Joseon Ricky

[Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel]

Ukrainians: We want peace!

The West: We all want peace. Here, have more weapons — just like Zelensky asked for!

Ukrainians: We don’t want Zelensky. We want elections!

The West: I hear you, but Putin attacked, and Zelensky stayed.

Ukrainians: Then we’re coming to you.

The West: Only if you’re not eligible for mobilization.

Ukrainians: Our mobilization is inhumane and unjust. They’re even drafting amputees and epileptics! Some are forced to the front, while others steal your money by the tens and hundreds of millions.

The West: Sorry, we’re currently at an event on distributing weapons development for you. We’ll talk later… if you survive.

[spencer 🦈 @Unpop_Science]

People will act like this material doesn’t work, but there is nothing high tech or unproven about this.

We have had the capacity to scale bioplastics for decades. We just use petroplastics because oil corporations control governments.

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@NowWaitA @leo1_ss @LewLoot This is fake. Both the Russian Central Bank and the IMF show nothing of the sort. A 50% contraction would be worse than the Great Depression. In a month, Russians will vote in Duma elections. A 50% contraction would spell doom to the ruling United Russia party. It won't.

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@NowWaitA @leo1_ss @LewLoot There is no evidence for anything you say here. Russia wants 80% of Ukraine is a claim made by Westerners and Kyiv. Russia's often stated goals are: The four Russian speaking regions, Ukraine's neutral non-NATO status, and the restoration of the rights of Russian speakers.

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@NowWaitA @leo1_ss @LewLoot Exchanges of military remains have been happening since late 2024. In that time Russia has turned over remains of 21,000 AFU soldiers and gotten back 900 in return. These figures are reported by the IRC. A Russian Officer said that Russia has 15,000 more in cold storage.

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@NowWaitA @leo1_ss @LewLoot 1 million men according to.. Ukraine. A review of Russian probate filings and obituary notices show 250,000 military age men filings for 2022-2026 more than the background 4 years before.

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@NowWaitA @leo1_ss @LewLoot Further, it's Ukraine and not Russia who has defaulted on external payments. EU taxpayers are on the hook for widely reported transfers totaling 150 billion Euros to keep Ukraine afloat.

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@NowWaitA @leo1_ss @LewLoot Sure. Russia has successfully defended Crimea, and is 90% of the way to taking Donbass, the area Ukraine wanted to keep. Russia's economy is in growth, and her population has grown since 2022. Ukraine's economy and demographics are in a state of twin collapse.

See Russia win?

[Ricky Gervais @rickygervais]

This billboard wasn't allowed in public, so please don't look at it or retweet it. Thanks https://t.co/mRWHMOKn4F

[Joseon Ricky @JoseonRicky]

@vonderleyen What a sick joke. My prediction for the final outcome? Crimea and Donbass will all be under Russian control. Ukraine will agree to not join NATO, nor will it allow foreign force deployment on its territory without UNSC mandate and governance.

How do you see it ending?

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

Goodnight 😴💤

Ain’t that the truth.

[AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 @AMK_Mapping_]

Over the last few weeks, forced mobilisation of men into the Ukrainian military has been significantly stepped up in Kyiv, as Ukraine continues to face disastrous manpower shortages. I would like to shed some light on these changes, and the issues which come with them. All information presented here was provided to me by people currently in Ukraine, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Kyiv, an increase in mobilisation has been observed since August 9. Additional mobilisation checkpoints have been set up, and the TCC (territorial recruitment) is monitoring bus stops and subway stations. Military-aged men are trying to avoid public transport to decrease their odds of being mobilised and sent to prison-style military camps. Community-made online maps have surfaced which track where mobilisation checkpoints are erected, or where past mobilisation attempts have occurred. Within these maps, there is a database where other users can confirm or deny the existence of these locations, to help flush out any fake locations submitted.

Desertions are becoming very common. Training only takes place for around 6 weeks (sometimes even less), before being sent to the frontline. Most brigades don't have enough resources to prevent desertion, especially after the 6-week training period is over. This has resulted in a lot of training camps being converted into what one source describes as "real prisons", where it is much more difficult to escape from. This has led to an increase in the number of desertions occurring after the 6-week training period once they are deployed to the frontline.

