Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
*At the time of my visit Dmitry Medvedev was actually Russia's president with Putin acting as Prime Minister. Nevertheless, it was clear Putin was running everything...
РОССИЯ: Москва и Камчатка
I visited Moscow and Kamchatka in 2011 but was saddened by the corruption, lack of organization, and their people's fear of Putin* and his government.
At the time of my visit Russia had been illegally occupying territories in Georgia since the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. The Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia and the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region were still being occupied by Russia at the time of my visit.
Well after my visit, in the years 2014 and 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine - killing tens of thousands of innocent people.
22 March, 2024 (Friday)
133 People were killed in a Moscow concert hall by Islamic State (IS) fighters on this date. Over 140 others were wounded in an attack that western intelligence agencies had warned Russia about but Putin ignored. Sad to note that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified that Russia had klled over 10,582 Ukrainian civilians between 2022 and the attack on the concert hall.
Political Assasination
Алексей Анатольевич НавальныйAlexei Anatolyevich Navalny (4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024) was a Russian opposition leader, anti-corruption activist, lawyer, and political prisoner. He organized anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia and against President Vladimir Putin. Navalny was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience. Alexi was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights.
On 17 January 2021, Navalny was again arrested after returning to Russia from medical treatments (due to an attempt to kill him with a Soviet-era nerve agent) in Germany. He was incarcerated, eventually ending up at the FKU IK-3 penal colony in the village of Kharp in the Russian Arctic. It is there that Navalny died on February 16, 2024 (age 47) with the Russian prison service saying he had "felt unwell after a walk" and "almost immediately" lost consciousness.
Insurrection
On Saturday, June 24, 2023, the head of Russia's Wagner paramilityary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, turned his troops back about 200 kilometres from Moscow. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal between Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin to end the armed insurrection. Earlier that day the Kremlin said Prigozhin has agreed to leave Russia for Belarus.
[On 08/23/2023 Prigozhin died in a "mysterious" plane crash en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, killing all 10 people on board]
President Nixon's 1992 Prescient Prediction About Russia
"Russia at the present time is at a crossroads. It's often said that the Cold War is over and the West has won. That's only half true. Because what's happened is that the Communists have been defeated but the ideas of freedom are now on trial."
"If they don't work they’ll be a reversion, not to communism, which has failed but to what I call a new despotism, which would post a mortal danger to the rest of the world."
"Because it would be infected with the virus of Russian imperialism which has been a characteristic of Russian foreign policy for centuries."
"Therefore the West has, the US has, everyone who wants Freedom in the world has a great stake in freedom succeeding in Russia. If it succeeds it will be an example of others to follow, for China, for example to follow. If it fails then it means the hardliners in China will get a new life - they'll say if it failed there, there's no reason to turn to democracy, that's part of what is at stake here."
"The other point to have in mind is that it's vital it succeeds because it'll mean that Russia, which for seventy years has been trying to export the values of communism to the world, will be exporting democracy, freedom and the goods of freedom."
Putin's War Crimes in Ukraine:
Note: This page was initially created to show my experiences during a three week visit to Russia in 2011.
Also, I studied the Russian language a little bit during my military and college years, so their country
had been on my mind for a long time - even prior to the internet becoming available. Anyway, although it
took me a long time to getting around to describing that trip I was so saddened by Russia's invasion of
Crimea, and then Ukraine, that I started adding these thoughts and notes to my page as the invasion unfolded.
Note, too, that it was at about that time that I conducted a number of interviews on my radio shows about
Russia's brutality...
- First and foremost, make no mistake about it - Putin is a war criminal - Putin and his military intentionally killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children throughout Ukraine.
- Putin's initial aim was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending Ukraine's desire to join NATO. But, at the time I made this entry, the invasion was becoming bogged down with Putin appearing to scale back his ambitions. Nevertheless, the indescriminate destruction and killing continued through month's end at the time I made this entry [in March, 2022].
- Putin Launched the invasion on 24 February, 2022 [although he had already illegally taken Crimea in 2014]. Putin told the Russian people his goal was to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine," (Nevermind that Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a Jew!)to protect people subjected to what he called eight years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine's government. "It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force," he insisted.
- Putin claimed this was not a war or invastion, but merely the fiction of a "special military operation" that Russian state-controlled media are required to adopt.
- Russia's military aimed to sweep into the capital Kyiv, invading from Belarus in the north, as well as from the south and east. But Ukraine's fierce resistance has caused heavy losses and, in some areas, driven Russian forces back at the time of this entry in March, 2022. And, to the world's astonishment, Russia's military proved itself to be astonishingly incompetent and disorganized through most of its invastion.
- On 03-17-2023, a year after I made the above entries, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. Putin is the first head of state of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to be issued with an arrest warrant.
U.S. Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, in a speach before the Czech Republic's Lower House on March 28, 2018:
"Russia has violated its international norms with its aggression against our closest allies in eastern Europe. More furtively, it spreads disinformation and engages in cyberattacks. It meddles in elections throughout Europe as it did in the United States. Russia does not share our interests or our values; if anything it is seeking to undermine those values. We must see this for what it is."
Photos from my own trip to Russia in 2011:
I am way behind in posting pix from my trip for this page but will get to it sometime soon!
In August/September 2011 I paticipated in a CMC group trip to the "Land of Ice and Fire" in Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. The adventure started at Denver's International Airport where we flew to New York JFK, Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, and then the Yelizovo Airport in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka Krai. This portion of the trip, alone, required about 20 hours of flying through 18 different time zones - half of which were just in Russia itself! Once established in Kamchatka, we traveled to the parks and volcanoes over some of the planet's most difficult roads in a converted Soviet military truck that featured a small-block V-8 and some extremely low (and needed!) "granny" gears. Our explorations included hot springs, bubbling mud-pots, fumaroles, permanent snow fields, glaciers, crater rims and volcano summits. Accommodations included some very comfortable hotels, hostels, cottages, and extended tent camping.
Although over half our trip was spent in the wilderness and parks we were also fortunate to experience various cultural presentations, museums, and local shopping throughout Petropavlovsk itself. And, of course, with a few days layover in Moscow, on our way home, we were able to take time to enjoy a lot of that city's historical offerings, parks, shops, and dining. I, myself, was completely enamored with Moscow's "Metro" (subway system) and made at least 15 trips as 28 Rubles each (less than one U.S. dollar). The people, overall, were pleasant but obviously in fear of their government and any authority - including the local police who I was advised were mean and corrupt.
Obviously traveling the length of Russia was a grand adventure. Nevertheless, I'd advise caution for anyone undertaking such travels as Russia, like a number of other countries around the world, in that it is a corrupt, dishonest, and a politically dangerous place...
- Roger J. Wendell
A GPS track of one of my many excursions through Moscow:
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