The Peanut Gallery: Ukraine Blows Away Russian Jet - Global Conversation Conveniently Ignores Putin's Loss of Control Over Belgorod's Skies.
January 24, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Your daily dose of unfounded speculation.
Please remember that I know nothing.
/u/_000001_ been with us since the beginning. He was the guy who kicked this whole flair thing off when he got himself banned for mentioning /r/TheNuttySpectacle in /r/WorldNews. The mods super didn’t like him doing that, so I proclaimed him /r/WorldNews Martyr and then started handing out titles at random.
That’s the story of how this whole flare thing got started. It’s since become a way for me to mark out people who I think are valuable contributors, help distinguish trusted voices for newcomers. I also like telling stories.
Anyway, that was how I thought of /u/_000001_ until just the other day when, on my way to work, I stepped on a nail. It missed everything important, luckily, but it still left a big-ass hole. Naturally it was raining, so the water soaked right into my shoe. Ever had to go an entire eight-hour shift with wet socks? Shit sucks, yo.
Luckily, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of those weird boutiques—the kind that sell useless knick-knacks and inexplicably stay in business year after year after year. This one had a window full of puppets. I figured I might be able to buy, like, a finger or something—maybe a pinkie—to plug the hole, maybe fix it in place with wood glue. Have I mentioned how much I hate having wet feet?
There was a little boy sitting on a stool when I wandered in, talking to this super-creepy cricket, just way too uncanny valley.
Now I play a lot of X-Com so I recognized immediately that the cricket was an alien. I shoved the kid off the stood and grabbed the little fucker before it could hop away, ramming it into my wet sock. Things were going great, but then the kid started crying, so I shut him up the kinetic way, which ticked off the old man so he called the cops...long story short I just decided to go to work barefoot.
Unfortunately, when I got home to interrogate my prisoner, I found the cricket dead. Autopsy later revealed cause was crushing related. That wasn’t all it revealed, however. I put the mangled body under a magnifying glass and who did I spy sitting on its shoulder, whispering in the cricket’s ear? Why, none other than /u/_000001_, informing that filthy xenos’ every move.
And that’s why I decided to change their flair to Jiminy Cricket’s Conscience.
Wooh, Nelly. There is an information operation on tonight. This Il-76 must’ve been bad.
A Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft crashed in Belgorod Oblast on January 24.
There’s a lot of competing narratives out there, primarily one that I don’t wish to repeat here as doing so lends it power. Suffice it to say, this was not an intentional downing on the part of the Kremlin, at least not from any perspective that makes sense. Russia’s aviation sector is in severe decline. Without access to spare parts, and with a heavy burden put along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the most expedient way for Russia to traffic goods across their country is by aircraft. The irreplaceable loss of a transport craft in those circumstances is not acceptable.
It’s not even an acceptable sacrifice from a propaganda perspective. It’s straight-up deleterious, not to mention pointless. Why would Putin keep incarcerated Ukrainians in Iran? It makes no sense.
Because that’s where this thing was trafficking between. The rumor I heard, and the one that feels like it fits the preexisting picture best, is that this craft carried a host of IRGC trainers and RF brass. Belgorod, atm, is the focus of heightened Russian activity, and it makes sense they’d push more air defense to the region in preparation. It’s likely they felt confident in their control, confident enough to fly an aircraft within thirty kilometers of the Ukrainian border.
Man, how many mysteriously blown up aircraft does that make now? There were the five jets over Christmas, then the il-17, and the A-50, plus its escort of that second il-17, and now this big-ass transport plane. Either Ukraine has some new capabilities (cough F-16s cough), or else they’re driving around a patriot battery on the back of a flatbed.
Russian information space actors are seizing on the Il-76 crash to sow domestic discontent in Ukraine and undermine Western will to continue giving military support to Ukraine.
Obviously. Notice how the conversation isn’t, “Wow! How did Ukraine do that?!” or “Wait, Russia lost another plane mysteriously? And on their own territory too?” it’s “Woah!!! Why atrocity?!! BAAAAD!!!” This is what information warfare looks like, folks. Welcome to the frontline. Grab a shovel and dig in.
Russian law enforcement authorities are codifying xenophobic profiling methods suggesting that migrants are predisposed to criminal activity against the backdrop of continued conflicts between Russian citizens and naturalized migrants.
Apparently the Kremlin is discussing introducing a rating system to risk assess migrants for crime. No, wait, that sounds too sterile. It hides the true atrocity behind polite description of intent.
Let me spell it out: they are developing a rating system for different ethnicities predilection of crime. The Kremlin is institutionalizing racial guidelines for stop and frisk, basing their assessments on phrenology, I assume.
Honestly this is just to further justify widespread conscription of migrants.
The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Ukrainian hackers recently conducted cyberattacks on Russian intelligence and communications infrastructure.
Ukrainian hackers ddos’d into a Kremlin supercomputer mainframe and backtraced their encrypted positronic data jewels, then Plus Ultra’d the harddrive. Easy peasy when you’re 1337.
NATO announced on January 24 that the Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises have started and will run until May 31, 2024.
Groovy. So we’ll have a surge of NATO personnel in Europe for Putin’s presidential announcement. That’ll make responding to any eventualities much easier.
Positional engagements continued throughout the theater.
Rather quiet today. This jet downing seemed to have put the damper on the front.
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko confirmed that Russian authorities have deported over 2,100 Ukrainians, including 500 children, to Russia for medical reasons in 2023.
Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this to an end.
'Q’ For the Community:
Why do you think the Kremlin responding so aggressively around the downing of this plane?
Join the conversation over on /r/TheNuttySpectacle.