Monthly Archives: December 2024

Happy New Year of the 80th Anniversary of the Great Victory!

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We present a selection of posts with drawings and caricatures from a very special edition of the Soviet satirical magazine, “Krokodil”. More can be found at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”!

Greetings on the coming Year of the 80th Anniversary of the Victory!

No doubt was left: the New Year of 1945 would finally bring Victory! As attested by the painting by L.Brodat on the cover of the combined issue №47-48 of “Krokodil” from December 1944.

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— Who is coming?
— New Year!
— Password?
— Victory!
— Advance! *

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* The final command — Advance! — is a play on the double meaning of the phrase “Coming New Year”, which translates literally as “Advancing New Year”, when at the same time, in the military context, the first word would also carry the meaning of “to attack” or “to charge”.

In the posts leading up to the New Year, we bring some of the drawings and caricatures from that issue of “Krokodil”. Some of them, as you will see, are surprisingly relevant now, in December of 2024!

At the Fascist Flee(ce) Market

The caricature by Yu.Ganf from the combined issue №47-48 of “Krokodil” from December 1944. It sums up the departing year in humorous detail, accompanied by a longer text with a month-by-month blow, which are translated below!

Let us admire the caricature in all its Bruegelesque detail, starting with the upper left corner.
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The Norwegian excuse for not taking Russian sailors on board is not good enough

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We are publishing a qualified opinion from reader @SlickPict on the Norwegian excuse for not taking the Russian sailors on board of the Norwegian ship “Oslo Carrier 3”, as presented at the end of the previous article The attack on Russian dry cargo ship “Ursa Major” in the Mediterranean. The text was first published on our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

The reader has been a participant of the events surrounding the disaster of a rig during the Montara oil spill.

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I’ve spent a long time at sea, on offshore installations and pipelay barges, plus the odd deep sea fishing trip…😁

I have witnessed and been directly involved in a sizable international incident where the crew of a drilling rig lost control of the well and abandoned the rig, right next to us on a pipelay barge.

We recovered the crew safely. The rig later burnt totally.

I can only think of one excuse for not taking a crew aboard from a life-raft or life-boat and that would be because it was unsafe to do so for some good and solid reason.

This excuse, (the only possible excuse) was not tabled by the Norwegians.

“There’s another ship on the way” communicated properly or not, is not good enough.
“There were no injured aboard” is not good enough.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in a life-raft or lifeboat will tell you that it is more comfortable drinking tea or coffee in the warm accommodation of a ship, than tied up to it in a life-raft or lifeboat. Every minute you are in these life-rafts in the open sea is dangerous. Being tied to a large vessel even more so.

The simple test here is, what would the Norwegian Government & media have to say if the position was reversed? Say for arguments sake that a Norwegian crew were not aided by a Russian vessel?

I think we know the answer.

They would scream blue murder.

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The photographs from the rescue operation are by the author, with the following additional comment:

[The rig crew] were picked up by an anchor handling/supply vessel and transferred to our barge.

This point is of significance. No waiting for other vessels, transfer if needs be, but get them out of the sea asap.

Another reader came with a similar comment:
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The attack on Russian dry cargo ship “Ursa Major” in the Mediterranean

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The attack on the Russian dry cargo ship “Ursa Major” that happened on December 23, 2024, was a targeted torpedo or sea drone attack, and is thus an act of terrorism. Using the British official terminology, it was highly likely an attack carried out by NATO. The ship sank with a hole in its hull, resulting in death of two crew members (they are still reported missing). 14 members of the crew were rescued, but even that did not go without a dramatic turn of event, when the Norwegian bulk carrier did not let the crew members to go onboard. This prompted a harsh respons from the Russian authorities. The Norwegian side has their own simple explanation, and we shall present it further down in this article.

However, the motive for the refusal raises an added question about the origin of the attack on “Ursa Major”, and if the Norwegian ship had something to do with it, taking into account the Norwegian involvement in the terrorist attack against the Nord Stream pipeline, which greatly harmed Germany and the European Union, but lead to extra profits for the Norwegian gas producers.

Below we present translations from several articled from the Russian newspaper “Argumenty i Fakty” and a translation from the Norwegian newspaper “VG”, describing the key points and theories surrounding this act of terrorism.

