From pine

Good morning!

The Russian Ministry of Finance published statistics on the execution of the budget in January 2023, and it turned out to be catastrophic: the deficit for the month amounted to 1.76 trillion rubles - this is a record since 1998. True, they say that this collapse has purely “paper reasons”. Wait and see. So far, this is what:

• Over three thousand people became victims of a powerful earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
• The Russians occupied more than a third of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. The authorities of the Luhansk region talk about the preparation of the offensive in the area of Svatov and Kremennaya.
• According to the “Mediazons”, the second wave of recruitment of prisoners in Wagner's PMC goes with a creak.
• The court in Moscow in absentia sentenced the founder of the journal “Doga.ru” to Nick Belotserkovskaya to nine years in the colony under the article on “fakes”.
• In Ukraine, the resignation of the Minister of Defense Alexei Reznikov was postponed.
• According to Bloomberg, the United States plans to introduce a 200 percent duty on Russian aluminum.
• The court in Tbilisi refused to free Mikhail Saakashvili.

The largest since 1939

In the south-east of Turkey and the part of Syria adjacent to this region on Monday night, an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 occurred . Its epicenter was 30 kilometers from the city of Gaziantep and 90 kilometers from the border with Syria. On Monday afternoon, a second powerful impetus was recorded . After earthquakes in many places, fires began, in the Turkish province of Hatay there was an explosion on the gas pipeline and the only runway of the local airport was destroyed. Here are photos of destruction. The stories of eyewitnesses - here and here .

Almost a day after the tragedy, it is known about more than three thousand dead in both countries. Only 5600 buildings were destroyed in Turkey. Today, people spent the night in cars and low buildings in anticipation of new shocks. A weekly mourning has been announced in the country.

In the US Geological Service, this earthquake has been an earthquake for the largest over the past hundred years and compared it to the Turkish earthquake of 1939, which led to the deaths of more than 30 thousand people.

Military reports

Russian troops intensified their actions in the Bakhmut area and are attempting to attack in the Luhansk region. According to the Ukrainian military Denis Yaroslavsky, now in Bakhmut, a third of the city is already in the hands of Russians, and two main supply of the Ukrainian army - the roads to Slavyansk and Konstantinovka - they were taken under fire control. Yaroslavl claims that now the battles in the city and its environs are no longer waging the Wagner PMCs, but the Russian military personnel, acting quite professionally. For his part, the head of the Luhansk region, Sergei Gaidai, talks about the frequent Russian shelling and daily attacks of Russians in the Kremenna and Svatov region. Here is a report on Ukrainian gunners that control this direction. Among the inhabitants of the Kharkov region there are stubborn rumors about the new invasion of Russia in the Kupyansk direction, but the local journalist Maria Malevskaya calls them part of the Russian “information and psychological special operation”.

Ukraine lives in anticipation of the Russian offensive. All its possible directions are listed here , but more and more analysts agree that the offensive has already begun in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, and it will be limited to these territories. So believes the expert of the American Center for Naval Analysis Michael Kofman; Ruslan Leviev, the founder of Conflic Intelligence Team, agrees with him: in his opinion, a new mobilization would be required for a large -scale offensive, and now the forces can only fight in the Donbass.

Due to the expected Russian offensive in Ukraine, permutations were postponed at the Ministry of Defense. The military department is still headed by Alexei Reznikov. Here, announced, but not consisted, as well as the Western strategy in the military support of Ukraine are commented on by Ukrainian political scientists Vladimir Fesenko and Vladislav Faraponov. Instead of permutations in the government, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine was engaged in Russian mercenaries: Vagnerovites were recognized as an international criminal organization, while other Russian PMCs were recognized as terrorist.

The Norwegian government has developed a five-year assistance to Ukraine with a volume of 75 billion kroons-this is more than $ 7 billion. According to Prime Minister Jonas Gara Steer, Ukraine will receive a tranche of 15 billion kroons. This year, half of this amount will go to cover military needs, the second half - to humanitarian aid. According to Reuters, Switzerland is gradually inclined to cancel the ban on the supply of his weapons to Kiev. New discussions about Western aircraft, which no one still supplies Kiev, read here .

UN Secretary General Antoniu Guterrish, speaking at the UN General Assembly, expressed fears regarding the probability of the spread of war outside Ukraine. It cannot be said that they are completely groundless: Ramzan Kadyrov, for example, suggested after Ukraine to "denact" Poland and fight there "with Satanism."

War, view from Russia

In the forest near Kaluga, early morning on Monday, the drone fell and exploded - the governor of the region assures that no one was injured. A local resident became a victim of shelling of a border village in the Belgorod region.

The Russian General Prosecutor's Office demanded that the Russian Legion Legion, which is fighting as part of the Ukrainian army, was recognized as terrorist. The issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

According to the Mediazons , the Wagner PMC recruiters again go around the colony, from where the prisoners have already been taken away, but now there are almost no people who want to go to the front.

Mobilized from Tuva recorded a video in which they complain about beating from the military so -called "DPR". The head of Tuva, Vladislav Khovlyg, said that "this is a flagrant case discrediting the position of the mobilized."

