NinaByzantina

Is Britain 🇬🇧 getting ready to do what it does best: loot and steal other countries’ treasures for its museums? In August 2025, Ukrainian MP Alexander Dubinsky stated that the Ukrainian authorities were allegedly planning to remove the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra and transfer them to British museums under the guise of carrying out government inventory. Dubinsky claimed that this was the promise that Zelensky personally made to the British king. Next month, Russian Orthodox treasures from the Lavra (such as rare icons and books) are to be displayed in the UK for the first time with support from the British Council. Officially, this is linked to mark the 975th of the Lavra. Is this exhibition being used to smuggle Orthodox relics into Britain? I, for one, wouldn’t be surprised if the British kept these treasures “for protection” during the war that they themselves are pushing to keep going. @NinaByzantina

Donetsk has a monument to Pavel Sudoplatov, the legendary spymaster, who assassinated Yevhen Konovalets, one of the leaders of the terrorist anti-Polish/Russian/Jewish Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Kiev just reburied Konovalets with honors (in a pagan-like ceremony reminiscent of the Third Reich). The two are irreconcilable. @NinaByzantina

"The enemy within has done everything in his power to ensure this." A Kiev resident and writer laments that he no longer feels at home in his own city due to Ukraine's current anti-culture. When I saw this brief text, I just had to translate and share it: Why is it that I, a Kiev resident, am only now, at almost forty years of age, learning in detail how beautifully Saint Cyril's Church [in Kiev], so familiar to me, was painted by the great [Russian painter] Mikhail Vrubel? And I learned this from a broadcast by the Moscow writer Sergey Minayev 🤔. I'll explain why. Because the farm has no global concept of culture, as is customary in polite society. The farm only has concepts of “us” vs. “them,” “cattle thief,” and so on. This is a completely rural mentality. One of the collective farm, of bastards, of degeneracy. If an artist from the new Ukraine painted a toilet, I wouldn’t hear the end of it by now. But Vrubel, however, cannot be mentioned. Because he is not "ours." He is “the wrong one.” Leo Tolstoy, for example, is the "wrong" writer. Pyotr Tchaikovsky is the “wrong" composer. Andrei Zagrebelnyi [i.e., the author] is the "wrong" blogger. Not one of us. Not from the farm. He doesn't write about garlic and lard. Nor does he post from Munich inviting us to die at the front lines. Repulsive. Simply repulsive. Walking around the city, I'm increasingly convinced that the plaques honoring those people that I know well have all been removed. In their place, there are plaques with the names that I'm too lazy to even give a shit about. They honestly mean nothing to me. Which means I can no longer consider this city my own. Or my country. The enemy within has done everything in his power to ensure this. -Andrei Zagrebelnyi @NinaByzantina