In various different cities, there are companies which hire deserters for low-paying offline jobs (offline so they don't have to leave the house and risk being caught again). They provide an alternative to larger-private companies - the HRs of which are in contact with private security companies, whose bosses and top employees are former policemen. These security companies can provide a service of checking candidates in police databases, as they have friends in the police force. This means that deserters often can't apply for these higher-paying jobs, as they risk being caught and charged.

Nevertheless, sometimes these larger companies do hire deserters on "special conditions", as, due to the declining population, they don't have enough employees, and can deny knowing that the employee was a deserter.

It's estimated that the rate of overall forced mobilisation activity in Kyiv has doubled this year, although this does not necessarily mean the numbers of men actually being mobilised has doubled.

On the border with Poland, changes have also been observed, which one of my sources attributes to the recent naming of a Ukrainian special operations unit after the UPA (a Ukrainian militant group which collaborated with the Nazis in WW2 and committed massacres against Polish civilians), which led to Poland's highest honour award being stripped from Zelensky. The current waiting time at one of the checkpoints, without being rerouted, is 15-20 hours. They have started interviewing everyone on the Ukrainian side of the border.

[Cincinnati Zoo @CincinnatiZoo]

Happy 18th Birthday to Sir Francis Bacon! 🎉

Red river hogs barrel their way through the forest in search of food. Using their strong snouts and sharp tusks to bulldoze through the leaf litter and soil, they dig up a dinner of roots, bulbs, other plants and small animals.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

Black activists rallying around Karmelo Anthony. Leftists celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder. Women forming fan clubs for Lindsay Clancy. The last 12 months have been the darkest I can remember. Something has been revealed about our society. These people have showed us who they really are, and we can never unsee it. “Radicalized” doesn’t really even begin to describe the effect all of this has had on some of us.

[Enezator @Enezator]

Not knowing this woman came to help him, he cries out of fear. Yet her love for him sparks a beautiful transformation. Some hands stretch toward kindness, and some cry until they finally feel it 🥹 via: Carol Midori

[Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast]

Apparently, two Russian POWs in Kharkov oblast managed to kill one of the Ukrainian soldiers guarding them, took his guns, commandeered an SUV locally and escaped. Godspeed, kings!

[Michelle @D162Michele]

No, China should never “get over” the Opium Wars.
Watching Britain go from the world’s empire to begging China for trade deals is simply history’s way of balancing the books.

[AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 @AMK_Mapping_]

Possibly due to recent increased Russian advances in several different sectors, the Ukrainian General Staff has stopped providing map updates in their daily reports.

This follows the decision by the Ukrainian Air Force to stop reporting on the numbers of Russian ballistic missiles intercepted, due to a lack of Patriot PAC-3 interceptors available for any interceptions.

[Ikkyu Sojun @ConciousLabRat]

Russia is the most sanctioned nation in history.

Not because it invented industrial-scale civilian slaughter.

Not at all!

The West already holds those trophies from Iraq on a fabricated pretext, Libya reduced to open-air slave markets, Afghanistan’s two-decade meat grinder ending with the Taliban in Kabul, Serbia bombed for 78 days, endless drone campaigns, and the deliberate wrecking of entire regions while lecturing the world about “rules.”

Russia’s crime was different.

It still had the industrial base, nuclear arsenal, and refusal to play the assigned role of compliant energy vassal.

So the full financial nuclear option got used…

SWIFT cuts, reserve seizures, secondary sanctions, price caps, the works.

Body counts and sovereignty violations never determined the response.

Capability and defiance did.

The Ukraine war is ugly but pretending it is uniquely demonic while the architects of far bloodier adventures walk free and collect speaking fees is not justice.

It is the rules-based order doing what it always does:

Enforcing hierarchy, not principle.

Power decides who gets the sanctions and who gets the TED Talk.

However, the power dynamic is shifting and the West could soon find itself on the losing side.