Showing how both side can turn the refinery explosion into propaganda images

A Russian air defense missile blows up a fuel tank at the Moscow Oil Refinery following a failed attempt to shoot down a Ukrainian drone.

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— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) June 18, 2026 at 12:58 PM

The "strongman" of Chechnya "appears to be seriously ill"

NYT:

[His] own succession plan could be resting on his 17-year-old son, who got married and received congratulations from Mr. Putin over the weekend. But that would require circumventing Russian law requiring regional leaders to be at least 30 years old.

...

The teenager was also awarded two medals in the span of 10 days

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And there are other contenders, including a man who led an effort to round up and brutalize gay people and another who went off to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

Congratulations to Ukraine, condolences to the world

This will be in textbooks.
Ukraine secretly delivered FPV drones and wooden mobile cabins into Russia. The drones were hidden under the roofs of the cabins, which were later mounted on trucks.

At the signal, the roofs opened remotely. Dozens of drones launched directly from the… pic.twitter.com/sJyG3WyYYI

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) June 1, 2025

Ukraine smuggled the drones into Russia, followed later by small wooden mobile cabins, people familiar said. The drones were then concealed under the roofs of the structures, which had been loaded on to lorries. On Sunday, the roofs were remotely opened and the drones launched… https://t.co/mdJ3pybSpo

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) June 1, 2025

Pretty dramatic day in Russia: Ukrainian drones have reportedly attacked four Russia air bases, destroying a significant number of strategic bombers and radar planes. (Tu-95s, Tu-22, A-50)

Russian milbloggers are furious. One calls it a "black day," another says they need to nuke Kyiv.

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— Justin Ling (@justinling.ca) June 1, 2025 at 5:10 AM

NEW | Pictures are emerging of the preparation of the operation Ukraine carried out today, using drones inside trucks.

Ukrainian sources suggest the attack has been in the works for the past year and a half.

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— Michael Horowitz (@michaelhorowitz.bsky.social) June 1, 2025 at 5:49 AM

People in Russia are filming drones they claim came out of trucks pic.twitter.com/lWj1b4FkoE

— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) June 1, 2025

Video showing drone launched from truck. https://t.co/mf8ErnLKNf pic.twitter.com/0MbXD7fKo6

— Def Mon (@DefMon3) June 1, 2025

🔥Chief of the Security Service of Ukraine Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk during preparations for Operation "Web", which resulted in a massive strike on Russian strategic bombers.

The most vulnerable spot was determined for each aircraft. pic.twitter.com/mCFIwd4sFY

— Cloooud |🇺🇦 (@GloOouD) June 1, 2025

A Ukrainian official has confirmed to Axios that Ukraine provided advance notice to the Trump administration regarding today's attack on Russian airbases.

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— NOELREPORTS (@noelreports.com) June 1, 2025 at 7:45 AM

Axios

Plenty of us have come up with stuff like this. It's just that not enough people in the right places are listening. https://t.co/5zaWLnO9wn

— Tom Shugart (@tshugart3) June 1, 2025

A reminder, given today's Ukrainian drone strikes, that it is becoming borderline-insane that we routinely allow ships *owned and operated by DoD-designated Chinese military companies* to sit in our ports with thousands of containers onboard and under their control. https://t.co/7AgDgKkE7O

— Tom Shugart (@tshugart3) June 1, 2025

Imagine, on game-day, containers at railyards, on Chinese-owned container ships in port of offshore, on trucks parked at random properties, etc., spewing forth thousands of drones that sally forth and at least mission-kill the crown jewels of the USAF. Entirely feasible IMO.

— Tom Shugart (@tshugart3) June 1, 2025

For over a decade I have outlined the exact scenario as we just saw in Russia. It could happen in the U.S. tomorrow. This was a pivotal event. U.S. military and political leadership cannot live in partial denial of this threat anymore. Our most prized aircraft are sitting ducks.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) June 1, 2025

"Russian police raided several bars and nightclubs across Moscow on Saturday"

A terse summary by the AP suggesting targeting of the LGBTQ community.

