cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/52382643

Vladimir Putin’s mobilisation decree from September 2022 left soldiers with three legal exits from the army: turning 65, certified ill-health, or a prison sentence. The first applies to almost no one; the second is, in practice, near impossible: the military medical commissions that decide such things are not in the business of letting people go.

With losses mounting and conditions at the front deteriorating, a growing number of men are now trying to be charged with desertion; it sounds grotesque, but they see no other option but to beg investigators for “mercy” and paying for lawyers’ services to fight for “the right” to be imprisoned. The military, short of bodies for the front, has other ideas.

...

Web Archive link

Plushka y Sunny son dos búhos originarios de Ucrania que han quedado permanentemente incapacitados por municiones desde la invasión a gran escala de Rusia en su país en 2022. Son dos entre cientos de miles de aves atrapadas en la determinación de Putin de seguir vertiendo sangre y recursos para aniquilar a otra nación soberana. Arriba con Plushka y Sunny, abajo con Putin.

Plushka and Sunny are two owls native to Ukraine who have been permanently crippled by munitions since Russia's full scale invasion of their country in 2022. They are two out of hundreds of thousands of birds caught up in Putin's determination to keep pouring blood and treasure into annihilating another sovereign nation. Up with Plushka and Sunny, down with Putin.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51869464

• Russia spent more than 50 billion rubles over the past five years building and running military-patriotic centers where schoolchildren undergo mandatory military training
• In these centers, teenagers from both Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories are being militarized
• By September 2025, there were 147 centers nationwide. The regions are responsible for creating and funding them, with money allocated in part directly from regional budgets.

...

Describing the system as a “conveyor belt for preparing Russian teenagers for war,” an investigation by TVP World’s Russian-language sister channel Vot Tak reported that while the camps are officially voluntary, significant pressure is often applied to get children to attend.

One mother of a 10th-grade camp attendee told the outlet: “The teachers said you can't refuse; you won't pass the Life Safety test, and if you fail, you simply won't be allowed into 11th grade.

“Those children who didn't want to go were closely scrutinized and pressured,” the woman continued. “Parents were called in for a talk; the children were invited into a separate classroom and asked why they didn't want to go and what their views were.”

...

The camps offer five-day courses during which cadets, typically aged 16 or 17, are taught weapons skills, battlefield first aid, and how to operate in conditions of biological, chemical or radioactive contamination, Vot Tak reported.

The camps’ official goal is to help young people acquire the skills needed for “rapid adaptation upon conscription,” but they are also used to promote military service and encourage young people to join the armed forces.

...

In addition to the Avangard centers, Russia is also rolling out a network of Voin (“Warrior”) centers, a parallel youth training initiative created on Putin’s orders shortly after Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

According to Vot Tak and official Russian materials, the Voin center network is already present in 21 regions of Russia, with plans approved by Putin to expand it to all federal regions. Vot Tak established that four of these “Warrior” centers are located in Russian‑occupied Ukrainian territory.

While there are no Avangard centers officially registered in Ukraine, Russia has actively pursued the militarization of Ukrainian youth in occupied areas through transfers to camps inside Russia and locally organized militaristic events, Vot Tak reported, citing a Ukrainian human rights lawyer.

...

Ksenia Kornienko, a lawyer with the Ukrainian organization Regional Center for Human Rights, told Vot Tak that Ukrainian youth are either sent to centers in Russia or enrolled in other types of military‑style programs in the occupied territories.

These activities have been documented in Crimea since almost immediately after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014, Kornienko said, adding that military training camps are organized at individual schools in the regional capital, Sevastopol.

Young people are trained at these camps by Russian veterans of the war in Ukraine as well as by members of the Russian National Guard and officers from the Black Sea Higher Naval School, Vot Tak wrote.

...

In the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russian‑backed separatists declared as “people’s republics” in 2014, military training camps for schoolchildren have been integrated into the education system since the early years of the secession movement and intensified after 2022.

In the case of Ukrainian children, pressure is often overt, according to Kornienko, who considers these practices a human rights violation.

“We've documented cases where Russian military personnel have come to schools, forcing teachers to send some of their children to participate in these camps,” she said.

“They've come to people's homes and told them that if they don't send their children to the camp, they'll be stripped of their parental rights or [the children will be] sent to a boarding school. This is how they've encouraged parents to sign documents,” the lawyer told Vot Tak.

...

“This pressure indicates that a war crime has been committed—the deportation and forced displacement of children.”

Web Archive link

Here is an alternative report by Medusa, citing Vot Tak: Report: Russia has spent billions building military-patriotic centers to train schoolchildren

Biting analysis on Iran's newest "election results" from Scott McKay at the Spectator.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/46106815

Recent disclosures that a Chinese cyber-espionage group known as APT31 has quietly penetrated Russian technology firms for years should reshape how Europe understands the China–Russia relationship.

...

Chinese actors reportedly gained deep access to Russia’s defence-adjacent technology sector, but Moscow appears unwilling to confront Beijing publicly. That silence says more about the state of the partnership than any official communiqué.

