Baza and Mediazona have reported that a man who threw a Molotov cocktail at a riot police bus was detained in downtown Moscow on the evening of May 2. They have published photos from the scene of the incident and the suspect’s arrest.
“A Molotov cocktail flew into a riot police vehicle in the center of Moscow. It all happened not far from the Karl Marx monument on Revolution Square — there are always several police buses there. A man threw a Molotov cocktail and it set fire to one of the paddy wagons. The vehicle was extinguished, and the thrower was detained.” Source: Baza, Telegram, 2 May 2022
A video made by an eyewitness, which Mediazona has at its disposal, made it clear that the front side of the vehicle was charred. The witness specified that the bus “burned for a couple of minutes” before it was extinguished.
The attacker’s motives are unknown, and there was no information about him at the time that the news went to press. In March, a court in Moscow sentenced to two years in prison an anti-war protester who threw a Molotov cocktail at the police: the container did not break, the liquid did not ignite.
Source: Radio Svoboda, 2 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader
Vitaly Koltsov
A Molotov cocktail thrown at a paddy wagon in Moscow turned out to be an anti-war protest by an alumnus of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
Before the protest, Vitaly Koltsov posted a poem about fiery hearts lighting up the darkness. The man went to throw a Molotov cocktail in the center of the capital dressed in a suit and carrying a suitcase.
“If the day is extinguished forever, / Our glory will not fade / Death is given only once, / Let’s choose it to our liking / So as to see, at the end, / The desert illuminated / By our fiery hearts / By the rising sun,” the man wrote before attacking the paddy wagon.
Vitaly Koltsov is the father of three children and a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Russian State University for the Humanities. He has been charged under Article 317 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code (endangering the life of a law enforcement officer). He faces up to twenty years in prison if convicted.
Source: Astra, Telegram, 3 May 2022. Thanks to Marina Ken for the link. Translated by the Russian Reader
I’m sorry you did nothing with our message. As you will have noticed, all Russians will be held accountable for the genocide of the Ukraine people. We will destroy your economy and life in Russia will be set back 100 years. Many more than the present almost 25,000 death Russian soldiers will be killed. Russia will lose its youth. Every Russian will be treated as a potential criminal. This is what you wanted!
Free people in the World
Source: Email sent to avvakum (at) pm.me, 3 May 2022
Shot of a young woman using a smartphone and having coffee in the kitchen at home
I enraged this particular reader, apparently, by not “acting” on their previous letter, dated 4 March 2022, to wit:
Dear sir,
Please help to stop the genocide in Ukraine by Putin. We know this is not the will of the ma[j]ority of the Russian people. Ukrainian and Russian population are interrelated in many families. They should be brothers and sisters. War should not be something of the 21st century.
In the last 30 years there was cooperation in Europe and more understanding. The Russian economy was helped by efforts of many investors, business owners and countries. By this a backlog in welfare has diminished. The war started by Putin means that all the people in Russia will get poorer. And travel abroad is made impossible. Nobody wants Russian people anymore. Even if the killing is stopped. The committed war crimes and the grieve about lost ones will be in the memories for decades. Everything you have build up in welfare, relations or future will be lost for a very long time.
Do something against the killing of civilians in Ukraine! You are the ones that should and could do that! What would you tell your children when they ask you why you tolerated this war?
As of the morning of May 1, around a hundred billboards featuring the image of the iconic pensioner who gained famed after the events in Ukraine [sic] had been installed in different districts in Petersburg. Fontanka.ru has analyzed the scale of this visual statement. The news-related intrigue lies in the fact that state agencies have nothing to do with the campaign.
“Under the banner of victory!” All images courtesy of Fontanka.ru
In the early hours of May 1, identical posters bearing the image of the famous pensioner holding a Soviet banner were officially installed in about one hundred outdoor media displays in Petersburg.
News about the woman broke out back in April, when she went out with a red banner to greet servicemen in Ukraine, confusing them with Russian soldiers. Her age, her deed, the reaction of the Ukrainian soldiers, and the video that went viral on the Net immediately turned her into a symbol of victory. The old woman’s face has appeared on DPR postage stamps, graffiti artists began to draw her in different cities in Russia, and so on. Even the Russian Federation’s delegate at the UN Security Council talked about her.
Currently, the images of the heroic old woman have been installed in the Central, Admiralty, Petrograd, Vyborg, Maritime, Kalinin, and Moscow districts. These include both large billboards and typical demonstrative surfaces [sic] along the roadways.
The urban spaces chosen for this campaign can be analyzed. The images have been installed near places of authority: on Suvorov Prospekt, next to the Smolny [Petersburg city hall], the seat of the Leningrad Region government, and the Interior Ministry building; on Tapestry Street, near the FSB building; on Horse Guards Boulevard, near St. Isaac’s Cathedral; and around the monument to Alexander Nevsky, outside the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
However, many similar phenomena [sic] have popped up on Moscow Prospekt, Pulkovo Highway, and the October and Vyborg embankments.
Fontanka.ru has learned that state (regional or federal) agencies did not pay for the campaign. Petersburg advertising market insiders, on terms of confidentiality, informed our correspondent that they had heard about the proposal from representatives of a private individual in mid-April. “It’s definitely a businessman. We are sure of this at least, since we called each other when we began receiving preliminary inquiries,” one of the insiders said.
As for the scale, according to the information we have obtained, the order received was for the placement of one hundred billboards at an approximate cost of around ten million rubles [approx. 139,000 euros]. “And that’s if they got a discount,” one source added. Several of our experts more or less agreed with this figure.
If someone in the advertising market has more accurate information, Fontanka.ru is ready to listen to it with a full guarantee of anonymity.
Source: Fontanka.ru, 1 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader
A Cult of Dementia
Putin’s red-brown ideology has taken the worst of Nazism and Bolshevism and mixed it with the cartoonish oligarchy from Dunno on the Moon. The final product has no equals anywhere in the world.
Just think about it. For several months now, Russian propaganda has been chewing over the image of a traitorous old Ukrainian woman who was waiting for the invaders with a Soviet flag. Compassionate Ukrainian soldiers gave her food, but took away her flag. That’s the whole story.
But no, the story didn’t end there. In Russia, the crazy old woman was made a real hero, and her image began to appear on buildings. But the occupiers have driven themselves into an ideological trap: no one except such “young Komsomol women” was looking forward to seeing them in Ukraine. The invaders were not greeted with flowers and bread, but were treated to Molotov cocktails and poisoned pies.
If you think about this story more deeply, the old lady with the Soviet flag perfectly reflects the main watchword of Putin’s Russia, its underlying doctrine, and the true purpose of invading Ukraine: our lives have sucked and we won’t let anyone else live either.
She is thus undoubtedly a hero to Russia, as is Pavlik Morozov. Russia has nothing to offer the world. It offers a rollback to the past and endless attempts to cash in on lost “greatness” instead of progress, old age instead of youth, betrayal instead of loyalty, and humiliation instead of pride. So, an old woman holding a Soviet flag is the most accurate symbolic depiction of modern Russia.
It’s funny, because the propagandists don’t care about Russian pensioners or about veterans of the Second World War. Old people in Russia live out their days (they live them out, they don’t live) in want and humiliation, in terrible conditions and hopelessness.
Source: Andrey Churakov, Facebook, 2 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader
The Russian Reader 