The russian invaders lost a sub? Ukraine Update Live | Day 891 of the russian Invasion of Ukraine

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1. The sign reveals the Kremlin's true intentions.
   The West must listen to the alarms from the Baltics. Russia's goals in Ukraine are something completely different than what the Kremlin wants us to believe.
   In the Capricorn house on Domberget, in the middle of Tallinn, sits the government of Estonia.

   From the terrace, the view of the Old Town and the Gulf of Finland is magnificent, but it is two inconspicuous marble paintings on the facade facing the alley that make the biggest impression.

   It contains the names of 66 former Estonian ministers, 10 of them heads of government, who were murdered by the Soviet Union after the invasion in 1940.

   Some were quickly executed, others died in Siberian prison camps after years of starvation and hardship.

   After a couple of the death dates there is a question mark. It is still not known when Jaan Tõnisson, prime minister and later also head of state, was killed. His burial place is unknown.

   The terror in Estonia struck wide; between 1940 and 1953 over 35,000 residents were deported.

   But it didn't hit completely blindly.

   The Soviets first targeted the young republic's elite. High-ranking politicians, diplomats, civil servants and military personnel – as well as their families – were imprisoned, executed or put in train cars bound for Russia.

   Russians traveled in the opposite direction, to settle in Estonia. In some places it happened after an almost total ethnic cleansing of Estonians, such as in the city of Narva.

   The goal was to crush all possibilities of building a future independent Estonian state.

   ■ ■ ■

   History repeats itself. The Soviet Union does not exist anymore and since 1991 Estonia has been independent again.

   But in Ukraine, Russia is reusing the old Soviet methods of terror against the population.

   The horrific testimonies from the town of Butja – of torture, rape and executions, carried out by Russian forces – were spread around the world at the beginning of the war of invasion.

   But the violence has not only been randomly bestial.

   In the areas they occupied, Russian troops have systematically targeted prominent Ukrainians.
   Even before the invasion, there were ready-made lists of officials, journalists, mayors, politicians and activists that the Russian authorities wanted to get hold of. Many of them were imprisoned, tortured or executed already at the beginning of the invasion.

   Deportations are also used again on a large scale.

   As the war rages, it is difficult to determine exactly how many Ukrainians have been sent to Russia.

   The grotesque movement of kidnapped Ukrainian children has received the most attention. Ukrainian authorities have identified nearly 20,000 children who have been forced to travel to Russia without their parents. Many of them have been adopted away to Russian families. But the real number is believed to be significantly higher.

   To that must be added the information that a much larger number of Ukrainian citizens from the occupied territories have been forced to leave their homes for Russia – not infrequently in the Far East.

   At the same time, the Kremlin is trying to get Russians to move into the Ukrainian territories that are now occupied.

   The chilling stories about population transfers and deportations to Siberia that you can take part in at the Occupation and Freedom Museum in Tallinn are thus being repeated in Europe in 2024.

   It is important to point to history here.

   Russia may have been less successful on the battlefield than Putin planned. But his excuses for the war have spread widely even in Western debate.

   It has been said that Russia only wants security guarantees, that NATO has come too close to the country's borders or that they only want to protect the Russian-speaking population.

   Many have found it desperately difficult to understand that, now as then, it is about an imperialist state that tries to subdue its neighboring countries, kill the leaders, crush the culture and displace the people.

   Debaters in the West who blithely call for Ukraine to make peace with Russia seem to think that it doesn't really matter what government is in a country. Anything is better than war, they think.

   But peace does not automatically mean an end to terror. The largest wave of deportations from Estonia occurred four years after the end of World War II.

   On the other hand, in the states that themselves experienced the terror of the Soviet Union, Russia's intentions were understood early on.

   Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sent advanced weapons to Ukraine even before the full-scale invasion. It helped that Kiev could hold its ground and that Russia's planned purges of the Ukrainian leadership in the capital could not be implemented.

   Therefore, we should listen extra carefully to the Baltic leaders – like the president of Latvia this week – when they warn that the West is not doing enough to meet the threat from Russia. They know exactly what they are talking about.

   And we should not go by the strange arguments from the left that NATO membership has meant an end to Sweden's aspirations for peace and solidarity.

   It is difficult to imagine a more solidarity-based task for Sweden than to contribute to Estonia's blue-black-white flag continuing to fly on Domberget.

2. Once again, YT failed to notify me of this stream…

3. 🇺🇦🌻🇦🇺🐨 Save the stolen Ukrainian 🇺🇦 children 👫

4. Same no notification grrr

5. Same, no notification

6. And I too found out that the "live" is over.

7. Apologies for my absence…lots happening here on Merseyside