Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin falsely and repeatedly vowed that Russia had no intention or plan to invade Ukraine. Anyone who said otherwise was simply being “hysterical”. As it turns out, those were all deadly lies, as we cover in detail on today’s BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]
On Thursday, the unhinged Russian President Putin unleashed a brutal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Not just its eastern border region with Russia, but against the entire country, which is now under assault from the North, East and South. Putin chose the most aggressive possible option. The nation of Belarus joined him. There is nothing justifiable about his attack.
Before unleashing the assault, Putin offered this chilling warning: “Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.â€
As we report today, from a myriad of legitimate and verified sources, thousands were arrested in Russia on Thursday for protesting in at least 52 cities against Putin’s unprovoked war against its neighboring nation. The largest protests were in Moscow and in St. Petersburg.
Hundreds of Ukrainians have already been killed and injured in the attack over the past 24 hours, according to preliminary figures from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday.
The world has begun to speak, largely in unison, against the hostility they described as “barbaric”, by instituting severe sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs and their family members.
President Biden explained the latest U.S. response today at the White House, ramping up previous sanctions. We share his clear-eyed remarks during today’s program. He charged, in no uncertain terms, that “Putin is the aggressor” who “chose this war and will bear the consequences,” while reiterating that U.S. forces will not be deployed to Ukraine. The U.S. President described Russia’s actions as being “about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary — by bullying Russia’s neighbors through coercion and corruption, by changing borders by force, and, ultimately, by choosing a war without a cause.” He asserted that “Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly — economically and strategically” before concluding: “And in the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, make no mistake: Freedom will prevail.”
But this is now an exceedingly dangerous tinderbox for the world.
We also share a number of other related events amid the new fog of a brutal new war, including an attempt by the Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.N. last night to call out the U.N. Security Council for allowing the Russian Federation, in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to take over the permanent seat (and veto power) of the USSR on the Security Council without being properly certified under U.N. charters.
There is much more on today’s program as we try to pull together many disparate threads and make some sense of all of this otherwise senseless violence by Vladimir Putin.
No, none of this was called for, despite what we have previously reported regarding various missteps taken by both the U.S. and NATO over the years.
We oppose Russian aggression, just as we oppose U.S. aggression. Today, it is Russia that has decided, to its shame, to become the aggressor in Europe.
Finally, we close today with our latest Green News Report, as Russia’s war on Ukraine spikes global oil prices, along with recent moves by the U.S. fracking industry to curtail production in order to squeeze supply and increase their own profits. That, and much more on today’s GNR…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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With the threat of cyberattacks, have any state SOS’s made statements regarding beefing up voting machine security (as if that were possible)?