FWIW, a longer summary with video, suggesting suitable men were press ganged.

"Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge" Russian civil war propaganda merch

#OtD 23 Nov 1890 revolutionary constructivist Jewish artist El Lissitzky was born in Pochinok, Russia. During the 1917 revolution he helped design propaganda posters for the revolutionaries. We have reproduced some of his work, available here: https://t.co/PWif4nkQh6 pic.twitter.com/RRNF9Hdmjd

— Working Class History (@wrkclasshistory) November 23, 2024

Wikipedia page for the artist and that particular image.

Extraordinarily strange anecdote in this article about the propaganda war over women's boxing in the 2024 Olympics

Here's the headline:

The Putin-backed strongman who threw the Paris Games into chaos

Banned from the Games, Russia wanted to upend the Olympics. Enter [a Russian power broker] and the boxing ‘gender controversy.’

And here's how the article starts:

With the future of international boxing hanging in the balance, as it so often is, the 2006 election of its top official featured the usual chaos: bribes, shouting matches and shows of physical intimidation in the lobby of an upscale Dominican hotel.

But the body flying down an elevator shaft was a new twist.

[The] president of USA Boxing at the time, was on his way to his room when something heavy slammed the top of the crowded elevator.

“We all thought the elevator was going to crash,” [the USA Boxing president] said of his fellow boxing delegates, who were there to select the next president of the International Amateur Boxing Association, the sport’s global governing body. Authorities found a man’s battered corpse in the elevator shaft. It was the boxing delegate from Mali.

[The USA Boxing president], who later became the association’s executive director, said the dead delegate was found with thousands of dollars of mysterious origin. Mali embassy officials didn’t rule out foul play, the Associated Press reported at the time, but nobody was charged in the death. A spokesman for the Santo Domingo police recently declined to comment.

Multiple boxing officials who were in Santo Domingo for the vote said the suspicion among their peers was that the Mali man had solicited bribes from both sides — and one of them didn’t appreciate it.

"A Russian ship loaded with 20,000 tons of explosive cargo - and has previously been dubbed 'the floating bomb' - has been spotted near the Kent coast today"

The headline is from the Daily Mail:

This comes shortly after the damaged Malta-flagged cargo ship was seen near a Norwegian military base, mere days after the NATO country gave the boat the boot. 

The estranged husband of Russia's richest woman was charged with murder

AFP:

Vladislav Bakalchuk and a group of men came to the offices of e-commerce giant Wildberries -- Russia's largest online retailer -- on Wednesday for what he said were peaceful negotiations that turned violent.

Tatyana Bakalchuk, his estranged wife and the company's billionaire CEO, said he broke into the building with armed men and opened fire, in what she called a botched attempt to seize the company by force.

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The incident came weeks after Wildberries finalised a controversial merger deal that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally approved but that Vladislav denounced as a "huge mistake".

Wikipedia:

On 13 January 2024 a fire broke out at the company's warehouse in the village of Shushary near St. Petersburg (coordinates: 59°47′01″N 30°26′44″E), whose area was 70 thousand m². Extinguishing of the fire lasted 30 hours. According to preliminary estimates, the amount of damage from the fire was approximately 11 billion rubles. The warehouse had operated without permission from the Russian State Construction Supervision Inspectorate (Gosstroynadzor) and had never been visited by the fire inspectorate.

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Her husband Vladislav Bakalchuk (the couple is in the process of getting divorced) calls the deal a hostile takeover and claims that Tatyana is being manipulated. Vladislav was unexpectedly supported by the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. He also called the deal a hostile takeover

(This is supposedly footage of the very public and chaotic shooting)

"Imagine receiving a traffic ticket in the mail because you were speeding down a Russian road in Kursk with a Ukrainian attack drone on your tail"

Ars quoting a Russian news outlet:

Mash claims that the traffic police are sympathetic and that given the drone situation, "speeding can be considered as committed in a state of extreme necessity." But those who receive a speeding ticket will have to challenge it in court on these grounds.