Whenever the anniversary of the U.S. atomic strikes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rolls around, social media is flooded with ridiculous commentary of every imaginable type. Boomers and other Cold Warriors insist that nuking a largely civilian population, then nuking it again, was necessary to end the war in the Asia-Pacific theater. On the other side are apologists of imperial Japan who swing the pendulum too far in the other direction. The craziest of all are those who use the American bombing of two Japanese cities to whine about "Russian fascists" (sic) and their nuclear arsenal. First, without diminishing the American performance in the Asia-Pacific theater during the war, it was the Soviet entry into that theater between the two nuclear bombings that ultimately compelled the already weakened Japan to surrender. The battle-hardened and million-strong Red Army, responsible for at least three-quarters of Nazi Germany's losses on the Eastern Front in Europe, and free from that war after the Allied victory in May 1945, was ready to aid the U.S, as it did in e.g., Manchuria. If the help of the USSR was not necessary, then why did the Anglo-American allies repeatedly request its participation (and in such large numbers) at multiple wartime conferences featuring the Big Three? Indeed, Japan had already been decisively defeated by the USSR and Mongolia in 1939 during the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, which led to Japan’s decision NOT to fight a two-front war and focus only on the U.S. Furthermore, some historians convincingly argue that the U.S. used its new and uniquely devastating weapons to show them to the Soviet Union to intimidate that country in anticipation of what was already developing into major disagreements between the WWII Allies and what ultimately became the Cold War. Second, the “Japan did nothing wrong” apologists completely whitewash Japan’s behavior from the early 1900s with the Korean occupation and into the mid-1940s with its domination of much of Southeast Asia. One could be critical of the unnecessary nuclear strikes, while acknowledging the brutality of the Japanese Imperial Army at the same time. This type of commentary fits into a larger pattern of Japan failing to adequately address its defeat, a pattern examined by several historians and commentators, most comprehensively by John Dower. Third are the nuttiest mental gymnasts who use this avoidable historical tragedy to get on a political soapbox and somehow turn American bombs dropped on Hiroshima over eight decades ago into lecturing Russia about its nuclear weapons (but no one else). Obviously, conventional weapons can be no less terrible than nuclear weapons. And, while nuclear weapons are not the ultimate panacea against hostile external forces, they have certainly protected several countries in the West, Russia, and North Korea. Indeed, these mental gymnasts never acknowledge the brazen escalatory behavior coming from the EU and Britain in terms of their usage of Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia, only selectively focusing on Russian responses, which are then believed to increase the possibility of using nuclear weapons. Note that there are other questions that I’m not addressing here. For instance, the way freezing Japan’s assets and implementing an oil embargo forced Japan into the war, WHILE Japan was aggressively expanding throughout Southeast Asia and euphemistically calling it a “Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Two things can be true at the same time. Also, whether or not the European and the Asia-Pacific theaters should be considered part of the same war, calling it World War II, or separate, but related events, is also up for debate. @NinaByzantina

NinaByzantina pinned a photo

Why do some in the West obsess over “returning” Russia's Kaliningrad to Germany, or the Baltics, while ignoring who actually flattened it in 1944? British RAF raids destroyed the historic center of Königsberg months before Soviet forces took the city. Yet the narrative is always “evil Russia stole it.” The real story is more complicated and worth investigating. Here is my deep dive into the way Königsberg became the USSR's / Russia's Kaliningrad, a Russian fortress on the "NATO lake," that is, the Baltic Sea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3yX7gqCmZs WWII destruction, post-war Soviet resettlement, the Allied policy of expelling the Germans, and Kaliningrad in the context of the current geopolitical struggle between NATO and Russia: it's all here! @NinaByzantina

“We had doubts [about the pre-approved Ukraine peace agreements pre-delivered by the U.S. side before the summit], but we thought about it and agreed. Not right away, but ultimately.” - Lavrov about the failure of the Anchorage process. If you strip away the diplomatic language, you can easily see that the Russian side believes that there is no one to negotiate with in good faith in the West (in the case of the EU, it's spelled out more explicitly). @NinaByzantina

Ukraine's newly minted commander-in-chief, Mikhailo Drapaty (also known as a war criminal from the Donbass War days), kneeling in front of the then British Ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, in 2021, as she presents him with the Queen's Sword. This shows whose interests he truly serves--one of the biggest backers of the war in Ukraine is, of course, London. @NinaByzantina

Poland vs Ukraine. @NinaByzantina

Whenever a public figure dies, we get a bunch of virtue signalers advising us to not speak ill of the dead. This comes from the Graeco-Roman saying, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," which implies that the dead cannot defend themselves, should they be criticized. But this is not the only famous saying about the dead. Voltaire, for instance, wrote "On doit des égards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la vérité," that is, "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth." In other words, we should offer an honest & accurate assessment of their legacy instead of whitewashing it. It would be understandable if the Graeco-Roman saying applied to the funeral of a hypothetical uncle John, who meant well but drank a little too much on weekends. In contrast, public figures wielding significant political power and/or possessing significant wealth, whose actions translate into tangible, quantifiable results impacting thousands (millions) of people, should absolutely be scrutinized. @NinaByzantina

