In Ukraine s South, Russian Occupiers Tighten the Screws – WSJ

DNIPRO, Ukraine Russia is tightening its hold over occupied areas of southern Ukraine, installing pro-Moscow leaders, hunting for dissenters and dismantling Ukrainian state institutions.

In the city of Melitopol, like many others in the area, red, blue and white Russian flags now fly atop public buildings. Russian security forces patrol the streets and soldiers man checkpoints, inspecting people s identification documents and looking through the contents of their mobile phones, residents say.

In March, Russian forces burst into the office of Melitopol s mayor, Ivan Fedorov, put a bag over his head and detained him. Moscow named a local pro-Russian politician to replace him. Mr. Fedorov was later released in a prisoner swap and is now in Ukrainian-held territory.

Russian occupation authorities have said they would seek to make the Russian ruble legal tender and say they will reopen schools teaching a Russian curriculum. Mr. Fedorov said Melitopol is now connected to Russia s internet via a fiber-optic cable from Crimea. There also are new Russian cellphone-service towers.

On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Russian conduct in the occupied areas, saying: Torture chambers are being built there, local authorities and anyone deemed notable to local communities are being abducted.

via www.wsj.com

Sounds like China (a.k.a. the PRC).

I was talking with Luke and his lovely Ukrainian wife Anya over the weekend. They are in Vilnius, Lithuania now, where Luke is pursuing his career in video games. His company is putting him up in a nice hotel, buying him his meals and everything. Evidently Vilnius is a much more interesting city than where they were in Sweden, which sounds way too socialist for young people to thrive. Luke seemed cautiously optimistic about the progress of the war. He doubted (but didn’t rule out) the military capacity of the Russians to pull off the encirclement of the Ukrainians in the Donbas. There were encouraging reports on YouTube this morning about UK doing counter-encirclements against the Russians. It’s not as if the Russians have displayed much prowess in pulling off maneuver warfare to date. Ukraine may end up looking like Israel did in 1968, pulling off the defeat of a larger but more sluggish opponent.