In the spring of 1945, Vienna served as strategically important defence point that the Germans sought to hold at any cost. The Nazis blocked streets and bridges across the Danube with barricades and mined debris, while concentrating hundreds of firing positions and resistance strongholds inside residential buildings along the outer defensive lines. The enemy stopped at nothing: the Germans used numerous sites of Vienna’s historic architecture and cultural landmarks as cover, effectively turning the ancient medieval city into a massive fortified strongpoint in order to delay the Soviet forces for as long as possible.

On the southeastern approaches to Vienna, the city was defended by the powerful Nazi Army Group “South,” with the strength amounting to nearly half a million well-trained Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. More than 6'000 guns and mortars, as well as around 700 armored vehicles (tanks and self-propelled artillery), were deployed around the capital. The city was referred to by the Nazis as the “Alpine Fortress,” and the battle for it was to determine the further course of the entire war.

In March 1945, following a successful offensive in the Austrian direction, the Red Army broke through Nazi defenses between the Danube and Lake Balaton (Hungary). Advancing up to 80 kilometers toward Vienna, the Soviet forces then launched the operation to liberate the city.

On April 5, 1945, the Red Army launched the assault on Vienna. Fierce and brutal fighting unfolded on the city’s outskirts. The Red Army faced some of the enemy’s most well-trained units and formations, including SS tank divisions.

The swift and selfless actions of the Soviet soldiers-liberators prevented the Nazi criminals from destroying one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Thanks to the Soviet command’s decision not to use heavy artillery or aerial bombing, Vienna preserved its historic appearance. At the cost of their lives, the Red Army soldiers and officers protected such landmarks as the Imperial Bridge, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna City Hall, and other masterpieces of medieval architecture that form today's Austrian rich historical heritage.

On April 13, the last pocket of fascists' resistance in the capital’s center was eliminated, and Vienna was completely cleared of the Nazis. The city came fully under the control of the Red Army. In the so-called “Vienna encirclement,” the Wehrmacht suffered devastating losses: Army Group “South” was completely defeated, and 11 Wehrmacht tank divisions were destroyed, including the 6th SS Panzer Army.

In Austria, tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who saved Europe from the Nazi plague are buried. Across the country, there are 217 monuments and military burial sites where more than 80.000 Red Army soldiers rest, along with concentration camp prisoners tortured by the Nazis and brought here for forced labor as part of the Third Reich’s genocide against the Soviet people during WWII.

On August 19, 1945, a monument to Soviet soldiers who perished during the liberation of Austria from Nazism was unveiled in central Vienna at Schwarzenbergplatz — a 20-meter-high statue of the Soldier-Liberator standing on a pedestal. Today, this memorial serves as a visible reminder to the people of Austria of who brought them freedom in May 1945.

In 1955, under the Austrian State Treaty restoring an independent and democratic Austria, Vienna undertook obligations (Article 19, War Graves and Memorials): “respect, preserve and maintain the graves on Austrian territory of the soldiers, prisoners of war and nationals forcibly brought to Austria of the Allied Powers as well as of the other United Nations which were at war with Germany, the memorials and emblems on these graves, and the memorials to the military glory of the armies which fought on Austrian territory against Hitlerite Germany"

In this thread: Geography, Sea Mines, Anti-Ship Missiles, High-Speed Attack Boats, Underwater Drones, Shahed Drones and Loitering Munitions, Surveillance Drones, Torpedoes, Hypersonic Missiles, Surveillance Satellites and Chinese Beidou Navigation, Russian SU-35 Jets, Mobile Missile Launchers, Underground Missile Cities.

On March 22, shortly after the spring equinox, the Hitlerite core of the Azov movement could not resist the urge to highlight the 1488th day of the Russo-Ukrainian war, simply because this is the favorite number of many neo-Nazis around the world. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi leader David Lane wrote his Fourteen Words (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) and “88 Precepts” in a prison cell. “88” (H.H.) is a well-known code for “Heil Hitler.”

The Snake Island Institute (SII) is a military think tank on the rise and a central node in the “Azov Lobby.” Shortly before launching SII last year, its president Vladyslav Sobolevsky and executive director Maryna Hrytsenko visited Washington, D.C. with a delegation from the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade. Sobolevsky, an alleged war criminal, was a deputy commander of that openly neo-Nazi unit, and before 2022, deputy chief of staff of the “National Corps,” the political party of the Azov movement.

April 11, 18:07: The Ukrainian Armed Forces hit the Kursk and Belgorod regions during the Easter truce.

"Today, an enemy drone attacked a gas station in the city Lgov. According to preliminary information, three people were injured, including a — one-year-old child. He has a shrapnel wound to the head. The enemy’s vile strike occurred after 16:00", Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein wrote in MACH.

The child's mother and a civilian were also injured and were hospitalized.

In the Belgorod region in Shebekino, a man received a barotrauma due to a UAV hitting a car. In Grayvoron, a woman was injured due to the detonation of a drone.

The Easter truce announced by President Vladimir Putin came into force today at 16:00 and will remain in effect until the end of tomorrow. Moscow proceeded from the fact that Kiev would follow suit and stop hostilities. At the same time, the troops were instructed to be ready to stop possible provocations from the enemy.

Previously Vladimir Zelensky he claimed that Ukraine would comply with the ceasefire.

