How to deal with trolls
Marijn Markus
Sept 10, 2026
No, russia did not lose 27 million people in WW2. The Soviet Union did.
๐ It was the ๐จ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ๐๐ peoples and ethnic minorities from all over the Soviet Empire who paid the price most of all during WW2.
๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine for example lost 16% of its population (going by 1940 population counts) and Belarus even 25%. Places like Armenia and Latvia were also hit hard.
Conveniently all of these losses of life were classified as ‘russians’ later by Moscow’s propagandists, who today claim ‘russia lost 27 million’ as if it were a badge of honor rather than an admission of failure.
๐ Even the numbers displayed below are likely still skewed in Moscow’s favor.
Note the only available statistics are primarily organized by Soviet republic, not ethnicity, so โethnic minoritiesโ still doesn’t follow directly from these numbers, and likely remains underestimated.
โฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆ
โYou cannot negotiate ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐ with those who came to ะบill you.โ
- Golda Meir
โWe want to ๐ฅ๐ข๐ฏ๐. They want to see us dัad. What kind of ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฌ๐ can there be here?โ
Note Golda Meir was born in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Her words are as true today as they were back then.
โฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆ
๐ โIf ๐๐จ๐ซ๐๐ข๐ ๐ง ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐จ๐ง๐๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ werenโt available, I donโt think they would be able to produce them.โ
That is Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Zelenskyโs sanctions policy commissioner, talking about Russiaโs new S8000 Banderol cruise missile.
Samples built in 2025 contained nine US-made components, four Chinese, two each from Japan, Switzerland and South Korea, and one Australian component.
The engine itself is Chinese: an 8.5 kg Swiwin turbojet.
And yet this increasingly imported-parts missile has quietly become one of the ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐ง๐๐ง๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐๐๐ญ๐ฌ to ๐บ๐ฆ Ukraineโs Black Sea ports.
According to Vlasiuk, roughly 80% of strikes on greater Odesaโs port infrastructure this year involved the S8000 Banderol, including attacks on Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi.
The Odesa Sea Trade Port, Pivdennyi port and terminals belonging to Oilexportterminal and Transgrainterminal have all been damaged.
Built by Kronshtadt, the same company behind Russiaโs Orion drone that serves as its launch platform, the Banderol is roughly five meters long, carries a 150 kg warhead, flies at 550 to 700 km/h and has a range of up to 500 km.
๐บ๐ฆ Ukrainian military intelligence first identified it in April 2025 after it began striking Odesa Oblast. Initially it was mistaken for a Russianized Iranian Shahed-238 before its actual design was confirmed weeks later.
By June 2026, it had reached Kyiv.
And the interesting part is the niche it was designed to occupy.
Development began in 2021 to fill the gap between cheap, slow Shahed-type drones and the much more expensive and accurate Kh-101 cruise missile.
It flies too fast for Ukraineโs newest interceptor drones to catch.
But at an estimated $150,000 to $300,000 per missile, shooting a multimillion-dollar Patriot interceptor at it is some rather unpleasant economics, especially when Patriot interceptors are already critically scarce.
Ukrainian aviation expert Kostiantyn Kryvolap estimates it costs roughly three times as much as a Shahed and considers it โtoo dear for the many-and-cheap trend.โ
Defense Express instead sees it as a deliberately low-cost missile intended for mass use.
Either way, it creates exactly the uncomfortable cost and capability gap it was designed for.
The 2026 Banderols now hitting Odesa differ slightly from the 2025 versions and are still being analyzed.
Meanwhile, Russiaโs Oreshnik ballistic missile presents the opposite sanctions problem. According to Vlasiuk, it contains almost no foreign components, with more than 1,000 Russian-made parts and around 100 Belarusian ones.
So Moscow appears capable of domestically producing components for some of its heaviest weapons.
But its lighter, mass-production Banderol still depends heavily on imported technology.
Apparently sanctions enforcement still has somewhere rather obvious to look.
โฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆ.