It seems that the word “discrediting” acquires in the language of Russian officials some previously unknown meanings. Here, for example:

• The court in the Tula region fined 45 thousand rubles under the article on the “discredit” of the Russian Army of man, who shot a video in the club on New Year's Eve, where Putin’s speech was shown to the song of Ukrainian performers of Potap and Nastya. The DJ, who put this song, also drew up a protocol on the “discredit” of the Russian army, but the court has not yet considered it. Perhaps law enforcement officers were confused by the mysterious text of this song: “And you on the New Year from pine, from pine from pine from pine/ from pine from pine, from pine trees from pine from pine,” but it is still difficult to understand what he discredits the Russian army.
• In Buryatia, under an article on “discrediting”, a 30 thousand rubles were fined an employee of Rossetei, who wrote on the website “Buryats against war and genocide!”
• The concept of truth is also a problem: the court in Moscow refused to recognize the words of Alexei Venediktov that Prigozhin is the owner of the Wagner PMC, even after the Prigozhin himself recognized himself as the owner of this PMC.
• The Muscovite, detained on Sunday for the yellow-blue tape on the backpack, will be judged by the article about the disobedience of the police, and what they are going to impose to a person who tried to penetrate the mausoleum to abduct the body of Lenin is not yet known.
• The court in Kazan arrested for three days a doctor of sociological sciences, the “foreign agent” of Iskander Yasaveev for “exciting hatred” in an article published last summer on the website of Idel. Reali. In it, Yasaveev analyzes the reasons that prompted Putin to invade Ukraine.
• Here is the story of a 60-year-old civilian activist from Ulan-Ude Natalia Filonova-she faces up to 10 years in a prison in a criminal case of "the application of violence against a representative of the authorities." Now she is in a pre -trial detention center.
• In the Buryat village of Kyren, they set fire to the district department of the Investigative Committee.
• The court in Moscow in absentia sentenced the founder of the St. Petersburg magazine “Doga.ru” to Nick Belotserkovskaya to nine years in the year in the case of the military “fakes”. She herself lives in France, but her property in Moscow and St. Petersburg was arrested.
• In the meantime, a working group is formed in the State Duma to study possible measures against citizens who left Russia, which, according to the Russian authorities, publicly discredit the Russian army and support Ukraine. The confiscation of property has long been called as one of the possible measures, and there are two forecasts on this score: the lawyer Ivan Pavlov believes that the relevant laws will be ready by the summer, and the apartments will begin to take it massively, while the political scientist Ekaterina Shulman, known for his optimism, predicts the indicative selection of property of two or three famous discreditors and fake degrees to intimidate all the rest. Soon we will see who is right.

Other Russian

• Putin signed a law allowing deputies and senators not to declare property and income.
• The Ministry of Justice of Russia introduced the song “The Last Call” to the list of extremist materials.
• The former coordinator of the headquarters of Alexei Navalny in Arkhangelsk Andrei Borovikov, sentenced to 2.5 years for the repost of the Rammstein clip in 2014, was transferred to strict conditions of detention in the colony. This means a ban on moving along the colony, restrictions on walks, dates, transfers and money that can be spent in a prison stall.
• In St. Petersburg, a single picket was held in support of political prisoners. The fate of the picketer is not known.
• The Project “All -Union”, which distributed popular science literature for free, announced the closure .

Around the world

• The court in Tbilisi refused to free the ex-president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. The petition of lawyers has been considered since December last year. Saakashvili wrote on Facebook that Putin promised to “hang him by the eggs” and seems to be fulfilling this promise through his proxy, oligarch Ivanishvili.
• In Belarus, the trial of political scientist Valeria St alsouming - she threatens up to 12 years under the article on the conspiracy and seizure of power. Against this background, Lukashenko created a commission to work with "those who want to return to their homeland."
• The Latvian authorities are considering the imprisonment of Peter Aven - he received it in 2016 on the grounds that his grandfather in his father was Latvian.
• “Important stories” issued an investigation about people who helped Putin’s friends to hide property in Europe: the assets of Gennady Timchenko were ruled by a person who once led firms that covered secret operations through the State Security of the GDR, and the manager of Arkady Rotenberg Ruslan Goryukhin successfully swore in the German court that he was not connected with Rotenberg.
• According to Bloomberg, the United States plans to introduce a 200% duty on Russian aluminum.
• The Supreme Anti -Corruption Court of Ukraine nationalized the Ukrainian assets of Russian rich Mikhail Shelkov and Sergey Chemezov with a total value of more than $ 54 million.
• The head of the European Council Charles Michelle confirmed that he invited Zelensky to personally come to the EU leaders in Brussels on February 9-10.

Six links

• How to write a story. An article by Richard Wetmore, a specialist in the intellectual history of the intellectual history, in which he explains what it is and why it is needed. Or after the book of the historian Giovanni Levy “The Commonerial Heritage. Career of one Piedmont Exorcist of the 17th Century” (Publishing House of UFOs), in which the author argues about the purpose of the microistory.
• Literary morals. The story of the editor's diaries and critic Vyacheslav Polonsky (1886–1932). Or an article by anthropologist Sergei Ushakin about the emergence of the sociology of children's reading in Russia - from the magazine “Children's Readings”, which publishes the Pushkin house.
• Movie. Guide to Dmitry Volchek for the best films of the Rotterdam Film Festival. Or a story about how filmmakers turn the imperfections of digital compression of images into an artistic technique.

Sincerely yours,
Seven forty