About 30 years or so ago a Ukrainian engineer named Anatoliy Kokush invented a motion-picture camera support arm that was gyrostabilized. He based the design on the Russian tank technology that had gyrostabilized turret guns.

The arm mounts to the top of a vehicle and the camera stays level and steady despite the vehicle's bumping and bouncing at speed over dirt roads, battlefields, etc.

The arm literally revolutionized moviemaking. It has been used on 10s of thousands of movies, TV shows, and commercials. In the early 2000s Anatoliy earned 2 Oscars for the Russian Arm.

He initially named the arm the "Autorobot" but us Westerners always referred to it as the "Russian Arm" so Anatoliy officially adopted that name for the arm in the 90's.

After seven days of Russian assault, the United Nations refugee agency announced that 1 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion, the swiftest exodus of refugees this century.

 "Biden is an Atlanticist who likes to brag about how he stayed in touch with European leaders while out of office from 2017 to 2021. He is a creature of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Munich Security Conference. He came up in politics immersed in the debates of the Cold War, which are now newly relevant. When he said recently that `the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power,' he could have been lifting the line from one of his 1988 presidential campaign speeches."

"Biden, in this view, is uniquely suited for the new role that has been thrust upon him."

"It was Biden and his team's patience and close consultation with European allies that has led to the extraordinary unity now on display. Biden's patience waiting to impose sanctions until after the invasion, even in the face of intense criticism, has been vindicated because Putin would have pointed to preemptive sanctions as a provocation and a reason to invade. Biden said that Germany would abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline if Putin attacked and he was right, because he had been engaged in quiet diplomacy on the issue all along."

Populist Embrace of Putin Cools
February 28, 2022 at 1:00 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 86 Comments

Wall Street Journal: "What Europe's populists saw in Mr. Putin was a kindred spirit, a leader willing to disregard the rules of international cooperation that emerged in the wake of World War II, underpinned by the military might of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They admired Mr. Putin's unapologetic nationalism and his deep-seated distrust of the U.S."

"That admiration is now running up against the reality of Mr. Putin's forces pouring into Ukraine. Some populists are rushing to distance themselves, branding Mr. Putin's aggression a setback of historic proportions."

According to a US Central Intelligence Agency study,[15] "the effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense. Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness." Another Defense Intelligence Agency document speculates that, because the "shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue ... it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate".[16]

Pat Robertson Says Putin `Compelled by God' to Invade
February 28, 2022 at 7:35 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 173 Comments

Pat Robertson came out of retirement to declare that Russian President Vladimir Putin is following God's plan by invading Ukraine, insisting this is part of an "End Times" battle.

Said Robertson: "People say that Putin's out of his mind. Yes, maybe so. But at the same time, he's being compelled by God. He went into the Ukraine but that wasn't his goal. His goal was to move against Israel, ultimately."

He elaborated that Ukraine was "a staging area" for a great Biblical army that will gather for Armageddon.

C&L

Following the initial decisions adopted by the FIFA Council and the UEFA Executive Committee, which envisaged the adoption of additional measures, FIFA and UEFA have today decided together that all Russian teams, whether national representative teams or club teams, shall be suspended from participation in both FIFA and UEFA competitions until further notice

Expansionism for security, and whatever other multifarious reasons, is always accompanied by public rhetoric designed to galvanize the support of the populace. This is nothing new. Of course, maybe we can't relate because we've never had any history-bastardizing, wild-swinging demagogues and warmongers in positions of power in this country. Heaven forbid.

And those are just the obvious, first-order effects. Bradley Jardine, a global fellow at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan research organization, writes that Tajikistan, a small Central Asian country north of Afghanistan, relies on remittances from Russia for more than 20 percent of its GDP. That means if workers in Russia stop sending money to their families in Tajikistan, that country's economy could nose-dive into a depression. Economic crises can spark political revolutions, and Tajikistan shares a border with China's westernmost province, Xinjiang. Russia's crisis could, then, become a Central Asian economic crisis, which could become a Chinese political problem. What happens in Russia will not stay in Russia.

The first is that it has nothing to do with Ukraine.

"Ukraine is from his perspective the most painful symptom of what's bothering him," said Adamsky. "He is out to overhaul the rules of the international game that were formed at the end of the Cold War, contrary to Russia's will."

His second point is that what's now happening is "unfolding according to two central notions in Russian strategic thinking - levels of escalation and multidimensional coercion (or deterrence)."

The Putin plan will be military and non-military. Soft power and hard. Cyber attacks and traditional ground war.

"The third conclusion is that the Russian army isn't what it used to be,"

His fourth conclusion is that Putin clearly sees the two major Russian failures being the German invasion in 1941 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin thinks that the lesson there is to act militarily not to appease.

His final conclusion goes to questions of how to end the war from Russia's point of view. Putin has mentioned nuclear weapons twice, though most don't believe he'd ever actually use them. When asked whether Americans should fear a nuclear war, President Joe Biden said frankly, "no."

But as Adamsky explained Putin "can't end with a whimper" because he's trying to show his strength on the world stage.

China Asked Russia to Delay Invasion Until After Olympics
March 2, 2022 at 3:41 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 81 Comments

"A Western intelligence report said senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials in early February not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing," the New York Times reports.

"The report indicates that senior Chinese officials had some level of knowledge about Russia's war plans or intentions before the invasion started last week."

Photos of Captured Russians Added to Google Maps
March 3, 2022 at 2:15 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 32 Comments

"Google Maps users are uploading dozens of photos of destruction, injured civilians, and captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine to the Google Maps listings of popular locations within Russia's major cities," Vice News reports.

"Russian president Vladimir Putin has blocked or limited access to foreign news coverage of the war in Ukraine, including Facebook and Twitter, some of the few places people within Russia that citizens could get non-state sanctioned news. Google Maps allows users to upload photos of places--usually as part of a review of the spot--but people are using this feature to get images from Ukraine into Russia."

Washington Post: "A besieged Ukraine has adopted a gruesome tactic in hopes of stoking anti-government rage inside Russia: posting photos and videos of captured and killed Russian soldiers on the Web for anyone to see."

"Deterrence is no longer enough, and we need more defense. Because otherwise, it will be too late here... Putin will not stop in Ukraine; he will not stop."

-- Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, quoted by the Washington Post.

Poland to Give MIG-29 Fighter Jets to U.S.
March 8, 2022 at 2:37 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 238 Comments

Poland's government announced that it will hand over all its MIG-29 fighter jets to a U.S. air base in Germany, the AP reports.

In return, Poland asked the U.S. "to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities."

It's still not clear how the jets get into Ukrainian hands