For years, Beijing and Moscow have cultivated the narrative of a ‘no-limits’ strategic alignment. But this curated image obscures a more complex reality. Viewed through the longer lens of territorial disputes, competition in Central Asia, and resentment over historical ‘unequal treaties’, the relationship looks less like an alliance and more like a temporary convergence of interests sitting atop a mountain of mistrust.

The APT31 hacking case fits squarely into this pattern. Chinese actors reportedly maintained long-term access to Russian companies involved in government contracting and systems integration, precisely those closest to Russia’s critical infrastructure and defence industry. Beijing did not hesitate to target sensitive sectors, yet Russia avoided naming China directly in its public disclosure. This illustrates the stark asymmetry in their partnership. China is confident enough to probe Moscow’s technological ecosystem, while Russia is cowed enough to downplay the intrusion rather than risk a diplomatic rupture.

...

Beijing’s support for Moscow is often perceived as unwavering, but in practice it is highly conditional. China backs Russia to the extent that the war distracts the West, drains NATO stockpiles and increases Moscow’s reliance on Chinese industrial and technological outputs. At the same time, Beijing has been careful to avoid provoking secondary sanctions that could damage its own economy, while remaining wary of moves that could destabilise Eurasia or Russia’s internal cohesion. Both scenarios would impact China’s long-term strategic interests, including in Russia’s far east.

...

This hacking episode is a reminder that the China–Russia partnership is uneven and constantly renegotiated. That gives Europe more room to manoeuvre than it often assumes. To use that space, European leaders must identify where China’s interests are most vulnerable and where the seams in the relationship can be found. China’s willingness to sustain Russia while simultaneously surveilling and constraining it underscores a partnership that is conditional, asymmetric and less durable than rhetoric suggests.

...

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41912864

Alt text: If you are seeing this, The curse is lifted. Have a good day

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41666757

Alt text:

Dudes be like " for my age I am a failure "

MY BROTHER IN CHRIST YOU are alive and that is good enough. Your goals do not define you. You are more than that. You are loved.

El País interview with Svetlana Alexievich, Belarussian author and 2015 Nobel Prize holder for literature. Ukraine from a pacifist's perspective.

It's not us yet, it's you. It may be us next week, but this is Russia's path of descent today.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44584358

[This piece has been written by Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City. She is the great-granddaughter of former leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev.]

...

To visit Russia over the past four years has been to observe the consolidation of a dictatorship in real time—to answer the question readers confront in 1984, wondering how Big Brother’s gaze became so penetrating and relentless. At the start of the invasion, the state lacked the means to quell all possible opposition, and so it suppressed selectively ... But in the time since, Moscow has built a larger repressive apparatus. It has cultivated a climate of fear and uncertainty that encouraged many Russians to silence not just themselves but also one another. The accumulation of subtle changes on the part of both the state and society has led Russia deeper and deeper into tyranny—a cycle that seems unlikely to break as long as Putin’s regime pursues the kind of total control that until recently seemed only to exist in Russia’s communist past or in Orwell’s fiction.

...

All over Russia, young men have been recruited to go to the front. Their families receive the equivalent of $2,000 to $20,000, or more, depending on the region. In three years, the government spent almost $38 billion, or 1.5 percent of Russia’s GDP, on these payments. The defense ministry said the army received almost 500,000 new recruits in 2024, and 450,000 in 2025. Some are coerced; some are criminals who would rather go to war than to prison. In addition to getting paid, they are absolved of their crimes ... Putin has tried to fashion the campaign in Ukraine as a defensive war, putting it on par with World War II, in Russia known as the “Great Patriotic War”.

...

In his 1993 article “Working Towards the Führer”, the British historian Ian Kershaw explained how authoritarianism takes over: through the use of ideology to justify individual and collective actions, through voluntary societal complicity, and through state repression. The leader outlines repressive requirements, then everyone else—starting with his entourage but extending to businesses, governmental and political organizations, schools and universities, and volunteer groups and individuals—make up the rules of behavior. The uber-patriotism of Putinism follows the same script. Ordinary citizens are not just passively complicit but co-authors of repression as they attempt to please their leader and police members of their communities. Officials eager to outdo each other become ever more aggressive in their crackdowns. The result is absurd spectacles as apparatchiks hone the craft of making the abnormal seem normal, and vice versa.

...

The government has even turned against regime insiders. Since the summer, there have been daily detentions of once-trusted government officials, politicians, and high-ranking army officers, who now stand accused of corruption. June and July also witnessed the brutal arrests of journalists from the online news outlet Ura.ru and the Telegram channel Baza, both hyperpatriotic, pro-war publications that had been obediently hateful toward “the enemy”—Ukraine, foreign agents, Kremlin critics. In the fall, a few of the most faithful were labeled foreign agents, including Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political propagandist, and Roman Alekhin, a prominent pro-war blogger. The reasons are subject to speculation: Markov dared to offer Putin advice, or perhaps he was too cozy with Azerbaijan. Alekhin could be critical of the Russian battlefield situation. The highly militant Crimean-born blogger Tatiana Montyan skipped foreign agent status altogether and was labeled “terrorist and extremist”, apparently because she criticized certain Kremlin-connected patriots. Now, no independent evaluation of Russia’s actions is tolerated, even when it comes from the most loyal of followers.