Installing ๐๐๐ฌ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ ๐จ๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ง๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ requires first whipping society into an aะฟgry soup of chaos and division, then funneling that ะณage into populist political parties that promise to solve everyone’s problems.
That’s also how we should view Musk’s purchase of Twitter: control one of the world’s biggest political megaphones, amplify division, then watch increasingly extreme politics feed on it.
And across Europe, Russian influence operations have repeatedly tried to exploit exactly those divisions and strengthen parties sympathetic to Moscow.
The logic is pretty simple:
If the world becomes more united and equal, those at the ๐ญ๐จ๐ฉ ๐จ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฉ๐ฒ๐ซ๐๐ฆ๐ข๐ risk losing their position.
So you need division inside countries, conflict between countries, and preferably a few regional wars to keep everyone occupied.
๐ช๐บ The EU is a particularly big threat to that pyramid model because European integration transfers power away from individual strongmen and makes smaller countries collectively harder to dominate.
Which is why weakening European unity is such an attractive objective.
Get ๐ซ๐ท France or ๐ฉ๐ช Germany out of the EU and suddenly the whole structure becomes a lot easier to pull apart.
Divide, enrage, rule.
Apparently “divide and conquer” just needed social media and a 21st-century rebrand.
โฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆ.
Marijn Markus is a Dutch AI lead, managing data scientist at Capgemini, and public speaker who uses data science and social science to analyze technology, ethics, and digital disinformation. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Professional Background
- Works as an AI Lead and Managing Data Scientist at Capgemini in the Netherlands.
- Studied sociology, criminology, social science, and statistics before moving into data science.
- Combines behavioral science with technical data skills to build human-centered AI systems.ย [1,ย 2,ย 3,ย 4]
Core Focus Areas
- Artificial Intelligence:ย Advocates for transparent, practical, and deterministic AI systems rather than over-relying on probabilistic language models.ย [1,ย 2]
- Combating Disinformation:ย Analyzes and exposes online Russian propaganda and Kremlin disinformation campaigns using open-source data.ย [1,ย 2]
- Defense and Technology:ย Writes public commentary on how European militaries need better IT integration, joint procurement, and cold-war readiness.ย [1,ย 2]
Where to Follow His Work
- Connect with him and read his regular industry essays on hisย LinkedIn Profile.
- Read his analysis on European defense infrastructure in his editorial piece onย The Recursive.ย [1,ย 2,ย 3]
https://www.therecursive.com/author/marijn-markus/
โWe found the key to the Russiansโ: Ex-Defense Minister Fedorov returns from the US, planning Ukraineโs largest venture fund for defense tech and war think tank
Fedorov credited contacts built around Palantir with helping raise it. No name, size, or date yet.
BY
OLENA MUKHINA
09/09/2026
Marijn Markus :
You can’t win a war if your country runs on a Pyramid of Liัs
๐ Putin announces the “capture” of Sviatohirsk. Days later, Ukrainian commander strolls through the same town and basically asks: where are the russians?
That is the battlefield update.
A chain of command built on fัar. Generals liั upward to keep their posts, and the man at the top consumes the fiction because his system cannot survive the truth.
Itโs why the Soviet Union fัll in the first place: a system so c0rrupt and fัarful that misinformation replaces reality.
And moscow is still running the same script.
Their commanders keep filming fakั flags and fakั captures for the Kremlin, while the battlefield stays where it was. Fัar makes them liั upward, then men diั to defend the liั.
We saw the same dynamic in 2022 with Kherson. The mythical three-day Kyiv operation. Every grand encirclement that never happened.
The moscovian army reports what suits it rather than reality. What the Kremlin wants to hear.
And the Kremlin wants to hear that the empire is winning.
So the gap between the map and the ground grows wider every month.
๐ The practical takeaway is simple: when moscovian officials announce a capture, wait.
Wait for geolocation.
Wait for Ukrainian command.
Wait for the commander who walks through the town and finds nothing but rubble and silence.
