have lived with chronic water shortages and have been reduced shitting into plastic bags forever.
You dragged Donetsk back like seventy years in time. You turned it into a depressed backwater, devoid of hope and future. Even ten years ago, tens of thousands of people, the most active, the most talented, the most entrepreneurial, fled the city and found refuge in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine. Many of them still remember our Donetsk with tears in their eyes, the Donetsk that existed before the arrival of the "Russian World."
You transformed it into something that even my pro-Russian acquaintances are shocked to see when they return after years of occupation.
It was you who trampled the million roses of our Ukrainian Donetsk into shit beneath the tracks of your tanks and the boots of your death troops, turning them into a foul swamp of death and despair.
And that stain will forever remain on the conscience of fascist Russia, which brings nothing but destruction, decay, and death wherever it goes.
🇪🇺 An EU country is turning away from Ukraine
Bulgaria is ending its weapons supplies to Kyiv.
The new government, which is considered one of the most pro-Russian in the European Union, says that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield.
“We are witnessing a war of attrition, and no matter how many weapons are accumulated, the only result will be more human casualties. It is time to sit down at the negotiating table,” said Bulgarian Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Sofia has provided Kyiv with 13 military aid packages.
Russian soldier admits his unit raped girls as young as 10 & 11 yrs old in Ukraine + forced mothers to watch - just before executing all 3 on orders from his commander
He confesses this happened multiple times as they found civilians hiding in basements
More and more russians are getting a taste of war: explosions, airport shutdowns, uncertainty. They seem genuinely surprised that Ukraine is fighting back, and the war is being brought to their homes. On the videos, they keep asking: "Why us?". Oh, you should know why.
In a deliberate act of ecocide, 3yrs ago today russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam, murdering people, causing a minimum of $14 billion in damage, flooding villages and towns, devastating ecosystems, and killing animals.
We must not allow russia to whitewash itself.
Before I leave Ireland, I want to place on record that in the last 24 hours I have received constant stalking and death threats for my reporting. However I will not be intimidated.
What I have uncovered is deeply troubling, and the effort to silence it only makes that clearer.
Beyond the remarks made by Rodney Mims Cook Jr., completely in line with the Kremlin, I didn’t think the collusion would go that far!
The design of Trump’s ballroom will be inspired by Putin’s hometown!
The Russian flag is flying over the White House.
https://t.co/vb1IZbedKa
Trump‘s hands have been untied for a year and a half and he’s only used them to try to strangle Ukraine and put Russian money into he and his cronies' pockets. Letting Trump do whatever he wants means letting Putin do whatever he wants.
"People are panicking" say residents of Crimea as grocery store shelves are stripped bare and limits on purchases introduced.
No more than 3 bags of sugar, 3 bags of buckwheat or pasta and other fantasies of the nostalgia for days of the USSR are back.
Rejoice comrades!!
Just as the Allies defeated the radical evil embodied by Nazi Germany, the Ukrainians will defeat the modern-day personification of that evil, now represented by russia.
We honor those who fell in the fight for freedom.
May today’s Allies have the courage of those of yesterday!
If we give the Ukrainians Patriots and sanction Russian energy the war is over. In other words, US policy at present is to keep the war going.
https://t.co/0KRZKRAVJA
That morning, six military vehicles surrounded the house. Armed men in masks broke in, and Olga, wearing only a shirt and leggings, with a bag over her head, was shoved into a van and taken to an unknown location. In her mind, she was already saying goodbye to her family.
She spent five months in the occupiers' torture chambers. She survived interrogations, rubber bullets, a knife to her throat, and waterboarding with a wet rag over a basin. She would pass out and only regain consciousness after being kicked with combat boots. But she never confessed to things she didn't do, because the thought of her children gave her the strength to hold on.
While Olga was in captivity, her daughter was interrogated at school three times without an adult present, and "social services" regularly came to their home threatening to take the children away. After her release, the family was put on a wanted list, and their photos were displayed with the label "highly dangerous individual." Fortunately, after a year and a half in hiding, the mother and her children managed to escape the occupation. Our team helped the family slip past all the Russian checkpoints unnoticed.
Today, Olga tends to her flowers and hurries to the kettle every morning to make coffee. In these simple things lies the true depth of what she had to endure.
▶️ Watch and share the full story—let it be heard by as many people as possible.
If you want to help us rescue more children from occupation and support their safe return to Ukraine, you can donate here https://t.co/osezFOnNBF
Kremlin narrative:
“Ukraine shelled the Donbas”
Reality:
Russians crossed into east Ukraine in 2014 and posted videos of themselves firing rockets at both Ukrainian military + their own side so they could blame civilian casualties on the Ukrainian govt
29.04.2014: In Luhansk, pro-Russian, masked men – including members of the Russian FSB and the GRU – storm public buildings by force. Their aim is to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
This was no accident. This was proof of 2 concepts:
1. NATO will not defend itself
2. Individual NATO countries will not defend themselves
3. And Trump will betray Europe and NATO even more by not condemning it.
Amazing that only country on earth defending entire free world is us. Not even USA is part of that equation anymore as their citizens await elections so they can impeach Trump as though there exist magical elections in dictatorships.🤷♀️
Brigadier General Denys "Redys" Prokopenko, commander of the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Azov", has published a detailed essay explaining why many Western analysts overestimated the Russian army in 2022 and why Russia is ultimately losing this war.
In his analysis, "Redys" points out that pre-war assessments by Western think tanks and intelligence services were based primarily on quantitative indicators - the size of the Russian army, numbers of tanks, aircraft, and artillery. They largely overlooked critical qualitative factors: command culture, morale, social cohesion, and the ability to adapt.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces, particularly units with roots in the volunteer movement like Azov, have developed a modern decentralized command philosophy based on trust, initiative, and Mission Command principles.
Higher command sets clear objectives and intent, while subordinate commanders on the ground have the authority and responsibility to determine how best to achieve them. This approach creates high flexibility and effectiveness in dynamic combat conditions.
In contrast, the Russian military system remains a rigid, top-down Soviet-style hierarchy where loyalty to the regime takes precedence over competence. This leads to operational paralysis, poor development of junior leadership, and a tendency for senior officers to sacrifice large numbers of personnel to fulfill orders, even when those orders are flawed.
Denys Prokopenko emphasizes that this war is not merely a clash of resources, but a contest between two fundamentally different systems: one that empowers its people and another that controls them.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda
Great reminder to everyone thinking about “Ukraine civil war 2014”.
There was never a civil war, never there were “separatists”.
Just Russian FSB operatives.