Well, this is disconcerting.
Ritter is hardly what I'd call...well, anyone I'd ever want to be around, but his info on what the Bush Admin did in regards to "weapons of mass destruction" was solid. And doing just a bit of preliminary research...his claims seem to check out. It looks like the Azov battalion has deeply engrained itself within the Ukrainian government. I was under the impression that the Azov battalion was just a militia group that had aligned itself with the Ukrainian government. What I see from this though, is that they were absorbed into their military proper.
They literally put Azov officers into their military structure. And they seem to have high political support from politicians, oligarchs, and even their own small party.
It was news... 8 years ago.
Its also no news that there is such a thing as Azov Movement, which is what the militant group was formed out of to begin with.
On the other hand he's full of shit when it comes to some of the facts. Eats up the propaganda line about muh neonazis (and other politics, putting either his knowledge or political alignment into question), and more hilariously, pinning the Azov battalion on Lviv...
Why would a movement from Lviv call itself the Azov Regiment? Wouldn't it make sense if they were based somewhere around, say... the Sea of Azov, which is on the other side of the country? Like, say, Mariupol (wonder why quite a few combat footage videos from there have that little link to an Azov website, hmm)...
Here's a far more competent, detailed, and cold headed pre-war analysis of Azov forces:
www.globalsecurity.org
So, basically:
Over the past week, friends in Russia have described to me how storefronts in vibrant shopping districts are being shuttered and there are long queues of people trying to buy goods before they become permanently unavailable. The price of modern
www.lotuseaters.com
Yeah, some of the high profile withdrawal are probably stupidly excessive. Especially when it comes to media\entertainment\culture sector, things like industrial goods and financial services are a different matter. The west should not be making it easier for Russia to entact its knockoff Great Firewall to keep out inconvenient politics. They probably would kick out many of those anyway, and they should not be avoiding doing reasonable things that would get them kicked out on political grounds, but it should be a sticking point that the Russian government had to do it.