The world is now realizing that the Putin regime is really just Vladimir Putin.
But the world is now realizing that the Putin regime is really just Vladimir Putin. And he is apparently no longer worried about what war will mean for Russia’s rich, much less its masses.

 

This was made brutally clear to all in the astonishing session of the Russian security council a week ago. In the echoing and ornate hall of St. Catherine in the Kremlin, a former imperial throne room where the annexation of Crimea was announced in 2014, Putin gathered his most senior lieutenants to “consult them” on whether to recognize the independence of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.

Not only did many of them look visibly uncomfortable, but the head of Russian foreign intelligence, Sergey Naryshkin, looked actually scared—to the point where he forgot whether he was being asked whether or not to welcome the republics into Russia itself or merely if they should be recognized as independent.

Stalin issues Order No. 227—outlawing cowards
On July 28, 1942, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the Soviet Union, issues Order No. 227, what came to be known as the “Not one step backward” order, in light of German advances into Russian territory. The order declared, “Panic makers and cowards must be liquidated on the spot. Not one step backward without orders from higher headquarters! Commanders…who abandon a position without an order from higher headquarters are traitors to the Motherland.”

When WE Think of The Average Russian We Think of Fearless Bears Siberian Tigers Tough Guys !
To Call a Spade a Spade Russians ALmost Singlehandedly Stopped Hitlers Eastern March
IT is a Story WE dont hear Today That Russia Was once Part of Saving Democracy !

 

A search for “are russians afraid of putin”  below

‘I fear being thought a coward more than I fear death’: Why this Ukrainian father is fighting on the front line
On Saturday, Andriy Kononenko, aged 51, became a soldier to defend his homeland from Russian invaders. Photo Right It is Clear Ukrainians have Balls of Steel to even think they can stop Mighty Russia ! 

 

 

Stalin Story  Continues 

Early German successes against Russia had emboldened Hitler in his goal of taking Leningrad and Stalingrad. But the German attack on Stalingrad, thought foolhardy by Hitler’s generals, because of Russia’s superior manpower and the enormous drain on German resources and troop strength, was repulsed by a fierce Soviet fighting force, which had been reinforced with greater numbers of men and materials.

The Germans then turned their sights on Leningrad. Stalin needed to “motivate” both officers and civilians alike in their defense of Leningrad—hence, Order No. 227. But it was hardly necessary. On the same day the order was given, Russian peasants and partisans in the Leningrad region killed a German official, Adolf Beck, whose job was to send agricultural products from occupied Russia to Germany or German troops.

The Russian patriots also set fire to the granaries and barns in which the stash of agricultural products was stored before transport. A partisan pamphlet issued an order of its own: “Russians! Destroy the German landowners. Drive the Germans from the land of the Soviets!”

Oligarchs Rebel ?

London (CNN Business)Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska have broken ranks with the Kremlin and called for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Fridman, who was born in western Ukraine, wrote in a letter to staff that he wanted the “bloodshed to end.”
“My parents are Ukrainian citizens and live in Lviv, my favorite city. But I have also spent much of my life as a citizen of Russia, building and growing businesses. I am deeply attached to Ukrainian and Russian peoples and see the current conflict as a tragedy for them both,” wrote Fridman.
“This crisis will cost lives and damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years. While a solution seems frighteningly far off, I can only join those whose fervent desire is for the bloodshed to end,” he added in the letter, which was provided by his office. The Financial Times was first to report the letter.
Fridman is chairman of Alfa Group, a private conglomerate operating primarily in Russia and former Soviet states that spans banking, insurance, retail and mineral water production. Fridman has a net worth of $11.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
The billionaire is also chairman of Alfa Bank, Russia’s fourth biggest financial services firm and its largest private bank. Alfa Bank was hit last week by sanctions that will prevent it from raising money through the US market.
Fridman’s call for peace was echoed by Deripaska, a billionaire who made his fortune in the aluminum business.
“Peace is very important! Negotiations need to start as soon as possible!” Deripaska said Sunday in a post on Telegram.
He also addressed the economic situation in a series of posts on Monday as the ruble collapsed and Russia’s stock market failed to open for trading.
“I really want clarifications and intelligible comments on the economic policy for the next three months,” Deripaska said, adding that the central bank’s decision to dramatically hike interest rates and force companies to sell foreign currency are the “first test of who will actually be paying for this banquet.”
“It is necessary to change the economic policy, [we] need to put an end to all this state capitalism,” he added.
Deripaska emerged from the chaotic scramble for assets following the collapse of the Soviet Union with a massive fortune, which Forbes estimated at $28 billion in 2008. In 2018, he was sanctioned by the United States, which noted that the oligarch “does not separate himself from the Russian state.”