Ursa Major

The ears of the GUR are sticking out. The cause of the demise of our ship in the Mediterranean Sea has been named

A new version has emerged in the mysterious case of the sinking of the Ursa Major vessel. As the group of companies “Oboronlogistics” (Defence Logistics), which owned the ship, stated in an interview with RIA Novosti, the cause of the tragedy was a terrorist attack.

There were three explosions

“Oboronlogistics” believes that on December 23, 2024, a targeted terrorist attack was carried out on the “Ursa Major” ship owned by the company. According to the testimony of the ship’s crew members, at 13:50 (Moscow time), three consecutive explosions occurred from the starboard side, in the aft part area,” the press service of the ship’s owner said.

Oboronlogistics believes that “Ursa Major” was in good condition, was regularly serviced and set sail without exceeding loading standards. Who could have committed the attack and why? The first to come to mind are the Ukrainian special services SBU and GUR, which benefited from the sinking of the Russian ship for many reasons. By the way, these “specialists” work under the strict guidance of their Western senior colleagues.

Ursa Major is an important target due to its unique status in “Oboronlogistics”. It belongs to the most versatile class of “Ro-Ro/Lo-Lo”, which, translated into ordinary language, means that the vessel can be loaded using cranes, or simply by delivering cargo on special platforms through the bow, side and stern. A kind of “universal fighter”, and in this class, the ship was the largest at “Oboronlogistics”.
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In Syria, the party is only starting

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This is an analytical article by Alexandr Rodgers, translated by SRBZOV

I’ve already written about this briefly after Assad’s fall, but now there is more data, so I can describe it in more detail.
The morons who yapped that “this is a defeat and/or weakening of Russia” are just that – morons.

Because Russia can keep its bases in Syria (if it wants), and the change in the situation has not caused us any particular problems. No one is attacking our bases, and the pro-Turkish militants who control this part of Syria are not at all against the bases remaining (and are even ready to provide security guarantees).
But the destruction of the existing balance has created problems for all of Syria’s neighbors (unexpectedly, Russia is not one of them) and for the United States.

Israel’s unprovoked aggression and full-scale invasion of Syria with an attempt at illegal annexation of Syrian lands (and whatever else they usually write about Russia) is not really a victory for Israel and does not strengthen its position. On the contrary, in the context of ongoing confrontation with other neighbors, this only stretches the border and disperses the Israeli army.

But the most important thing is the growing conflict between Turkish proxies (HTS) and American proxies (Kurds from the SDF). Moreover, there are career military personnel on both sides – Turkish and American.

The Turkomans have recaptured two cities from the Kurds – Manbij and Deir ez-Zor. Moreover, despite the Biden administration’s attempts to resolve the situation, Erdogan directly says that he will not stop the fighting until the SDF is destroyed.

I have come across several publications where the authors write that the Trump administration will have completely different goals than the current one, and it will try to leave Syria. I would not be so sure of this. If anyone has forgotten, I will remind you that it was Trump who first deployed American troops there to strengthen and train the Kurds, and bragged “I took the oil.”

And the Turks are now driving the Kurds and the Americans who support them out of these very oil fields. And Trump has already made statements about the “hostile takeover” of Syrian territories by Turkey the other day (he somehow bashfully kept silent about Israel, which is doing the same).

The fighting there is serious, with tanks, artillery, drones. The Turkish army is helping with air support.

There was information that the other day the Americans unloaded ten military transport aircraft full of armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Kurds. Plus, additional American troops have been deployed there.

And just a week ago, Michael Rubin, one of the leading American experts on the Middle East, who has taught US Army soldiers for many years and has been in contact with various groups, including the Taliban, wrote an article for the think tank “American Enterprise Institute” with the eloquent title “The United States Needs to Prepare to Kill Turks in Syria”. That is, “The United States must prepare to kill the Turks in Syria.”

It is especially amusing that the goals of this think tank are stated as “Building a free and secure world, protecting human dignity and expanding human potential.” For a safe and free world, kill the Turks!

As we see, in Syria, US and Turkish proxies are waging war against each other, the Pentagon is actively supplying the Kurds with weapons (this means, for example, that all these weapons are not going to Ukraine), and American influencers are openly calling for the killing of the Turks.

Two NATO countries are fighting each other through proxies, NATO is united as never before!

The hardest thing in this situation is to try to explain how this has weakened Russia.

