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Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" by the Russian media for his reputed ruthlessness, on Nov. 9 recommended Moscow's forces quit Kherson and the west bank of the River Dnipro where they were dangerously exposed. Simonyan urged Surovikin, a hulking shaven-headed figure who has been shown on TV speaking in clipped Russian military language, to ignore "nonsense" from critics, a reference to influential military bloggers unhappy about his retreat. Nor is taking new ground in the east against a highly motivated and Western-equipped Ukrainian military an easy task, especially in the winter. The appointment of Surovikin on Oct. 8 was the first time Russia had publicly named an overall commander for its forces in Ukraine. With the exception of the city of Lysychansk, in eastern Ukraine, he said all the territory Russia held looked defensible.

The pullout proposed by General Sergei Surovikin, appointed last month to take overall charge of Russia's war effort, means Moscow is giving up a strategic city just north of annexed Crimea, the only Ukrainian provincial capital it had captured since its Feb. 24 invasion. The decision - described by one Russian military blogger as "a black page in the history of the Russian army" - was nonetheless quickly defended by some of the most high-profile proponents of the war as a wise and necessary action. But he said that ceding Kherson to Ukraine would put Russian-annexed Crimea within range of Ukrainian guided missile systems and U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets. As Shoigu and Surovikin announced the retreat on Wednesday, Putin was congratulating employees of a leading scientific institute on its 75th anniversary. And after that, to understand who is right, who to blame and what is the essence of the problem".

☆ Elon Musk manages free speech versus 'hellscape' at Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Sheila Dang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

The pressure is mounting on Musk and Twitter as he is set to address the Twitter staff on Friday after closing the deal. Fewer than 10% of 266 Twitter employees who participated in a poll on messaging app Blind expected to still have their jobs in three months. Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, according to people familiar with the matter. Twitter, Musk and the executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. As news of the deal spread, some Twitter users were quick to flag their willingness to walk away.

☆ Elon Musk says he'll be 'digging' into shadowbans on his first day at Twitter as conservatives urge him to overturn their previous punishments
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that he will be "digging" into shadowbans as he takes over Twitter. Right-wing politicians and pundits have started calling on Musk to make changes to Twitter. "As of now, I'm still Shadowbanned, ghost banned, search banned, and Twitter removed 1200 followers today - as usual," Catturd, whose identity is not known, posted on Friday. Conservative commentators Piers Morgan and Ben Shaprio have both asked Musk to restore controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson's account. Even the editor-in-chief of the pro-war, Kremlin-funded Russia Today channel asked Musk for help.

☆ Elon Musk says he'll be 'digging' into shadow bans on his first day at Twitter as conservatives urge him to overturn their previous punishments
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

☆ Conservatives and anti-vaxxers are frantically lobbying Elon Musk to lift Twitter bans on their idols after he took over
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

An assortment of conservatives are lobbying Elon Musk to undo Twitter bans on prominent allies. Musk has said he opposes permanent bans and plans to roll back moderation on Twitter. But Twitter is enforcing legal sanctions on the networks in the EU and UK which prevents people seeing their content. Twitter has said it never shadowbans anybody, though Musk said Friday he was "digging in" to the allegations. Evolutionary biologist and podcaster Bret Weinstein, who has long questioned COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, also called for Musk to reinstate anti-vaxxer Dr Robert Malone.

☆ Russian TV presenter says sorry but faces probe for call to drown Ukrainian children
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Oct 24 (Reuters) - A Russian TV presenter apologised on Monday for calling for Ukrainian children to be drowned, as Russia's state Investigative Committee said it was probing his remarks. In a show last week on state-controlled broadcaster RT, presenter Anton Krasovsky said Ukrainian children who saw Russians as occupiers under the Soviet Union should have been "thrown straight into a river with a strong current" and drowned. Ukraine said on Sunday that RT was an inciter of genocide and should be banned worldwide. Krasovsky is a pro-war commentator on Russian television who has been sanctioned by the European Union. In last week's show, he also talked about shoving children into huts and burning them, and joked about the rape of Ukrainian women.

☆ Russian state TV host under investigation after he said Ukrainian children should be drowned and burned in their 'monstrous little houses'
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia Today host Anton Krasovsky was suspended after calling for Ukrainian children to be killed. Krasovsky aimed his comments at Ukrainian children who saw the Soviet Union as occupiers in the 1980s. Krasovsky replied: "Just drown those children, drown them," before going on to describe Ukrainians as having "piece of shit little houses." "There are masses of awful, monstrous little houses, they shit all over the Carpathian Mountains," he went on. "God, those grannies would spend their burial savings to get raped by Russian soldiers," he added.