Their information space is a ๐ฝ๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐บ๐ถ๐ฑ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐น๐ถั๐.
And Budanov just pulled one brick out of the base.
The only way to go.
Cemil Kerimoglu:
The peace conditions for Russia must be the following:
Demilitarization, denuclearization and disintegration. Russians must be thoroughly de-Putinized, atone for their 600-year criminal history and pay reparations – above all to Ukraine, but also to all the other nations and peoples that they have brutalized throughout history.
Moreover, Russia must be disintegrated into dozens of independent states, each with its own regional and national identity that condemns and disavows the “Russian” past. This, and only this, will bring eternal peace to Eurasia.
The above was a response to Duginโs latest satanic nazi outburst: โNext peace conditions will be worst for Ukraine. Worst than unconditional surrender.โ
Operator Starsky :
Been monitoring the updates, and the picture is always the same.
Ukraine: malls, food storages, and apartment buildings on fire.
Terrorussia: burning refineries, ships, warehouses, ports, and air defenses. Degenerates killing each other in the gasoline queues.
Basically, this is why terrorussia is going to lose the war.
Unlike the Crack Head Russians the Ukranians remain focused on the mission.
Shaun Pinner :
The enemyโs objective, in my view, extends beyond taking territory. It is making cities increasingly impossible to inhabit, something Russia has arguably been doing since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, genocidal certainly in its intent.
But now, the combination of increasing effectiveness, deliberate cruelty, modern technology and remarkably muted international outrage has lifted the veil completely.
These attacks are no longer confined to the darkness of night, nor are they accompanied by the same pretence of plausible deniability. We are seeing broad-daylight attacks on passenger trains, schools, hospitals, media facilities and civilian infrastructure.
Even supermarkets.
Joe Thomas :
Americans need to be vigilant about socialism creeping into the Democratic Party; otherwise, you might have a government that hands out $12000 checks, takes part ownership of businesses, and praises the North Korean leader on a regular basis.
I agree however to have a government that uses the FCC to censor media is equally as bad. I refer to ABC kneeling to the government and not allowing a Democrat, who is running for Senate, to express his opinion on national TV. Thatโs fascism plain and simple.
Prof Bonk :
A political ceasefire was supposed to freeze the front line. Instead, 400 encircled Russian troops executed a frantic midnight sprint out of their fortresses, walking directly into a kill zone and erasing an entire sector in 24 hours.
The Encirclement
By September, the 20th Army’s bridgehead north of Lyman was suffocating. Ukrainian teams spent months severing supply lines, pinning 400 soldiers against the Zherebets River from Shandryholove to Zelena Dolyna with zero rations and three bullets per man.
The Fatal Order
Desperate for a miracle rescue near Drobysheve, Russian command used a unilateral truce to order a multi-army night breakout. The fatal catch: top brass gave frontline officers under six hours to plan, coordinate, and launch a complex multi-vector escape.
The Night March
With zero preparation time, panicked commanders slapped together Frankenstein squads out of cooks, radio clerks, and wounded stragglers. At midnight, these patchwork units abandoned their fortified bunkers and marched blindly across open fields into the dark.
The Resume Button
At sunrise on September 5, the truce expired, and Ukrainian forces hit the resume button. The trap snapped shut. Ukrainian artillery and thermal drones caught hundreds of Russian infantrymen walking exposed in open fields, miles from their empty positions.
The Collapse
The breakout disintegrated in minutes. Rescue units near Ivaniivka dissolved under fire while Ukrainian shock troops moved in to seize the empty fortresses behind them. Russia’s Western Group of Forces shattered before generals even realized the mission had failed.
By September 9, the entire red salient from Shandryholove down through Zarichne, Torske, and Yampil evaporated into a lawless gray zone. Command and control vanished completely, leaving scattered stragglers trapped in the woods without radios.
The Paradox
A political truce built to freeze the war tricked Russia into abandoning its strongest fortresses, obliterating its northern flank and handing Ukraine total control of the Lyman sector.