I just can’t do it.

Yeltsin Centre as a magnet for the liberal dregs of society, with Nina Hrusheva as an example

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To get a feel of what legacy Yeltsin left behind, and what kind of people get attracted to it, we published several posts at out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, using one specific case as an example, and commenting along the way.

The country must know its antiheroes

Yeltsin Centre in Yekaterinburg invited a patented russophobe Nina Hrusheva — the great-granddaughter of Nikita Hrushev. Yes, the very same who got the top position in the USSR in exchange for the unconstitutional transfer of Crimea to UkSSR, the same who black-paintes Stalin and his legacy, the same who initiated the future dismemberment of the USSR.

Nina Hrusheva, a citizen of the USA, was to present her book «Nikita Hrushev. A Leader Outside of the System.»

Getting ahead, it was announced that Hrusheva’s visit was cancelled «for technical reasons». And good riddance!

We shall talk about Yeltsin Centre in a different post. Now, let’s take a closer look at Nina Hrusheva… UralLIVE reports:

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She wants to dismember Russia and judge Putin. Meet the new guest of the Yeltsin Center
Nikita Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter went crazy and betrayed her motherland

On November 26, a speech by Nina Hrushcheva, professor at the New School University in New York, was announced at the Yeltsin Center. She is the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, through whose fault Crimea became part of the Ukrainian SSR.
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Shooting of the “White House” in October of ’93 in the recollections of the contemporaries

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«It was democracy that was shot at in Russia»
— Ruslan Hasbulatov

On the 15th anniversary of the «Boody October» in 2008, newspaper «Komsomolskaya Pravda» published an article with several recollections and testimonials from the participants of those events.

We presented those accounts in a series of Telegram posts on our channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

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At that time, a civil war almost broke out in Moscow, caused by a political war between President Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet. Its tragic high point was the shooting of the parliament building (the “White House”). Who gave the order and who shot at the “White House”? What is the role of the West in those events? And how did they turn out for the country in the end?

The political feuds between President Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet, headed by Hasbulatov, lasted throughout 1993. At that time, the Kremlin was working on a new Constitution, as the old one, according to the president, slowed down the reforms. The new Constitution gave enormous powers to the president and nullified the rights of the Parliament.

Tired of butting heads with deputies, on September 21, 1993, Yeltsin signed Decree No. 1400 on the termination of the activities of the Supreme Council. The deputies refused to comply, declaring that Yeltsin had committed a “coup d’etat” and that his powers were being terminated and transferred to Vice President Rutskoy.

Riot police blocked the White House, where the parliament was sitting. Communications, electricity, and water were cut off there. Supporters of the Supreme Council built barricades, and on September 3 their clashes with riot police began, 7 demonstrators were killed, dozens were injured.

Yeltsin declared a state of emergency in Moscow. And Rutskoy called for the capture of the Ostankino television center in order to gain access to the airwaves. Dozens of people died during the capture of Ostankino. On the night of October 4, Yeltsin ordered the storming of the White House. In the morning, the building was shelled. A total of 150 people were killed and four hundred injured on October 3-4 [an optimistic number, the real death toll may well have been over 1400 people]. Hasbulatov and Rutskoy were arrested and sent to Lefortovo prison.

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Let’s start with a short interview with the then Chairman of the Supreme Council, Ruslan Imranovich Hasbulatov. Read also The Bloody October of 1993. Retrospect. The Last Interview with Ruslan Hasbulatov

For context, the publication came 2 months after US-NATO poked Russia using Georgia as a stick, and discovered that Dmitry Medvedev, far from being an obedient liberal, responded with a short decisive policing action in Georgia, taking some NATO equipment as trophies.

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Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman of the Supreme Council Ruslan Hasbulatov. Photo: T.Kuzmina (ITAR-TASS)

“Kohl persuaded Clinton to help Yeltsin destroy the parliament”

— Ruslan Imranovich, after 15 years, how do you see the history of October 1993?
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National identity and political choice on the example of Russia and China – a re-blog of Dmitry Medvedev’s article

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The article you are about to read was translated and published by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on their Telegram channel. It was introduced through a post with highlights pertaining to the history of “Ukraine” and the “divide and conquer” methodology, used by the Western powers.

