I’m loving this sort of thing.
For years, Russia has been yelling about “Ukrainian Nazis,” the “Kyiv junta,” the “protection of the people of Donbas,” the “NATO threat,” and “we didn’t start this war, Ukraine attacked us.”
And then, as if nothing happened, Russian officials openly and publicly threaten Armenia with a “Ukrainian scenario” if its pro-Western government, which has been confidently re-elected, continues moving closer to the European Union and European countries.
The trend of billionaires investing millions of dollars in building apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand is a total waste of capital, and it demonstrates absolute divorce from reality.
For the sake of argument, let’s play this scenario out: let’s say, it gets real ugly, scarcity hits hard, there’s a drastic collapse of society, total supply chain destruction, food scarcity, the works.
Do they think their pilots won’t just shoot them once they land in Aukland? Their chefs and staff won’t cannibalize them the first chance they get? Or the locals won’t shoot wealthy Americans for sport?
That’s the major difference between the American wealthy and the European wealthy - the former are not invested in the health of their nation (they don’t see it as anything more than an ATM). Do they even have contact with the real world? They don’t have to wait in traffic and endure a crumbing infrastructure, they can fly over it in a private helicopter. They don’t need to deal with the hassle of the healthcare system, because they have private medical staff / concierge.
Elon Musk was against the development of public transportation system - like a subway - in LA, because you could end up riding it with a criminal, hence why he went for that overly expensive hyperloop tunnel system.
These people have no skin in the actual game, there’s no incentive for them to make America a healthy and safe society, because they have already built their apocalypse bunkers.
In contrast, think of the von Liechtenstein family - the royal family running Liechtenstein for 800 yrs now. The crown prince, Hans Adam III, drives his own car, uses public airlines (first class), walks the streets of the principality without security detail, and even opens the castle for citizens each year for celebrations, where he drinks beer from a plastic cup and hangs out with his citizens.
Why? Because he has spent his entire life making Liechtenstein a safe and prosperous society. He’s not afraid that his people would storm the Vaduz castle and hang him. On the contrary - years ago, they voted on a referendum to give him MORE powers, not less.
Many such examples.
The apocalypse bunkers are a waste of resources.
@parushev_atanas Нищо!От него се искаше 2 неща:да продаде НХ на западни партньори, за да избегнем повторна енергийна зависимост от азиатските орки и да направи лустрация.Той направи обратното.В 🇪🇺и NATOтака или иначе щяхме да влезем и без него,🇪🇺 бързаше да ни приеме заради важната ни геo локация
Именно!
България най-много е дърпала, когато русия е била слаба и не е имала ресурс да ни мачка и пречи.
Когато този прозорец се отвори отново, трябва да сме готови. И смятам че проект - политически И социален - трябва да се подготви от сега.
Когато му дойде времето, българското информационно пространство трябва да се задръсти с анти-руска фактология, за да може българинът веднъж завинаги да ги помрази тази боклуци и никога повече да не им позволи да вилнеят в България.
How many people truly realize that today’s “culture war” trends - the manosphere, radical feminism, left- and right-wing wokeness, gender wars, racial divides, and religious conflicts - are to a large extend, manufactured?
While some may be organic and comes from a real place of frustration, there are clear signs that these movements are arguably fueled by nation-state actors and other players (including intelligence agencies) seeking to sow discord and destabilize society for a range of strategic ends.
Meanwhile, social isolation - especially among the young - and excessive screen time are being weaponized to amplify the noise until people mistake it for reality.
Do you notice how there are no civilian casualties? Yes, me too.
That’s the difference between Ukraine and Russia. When russia flies drones into Ukraine, they crash in residential buildings, maternity wards, schools, hospitals, elderly homes. When Ukraine flies drones over Russian skies - it targets actual war infrastructure, like factories and oil refineries.
The Russians would do well to remember that Ukraine could just kill you in your own home. They chose not to, because they are civilized, and you are not.
The Russians offered to “exchange” children for soldiers. But how can you exchange children? That’s impossible,” Zelenskyy said.
“First of all, it violates the law: civilians cannot be exchanged - they must be returned. Therefore, the very concept of such an ‘exchange’ is unacceptable,” the president noted.
The very fact of such a proposal from the Russia only confirms that the abducted children were indeed taken away.
👉 https://t.co/ID2TklPMaC
Ask anyone to picture "war" and you get the same image: tanks rolling into the city. Meanwhile, Russia has been attacking satellites that feed intelligence to Ukraine, sabotaging undersea cables, and planting severed pig heads at the steps of mosques in Paris to fuel societal discord.
If you believe war is only war when tanks are in your square, then a great deal can be done to you - your trade strangled, your infrastructure sabotaged, your population turned against itself - and you will keep insisting, right up until the lights go out, that you are living in peacetime.
Russian state TV hosts calling for the destruction of Ukrainian cities and referring to Ukrainians as ‘animals’ or ‘insects’ is not ‘just propaganda’; it’s genocidal rhetoric.
