CPACK started in Budapest! An illustrious group of right wingers was greeted first by some priests (and rabbis ...) and…
A Stupid, a Liar, and a Stupid Liar
Most stupid reason thinkable mentioned our foreign minister, why he does not hand back his Russian medal of friendship, he received from his Russian colleague Lavrov. He had no time to think about! ►HU It doesn’t take any time to understand that being a friend of the Putin regime requires an enormous readiness for unconditional submissiveness. If Szijjártó wants to be that submissive to a foreign dictator he really should know – or he is just that stupid that he doesn’t understand situation the world is in. He received his nickname kakas (rooster) for his haircut, but it also fits to his stupid imposing behaviour.
Orbán announced last Sunday that he will not allow that Paks 2 will be part of the sanctions (although he said as well that he will not veto any sanctions against Russia) and that Hungary will neither take place in giving Ukraine weapons nor in the delivery of those weapons. Already on Monday the Dutch have shown a Hungarian military plane being loaded with weapons the Netherlands donate to Ukraine, a picture that also found its way into the comment section of HN. And of course Orbán voted in favour of EU weapon purchases for Ukraine, so Hungary as member of the EU also participates here.
Yesterday evening on ATV Péter Márki-Zay was interviewed and the TV station tried hard to get him involved in contradictions. This time the host was even hostile against the interviewed, but the PM candidate did not move away from his position that use of a Hungarian plane is participation, that participation is not limited to transporting across Hungarian territory. We are full member of the very defence organisation that organised the transport with our hardware. And the same way MZP emphases the fact that without Hungarian participation in weapon purchase the EU would have been unable to do that. Orbán had the possibility to veto, but didn’t do so. Márki-Zay said repeatedly that he celebrates every time when Orbán does the right thing and in this case he did – just Orbán lied that he wouldn’t do ►HU.
In the European Parliament (EP) took place seating about Putin’s war as well. The EP voted in favour of starting membership negotiations with Ukraine, which of course needs additionally an unanimous vote of all 27 members as well. So this is just one of many steps, although a needed one. But the EP voted about other things as well. Among them a motion to stop all Russian investments in the EU and stopping all operations of Russian banks in the EU ►EN. All FIDESZ MEPs have agreed with the motion. A founding member of FIDESZ, the head of the FIDESZ delegation in the EP Tamás Deutsch, has been asked why FIDESZ voted for stopping Paks 2. He told ATV: “Of course we did not. That’s it! ►HU” MEP István Ujhelyi (MSZP) put the part of the minutes with those independent MEPs who voted in favour of the motion on his facebook account, where he underlined the names of the FIDESZ MEPs ►HU. Again Deutsch has proven that he is the stupidest liar within FIDESZ.
Yesterday evening Unity for Hungary held a demonstration in front of the International Investment bank IIB, the bank that has been fetched to Budapest by Orbán and where he granted the Russian employees diplomatic immunity, the Russian spy bank. Unity for Hungary wants the Orbán government to remove the IIB from Hungary. Again thousands of people demonstrated for this aim. During his interview with ATV Péter Márki-Zay was also asked, whether the demonstration wasn’t unnecessary regarding the FIDESZ vote in the EP against all Russian banks operating within the EU. MZP made clear that he wants to see this happen before he believes in. The voting in the EP has no impact on both the existence of the spy bank and the Paks 2 investment. He wants to see to be put into national law before he will celebrate Orbán for doing the right thing. The EP motion has no binding effect, national law would have.
After speaking on the demonstration and giving the interview Péter Márki-Zay took the donations Unity for Hungary had collected for refugees and travelled to the Hungarian-Ukraine border.
And 2 follow-ups to earlier topics: The university of Debrecen has decided not to revoke the honourable doctorate they gave to Putin, but to declare it invalid because of a formal reason ►HU. A very brave decision of the FIDESZ leadership of the university. And the Sberbank Europe is in liquidation, the Hungarian subsidiary has lost the banking permit ►HU.
As I am not part of any Catholic denomination or doctrine, there is no way I can relate to whatever…
Since Melania and Donald formally met with the Pope I suspect her transgressions may also have been forgiven.
Melania Trump is a Slovenian Catholic, but it is unclear if she attends mass at any parish. It is clear…
But wait, Donald Trump’s wife Melania hosted a closed-door fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago not long ago for the Log Cabin Republicans,…
🙂 yes stupid and liars and cowardly and incapable of anything else. István thank you for your effort every day.
