#настає зима для владіміра путіна

[tomorrowusa]

In London, protesters from an anti-Brexit group painted the street outside the Russian Embassy blue and yellow – the colors of the Ukrainian flag. 🇺🇦

Four people have been arrested after protesters painted the road outside the Russian Embassy in London in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

Led by Donkeys covered the street in Kensington Palace Gardens in yellow and blue paint ahead of the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine.

The group said it wanted to remind Russia's president of Ukraine's "right to self-determination".

[ ... ]

Explaining the protest in a tweet, the group said: "Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Putin's imperialist invasion of Ukraine, an independent state and a people with every right to self-determination.

"The existence of a massive Ukrainian flag outside his embassy in London will serve to remind him of that."

Friday is the first anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion.

Got blue and yellow? 💙💛 Let people know you oppose fascist Tucker Carlson and MTG favorite Vladimir Putin.

[tomorrowusa]

Russia, a fossil fuel superpower, is experiencing significant heating issues this winter.

Thousands of Russians have been affected by heating systems failing across the country, including Moscow and its outskirts, the Moscow Oblast, as they face one of the harshest winters in decades. The wave of breakdowns started in December and shows no sign of stopping. This week, at least 16 people suffered burns in the city of Nizhny Novgorod when a large-bore heating pipe exploded, spouting boiling water into the street. The pipe failure also left more than 3,000 people without heat, according to a local news channel on Telegram. [ ... ] The most severe breakdown occurred in Klimovsk, a district of the city of Podolsk in Moscow Oblast, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the capital. On January 4, the temperature dropped to -34 Celsius (-29.2 Fahrenheit) — the coldest spell for the area in at least 40 years. On the same day, a Klimovsk heating plant failed. Some 20,000 people were left without heat in the district of 50,000 people. Thousands of them remained cut off from the heating grid for several days. Other cities and towns in the region also experienced multi-day heating failures during the extremely cold weather, with residents of the city of Elektrostal lighting bonfires in front of their apartment buildings as a sign of protest.

Putin has his priorities. The Brezhnev-era infrastructure in Russia is falling apart but he is still diverting resources to his 3-day 696-day "special operation" in Ukraine.

Experts warned that the heating network in Russia is poorly maintained and outdated — especially in the areas that have massively increased their population density since the Soviet times. Even now, some parts of the country still use decades-old steel pipes, well past their projected 25-year lifetime, according to Russia's The Bell outlet. Official figures cited by The Bell indicate that some 3% of the heating, water and sanitation network is labeled as being in a state of "emergency" every year. Still, only 1%-2% are being modernized, leading to thousands of breakdowns.

Putin gambled about who would "suffer" – and he lost.

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, state propagandists issued dire warnings over EU sanctions on gas imports, claiming Europe would "freeze" without access to Russian gas for its heat. Nearly two years into the war, however, heating in Europe appears stable while Russian officials scramble to respond to the heating crisis. This contrast is pointed out with glee by Putin critics and Russian-speaking users from war-torn Ukraine. "They decided to freeze out Europe, but that didn't work. Then they decided to freeze their own to intimidate others," a YouTube user commented under a video reporting on the breakdowns.

Europe had already been increasing the amount of energy it gets from renewable sources. And after Putin's illegal invasion began, many European countries greatly decreased the amount of natural gas they import from Russia. Being less reliant on Russian energy has made Europe more independent. It's never a good idea to become dependent on neighboring dictators.

This report on people freezing in Russia is from UATV in Ukraine. You'd never get anything this candid about the Russian heating crisis on Russian state media.

Dictator Putin's invasion of Ukraine has only spotlighted Russia's shoddy army, its decaying infrastructure, its endless corruption, and its police state repression. If Putin was trying to demonstrate what a great world power Russia is, his invasion has only proven the opposite.

[tomorrowusa]

[H]e's in a precarious situation, I think. Although it's so difficult to predict when someone who has been an autocrat, obviously; what is that moment that pushes them off the throne? And of course, he's a kleptocrat on top of everything else and everyone is empowered by him. So but – what he has done in his country, again, I think we mentioned before — he set out to make Russia great again what he's really done is make NATO great – and great again.    [ ... ]    [T]his changes the dynamic, I think, with respect to European and US reluctance to say that Ukraine should be able to join NATO – given what Russia has done. There has to be a security guarantee at the end of this. The only credible guarantee is NATO membership and we can then say, 'look, you brought this on yourself'.

Retired General David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, talking with CNN’s Jim Sciutto about how he thinks Putin has been affected by Ukraine’s successful recent counteroffensive.

Ironically, Putin has made NATO stronger than at any time since its founding. Even if Ukraine doesn’t join NATO, it is likely to end up with security agreements with a number of NATO members; Turkey and Poland particularly come to mind.