Scholars like Gregory Stanton (Genocide Watch) and the UN Office on Genocide Prevention identify dehumanization + public calls for mass violence as key warning stages of genocide.
To ignore it, divide it, or deny it is to slip into genocide denialism.
The Russians have no business sitting atop all those resources spanning 11 time zones. By any rational measure, the average Russian should be drowning in wealth - richer than a Norwegian + two Qataris.
Instead, their sewage pipes are literally erupting in the streets. I shit you not (pun VERY much intended). There are actual geysers of human waste shooting through the streets of this so-called
“great power”.
And while their cities marinate in excrement, they somehow find the budget to shell maternity wards and raze entire cities across the border.
They don’t deserve a single drop of oil, gas, or a single gram of mineral wealth. Resources are wasted on such population.
Damn. If only someone had been saying all these years that European countries should unite and at least close the skies over western Ukraine, helping Ukraine shoot down Russian missiles and drones there in order to:
a) relieve pressure on Ukraine’s air defenses in the rest of the country;
thereby guarantee their own security and b) ensure that no Russian drones or missiles cross NATO borders and strike Poland, Romania, or other European countries.
That’s all. Just shoot down flying pieces of metal, electronics, and plastic over Lviv, not even Russian aircraft with pilots at the front!
Why has nobody ever suggested this a million times over the years?
Apparently, it’s much wiser to keep burying your head in the sand and allowing Russian drones to crash into apartment buildings in European countries.
God forbid Putin gets angry and says it’s an ESCALATION!!!
Russians and pro-Russian cheerleaders say that by bombing Evangelical churches in Ukraine, Moscow is actually protecting Christianity - because “Evangelicalism is a satanic sect” and “it’s a shitty religion from the USA,” so they need to “burn them all.” Very telling.
For those who hesitate: install Codex or Claude Code.
Have a literaly genie that can script anything on the fly in your terminal, work on your files, interpret pictures, understand your voice, code anything you want, use a browser to do stuff on your behalf, and connect to any app to carry entire tasks across them. All just by talking to it. And the $20/month starter is quite generous.
That's it. Do it. Stop ruminating, stop waiting, stop hesitating, stop delaying, stop denying. Just do it. This is how computers are used by power users in 2026, and for everyone else in 2027.
Both points are accurate - and frankly interchangeable, when you consider the broader context.
Russia's imperial ambitions are self-evident. They never recovered from the USSR's collapse - the shame of it - because Russia is an eastern continental empire, not a Western one. The West can absorb humiliation. Britain, France, Portugal, the Netherlands - all lost their empires, licked their wounds, and rebuilt as liberal democracies. That's not how the East operates. Neither Russia nor China will abandon their claim to the "Third Rome" or the "Middle Kingdom." Russia is simply pursuing it in the most moronic way possible, unlike the Chinese, who are vastly more pragmatic and strategic.
But @anneapplebaum point stands alongside the imperial one.
Consider what Ukraine represents to the Russian mind: a "brotherly" nation, Kyiv as a holy city, the crown jewel of the Soviet project. If Ukraine succeeds in building functional democratic institutions, tackling corruption, raising living standards through rule of law and European integration - it would pose an existential threat to Russia. Ideologically.
They watched this play out with the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, the Balkans. They could not afford a Ukrainian success story.
This is why Maidan triggered such a panic in Moscow. A prosperous, democratic Ukraine dismantles the core Kremlin regime narrative that authoritarian stability beats democratic chaos, that Putin's model is the only viable path for post-Soviet states.
This is why Russia invaded in 2014 - despite Ukraine not seeking NATO membership, despite a pro-Russian president in Kyiv, despite a freshly extended Crimea base lease. It was about democratic development AND imperial logic, simultaneously.
Putin's recent comments about Armenia following Ukraine's path toward Europe - confirmed it. Democratic neighbors are an existential threat to Moscow. Always have been.
They want to deny Ukraine (as well as Georgia, Armenia and other states in their immediate orbit) the right to choose a different political system than Russia's.
Aftermath of last night’s russian attack on Kyiv’s Lukianivka district. It is not Putin. Thousands of russians prepared this attack, produced missiles, programmed them, and cheer the death and destruction.
Russia uses 695 forms of torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war, including beatings, physical torture, sexual violence, and psychological abuse.
This was reported by Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, during the presentation of the project “Made in Russia. Delivered into Captivity,” which documents Russian war crimes.
The Ombudsman said that prisoners are strangled, attacked with dogs, beaten with electric shock devices, and forced to stand in one place for up to 18 hours. If they try to sit down, they are beaten again.
“One form of torture is the ‘barbershop.’ During shaving, the Russians cut off not only hair but also pieces of skin from the head. If a person starts screaming, they are beaten physically or shocked with electricity,” Lubinets said.
Russia has returned to Ukraine the bodies of 375 military personnel and civilians who were verified as prisoners. Of the verified Ukrainian prisoners of war, 149 were tortured to death.
He also emphasized the lack of international response. In particular, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross were invited to the event, but none attended.
📷: Instagram / libkos