Right now (a bit OT) – The Compulsive Liars’ Union, aka Fidesz, probably have very red ears at the Chinese hotlines over “The Pillar Of Shame” being erected in Budapest today.
So the idea that Paks-2 con continue is difficult to believe. As the 30 year loan deal was originally structured it was the Russian state Corporation Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs Vnesheconombank (VEB) that was financing the project that would have to be built primarily by Rosatom from what we know of this formally secret deal. VEB and all 42 of their subsidiaries are under economic sanctions by the US https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0602 and the EU could be cut off VEB from the Swift messaging network under proposals being discussed by EU member states right now.
Today Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Affairs essentially repeated the idea that Hungary could continue to do business with Russia and if it did not here is what will happen: “I would like to make it clear that if natural gas does not come to Hungary, there will be no heating, no industry and no jobs. If a nuclear power plant is not built in Hungary . . .a brutal increase in energy prices will follow.” (https://magyarnemzet.hu/gazdasag/2022/03/szijjarto-peter-nem-engedhetjuk-meg-hogy-mi-fizessuk-meg-a-haboru-arat )
I honestly do not disagree will Szijjártó’s gloomy prospects for Hungary in terms of energy prices and that I think will apply to the USA to a lesser extent and the EU as a whole significantly. But these could be the least of the problems we all will be facing in the not too distant future. Because the Russians have determined that a full scale war of attrition against Ukraine is necessary, the methods used in the 1999–2000 battle of Grozny will be applied to Kyiv. and other cities.
The Russian tactic in 1999 was to hold back tanks and armored personnel carriers and subject the entrenched Chechens to an intensive heavy artillery barrage and aerial bombardment before engaging them with relatively small groups of infantry, many with prior training in urban warfare. As we have seen in Ukraine the Russians did attempt fast light drives into Grozny initially that were repelled.
The Chechens dug hundreds of trenches and antitank ditches, built bunkers behind apartment buildings, laid land mines throughout the city, placed sniper nests on high-rise buildings and prepared escape routes. In some instances whole buildings were booby-trapped; the ground floor windows and doors were usually boarded-up or mined, making it impossible for the Russians to simply walk into a building. Relying on their high mobility (they usually did not use body armor because of lack of equipment), the Chechens would use the trenches to move between houses and sniper positions, engaging the Russians as they focused on the tops of buildings or on windows. Well-organized small groups of no more than 15 fighters moved freely about Grozny using the city’s sewer network, even sneaking behind Russian lines and attacking unsuspecting soldiers from the rear.
Near the end of the siege the Chechens carried off a breakout from Grozny, in some respect similar to the breakout attempted by the Germans and their Hungarian allies in Budapest during the Soviet siege in WWII, but actually much more successful. None the less, the Russians hunted down the Chechens and slaughtered them over time. The United Nations workers who entered the city with the first convoy of international aid discovered “a devastated and still insecure wasteland littered with bodies”. There were some 21,000 civilians still in Grozny. The city’s losses were never counted. Most of the corpses were cleared in 2000 and 2001 but one mass grave dating from the time of battle was discovered in 2006 in the former Kirov Park area of Grozny.
Being a former artillery officer I am highly familiar with this tactical approach to taking a city and I studied examples of this approach at the US Army War College covering even the US Civil War bombardment of the Confederate Defenses of Richmond Va to Stalingrad. Really the civilian deaths in all of these assaults are discussed almost clinically as an inevitable but not intentional. I believe that it could well become impossible for some NATO nations to stay out of some level of direct combat in Ukraine if the slaughter carried out is as ugly as it was in Gozny. Zelensky seems to be counting on moral outrage pushing countries to greater involvement on the ground in Ukraine and he is using all of his skills as an actor to promote this and ever opportunity. If the worse does come to pass the energy problems will be the least of all of our problems, we are all treading on very dangerous ground.
The planned tetrarchy of Ukraine on Lukashenko’s map:
“https://preview.redd.it/6sy391rrauk81.jpg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa909b86a5f306f6c3b2514a75f40baac38364b2”
From the arrows you can see the Russian would like to capture first:
#1 Kiev,
#2 the entire NE Ukraine down to the Dneper river,
#3 the entire Donetsk basin,
#4the entire Black Sea cost including Odessa and a corridor to Transnistria,
#5 perhaps the rest of Moldova.
#4 the entire Black Sea coast
According to captured Russian documents dated January 18,
the war against Ukraine was planned to last 15 days.