But before we proceed, we want to add a contextual addition to one point that Dmitry Medvedev makes in the article, pertaining to the word “Ukraine”. We wrote about it in a post at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”:

A quick linguistic excursion into the history of Ukraine

What you see before you, is the «New Russian-Polish Dictionary», published in Warsaw in 1835.

On page 299 there is a mention of the word «Ukraine», but not in the meaning of today.

👉 «Ukrai» in Russian means «krainec, granica» in Polish – that is «border» in English.

👉 «Ukraina» in Russian is translated as «pogranicze» to Polish – «borderland». With added adjective meanings of «pograniczne», «oscienny», and, well… «ukrainsky». That is, «of a border» (as in, for example, «a border crossing»)

That’s it!

📄 Excerpt from the article by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation (December 13, 2024)

Ukraine: the West’s new social vivisection exercises

  • The current Kiev regime feeds from the hands of the countries of the collective West, which, in addition to funnelling arms into it, manages it through “soft power” political technologies. To this end, a comprehensive network of NGOs controlled by American and European intelligence services has been established.
  • Western forces are acting against us according to the same hypocritical principle of “divide et impera.” Their establishments and Ukrainian ideologues are persistently attempting to apply the Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and other experiences (including Manchukuo) in Ukraine. Their aim is to demonstrate that Russians and Ukrainians are as disparate as possible, to sever Ukraine from Russia, to sow discord, and to create ethnic divisions.
  • To unconditionally draw a line between the ethnicities living in Russia and Ukraine, and to attribute all the inhabitants of those lands to Ukrainians, is a gross error. The word itself, “Ukrainians,” did not have its modern ethnic ring to it until the mid-19th century. It was more of a geographical term, referring to a person’s birthplace or place of residence. The explanation is quite simple: there were no independent state formations within the borders of modern-day Ukraine at the time when the modern system of nation states was emerging following the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, or in the 19th century.
  • Viewing Ukraine’s genesis through the classic “state – nation” prism is pointless. Ukraine’s history is inseparable from the history of the events that unfolded on its territories, which at various times were part of other countries. Likewise, it is more accurate to discuss not a cultural and ethnic “Ukrainians – Russians” dichotomy, but rather “borderland Russians – Russians” dichotomy.
  • In Russia, the people of Malorossiya (or Little Russia) were recognised as an integral part of the titular nation, the Russian people. Their integration into imperial society was considerable. Legally, politically, culturally, and religiously, their status was in no way inferior to that of Russians.
  • Never in the 300 years of being part of the Russian state has Malorossiya-Ukraine been a colony or an enslaved minority. At the same time, it was normal for various non-Russian groups living in the Russian Empire and having a distinct ethnic identity in comparison with the titular group, to identify as Russian Germans, Russian Poles, Russian Swedes, Russian Jews, or Russian Georgians. It was a common figure of speech. However, there was no such thing as “Russian Ukrainians.” The phrase even sounded absurd.

The complete article is below.
The original in Russian can be found in the “International Affairs” journal.
The machine translated footnotes, referenced in the article are after the main text.

National identity and political choice on the example of Russia and China

Article by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russian Federation (December 13, 2024)December 14, 2024

If you are hoping to turn a Russian pharmacy into a Ukrainian one, it’s not enough just to clip the letter “я” off the end of the word “гомеопатическая” on its signboard.
— Mikhail Bulgakov [1]

The party and state visit to China on December 11-12, 2024, at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party has reaffirmed the unprecedentedly high level of relations between Russia and China. There are no issues we cannot discuss. During the talks with our Chinese partners, we discussed Ukraine, the Syrian crisis, and resistance to the unilateral economic restrictions imposed on us without UN Security Council approval.
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“I’m Alive!” – The Strange Case of Russell Bentley

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A translation of an article, appearing at Tsargrad.tv on the 14th of December 2024.

“I’m alive!”: The strange case of Russell Bentley — the perpetrators did not appear in court. The murdered militia member appeared to his friends in a dream

On December 5, the trial pertaining to “the case of Russell Bentley” — an American volunteer with the call sign Texas — commenced in the garrison court of Donetsk. In 2014, he burned bridges in the United States, came to fight for Donbass, and participated in the battles for Donetsk airport. And on April 8, 2024, he was killed in Donetsk. By our own people. Four servicemen from the 5th motorized Infantry brigade of the DPR, including one of its commanders Vitaly Vansyatsky, are being tried for this crime. A journalist from Tsargrad called Lyudmila Bentley, Russell’s wife, to find out the details of the trial, and found out an amazing fact. Texas appeared almost simultaneously in a dream to three of his loved ones and uttered the same phrase: “I’m alive!”