The “cyberattack” on Poland's railway "doesn't seem to have involved any cyber at all"

Wired:

On Friday and Saturday, August 25 and 26, more than 20 of Poland's trains carrying both freight and passengers were brought to a halt across the country through what Polish media and the BBC have described as a “cyberattack.” Polish intelligence services are investigating the sabotage incidents, which appear to have been carried out in support of Russia. The saboteurs reportedly interspersed the commands they used to stop the trains with the Russian national anthem and parts of a speech by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

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Because the trains use a radio system that lacks encryption or authentication for those commands, Olejnik says, anyone with as little as $30 of off-the-shelf radio equipment can broadcast the command to a Polish train—sending a series of three acoustic tones at a 150.100 megahertz frequency—and trigger their emergency stop function.

...

the ability to send the command has been described in Polish radio and train forums and on YouTube for years

Funny (revealing) story about a running a popular Russian-language account about comic books

Thread starts here:

it was a lovely experience, their editor was great and a pleasure to work with, the article did well, and all was good. Except we couldn’t figure out a way to get me paid for the work I did.

"A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map is being used to sneak information about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Russian gamers"

RPS:

The secret room contains info and images from the war captured by Helsingin Sanomat's reporters and photographers. There’s even a map attached to the wall, detailing the number of bombings that the Russian military has aimed at civilians.

Wewnątrz są informacje o:
- cywilnych celach ataków na Ukrainie
- masakrze w Buczy
- Juriju Głodanie, który wyszedł do sklepu, a w tym rosyjska rakieta zabiła jego rodzinę pic.twitter.com/534VRge5SB

— Łukasz Pożyczek (@LukaszPozyczek) May 3, 2023

*Previously: Amazon has been working closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer storage units called Snowball Edge 

WaPo looks at the disguises and other tactics people are using to escape Russia

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It's packed with anecdotes abut several escapes. Here's one:

The trip, using seven cars, took more than a day. Nearing the frontier late at night, the seventh car got stuck in mud and the driver panicked. [She], her daughter and a guide had to get out and walk, farther than planned.

“The moment we got into this field, we just fell down in the mud,” she said. “It was pitch black. There were tractors and the headlights of border guard cars. The guy who was with us kept saying, ‘Girls, get down, quickly!’ It was terrifying, like a movie.”

The guide’s phone had no signal but he told them he could navigate by the stars. “He said, ‘Look at the tail of the Great Bear in the sky.’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It seems funny now but it wasn’t at the time,” she recalled. “We were hysterical.

*Previously: Boat disguised as a rock. 

"Five Russian men fleeing military conscription have been living at a South Korean airport for months"

CNN:

"The men are able to shower but have to wash their clothes by hand and are unable to leave the departure and duty-free areas"

...

Military conscription is a sensitive issue in South Korea, where military service is mandatory for all able bodied men between the ages of 18 and 35.

Billboards encouraging urging citizens to root out Ukrainian spies by asking people to pronounce Russian placenames

2/ The 7x7 Horizontal Russia Telegram channel reports that billboards have appeared in Irkutsk with the slogan "Test for a spy: test a friend with one word" and a QR code. pic.twitter.com/uLEXGEnn0g

— ChrisO_wiki (@ChrisO_wiki) December 19, 2022

"Amazon has been working closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer storage units called Snowball Edge"

Russ Mitchell for the LAT:

On Feb. 24, the day of the invasion, [the head of government transformation at Amazon Web Services] met for lunch with [the] Ukraine ambassador ... at the Ukraine Embassy in London.

They sketched out with pen and paper a list of the most essential data: the population register; land and property ownership records; tax payment records; bank records; education registries; anti-corruption databases, and more. The project involved 27 Ukrainian ministries, 18 Ukrainian universities, the country’s largest remote learning K–12 school serving hundreds of thousands of displaced children, and dozens of other private sector companies including Ukraine’s largest private financial institution, PrivatBank.

The Snowball units, in their ruggedized gray containers, were flown from Dublin to Krakow in Poland. Then the Ukrainians “spirited these devices over the border into the Ukraine”

...