(February 20 through March 6).
In reality, Putin launched the war at 4 days later.
March 2 is day #7.
I have a close friend who lives in Chicago’s Polish community. He sends me a lot of stuff from Poland on the internet in terms of news. Most of the stuff he send is closed captioned in English. One of his chilling stories is that of the Russian mobile crematoriums that are according to the Poles already burning bodies, both Russian and Ukrainian. The Poles believe Putin does not want to go through the Grozny situation of mass graves being discovered for years after this current war.
The mobile crematorium story has now been picked up by Fox News here in the USA, there is some level of Voyeurism in these kinds of stories. But they drive TV ratings up and many people are fascinated by them. But given what could be coming these stories could well be more than crazy talk.
This story just came across my business news feed https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/02/putin-loses-key-ally-in-the-european-union-as-hungarys-orban-turns.html It is compared to our host’s post this morning absurdly simplistic. I have to wonder if it was planted by US investors in Hungary that want to present Orban as getting more pro-western every day. But this is often what passes for journalism on Hungary in the USA.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340 This is an interview with the former White House national security adviser Fiona Hill. In this interview she openly discussed the possibility of nuclear war with Russia evolving out of the invasion of Ukraine. Clearly she believes it is possible to avoid that outcome, but appeasement like Orban and Fidesz promote make it more likely, not less likely.
I agree with you that with Putin and Trump, the question is not if there will be a nuclear war, but when. Putin has made it clear that he wants the old borders of the USSR only …
… I can imagine it figuratively they drive so far with the tank until the GPS says you are at your target. I am for Ukraine, Putin needs as much headwind as possible.
According to Atlas VPN, demand for VPN in Russia has skyrocketed by almost 2000% in the past week. If you don’t know what a VPN is, in brief, it’s some software that allows you to connect to the Internet as if you were in another country – in this case any country but Russia since the Internet there is heavily censured/blocked. With a VPN, Russians are now able to follow the news from anywhere without any restriction and can have full access to foreign news and not just Putin’s propaganda.
EU should focus on organizing an airbridge out of Ukraine.
It’s not too early!
Nice idea, but provocative and unless NATO is ready for a confrontation, it maybe too soon
Andriy Yermak who is head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine wrote a powerful opinion piece for The NY Times published today and titled “As I Write, President Zelensky Is Beside Me. Please, Help Us Show Putin the Mistake He Has Made.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/opinion/ukraine-russia-war-zelensky.html )
It’s an appeal for additional arms from NATO and the USA immediately. Yemak writes: “Ukraine is not asking for its allies to put boots on the ground. But we need the West to back us up in order to keep defending our families and our land. We need to show Russia — in painful terms — the mistake it has made.”
I have to say I am in agreement with most of what Yemak writes with the exception of the part of the essay calling for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. He admits “We recognize that this would be a serious escalation in the war and that it could bring NATO into direct conflict with Russia. But we firmly believe that Russia won’t stop at just Ukraine, which would potentially drag NATO into this conflict anyway.“
The problem in my opinion is not just for not just a conflict with planes getting shot down and pilots getting killed, but a nuclear exchange. Yemak does not seem to even contemplate that possibility. We have to ask the question is Putin that crazy to go that far, I think so, and so do some others. Moreover if we ask the American people if the USA should take such a risk, we first have to understand when asked to find Ukraine on a blank map of Europe, only about 1 in 3 voters correctly located the country.
Even among US voters who knew where the hell Ukraine was on a map only a bare 50% supported even sending them arms, let alone sending up fighters to take down Russians violating a no fly zone. I honestly do not believe the Ukrainians understand how tired people are in the USA are of war, after Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yemak Is right that NATO could end up in a war with Russia based on Putin attacking a NATO county. That risk is accepted I think by most Americans and the NATO defense treaty has been a known factor for most of the lives of our population.
UN General Assembly vote condemning the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Against: 5 – Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Syria.
(nice company….)
