TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 72 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
🔥The LUKOIL oil depot in the village of Pavlovskaya, Krasnodar Territory of ruzzia after a UAV attack. One of two.
Good morning Resisters everywhere. We got about an inch of rain 4th of July morning.
This morning, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported two downed UAVs over the Tambov region, but the local mass media provided footage showing the drone flying into the territory of the Tambov gunpowder factory and setting up a mushroom season there.
approximate place of impact - 52.594376,41.518463
Raiffeisenbank was ordered to urgently present a plan for leaving Russia and was threatened to be cut off from dollars
European and American regulators are putting intense pressure on Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) to wind down its Russian operations. A year and a half ago, they even studied the possibility of splitting it up. Now the United States is threatening to disconnect Raiffeisen from the dollar system, and eurozone regulators, considering the behavior of the bank’s management dishonest, demanded that a plan for leaving Russia be prepared as soon as possible.
The Russian division of the banking group was the most profitable before the war, and now it accounts for more than half of its profits. Its success now is largely due to the fact that Raiffeisenbank remained one of the few official channels for transferring currency from Russia to Western countries, which made it possible to raise commissions. Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that they would like the bank to continue operating. He himself said that he intended to leave, but could not give a time frame. In Russia, he actually has capital blocked for 5 billion euros.
But regulators’ patience is running out, Reuters writes, based on conversations with a dozen and a half representatives of regulatory authorities in the US, Austria and the eurozone, as well as people with direct knowledge of the situation at the bank. One of them said that in June, representatives of the European Central Bank participated in a meeting of the RBI supervisory board and demanded to present a plan for leaving Russia in the coming weeks.
🇰🇵💥 The idea of using North Korean shells in the Russian army backfired!
This actually happened a couple of days ago. But now the report about it being North Korean ammunition
Former car factories of foreign companies are searching for Chinese partners.
The russian automotive industry suffered more than other industries from the war. The main reason was the mass exodus of foreign companies and the shutdown of their factories. In the pre-war year of 2021, they made more than 70% of the 1.34 million cars produced in russia. Of the 21 car plants operating in the country, 10 belonged to global automakers, and six more, including AvtoVAZ and Avtotor, assembled their models.
Therefore, 2022 was a catastrophic year for the automotive industry. Production has fallen by a third to the lowest since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with only 450,000 passenger cars. In 2023, production increased to 537.000, and this year it may amount to 675.000 - half as much as before the war.
The recovery of the automotive industry is highly dependent on the resumption of production at the factories of companies that have left russia which consist now almost exclusively of the assembly of Chinese models, even if they have names invented in russia. But Chinese manufacturers are in no hurry to develop local production. They prefer to sell finished cars in russia or invest serious money in neighboring countries.
As imports of Chinese cars increase, the market share of cars 'made in russia' is falling. For the first six months of 2024 they accounted to 45%, a drop from the 56% from Jan-June last year.
Read more
Btw. production plan of AvtoVAZ (former Renault factory) for this year is to assemble 50.000 Chinese clones.
@freerussia_report
What's more on the radar?
- RuZZia will buy soap, shampoos and clothes from North Korea, according to the Rospatent magazine. An application for trademark registration for the relevant products was filed by Ryongaksan Soap Faktori from Pyongyang, Sota noted. Z-sources wrote that NK manufacturers are considering the possibility of supplying jeans, bags and shoes. The 2017 UN Security Council resolution bans the export of textiles from the NK to cut it off from sources of foreign currency that could be used in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. The Security Council also banned the use of labor from the NK, since the workers get deduct up to 70% of wages to the state.
- Chinese companies are developing an attack drone for Russia, similar to the Iranian Shahed, which the Russian military uses to attack on the territory of Ukraine, European officials familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
They claim that back in 2023, russian companies held negotiations with Chinese partners on cooperation and offered to create a copy of the Iranian kamikaze drone. This year, development began in China. At the moment, the drone is being tested before being sent to Russia, the agency's interlocutors noted. At the same time, they clarified that Chinese drones have not yet been used in Ukraine.
- Russia's active rapprochement with China worries India, which opposes its growing influence in the region. Concerned about expanding the "borderless partnership," Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Moscow for talks with Putin. "The deepening of strategic cooperation between russia and China makes New Delhi uncomfortable, since it is like a best friend sleeping with an enemy. Given our concerns, it makes sense for the prime minister to go there and talk to Putin at the highest level." Like China, India has taken advantage of the difficult situation in which russia has found itself due to sanctions, so Putin might not be inclined to hear Indian worries.
- A former US policeman, US Marine John Mark Dugan, who worked as a police officer in Florida and Maine in the 2000s, who fled to russia began to spread Kremlin propaganda. For the mass production of fakes, he and other Internet trolls began to actively use artificial intelligence, according to a BBC investigation.
In European countries and the United States, sites mimicking local newspapers have proliferated (some of them, such as the Chicago Chronicle published in the 19th century, have long since closed). Websites linking to "independent journalists" and "whistleblowers" are proliferating, through which disinformation about Ukraine and Western politicians is spread, and artificial intelligence (AI) is used to produce it. Fake documents and fake videos are also used.
In recent weeks, many such sites have focused on American politics and the upcoming presidential election, the BBC has learned. They can mix Ukrainian and American themes: for example, one story tells how horrified a Ukrainian propagandist was when she was given the task of defaming Donald Trump and supporting Joe Biden; another said that the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, during a trip to New York, went shopping in jewelry stores and made racist remarks about employees there. Thousands of articles appearing every week show that the production of such disinformation is being automated by AI.
