Raving Madman Loser Attacks Ukraine: Some Things We Know So Far!

Jesus Christ, here we go.

Late last night in America, the breaking news alerts took over the news stations, and early this morning in Ukraine, the sirens started blaring. Vladimir Putin had given the order for the real invasion of Ukraine. In the shocker of the century, it turns out Putin's not just interested in "protecting" a couple of pro-Russian provinces on the east side of the country, and he's not interested in "peacekeeping." He's going straight for the capital of Kyiv. Early explosions also were heard in the cities of Odessa and Kharkiv and we don't know where else. It's moving fast.

If you were watching the news last night, you saw images of traffic at a standstill as Kyiv residents desperately tried to make their way west to "safer" areas.

BBC Ukraine editor Marta Shokalo explains what it's really like on the ground there:

I was awake at night when I got a message from a colleague about Vladimir Putin's speech announcing an invasion.

Then immediately the explosions began. I could hear them from my home, and people in different parts of the city started sending messages to our WhatsApp group, about explosions happening close to them.
To realise that Kyiv itself was under attack, not the front line in the east of the country, was a big shock.

There is no safe place in Ukraine any more.

The biggest fear for ordinary people here is running out of electricity and the internet not working - then we would be really isolated. Another fear is that bridges over the Dnieper river will be bombed, dividing the eastern and western halves of the city. [...]

There are huge queues outside the supermarkets near my home and at ATMs, many of which have run out of money. Some petrol stations too have now run out and closed. There is an air of panic, now that we know the entire country is under attack.

The roads out of the city are blocked with traffic, but it's a perilous journey - sitting in long, slow-moving queues of traffic you could easily run out of fuel far from home. Trains are operating, but there are big crowds of people trying to get a seat. Ukrainian airspace is closed, under the martial law introduced by President Zelensky.

And no, it's not just military installations Putin is targeting, despite what Russia is saying. Shokalo says "we have photographs of residential buildings in a number of cities around the country that have taken direct hits." She says the attacks are everywhere, throughout the country:

The countryside may be safer than the city, but in a country under attack from north, east and south, there is no truly safe place here any more.

It started with airstrikes. Now the tanks and the soldiers are coming in, from a lot of sides, and people are sharing messages from people inside Ukraine about what's happening where they are. On Twitter, Julia Davis is a good person to follow, for that and also for all the insane lying shit they are saying on Russian state TV.

When Putin announced the attacks, he lied and said it was about self-defense, and that he wanted to "de-Nazify" Ukraine. The   Times of Israel   notes that Ukraine is a country with a Jewish leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But one of the oldest Russian propaganda lies about Ukraine is that is a Nazi country.

By the way, Ukraine's official Twitter shared this as the invasion began:

pic.twitter.com/IaqFbpayqz

— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine / Україна) 1645679916 

Putin said he was just trying to "protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide." What bullying and genocide? Putin did not show his work, so we're just gonna call literally everything Putin said projection. He's an addled murderous thug who runs a failed petrostate that he's desperately trying to restore to its former "glory." Of course it's projection.

Putin also told Ukrainians to please go home so he doesn't have to murder them and reminded everybody he has a big nuclear penis:

Putin urged Ukrainian servicemen to “immediately put down arms and go home.”

In a stark reminder of Russia’s nuclear power, Putin warned that “no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to the destruction and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.” He emphasized that Russia is “one of the most potent nuclear powers and also has a certain edge in a range of state-of-the-art weapons.”

God, what a fucking loser.

As we said, things are moving fast, even as we're typing this, but a few themes are emerging. Global markets are going batshit, the price of oil is skyrocketing, and Russian currency is doing the opposite of skyrocketing. Expect today to be filled with calls for sanctions on a bugfuck level we've never seen. You're going to see a lot of people calling for Russia to be removed from SWIFT, the global payments system. H ere's more on what that would do and why it could be such a potent weapon.

(Personally, we also think it's time to turn off the fucking lights in Russia and not even pretend like that's something we don't have the ability to do. Also this. )

This is the foreign minister of Ukraine:

Right now, Putin is plunging Europe into its darkest time since 1939. Any government hoping to sit this out is naïve. Don’t repeat mistakes of the past. Hit Russia with severe sanctions now. Help Ukraine with military and financial support. Together we can #StopRussianAggression.

— Dmytro Kuleba (@Dmytro Kuleba) 1645710900 

Shit just got very real. It's going to be interesting to see how a lot of Republicans start sounding very, very old-school, like we didn't all just watch them shrug their shoulders while Putin helped their idiot king into office, and then proceed to make up conspiracy theories about how actually Ukraine was the real election meddler.

Another thing we'll note here is that US intelligence on this has been spot-on, and it's good that the Biden administration decided to share our intel with our allies early and often, so everybody could work in concert with the same set of information in front of them. They also made a hell of a lot of it public. The Washington Post   published an article on February 11, almost two weeks ago, with the headline "New intelligence suggests Russia plans a ‘false flag’ operation to trigger an invasion of Ukraine." In the ensuing days, the Biden administration has been accused of overreacting. Apparently not. A week ago, Biden said he was "convinced" an attack was imminent, that Putin had already made the decision, and that they'd go after Kyiv.

So here we are. And no decent person wants it. The traitorous former president of the United States might be jizzing himself over what his benefactor is doing to Ukraine — seriously, he did it again last night — but there is no rational reason for any of this, and as David Ignatius writes, there are signs even some high-ranking Kremlin figures aren't totally behind this. Vladimir Putin has invaded a sovereign, peaceful nation with the intention of seizing it and making it Russia again. Nobody knows what he'd like to do after that, but this could very much be a Hitler in 1939 moment.

Maybe not. We'll see what the world does in response.

POSTSCRIPT:  This doesn't sound good. 

Advisor to Ukrainian interior ministry says Russian forces entered Chernobyl and that fighting there destroyed a nuclear waste storage facility.

— Richard Engel (@Richard Engel) 1645713290 

[ BBC / Times of Israel ]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here! 

Wonkette is funded ENTIRELY by a few thousand people like you. If you're not already, would you pls consider being the few thousandth and one?

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .