Have just finished reading Red Notice: A True Story of Corruption, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. A great read and troubling insight into the workings of the Putin régime.

Blurb: Browder recently brought out another book: Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder,and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

There are many interviews with Browder on YouTube. He seems to think that Putin's war in Ukraine has nothing to do with Nato expansion or a desire to create a Greater Russia but is an end in itself: to be at war in order to retain public support at home and remain in power.

Related videos/website:

Hermitage Reveals Russian Police Fraud
https://www.youtube.com/user/RussianUntouchables/videos
https://www.russian-untouchables.com/eng/

This person comes to mind as the possible culprit for the import:

red notice is a good book and fun to read but browder's massive ego and his own back slapping does get quite annoying

You fingered them

He didn't strike me as being more egotistical than one would expect from someone in that line of work but perhaps I was too caught up in the story to notice.

Yeah...! We are officially in Cold War II. Nato and Otan have cancelled the strategic partnership with Russia. Erdogan is no longer against Finland and Sweden joining and Poland will get a Nato headquarters.
From ARD.

Gert Fröbe, probably one of the best international filmstars to come out of Germany.

Agree, just having read Freezing Order. The magnitude and organization of the theft is quite impressive.

A brilliant actor…
A year or so ago ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines’ was on the box.
He played a German Officer in the film.. or better said a magnificent caricature of a Prussian officer, I almost wet myself laughing. My mrs ( Swiss ) thought it was borderline racist.
The Swiss and humour are not obvious bedfellows.

So if Cold War II has started, then where are all the CND marches ?, Women chaining themselves to military base fences ?, 21st century Hippies marching
through the streets with placards saying 'Make Love Not War !!' Americans skipping the draft ?, Protect and Survive ? & Frankie Goes to Hollywood with an
updated version of their 'Two Tribes' hit, etc, etc ??

Hang on, hang on! It was only announced yesterday, give it a bit of time.

There's no draft. Yet.

It's good point, though. At some point, it will have to come back if things continue to go downhill like this - but I don't see anybody having the spine to do it.
I also don't know where the extra troops that NATO members are promising each other every week are going to come from. It's not like there's a quarter million soldiers sitting in their barracks around the continent, fully armed, fully trained, with complete equipment - just waiting for the "Go!" from HQ. And that doesn't even take into account the huge amount of support-personnel each of these soldiers would need to actually carry out their duties.
Germany is just the worst example of an underfunded, understaffed and politically-socially undersupported army on the continent.



Young people, when they talk of "defending" something or somebody, they think of a supportive tweet or video they liked. Not going through basic training.

what's the 2 line summary?

It's all done online now. Protesting via Twitter is just so much easier and quicker than camping out at Greenham common.

We haven't had pictures of long tables in a while. Here is Putin yesterday in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, among trusted friends of the Caspian Sea Summit.

Gazprom cancels dividend.

I suspect this could be to conserve cash prior to cutting off or reducing gas deliveries to Europe. Hope you all bought some wolly jumpers for this winter!

Check out Uniper, Gazprom biggest customer. They pulled earnings outlook and request government support for liquidity problems (margin calls).

Billions, if not trillions of dollars, sleeved out of Russia by essentially an organized crime structure, with kickbacks to Putin himself on most if not all "transactions". The case that Browder and Magnitsky experienced with Hermitage was theft of 200 million USD tax revenue from the Russian state committed by Russian state officials. Browder's guys (or maybe rather Danish journalists; cannot remember) could track down 200 billion USD leaving Russia through Danske Bank Estonia alone. Murder of people investigating the corruption.

Heads Up !! For the new Channel 4 thriller called The Undeclared War. starting tonight but ( as always ) available on Channel 4 catchup.
It's supposed to reveal what Cyber Warfare is all about with the usual dramatic license all thrown in.

Underdeclared War - What it's all about ?
Thriller about a leading team of analysts in GCHQ secretly working to ward off a series of cyber-attacks on the UK in the run-up to
a general election in post-pandemic 2024. Starring Simon Pegg.

Channel 4 - The Undeclared War - Cyber warfare drama