Cybersecurity firm Recorded Future has identified 120 sites registered in May in just three days that are involved in an operation dubbed CopyCop. And this is just one such Russian operation, estimating that at least 170 sites are linked to CopyCop.
- Putin opens a new register of all "foreigners who own shares large russian companies, directly or indirectly" by decree.The data are available to the court, the prosecutor's office, the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB at their request for familiarization "in connection with criminal or administrative cases".
@freerussia_report
Same procedure as last year? - Same procedure as EVERY year!
New deputy head of russia’s Attack Ministry Oleg Savelyev conceals his wife — and her luxury properties.
Russia’s new Attack Minister Andrei Belousov recently replaced longtime Putin confidante Sergei Shoigu in the post. But while the Belousov appointment was hailed by Z-propagandists as a signal that the Kremlin was preparing to clean up corruption in the military, it appears that the new boss is very much the same as the old boss.
One of Belousov’s top proteges is Oleg Savelyev, a former auditor for russia’s Accounts Chamber who in May was appointed as deputy minister of defense. As The Insider has discovered, Savelyev hides his de facto wife from his income declaration — and with her, their expensive property holdings.
Oleg Savelyev is familiar with the Ministry of Attack, having supervised military and security agencies during his five years at the Accounts Chamber, the parliamentary body overseeing federal spending. Now, under new minister Andrei Belousov, Savelyev has been appointed to oversee the Attack Ministry's entire apparatus. Unlike his predecessor, former paratrooper Yuri Sadovenko, Savelyev lacks military experience. In the 1990s, he worked as a PR consultant for regional politicians, and from 2008 to 2014, he served as deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Development — a period that overlapped with Belousov’s tenure at that ministry.
According to The Insider’s findings, Savelyev has a son and a daughter, both of whom avoid traveling to occupied Crimea — this despite their father’s previous role as head of the Crimean Affairs Ministry following russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. Instead, Anna Savelyeva, 22, vacationed in France after the full-scale invasion began. Although the deputy defense minister himself is under sanctions, his children continue to travel to NATO countries, seemingly intent on exploring the territory of a strategic adversary. Savelyev's son Ilya likes to spend time in another NATO country — he plays tennis and has taken part in several tournaments in Turkey. No military service, of course.
Read more
@freerussia_report
Addition to previous report
"The actions for which I am being tried were an attempt to prevent a crime being committed in the name of my country."
Judge of the 2nd Western District Military Court Timur Zhidkov found Alexey, Ioann and Timofey Ashcheulov guilty of preparing for treason, attempting to participate in the activities of a terrorist organization and attempting to illegally cross the state border.
This is what one of the condemned, John Ascheulov, said in his last word:
“I believe that the Russian government, on behalf of the Russian state, committed a huge crime. The largest in the 21st century, and continues to commit it. The actions for which I am being tried were an attempt to prevent this crime, committed in the name of my country, my people, and, in particular, on my behalf as a citizen of Russia. The actions of the Russian government, in particular Vladimir Putin, fall exactly within the qualifications of Article 353 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [planning, preparing or unleashing an aggressive war].
Taking into account the historical context, my actions are counteraction to crime. At the first hearing, I said that I did not consider myself guilty, there was nothing in my actions that would fall under the definition of terrorism or an attempt on it <...> Russia does not need a war against Ukraine, Putin personally needs it. The fact of my birth does not oblige me to support the government in everything. I consider myself a free person and free to choose. I believe that Article 275 [treason] was brought against me for my own opinion and position. My only fault is that I did not adequately counter the crime that the government of my country is committing in my name.
As a rule, the last word asks for leniency, but I will not do this. I think my position is absolutely correct, I think that you don’t have freedom, so you can’t give it to me either. You can give me any sentence - at least 10, at least 20 years - I will treat it the same <...> The loss of part of my life, and, possibly, my health, against the background of many thousands of innocent people who died, looks completely faded. I am responsible for the actions of my government, and many peaceful citizens of Ukraine who died from Russian bombings are absolutely innocent, like hundreds of children of Ukraine <...> I regard the term that will be assigned to me as a payment for not being an accomplice to the crimes that the government of our country commits for defending the freedom of one’s personality.
I do not consider myself a traitor to Russia, I consider Putin a traitor to Russia. That's all I wanted to say".
The judge tried several times to interrupt John's speech, but he managed to finish his speech.
Judge Timur Zhidkov is the same one who sentenced Dasha Trepova to 27 years.
@freerussia_report
A memorial plaque was installed in Komi to a mercenary of the Wagner PMC who raped a woman with “mild mental retardation”
In the Khabarikha/Komi Republic, a memorial plaque was installed to the Wagner PMC mercenary Vladimir Popov, convicted of raping a woman with “mild mental retardation.”
The memorial plaque was installed on the house where the brother of the deceased lives in October 2023 with a “ceremonial meeting” in memory of the four dead residents. One of the boards was dedicated to Popov, who died near Donetsk in March 2023.
Popov was convicted in November 2021 of rape and sexual assault and other acts of a sexual nature “taking advantage of the helpless state” of the victim.
The local news agency BNK wrote about the case without naming him, saying a man was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for drinking at home with a woman and, realizing that she could not resist, first raped her, and then “took a wooden plug and inserted it into the victim’s genitals.”
A true ruZZian hero 🤮
@freerussia_report
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 72 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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