Abstention (35) or Absence* (11):
China, Vietnam, Laos,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Iran, Iraq, Morocco*, Algeria
Mongolia, Armenia, Azerbaijan*, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan*, Uzbekistan*, Kyrgyzstan,
Guinea*, Guinea Bissau*, Senegal, Togo*,
Burkina Faso*, Mali, Central African Republic,
Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia*, Uganda, Tanzania, Madagascar,
Burundi, Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Eswatini*, South Africa, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea,
Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Venezuela*, Bolivia,
In favour: 141,
including Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
Edit: Corrected misleading typo
Thanks for the comprehensive post. Sadly, most of us know that the Hungarian regime leaders lie about everything or as Mary McCarthy once commented: “including and & the”. Nevertheless, the breathtaking lies are at a new level. Of course, the peacock
Orban had to retreat from standing in the way of NATO/EU, but few outside of Hungary are fooled by this behavior. Meanwhile, Orban and stooges such as Deutsch look for ways to fool Hungarian voters (behavior similar to Trump, whose initial embrace of the Putin invasion has yield to his usual b.s.)
The 2 main criminals, the Viktor and the frequent flyer play the good people. by saying everyone in need is helped to get to Hungary.
https://hirado.hu/belfold/cikk/2022/03/02/orban-viktor-segitunk-a-bajbajutottakon
https://hirado.hu/kulfold/cikk/2022/03/02/szijjarto-peter-az-ensz-ben-minden-humanitarius-segitseget-megadunk-de-kimaradunk-a-haborubol
The frequent flyer even telling “we let everyone in”
Today the police had to select for a certain time who is allowed to enter Hungary. At least from Rumania, according to György Bakondi they have now “taken the necessary measures to screen out people who may pose a threat to internal security”, so maybe it was also the border with Ukraine.
https://hirado.hu/belfold/cikk/2022/03/02/ukrajnai-haboru-bakondi-eddig-104-ezren-erkeztek-ukrajnabol
The measure meant, that people without a biometric passport and from outside the EU could not enter Hungary. (At least not from Rumania as far as I know).
https://444.hu/2022/03/02/romania-felol-csak-biometrikus-utlevellel-enged-be-ukran-menekulteket-magyarorszag
https://www.ebihoreanul.ro/stiri/ungaria-nu-crede-n-lacrimi-politistii-maghiari-nu-primesc-refugiati-ucraineni-veniti-din-romania-fara-pasapoarte-biometrice-169593.html
Now it seems the regime took back the measures:
https://twitter.com/BogdanAurescu/status/1499116745642192900
I guess most of the people without biometric papers are the poor, maybe even the Roma, and we have to keep Hungary save. I think they pulled back because of international backlash, but I guess they will find an alternative way for the “selections”.
This is what the Russian military demanded from the mayor of the freshly occupied Kherson.
People can be on the streets only during the day.
Maximum two people are allowed to walk together.
Only cars or trucks delivering food or medicine to the stores and pharmacies can move. But only slowly and have to stop by the orders of soldiers.
Strict curfew from 8 PM to 6 AM.
Mayor Kolykhayev:
“We are experiencing enormous difficulties with the collection and burial of the dead, the delivery of food and medicine, the removal of garbage, ”
https://www.facebook.com/kolykhaev.igor/posts/4999567616803299
I assume the Russians will also eventually go door to door searching for guns.
March 3, 2021.
“All trains going from Eastern Ukraine in the western direction are now used for evacuation. No tickets are required.”
Trains going to the Hungarian border:
No. 3/4 Zaporizhzhia–Uzhhorod (Ungvár)
No. 17/18 Kharkiv–Uzhhorod
No. 29/30 Kyiv–Uzhhorod
No. 31/32 Kryvyi Rih–Uzhhorod
No. 37/38 Odesa–Uzhhorod
No. 45/46 Kramatorsk–Uzhhorod
No. 81/82 Kyiv–Uzhhorod
No. 5/6 Mariupol–Rakhiv (Rahó)
No. 15/16 Kharkiv–Rakhiv
No. 25/26 Odesa–Rakhiv
No. 55/56 Kyiv–Rakhiv
No. 95/96 Kyiv–Rakhiv
No. 57/59–No. 58/60 Kyiv–Vorokhta, Chop (Csap)
https://t.me/UkrzalInfo/1286
to the Hungarian border: 13 trains,
to the Polish border (Lvov, Przemyśl, Truskavets, Kovel): 13 trains,
to the Rumanian border (Chernivtsi, Vorokhta): 5 trains
to other western Ukrainian destinations (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil): 3 trains.
Together: 34 trains
Putin can declare victory in a week.
If the Russian army takes Odessa, the remaining Ukraine will be completely land-locked. Putin will keep his conquests – the entire Black Sea region (which was called New Russia in the 19th century).
If he can take Kharkov, he will add most of the Ukrainian military industry to Russia.
Cease-fire will mean that that Putin will keep all of his conquests.