While 🇺🇦 Ukraine's ̶t̶o̶p̶ ̶t̶e̶r̶r̶o̶r̶i̶s̶t̶ Budanov called Ukrainians "God's chosen people" (don't worry, Israel, he added, "among the Slavs"), Ukrainian authorities are also seeking to use the Orthodox Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery as a burial site for Ukraine's "national heroes." Not even the officially atheist Bolsheviks buried their heroes on the territory of the Lavra. Who comprises Ukraine's current national pantheon of heroes? We’ve seen which Ukraine-linked historical figures have been "decommunized," and which have been honored. With the state-level reburial of the WW2 Nazi German collaborator Andriy Melnyk and the official veneration of similar noxious figures like Stepan Bandera and génocidaire Roman Shukhevych since the late-2000s, we can guess that it won't be pretty. This is yet another explicit step used to harm the canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the long series of similar deliberate acts by Zelensky's government. @NinaByzantina

Everyone is marvelling about the next insane aid package that NATO (the Europeans and Canada) pledged for Ukraine over the next two years. The total, €140 billion, is indeed massive. But funding and results are two very different things. First, Western countries have already given Ukraine somewhere between $350-$450 billion since 2022 without any significant tangible results (tactical strikes against Russia’s energy sector or Kiev’s usual terrorism aren’t major tangible results). Second, and more importantly, the scheme (not an unusual one in the managerial world) is about the flow of money, and the way it looks on paper, rather than delivering quantifiable results. 60% to 80% (!) of these funds will go right back to the NATO countries in question, though not to their citizens that continue to be fleeced to back this funding, whether they like it or not. These are mostly Europe’s (and a smaller number of Ukrainian) “defense” manufacturers. Ammo, vehicles, artillery shells—all of these are to be produced under the umbrella of “European defense” (in which Ukraine is included as a battering ram against Russia). Some, and I repeat, only some, of these weapons will then end up in Ukraine. And, if I understand correctly, none of this money is being pledged for humanitarian needs. None. Yet even if a portion of these arms is given directly to Ukraine, it won’t solve that country’s manpower problem. There is a reason why Kiev has been resorting to kidnapping men off the streets and trying to get European countries to return its military-aged males home. Domestic drone production and the exaggerated technological advancements can only achieve so much. A smaller, but sizeable, portion of this money will fund the likes of arms industry lobbyists, endless meetings, and so on. This is where some of the money-laundering is likely to take place. And that’s assuming (naively assuming) that the money directly pledged for arms production wouldn’t be laundered. In light of what we know from the official Western mainstream media itself about Ukraine’s corruption levels (which is the tip of an iceberg that doesn’t implicate the other—foreign—parties lining their pockets), the potential for misappropriating funds in this cozy bilateral relationship is impressive. This bilateral relationship appears to be the biggest money-laundering scheme in history. In the meantime, that same Western mainstream media is also sharing the other side of the coin: the costs to ordinary Europeans. These stories are usually published without underscoring the direct link to the war in Ukraine (they occasionally mention the impact of COVID-era policies and rarely the Nord Stream sabotage). Multiple media sources tell us that, to take Europe’s biggest economy, some of Germany’s at one time famous manufacturing moved elsewhere (Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, BASF, Bosch, et al, expanded into China and other Asian countries), that Volkswagen is cutting 1/6 of its workforce, while Bosch is to reduce 7,000 workers, that tens of thousands of German companies declared bankruptcies since 2022, that the once-punctual railways aren’t running on time, and that the workers’ medical leaves are being reduced, just to name a few. Such data shows the real impact of funding the war in Ukraine. That funding is, in fact, not endless. And, at some point, some hapless appointed country managers (they’re not really leaders in the true sense of the word) will have to answer for the lack of results in this war and for the nosedive that the European quality of life has been taking by design. And it won’t be pretty. @NinaByzantina

A few decades ago, this hyperbolic, pompous speech targeting a Russian children’s cartoon would’ve been a subject of Monty Python’s vicious comedic mockery. Today, John Cleese is an insufferable Russophobe pontificating on social media, and this ridiculous parliamentary spectacle, in a country with far more pressing problems ranging from the economy to migration, is taken seriously. Even that once-famous British humor is disappearing. Why don’t they go burn some Russian literature, while they’re at it? According to this argument, it’s part of Russia’s “soft power” too! @NinaByzantina