The call was answered by the probable killer

So, there are four defendants in the dock: Vitaly Vansyatsky, Vladislav Agaltsev, Andrey Iordanov and Vladimir Bazhin. Surprisingly, they are all Donetsk residents, from Makeyevka…

This means that they couldn’t possibly not know Russell Bentley, who was a “landmark” of the DPR — not only a well-known militia member, but also a journalist, musician, and a frequent guest on local TV. And therefore, to detain, torture, kill Russell, and then methodically destroy his remains, you have to be either very unscrupulous or very stoned.

One has to wonder what the law enforcement system should be like, in order to impute part 5 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code for such a crime (abuse of official authority resulting in death by negligence)?

It is also interesting that when Lyudmila Bentley did not yet know where her husband had disappeared, she called Vansyatsky, unaware that the person on the other end of the line was the likely the killer of Russell. Vansyatsky said at the time that he knew nothing about any Bentley.

Recall that on April 8, Russell and Lyudmila arrived at the administration of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, where the American was called to extend his monthly minimum social security (7,300 rubles).

At that moment, the arrival of the HIMARS happened nearby, and Texas rushed there by car to help possible victims (in Donetsk, many people do this in similar situations), but before reaching the place of arrival, he was stopped and then taken somewhere by the military. (Tsargrad described the whole situation in detail).

“Their motive is still unclear. I don’t see any logic in their actions. Russell always had with him a standard set of documents certifying his identity: a Russian passport with a residence permit in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, a military ID card, a weapon permit, several journalistic certificates (at that time Bentley was a military correspondent of the Sputnik agency — the one headed by Margarita Simonyan and Dmitry Kiselyov). Establishing his identity was not a problem. They say that Russell tried to call someone. Of course, he did. To call me. We agreed that in some difficult situations, he calls, and I translate on the phone – I facilitate his dialogue with people with whom there is a problem. This was the case, for example, with a car repair technician. But this time they didn’t let him call. The phone was smashed so that it lay on the ground smoking. Where is the logic? If they suspected that he was some kind of spy, it would be logical to protect the phone like the apple of your eye to check contacts and correspondence”
— says Lyudmila Bentley.

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100 Year Anniversary of the Soviet Art Collective “Kukryniksy”

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KUKRYNIKSY is 100 Years!

We present the material from the series of posts at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, celebrating the centenary of this illustrious art collective!

2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the day when the first cartoon of Mihail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov, Porfiry Nikitich Krylov and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov was printed in the magazine “Komsomolia” with their common signature “Kukryniksy”.

👉 Mihail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov [October 8 (21), 1903 – November 11, 1991]
👉 Porfiry Nikitich Krylov [August 9 (22), 1902 – May 15, 1990]
👉 Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov [July 8 (21), 1903 – April 17, 2000]

The “y” at the end is the Russian plural form — that is, “Kukrynikses” — preserved for the authenticity of the collective’s name.

Mihail Kupriyanov was born in the city of Tetyushi, Kazan province of the Russian Empire, Porfiry Krylov — in Tula, Nikolai Sokolov — in the village of Tsaritsyno, Moscow province, and his entire childhood and youth were spent in Rybinsk.

Young talented artists would hardly have had the opportunity to meet if it were not for the “Higher Art and Technical Workshops” (VHUTEMAS). In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov began working together in the wall newspaper of VHUTEMAS under the signature of Kukry and Krykup.

At the same time, Sokolov, while still living in Rybinsk, put the signature “Niks” on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and the three of them worked in the wall newspaper of VHUTEMAS as Kukryniksy.

Our team, to tell the truth, consists of four artists: Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and Kukryniksy. All three of us treat the latter with great trepidation and care. What was created by the team could not have been mastered by any of us individually.
— Kukryniksy

The Exhibition in honour of KUKRYNIKSY

I do not know if there ever existed — and I do not think that in the field of caricature there could exist — such a “consubstantial and indivisible trinity” as our Kukryniksy.
— Maxim Gorky

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