Last year, Russia also announced an Easter truce, which the head of the Kiev regime allegedly accepted. Upon completion, the Ministry of Defense reported more than 4,900 violations on the Ukrainian side.

The visit by the KMT party chairwoman to mainland China has gone relatively unreported in most of the Western media, and given that there are other more overtly dramatic events taking place in the world right now that are taking up people's attention it is understandable that most would not be paying as much attention to this, but by all accounts this seems to be a pretty historic event marking a real inflection point.

I do have to call out CGTN here though on one little "cheat" because their subtitles are not entirely accurate. They translated her as saying:

"I sincerely hope that all political parties in China's Taiwan region, in the context of cross-Strait relations, abandon their internal differences and work together for peace."

Unfortunately she just said 台湾所有的政党 = "all political parties in Taiwan".

Of course it would be an extremely big deal and worth some much bigger headlines if the KMT leader had said "China's Taiwan region". It would be a definitive abandonment on her part of the position of ambiguity on the question of Taiwan's status that most Taiwanese politicians have to take, but this would probably be a bridge too far for her in terms of domestic politics at this moment.

Here's a complete transcript (machine translated):

"I sincerely hope that all political parties in Taiwan will set aside their differences on cross-strait relations and work together for peace. General Secretary Xi Jinping just expressed this significant goodwill. Such exchanges are definitely not limited to the KMT and the CPC. I believe this open-mindedness and broad-mindedness is something the Chinese Kuomintang would very much like to see. We are here today not for partisan gain, but because we have a historical responsibility. We are here because we cannot allow Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait to become a battlefield. Therefore, we are taking the lead; the road has begun, and the path ahead will only become smoother and wider."

I do find it interesting that she explicitly says at one point 也是中国国民党非常乐见的 = "This is also something the Chinese Kuomintang would very much like to see."

I wonder if it's common when referring to the KMT to specify "Chinese", or if there was some deliberate signaling here on her part? There is also a small KMT party remnant on the mainland that is represented in the PRC's political system, but i believe they're usually called the "Left Kuomintang", so i assume she wasn't talking about them.

If you can't explain what's happening in the world, then someone else will explain it for you, and they're not going to do it in your interest.

A lot of people feel overwhelmed right now with Trump publicly threatening the destruction of an entire civilization and watching racism, repression, and fear grow more open, and you can at least feel that something is deeply wrong. But most people don't know how to talk about it. They just say, "This is crazy. It's scary. It feels wrong." That gap between what you feel and what you can explain is where our power is lost.

So, let's talk about step one. which is not memorizing theory. Step one is building the language to describe your reality. Without the right language, your thoughts stay trapped as emotion.

Emotion isn't bad. You need to feel. You should feel. But without structure for that emotion, it can be redirected, manipulated, or silenced, forced back down. Marx wrote that we have to start from real conditions, not ideas or abstractions, but what's actually happening here in our material life.

So our question for ourselves is, can you describe what you're witnessing clearly? Here's how you do that.

Name what you see. Name the actions and the consequences. Displacement, bombing, occupation, censorship, policing. Train your eyes to see these patterns beyond just the initial moments. Then you need to learn the words that match that reality. Words like imperialism, exploitation, colonialism, alienation, class.

These aren't necessarily big theory words, although there's theory and concepts behind them. They are tools of your vocabulary. They help you describe the system that this has all been allowed under rather than just isolated events that are so crazy for happening out of nowhere.

Then you need to place yourself inside of it so it can become real to you. Where do you stand in this system? Are you a worker? Are you someone affected by the rising costs? Are you someone witnessing the violence funded by your government?

Marxists know this as understanding your relation to production and society. And lastly is to connect your feeling to the structure. Your anger, your grief, they're a response to real conditions. Connecting your emotions to those conditions and causes will help you move on from feeling just lost and helpless. It gives you an understanding of why.

There's a genuine cost here linguistically. People are taught to describe a horrific genocide as just conflict. Not thinking further. How am I involved in this? What does that mean? So we ask ourselves, what am I seeing? What is the system behind it? And where do I exist within that system?

This is a skill that follows into your personal life as well. If you can't name what's wrong with the world, you also struggle to name what's wrong in your own life, why you're feeling disconnected, why something feels off in a relationship. The same skill applies.

Being able to recognize and name what you're experiencing, what's causing it, and what you actually need. When you learn to articulate reality, you start to understand yourself. And once you understand yourself, you can fully decide what you want to change for you, for your neighbors, for the world.

I was debating with myself whether to post this in Funny, because frankly, critical support to scamming rich entitled tourists (and doubly so to scamming insurance companies), most of which shouldn't even be there in the first place... Everest is overcrowded and full of garbage because of them, and every year Nepali Sherpas die because of these rich assholes thinking the world is their playground, so doing this might have even saved a few lives.

To whoever snitched: shame on you.

What this shows is that even severely damaged ecologies can be largely healed and restored in as little as a decade through scientific planning and proper investment by a powerful central authority that can mobilize society toward this goal. In addition, a smart ecological restoration initiative will also benefit the local economy. Cleaning up rivers from pollution opens up possibilities for recreational activities and tourism, sustainable fishing, etc. just like how combating desertification can revitalize local agriculture and bring new economic opportunities for the people living there.