☆ Why the Crimea bridge blast was such a blow to Putin
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Mithil Aggarwal | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

But when he boasted of his military’s Monday morning assault, Putin sought to frame the attacks as revenge for the blast that damaged his signature bridge connecting Russia with the annexed Crimean Peninsula. “This was the first attack on critical Russian infrastructure,” Frank Ledwidge, senior lecturer of law and strategy at University of Portsmouth, told NBC News. which was directed by her husband, a sign of the prominence Kremlin allies sought to give the bridge in Russian popular culture. Simonyan was one of many hawkish voices who expressed fury in the wake of the bridge blast and delight at Monday's apparent retaliation. While it was unclear whether the bridge blast and Monday’s assault were tied, what was clear is the value of the bridge to both sides.

☆ Explainer: Why Russia's missiles on Ukraine have limited impact
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Peter Graff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Ukraine says Russia fired 83 cruise missiles on Monday and that it shot down at least 43 of them. Both sides say the attack was on a huge scale, unseen at least since Russia's initial wave of air strikes on the first night of the war in February. Western military analysts have no firm figures for how many missiles Russia has left, but for months have pointed to indicators suggesting the supply is limited. Ben Hodges, another former commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, said that despite Monday's attacks, Ukraine still appeared to have "irreversible momentum" on the battlefield. "Russia's logistics system is exhausted and no Russian wants to fight in Putin's war in Ukraine," he tweeted.

☆ Russia is scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel in order to hold off Ukraine's advance
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Michael Peck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Members of the German Volkssturm march during their swearing-in ceremony in Berlin on November 12, 1944. While Russia still has a military draft, only about 30% of its troops are conscripts, with the remainder contract soldiers. Arkady Budnitsky/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesHence, Putin signed an executive order for partial mobilization on September 21. But the hundreds of thousands of Russian men fleeing the country know better. Those new Russian soldiers will receive barely any training.

☆ Putin grants Russian citizenship to U.S. whistleblower Snowden
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Olesya AstakhovaSept 26 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA). U.S. authorities have for years wanted him returned to the United States to face a criminal trial on espionage charges. He said that Snowden's wife Lindsay Mills, who gave birth to a son in 2020, would also apply for citizenship. Russia granted Snowden permanent residency rights in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship. Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak U.S. secrets but was not a traitor.

☆ Senior Russian lawmakers express concern over Putin's mobilization drive 'excesses'
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-25 | by ( Hyder Abbasi | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Amid increasing public anger about Russia's mobilization drive, two of the country's most senior lawmakers ordered regional officials to solve the “excesses” that have stoked protests and seen flocks of military-age men attempt to flee. “Appeals are coming in,” Volodin, speaker of the Duma, Russia’s lower chamber of Parliament, said in a post Sunday. Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin in St. Petersburg in April. It said hundreds of people had been detained by police across Russia for protesting against the mobilization and the war. The territory controlled by Russian or Russian-backed forces in the four regions represents about 15% of Ukrainian territory.

☆ Complaints about Russia's chaotic mobilization grow
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-24 | by ( Kevin Liffey | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register"It has been announced that privates can be recruited up to the age of 35. Reports have surfaced across Russia of men with no military experience or past draft age suddenly receiving call-up papers. "Some (recruiters) hand over the call-up papers at 2 a.m., as if they think we're all draft dodgers," he said. There has been a particular outcry among ethnic minorities in remote, economically deprived areas in Siberia, where Russia's professional armed forces have long recruited disproportionately. The interior ministry of the Russian region of North Ossetia advised people not to try to leave the country for Georgia at the Verkhny Lars frontier post, where it said 2,300 cars were waiting to cross.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the partial mobilization of his country’s military Wednesday, calling up military reservists in a significant escalation of his war in Ukraine after a series of setbacks that led to growing pressure on the Kremlin to act. Until now, Putin had resisted calls from nationalist supporters and pro-military bloggers for a general mobilization since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. The Kremlin has insisted that what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine is going according to plan, but military observers have said Russian forces are depleted and increasingly dispirited. It wasn’t clear if the proposed annexation would cover the entire territory of the provinces or only the areas currently occupied by Russian forces. “We are aware of reports that President Putin may be preparing to enact mobilization measures.

☆ Many Russians seek ways out as call-up orders arrive
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-21 | by ( Caleb Davis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

In St Petersburg, Pavel Chikov said recruitment offices had handed packs of conscription papers to homeowners' associations. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the army was calling up people with experience of service and military "specialists" to fight in Ukraine. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterBut there was little clarity as to who these would be. In the city of Kursk, one woman married to a soldier said: "They're not letting people out of Kursk. read moreFor now, Shoigu said Russia would not call a general mobilisation, nor recruit students or send current conscripts to fight in Ukraine.

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