Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] This week, Russian Armed Forces are expanding their zone of control around the village of Neskuchnoye in the Kharkiv region, where they expelled the Ukrainian Armed Forces on February 27–28. Here, as around the ancient Russian town of Volchansk, located 30 kilometers to the east, the security zone is expanding, designed to protect our border region. But this small village has great, independent value for Russian culture.
It, like the surrounding farmsteads, has been known since the time of Peter the Great. The Murom River formed a cordon between the Belgorod voivode's zone of responsibility and the Kharkov regiment. During the reign of Anna Ioannovna, the lands on both banks belonged to her cousin, Tsarevna Elizabeth Petrovna, the future " Merry Tsarina." And the names here befit this lady's character—Neskuchnoye (Neskuchnoye) and Veseloye (Veseloye)—were appropriate.
During the time of Catherine the Great, the dividing line between the Belgorod district of the Kursk province, to which Neskuchnoye belonged, and the Kharkov district of the Slobodsko-Ukrainian province, and then the province of the same name (where Vesyoloye was located) ran along the Murom River.
From 1850 onward, the village and its manor house changed hands, finally ending up in the hands of State Councilor Nikolai Ber. In his youth, Ber served in Tsarskoye Selo. There, he met the artist Evgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray (1849–1886) and his sister, whom he married.
In 1885, Ber sold Neskuchnoye to Lanceray: it was believed that the local climate was beneficial for patients with tuberculosis, which Yevgeny Alexandrovich suffered from.
From his grandfather, a major in Napoleon's army who settled in Russia, Evgeny Lanceray inherited a surname and religion that were exotic for these parts: a man of Russian culture, he remained a Catholic according to family tradition.
In this generation, the Lanceray family no longer had a military background; artists predominated. Yevgeny Alexandrovich, who had achieved fame as an animal sculptor, was married to Ekaterina Nikolaevna Benois, the daughter and sister of renowned Moscow artists and architects. Thus, the Lancerays became related to an entire dynasty of artists, whose founder was Alberto Cavos, who designed the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
The representatives of the Kavos-Benois family, like Lanceray, were also “by inertia” parishioners of the Roman church.
But one of Yevgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray's sisters was forced to break with the tradition of this large family nest: she converted to Orthodoxy when she married a neighbor, a certain Anatoly Serebryakov. The Serebryakov family will play a role in our story.
The Benois family still remembers that the sculptor was “ emaciated and stooped, with completely transparent fingers,” but at the same time he rode out of the gates on horseback “with the look of a dashing Circassian.”
The fresh air inspired creativity. It was in Neskuchny that Yevgeny Alexandrovich created his famous sculptures of horses and riders, now housed in many museums.
His children were also born there, the youngest of whom was Zinaida (1884–1967).
When Zinochka was not yet two years old, Yevgeny Lanceray died, and his widow and children moved to St. Petersburg. Her cousin, Alexander Benois, recalled: "Zina grew up... a sickly and rather unsociable child, in which she resembled her father and not at all her mother or her brothers and sisters, who were all distinguished by their cheerful and sociable nature."
Lanceray's widow never remarried, educated her children in the capital, and regularly took them abroad. She never forgot Neskuchnoye.
From those times, not only paintings by Zinaida and her brother Evgeny Jr., photographs of the estate, but also a detailed description of those places left by Alexander Benois remained.
"Rows of low hills stretched one after another, becoming increasingly fading and bluer, and along their rounded slopes, meadows and fields mingled yellow and green. Here and there, small, lush clumps of trees stood out, among which huts with their welcoming square windows shone brightly white... A white manor house appeared, standing out against the mass of trees. Further away, in a field, stood a white church with two green domes, and even further away, barns and granaries of various sizes and purposes were scattered. All this seemed very impressive to me..."
Zina Lanceray turned Neskuchnoye and its surroundings into her plein air. She spent the spring, summer, and early fall there every year. It was there that she painted such masterpieces as "At the Dressing Room. Self-Portrait" (1909), "Harvest" (1915), and many others.
