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“President, Change Course!”: Yelena Osipova, The 77-Year-Old on the Frontlines of Petersburg’s Anti-War Protests

Police detain Yelena Osipova during a protest in Petersburg in March 2022. The placards she is holding call for the elimination of nuclear weapons throughout the world. Photo: Yelena Lukyanova/Novaya Gazeta

“President, Change Course!”
Yelena Osipova, a 77-year-old artist, has been taking to the streets of St. Petersburg for twenty years with her painted placards on the day’s most burning issues

Some call her the city’s conscience, while others call her the city’s disgrace — just as some consider the “special operation” a humanitarian disaster, while others regard it a liberation campaign. But Yelena Andreyevna Osipova is more afraid of people who are indifferent than of her opponents.

There have never been major renovations in the late nineteenth-century residential building where Yelena Andreyevna lives. Her communal flat is chockablock with furniture that was purchased at least half a century ago. When her guests arrive, the artist takes out a new…

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U.S. Media Decries Brutal Russia Invasion of Ukraine—Yet an Intrepid Reporter Finds that the Russians Were Welcomed as Liberators in the Southern Ukrainian City of Henichesk along the Sea of Azov

Tales from the Conspiratum

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/25/u-s-media-decries-brutal-russia-invasion-of-ukraine-yet-an-intrepid-reporter-finds-that-the-russians-were-welcomed-as-liberators-in-the-southern-ukrainian-city-of-henichesk-along-the-sea-of-a/

By Sonja Van den Ende

March 25, 2022

A picture containing outdoor, road, sky, street Description automatically generated — Russian troops in Henichesk. [Photo courtesy of Sonja Vandenende]

[This is a report from Sonja Vandenende, a Dutch journalist who was embedded with Russian troops in southeastern Ukraine. Previously, Sonja reported on the ground in Syria for CAM. Her reporting substantiates that ofPatrick Lancaster, a Russian-speaking U.S. Navy veteran whose reporting on the war in Donbass for eight years is respected by investigative journalists. CAM’s mission is to bring to your attention alternative narratives gleaned by eyewitness accounts—even if they could be misconstrued as pro-Russian.—Editors]

Last week I was embedded with the Russian army and visited two towns in southeastern Ukraine. The first town was called Henichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov in Kherson Oblast (province) of southern Ukraine, bordering on Crimea.

The Russian army, patrolling the city, went with us—the embedded journalists—for protection. But…

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Destination Ukraine> Brett goes to find the Truth (Part One) … The Ignorance Of War

Written by Brett Redmayne-Titley. Originally published on

“Now listen you pundits, you gamblers, you fools.
Don’t you feel that water boiling up all around you?
There’s an absence that I see when I look in to your eyes.
Do you feel that madness way down deep inside?”

In a personal quest to discover the on-scene realities of war-torn Ukraine, it is first essential to ask the most fundamental of questions.

Does the presentation of the concept of truth remain a valid argument?

Are facts, those established by close investigation and scrutiny, no longer part of one’s God-given faculties of comprehension, critical thinking, inquiry, and self-preservation?

And, should the pursuit for knowledge be ignored at the whim of mere personal opinion?

The world is closer than ever before to nuclear annihilation. That is one fact that must be considered. And,… now is not the time for ignorance.

At this perilous time in history, as with too many wars previous, it is ignorance that has driven the civilized part of the world to provide the necessary “approval ratings” of war. On the long list of US-inspired wars and colour revolutions globally, each time the “Masters of War” quickly and tightly pulled the mask of propaganda over the eyes, the minds and the heartstrings of good-hearted men and women. It is natural and correct for all of sound conscience to abhor the horrors of war. However, goodness is too easily abused by the evil that drives other men to war.

Ignorance is not stupidity. Far from it. Certainly, the natural reaction to this perceived personal defamation is at best terse. But the charge of ignorance is instead one of a quantification of knowledge only. For, it defies even the deepest ravages of reason for a person to insist that their personal opinion of current events, for which they have very little accumulation of knowledge beyond Main Stream Media, must be considered superior to that of those who aspire to a factually based investigation and historical argument instead.

For years, many journalists who have offered to the public excellent work in establishing the truth of current news events via their own inquiry and investigation have overlooked the role of public ignorance in war. Quality journalism is increasingly preaching only to the choir. The real horror is that… there are far too few left in the congregation who will even bother to listen to the sermon. It is this ignorance, thus defined, that again drives a world to war in Ukraine. And nuclear destruction.

The stakes at this moment, the survival of mankind, are far too high not to challenge ignorance. There must be a return to a demand for reason, comprehension, debate and critical examination of all facts. If not, we shall surely perish; all the while uselessly pointing fingers at each other.

Is it not time to finally demand public consideration of the most important and fundamental of age-old questions?:

What… the… fuck?!

“I see those bombs drop almost everywhere.

Yet, across this world, it seems that nobody cares.

In a world where fact and truth you believe are lies…

It reveals a madness way down deep inside.