The data, 10 million gigabytes so far, represent “critical information infrastructure. This is core for operation of the economy, of the tax system, of banks, and the government overall,” he said. The data also include property records whose safekeeping can help prevent theft of Ukrainian homes, businesses, and land.

Through history, invaders have “come in and staged fake referendum and parceled out the land to their chums,” said [the AWS representative]

...

Amazon didn’t have to worry about its relationship with Russia on the Snowball project. It doesn’t have one.

An explanation for how that letter on Ukraine came to be published and retracted

Semafor (everyone they interview should demand to be described with similar terms):

Joe Cirincione is blunt and smart when it comes to war and nukes. His knowledge and charisma have made him a key figure in the progressive national security world. He was previously a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, President of the Ploughshares Fund, which backed the Iran nuclear deal, and then joined the Quincy Institute, an influential new foreign policy think tank that embraces American “restraint” in global affairs.

That is, until July, when he resigned his position over the Quincy Institute’s call for diplomatic talks with Russia on Ukraine, which he found divorced from realities on the ground.

...

JOE CIRINCIONE: Terrible staff work + terrible expert advice - Member involvement = Debacle.

To produce the shortest-lived Congressional letter in history, the CPC policy director worked in June with a few outside groups to write the letter. They were told they could release it when they got 30 of the 100 CPC members to sign it. They couldn’t hit that number until October, when they blindsided the members by releasing it 2 weeks before key elections. CPC Chair Jayapal tried walking it back, then had to pull the plug. It was the right call. The letter was an incoherent mishmash of contradictory positions based on an outdated analysis of the war. It was written when the war was stalemated, released when Ukraine is winning. Of course the positions don't make sense.

An optimistic take on "How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end?"

After a long discussion about why a nuclear attack is unlikely:

By what I take to be no coincidence, both Kadyrov and Prigozhin control something like a private armed force.  ... Prigozhin and Kadyrov are calling for is an intensification of the war, and mocking the Russian high command in the most aggressive possible tone, but meanwhile they seem to be protecting their own men. 

...

In the overall logic that I am describing, rivals would seek to conserve whatever fighting forces they have, either to protect their own personal interests during an unpredictable time, or to make a play for Moscow.  If this is indeed the present situation, it will soon seem foolish for everyone involved to have armed forces located in distant Ukraine, or, for that matter, to get them killed there day after day.  Then comes a tipping point. Once some people realize that other people are holding back their men, it will seem senseless to expend (or alienate) one's own. 

At a certain moment, this logic applies to the Russian army itself. 

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Mobilization itself starts to look like a spear pointed the wrong way

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And so we can see a plausible scenario for how this war ends.  ... In such a struggle, it makes no sense to have armed allies far away in Ukraine who might be more usefully deployed in Russia: not necessarily in an armed conflict, although this cannot be ruled out entirely, but to deter others and protect oneself. 

Chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil "is the 8th Russian energy executive to die suddenly this year"

"a list of these cases, in chronological order."

Meanwhile:

The chief financial officer of financially struggling Bed Bath & Beyond died Friday after falling from a New York City high-rise, police said.

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In August, its stock plunged more than 40 percent after a 350 percent spike that month, The Washington Post reported, riding a wave of excitement from investors after billionaire Ryan Cohen took a large stake in the struggling retailer. The company’s stock went into a free fall for days when Cohen signaled that he would drop his shares.

Meme stock Bed Bath & Beyond crashes more than 40 percent

A Securities and Exchange Commission filing confirmed that he sold his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond, profiting more than $58 million, according to MarketWatch, after selling 7.78 million shares at weighted average prices ranging from $18.68 to $29.22.

...

On Aug. 24, shareholders who said they had lost $1.2 billion filed a complaint alleging that Bed Bath & Beyond, [the CFO] and Cohen participated in a scheme to inflate the price of its stock to sell shares at a higher price.

Max Rebo band music box; Griner hostage situation, illustrated; Hologram action figures; Glottis and Manny; Those viral marriage comics

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