Clarissa's Blog

Wait, what?

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1568642550059401224?t=WrVP6gm3v5GTpzLgPK4YsA&s=19

Christmas really came early this year. I hear rumors that the Gauleiter of Donetsk fled. This is still at the unverified rumors stage but only a few days ago it would have sounded insane while now… not so much.

Sorry for the avalanche of posting on a Saturday but our troops have entered Lisichansk and I’m riding a high.

I was stunned by this thread by a woman who decided to do all her Christmas shopping in Ukraine this year and recently received a package from Bucha:

That’s the same Bucha that experienced one of the worst known genocides in this war. People already went back and are hard at work in their businesses. This is truly the only thing that Ukrainians ever wanted: to be left alone to live, work and create in peace.

Labour is so stupid. Look at this:

Not a single Ukrainian. These clowns will discuss how THEY will end “the war in Ukraine” without ever mentioning who is waging that war.

Of course, Putin’s lapdog Corbyn can’t afford to be seen in the company of any Ukrainians or his funding will dry up.

Nothing will teach these idjits. Nothing. And people who vote for them are stupid, too, sorry.

I spent my whole childhood on the bus Kharkiv-Lisichansk. My father is Kharkiv and my mother is Lisichansk.

The names of these liberated towns and villages mean so much. It’s a coincidence that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is following the route of my childhood journeys but it adds a completely different layer of feeling for me.

Please take a moment today to celebrate the amazing victories of Ukrainian warriors.

Putin’s regime functions not by mobilizing society with the help of a single grand vision, as fascist Germany and Italy did, but by demobilizing individuals, assuring them that there are no certainties and no institutions that can be trusted.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ukraine-war-democracy-nihilism-timothy-snyder

Exactly. No certainty, no social trust, no institutions that have been time-tested and can be relied upon to work. Remind you of anything?

The current Russian regime is one consequence of the mistaken belief that democracy happens naturally and that all opinions are equally valid.

Also true. The scariest thing about Russia is that there’s no reality any more. Everything is whatever somebody claims it is. Russia is what happens when the insane idea that “a woman is anybody who identifies as a woman” is taken to its logical conclusion. It is what happens when people refuse to accept any limits on their capacity to remake the world by renaming it.

There’s also good stuff in the linked article about how “the global South” is pathetically subservient to the Russians when the Russians are openly hoping they’ll starve. As I keep saying, you can only blame “colonialism” for so long. If you are still in deep shit 200 years after achieving independence, it’s not the empire’s fault. You might just be a deadbeat.

Snyder understands the region like almost nobody else. If only he concentrated on what he knows and avoided trying to analyze US politics, he’d be priceless. Well, nobody is perfect.

https://twitter.com/ILoveH1story/status/1568275694156922880?t=zFEojESW7r2E8CfP599jaA&s=19

Except for the cars, nothing changed. It’s really incredible. Also explains the victimhood Olympics I wrote about previously.

Ukrainian soldiers are singing the national anthem before going into battle:

https://twitter.com/buch10_04/status/1568342059463081984?t=V8rag-zWCBdKTDz1mLL-Vg&s=19

Russian soldiers don’t sing theirs because they don’t know it. Russia has a fluid relationship with the anthem and nobody knows for sure what it’s supposed to be at the moment. It’s not filled with any historical meaning, and nobody relates to it emotionally. Neither do they know what their current flag is supposed to mean. But ask a Ukrainian what our flag means, and I promise you’ll never forget the reaction and the answer.

The nation-state is as strong as the emotional attachment people feel towards its symbols. No, it’s not rational. The best things in life never are.

P.S. I don’t know why it says there’s sensitive content. It’s only people singing. It’s sensitive because it’s touching but there’s no violence or anything like that.

In war, people understand what matters. Ukraine experienced the largest number of weddings in 7 years, and it’s only September. 21% more marriages have been registered than in 2021. The number of divorces has dropped by 42%.

Let’s now wait for the news of a baby boom. We never had one after WWII, and it’s long overdue.

Here’s a short .gif of the troop movements over the past 3 days:

https://twitter.com/antiputler_news/status/1568239880487960576?t=PoHDPXZqDPWKDDo_yM665A&s=19

Just 3 days! Imagine the planning, the strategy, the restraint, the brilliant counterintelligence that tricked the pestilent bastards into thinking that the counteroffensive would happen in a completely different place.

This will be in all the textbooks.

P.S. I’ve already seen a bunch of geniuses online who point out that the maps are incorrect because not every part of the areas shaded in different colors has soldiers in it.

No, soldiers don’t stand shoulder to shoulder holding hands on every square inch of the territory. This is a crucial insight that we were all sorely lacking.