There seems to be some interesting combat going on these days, with Russian volunteers fighting for Ukraine invading a Russian border city and fighting the Russian military. Some suggest that this is actually a false flag operation… but wouldn’t that make it *worse?* The Russian government actually showing the Russian people an active resistance? Nah. The Kremlin couldn’t be *that* incompetent… could it?
A song from five years ago is now made relevant again by this news about the “Trump-Russia Collusion” narrative falling apart even more:
As the kids say, it’s a “banger.”
It was produced by the same folks responsible for the Alex Jones “Gay Frogs” remix:
Every now and then I see posts, tweets, comments, etc. mentioning that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a net worth over a billion dollars. For a comedian to be that rich, especially when his nation is gettign bombed into gravel, is suspicious to say the least. The implication, of course, is that there is financial chicanery goign on… likely American tax dollars being funneled directly into his pockets.
But as with so many Interesting Stories, this appears to be complete BS.
An article from Forbes:
In short, he’s nowhere near a billionaire. Forbes estimates he’s worth $20 to $30 million, which is a surprisingly high amount. But there is a fair explanation for that:
His main asset: an estimated 25% stake in Kvartal 95, a group of companies that produce humorous shows, which he transferred to his partners after being elected president, though he’ll likely regain his shares after leaving office. Kvartal 95 produced and owns the Servant of the People series, a popular political comedy starring Zelensky as a Ukrainian high school teacher who is elected president. Netflix, which previously streamed the show between 2017 and 2021, snapped up the rights again in March. With estimated revenues of $30 million annually, Forbes Ukraine values Zelensky’s stake at $11 million.
He was an entertainer, and prior to the war had a goodly stake in an entertainment company. This makes sense.
If there is evidence that he’s substantially richer than that, in the “Russian Oligarch” category, I’m sure the world would be interested to see it. But “evidence” has to be more than the say-so of some Russian talking head.
Three main options:
1) Ukrainian quadcopter flew hundreds of miles.
2) Russians PO’ed about their crappy government and their stupid war
3) The Russian government did it themselves.
Personally, #3 makes the most sense to me. Caiming that Ukraine launched an assassination/terrorist attack against Dear Leader is good propaganda, and it gives the Kremlin permission – as if it really needs it – to launch further extermination campaigns against Ukraine. If evidence can be manufactured to show that the drones came from, say, Germany or Finland or the US, that gives that much more evidence that Mother Russia needs to wipe out the west.
There are, of course, other options:
4) The Chinese did it. Why? For the same reason Red China hired SPECTRE to develop reusable launch vehicle technology in the med-60’s in order to snatch both US and USSR capsules from orbit: to spark a war between the other two powers. China stays out of it, then moves into the chaos and rubble afterwards.
Well, this could be the start of something… interesting:
It appears that “Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky” was blown up by a bomb, far from the Ukrainian front lines. The guy seems to have been a Kremlin mouthpiece, so the obvious suspect would be Ukrainian forces deep in Russia. the less obvious suspects would be anti-war Russian forces… or the Kremlin itself. I’ve no idea who the guy was or how influential or important… but as false-flagged a martyr, he’ll probably have some propaganda value. Whoever was responsible, things could get interesting, as the Kremlin will doubtless use this to gin up more genocidal hate. As with the Trump indictment, it’ll be a fantastic way to distract the domestic audience away from internal problems.
It’s claimed that Vladlen Tatarsky, one of the most known Russian military propagandist is dead. In St. Petersburg, Russia, an explosion has just occurred in a cafe where Vladlen Tatarsky, was holding a "creative evening". pic.twitter.com/WfQAFlBt8B
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2023
The moment of the explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg today, during which Russian military propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky was reportedly killed pic.twitter.com/UNGrcFArKj
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 2, 2023
Russia and China have been making lots of noises about joining forces, ostensibly to knock the USA, and the American dollar, down a peg. This feller has an interesting view on the topic; in his thinking, somebody gonna stab somebody in the back, and the only question is whether the Chinese or the Russian get stabby first. Is he on to something? Is he huffing the copium? I dunno.
Where LazerPig savages the supposedly superior Russian T-14 tank. Turns out… it’s kind of a joke.
Heh.
This video from at least 7 years ago lays out some of the reasons why the Russians may well have gotten rather adventurous of late: they are running out of Russians, but they’re not running out of routes to invade Russia. So rather than cultivate good relations with the surrounding nations or get on about the task of making more Russians, they seem to have gone the other route of trying to seize all the invasion routes while they still have a military with which to do it. As the last year of their little two-week “military operation” has shown, that hasn’t gone so well.
Note the “demographic pyramid” he shows here. It lays out the population of Russia by age; a growing population has a wide base of young people, but back when this video was made (circa 2015) Russias base was looking kinda weak. However, it did seem to be growing somewhat:
So how is it looking today?
Oh, dear. It looks like baby-making fell off a cliff right after this guy made his video, so instead of things maybe getting better they’ve gotten much worse.
“Population pyramids” are interesting things to consider. Nations like this with shrinking young uns are in serious trouble; the pyramid for South Korea looks especially dire:
China’s not looking so good:
Nor is Japan:
Iceland, in contrast, looks kinda ok:
but if you really want to see where the population of the future is coming from, you need pyramids that look like this:
Or this:
The nations with wide bases will have greatly increased populations, with greatly increased pressures for those populations to leave and colonize low-population regions. The dying nations will, like Russia, likely try to defend themselves with constantly diminishing human resources, or they will, like much of Europe is currently doing, simply allow themselves to be colonized and replaced, culturally, religiously, ethnically.
Gonna be an interesting century.
From three days ago, the only news source Google seemed to find:
Russia, it seems, isn’t paying its bills, so Kazakhstan sent in the repo men. Apparently. The bulk of the story is behind a paywall.