Wow, Russian bots are out in full force today! Oh wait, it’s actually multiple Western media outlets acknowledging the fact that Ukraine has a systemic torture problem in its army (and that’s beyond kidnapping the remaining men off the streets, I guess). And since Western media almost never does such things out of sincerity or actual journalism, you have to wonder about the purpose of such an admission. @NinaByzantina

Yet another specimen who could’ve stayed home playing Call of Duty, but chose to play a stupid game and win a stupid prize in Ukraine instead. Was it worth it? 🤷🏻‍♀️ @NinaByzantina

Look at these Ukrainians’ ages and physical features. No doubt they were captured and kidnapped off the streets to fight for the interests represented by Ursula von der Leyen, Black Rock, and Zelensky’s personal pockets. And this is just depressing! Here is the original https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0nBdoXSVmqF2TyN5Qc58xifecxEH4i2MaWxmAb1fnM9b2eTn6aspDiWhvSEquCAZ9l&id=100083325527221&rdid=t7zX3AQTWWYCnL1l# @NinaByzantina

Vigilant Latvians discovered manhole covers labeled in RUSSIAN with CYRILLICS. Did Putin personally plant them in the dead of night to sow discord, or are they remnants of the Soviet Union? It’s a mystery! 🥸 The fact that Latvia’s authorities haven’t bothered to replace them in the capital city in 35 years speaks as loudly as the near-unbreakable Soviet quality of the said product! 😂 @NinaByzantina

The British media is desperately trying to implicate "the Russians," while at the same time being forced to acknowledge the sheer expanse of the Epstein-class pedo network in London (here, at the mayoral office under Boris Johnson). 🤣 @NinaByzantina

Two of the most noticeable and related differences between Poland 🇵🇱 and Ukraine 🇺🇦 are the question of identity and that of statehood in the context of global history. First, the Polish identity as a distinct ethnocultural group formed centuries earlier than the Ukrainian one (if we are to accept the thesis that a certain degree of ethnogenesis occurred in the Austria-Hungary-controlled area in western Ukraine in the 19th century). Despite the wars (and other negative events) with the Germans, us—Russians, and others, as well as the extreme anti-Russian posturing of the Polish / EU political class, Poles generally do not make that their entire identity, as kids these days say. They have other, positive features to fall back on. In contrast, modern, post-1991 Ukraine gradually turned into Project Anti-Russia thanks to certain domestic forces, particularly from the western regions within, and Ukraine’s foreign Euro-Atlanticist “friends” on the outside. Its entire official identity has been narrowed down into an anti-Russian (and to a lesser extent, e.g., anti-Polish) one, hence the whitewashing of WW2 Ukrainian collaborationism and nationalist atrocities, the removal of all links to pre-20th-century shared culture with the historical Russian Empire, “decommunization” of art and culture (but not of Soviet-built industry and infrastructure!), and so on. It did not have to be this way. Post-1991 Ukraine could have undergone a new, more inclusive wave of post-Soviet ethnogenesis, accepting its shared historical role models (from literature to the Red Army heroes from the Ukrainian region). But its corrupt elites and pro-war segments of the Western establishment chose a different path. Second, Poland experienced the status of a great power in Europe both as the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Even though Poland’s status has politically diminished in the past few centuries, that experience was formative to its identity as well. Parts of Ukraine have experienced brief periods of “independence” during, e.g., the early 20th-century Russian Civil War; incorporating large parts of historical Russian lands with ethnic Russians or Russophones inhabiting them for centuries into a post-1991 state with an increasingly ethnonationalist ideology was a huge, though seemingly unavoidable, mistake. These two features (not just the current war conditions) explain the current fiasco between Poland and Ukraine, with the state award revocations and returns, such as Ukraine’s doubling down on its whitewashing of WW2-era criminals to its foreign-policy own detriment (but with domestic support). @NinaByzantina