Friends, consider donating to the Ukrainian Freedom Fund. A vetted, well-managed charity helping Ukraine’s vets. http://ukrfreedomfund.org

Love it. Exactly the sort of warrior culture needed at the edge of the Steppe.

http://azov.press/ukr/u-centri-mariupolya-zmagalis-naysil-nishi

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/05/25/ukrainian-catholics-who-used-to-worship-in-a-basement-see-dream-of-golden-domed-church-come-true/

People arrive for a liturgy May 21 at the new Ukrainian Catholic parish in Odessa, Ukraine. “We dreamed of a golden-domed church,” said Bishop Mykhaylo Bubniy of Odessa, whose parishioners waited decades for the new building. (CNS photo/Mariana Karapinka) See UKRAINE-ODESSA-CHURCH May 24, 2017.

Below is a video of the behind-the-scenes work CNN did to stage the photo-op with Muslims holding up signs that read, ‘ISIS WILL LOSE’.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/shock-video-cnn-creates-fakenews-london-following-terror-attacks-stages-anti-isis-muslim-protesters/

Cautiously optimistic that this isn’t consolidation of power.

https://odessablog.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/nationwide-sweeps-and-arrests-across-ukraine/

told ya

See? Now that Trump won, the Kremlin needs to ally with the opposition. That’s what Russia has done for CENTURIES. They ally with opposition groups. It isn’t complicated. Read my Nine Lessons of Russian Propaganda.

http://americanmilitarynews.com/2017/02/the-man-leading-californias-secession-campaign-lives-in-russia/

Excellent map illustrating #Russia’s #military activities both within & outside #Ukraine, 2014 – 2016. Courtesy of @DPJankowski.

Perfect!

* Russians see western law-abidingness as an exploitable weakness.

* They function by making threats, and getting others to back down.

* They consider democracy and prosperity on their boarders to be a threat.

* They try to secure themselves by sowing chaos and instability.

* Rampant alcoholism and abortion-as-birthcontrol – they’re already off the demographic cliff. (In sharp constrast to all the “traditionalist brotherhood” propaganda.)

* Most jihadists of any non-Middle East country.

* Real possibility of fracturing. (As was also concluded by Stratfor.)

* They’ve threatened Nuclear War against the US (and Poland and others).

In the 1946 London victory parade that commemorated the victorious allies against Nazi Germany, Polish forces, who were the first and one of the most important allies in the war against Hitler and Germany, were forbidden to participate and the Polish flag was removed because the western allies did not want to annoy Russia and to remind everyone how they betrayed Poland at tne end of WW2 and sold it to Stalin.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the former Georgian president who became governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region, announced Monday that he is resigning in frustration at what he characterized as obstruction in efforts to root out corruption.

Saakashvili was appointed governor of the corruption-riddled Black Sea region in May 2015 by President Petro Poroshenko. But in his resignation announcement in Odessa, Saakashvili accused Poroshenko of supporting the criminal clans in Odessa.

Saakashvili announced his resignation in a video posted on his Facebook page, saying he felt “cheated and tired.”

“We are witnessing retrograde forces attacking everything progressive,” he said. “We are seeing all new beginnings being nipped in the bud.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/saakashvili-steps-down-head-corruption-111637815.html

Чарівний Синевир

Фото: Роман Михайлюк

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Synevyr/@48.6135989,23.661169,13z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4739e3e3f179593f:0xbc869f803c94acef!8m2!3d48.617!4d23.684?hl=en

Russia is becoming increasingly a Muslim country. Out of a total population of over 146 million (including two million in annexed Crimea), it counts about 15 million people of Muslim background—even if not all are believers and even fewer practice Islam. Given forthcoming demographic changes, by around 2050 Muslims will represent between one third (according to the most conservative estimates) and one half (according to the most ‘alarmist’ assessments) of the Russian population. This ‘Islamization’ of Russia—not in the sense of radical Islam but of a rising number of citizens self-referring to Islam—will impact both Russia’s domestic situation and its foreign policy options in the medium and long term. Islam’s growing importance in Russia will shape the future of the country in at least five main directions: the overall demographic balance of the country; the strategy of ‘normalizing’ the regions of the North Caucasus; Russia’s migration policy; Russia’s positioning on the international scene; and the transformation of Russian national identity.

https://jamestown.org/program/marlene-laruelle-how-islam-will-change-russia/

Just shy of six months old, our son has broken his mother’s heart, probably for the first of many times. Today, he demonstrated an ability and willingness to fall asleep without her assistance.