...

Archive link

Your pirates, my librarians. cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60161919

An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.

Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, said it had “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping”.

“An investigation into unauthorised access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management] to access some of the platform’s audio files,” said Spotify.

Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a “‘preservation archive’ for music”.

The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via “torrents”, a means of sharing large digital files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

“With your help, humanity’s musical heritage will be forever protected from destruction by natural disasters, wars, budget cuts and other catastrophes,” said the group.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44158572

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44158364

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6267966

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6267965

Archived version

...

“A Russian soldier came to her house in May 2022, smashed her face with his rifle butt and broke her teeth, slashed her stomach with a knife, and raped her. He then stole her bicycle and left her a Kalashnikov bullet as a souvenir.”

...

“How can you look in the eyes of this 75-year-old woman and say there won’t be punishment for what that Russian soldier did to you?” said Kovalenko, her own eyes wet with tears.

The 38-year-old [Ukrainian documentary-maker Alisa Kovalenko] from Zaporizhzhia was one of a group of four Ukrainian survivors of sexual violence and activists who came to London last week to lobby MPs, members of the House of Lords, and Foreign Office officials to try to get British support against the proposed amnesty.

...

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43927448

Web archive link

The Kremlin's annual 'Direct Line call-in show' in Moscow is an hours-long ordeal in which Russia’s de facto leader responds to carefully vetted questions from members of the public.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/44795391

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/44795387

[Archived](https://archive.ph/wDNE7#selection-1813.0-1849.381 Found a better link, not behind a paywall! https://en.belsat.eu/84778803/slavery-in-the-drone-factory

Seriously, Firefly was already struggling financially after restructuring, this may not be an RUD, but an actual blow to the company.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/43167661

Archived

"Up to 1,000 people lined up outside President Vladimir Putin’s official reception office near the Kremlin on Saturday to submit written complaints on social and environmental issues, in what was reported as one of the largest opposition-linked gatherings since early 2024.

Public demonstrations against Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine have become increasingly rare amid sweeping laws that effectively ban criticism of the military. Scores of people have been fined, imprisoned or forced into exile for their anti-war views since the start of the full-scale invasion.

[...]

Eyewitness accounts and independent media outlets such as Sotavision, RusNews and Activatica reported lines stretching 70-115 meters (230-380 feet) at their peak. One of the organizers told the Agentstvo investigative news outlet on condition of anonymity that 400 people stood in line at one point during the 5.5-hour event.

Estimates ranged between 800 and 1,000 participants by the end of the day, although counts could not be independently verified.

[...]

Their appeals ranged from the preservation of green spaces and architectural landmarks, to opposition to toll roads, demolition projects and cuts to social benefits. Some groups reportedly submitted hundreds of pages of signatures at a time."

[...] That's just sad. The organizer commented anonymously..on how many people were lined up quietly with petitions. That's not a protest, that's a bread line outside the Czar's scullery.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46709771

Credit to u/rustybeancake for the alternate title. Suggestions for a better name?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38367381

This is an op-ed by Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University.

The Brics group of nations has just concluded its 17th annual summit in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. But, despite member states adopting a long list of commitments covering global governance, finance, health, AI and climate change, the summit was a lacklustre affair.

The two most prominent leaders from the group’s founding members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – were conspicuously absent. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, only attended virtually due to an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over his role in the war in Ukraine.

China’s Xi Jinping avoided the summit altogether for unknown reasons, sending his prime minister, Li Qiang, instead. This was Xi’s first no-show at a Brics summit, with the snub prompting suggestions that Beijing’s enthusiasm for the group as part of an emerging new world order is in decline.

[...]

The Brics group is a behemoth. Its full 11 members account for 40% of the world’s population and economy. But the bloc is desperately short of providing any cohesive alternative global leadership.

While Brazil used its position as host to highlight Brics as a truly multilateral forum capable of providing leadership in a new world order, such ambitions are thwarted by the many contradictions plaguing this bloc.

Among these are tensions between founding members China and India, which have been running high for decades.

There are other contradictions, too. In their joint Rio declaration, the group’s members decried the recent Israeli and US attacks on Iran. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, also used his position as summit host to criticise the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

But this moral high ground appears hollow when you consider that the Russian Federation, a key member of Brics, is on a mission to destroy Ukraine. And rather than condemning Russia, Brics leaders used the Rio summit to criticise recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s railway infrastructure.

[...]

Brics declared intention to address the issue of climate change is also problematic. The Rio declaration conveyed the group’s support for multilateralism and unity to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. But, despite China making significant advances in its green energy sector, Brics contains some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases as well as several of the largest oil and gas producers.

[...]

I can't add snark to this, it's too sad, it reminds me of The Killers of the Flower Moon.

Please don't forget that if Ukrainian parents don't send all their kids to the invader-run schools, they run the risk of having their children kidnapped by the occupier authorities and taken to Russia for "adoption" with new Russian passports and identities. As David Knowles used to say on "Ukraine: The Latest", please don't look away.