“On our estate in Neskuchny, where everything, both the nature and the peasant life that surrounded me, excited and delighted me with their picturesqueness, I generally lived in some kind of ‘daze of enthusiasm,’” she recalled in 1955. It was there, in Neskuchny, that she met her cousin, her future husband, Boris Serebryakov.
And this love was forbidden: Zinaida and Boris were cousins, of different faiths and registered in different, albeit neighboring, provinces. Therefore, they had to navigate complex bureaucratic procedures in Belgorod and Kharkov to obtain permission to marry.
Boris Serebryakov was a railway engineer who spent much of his time on business trips, primarily in the Asian part of Russia. He died of typhus in 1919, and Zinaida Yevgenyevna suffered the same fate as her mother—she became a widow at 35 and never remarried.
In November 1919, the front line ran near Neskuchny, and, taking advantage of the chaos, local peasants burned down the estate. Yet Zinaida Evgenievna depicted many of them in her paintings.
Fortunately, the owners were fifty miles away at the time. Food supplies were scarce, but perhaps even more importantly, paints were hard to come by. Zinaida drew with charcoal and pencils. Thus, "under duress," Serebryakova created her masterpieces—the portraits of her children, "On the Terrace in Kharkov" (now in the collection of the Novosibirsk Museum) and " House of Cards," which now graces the collection of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
In 1924, Zinaida Serebryakova—by then already a world-renowned artist whose works (including those painted in Neskuchny) had been exhibited in New York and European capitals—received an invitation to Paris. Formally, it was an "artistic assignment," a commission for a large mural. But Zinaida Serebryakova was never able to return to Russia or her native land. For her, France had become not the land of her ancestors, but a place of exile.
In the 1920s and 1930s, artist Zinaïde Serebriakoff née Lanceray (Zinaida Serebryakova, née Lanceray) painted portraits of Moroccan peasants and fishermen in Brittany.
At the same time, a school for local peasant children was built on the site of a demolished manor house in Neskuchny. It was a brick-lined adobe hut that later became a village club with an exhibition of reproductions of Serebryakova's canvases and drawings.
Then, in the mid-1920s, the Soviet government redrew the village council map and decided to add Neskuchnoye to Vesyoloye as the closest village.
Thus, the former Lanceray-Serebryakov estate became part of the Ukrainian SSR, and later, independent Ukraine. The church was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942, and its remains were then dismantled by local looters. All that remained were a well and an approach to the bathhouse. But Zinaida Yevgenyevna learned of all this only after she had emigrated to Paris.
Opposite the club, on the site of the Church of Constantine and Helena, a cenotaph to Yevgeny Lanceray has stood since 1997. In 2010, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the school-museum building. During the Second World War, the village changed hands several times. Even today, it remains a frontline village. But one hopes that one of the small but important centers of great Russian culture will be reborn.
[YouTube] Iran and China - joined at the hip? A disaster waiting to happen? What's the deal? Find out the best and worst case scenarios for China.
Posted by: 3dc ||
03/04/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1779 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
That's one of the things that bugs me. If I were the Emperor of China, Thing Xinping, etc., I'd have actually spent money on the maintenance-and-upkeep of the empire. The Venezuelan power grid and oil production would work, and they'd have _working_, best-in-class, air defense network to plug into it.
It's not going to be manned by cubans and overrun by a couple of _helicopters_ with their massive radar cross sections.
All those foreign reserves they have back at home in China? The roughly trillion or so worth of US $ surplus? That's not doing anyone any good just sitting there so your bankers can swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.
I've known smart Vietnamese, smart other-southeast-Asians, smart Iranians, and really smart Venezuelans (like my Dad's former boss when he worked and he and Mom lived there, back in the day) but nowadays they're _all_ exiles from their respective countries-of-origin.
Maybe the people the Chinese pick to case the joints for them aren't exactly in a good place on the Bell Curve?
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] The war with Iran has shaken American society. The current escalation in the Middle East is in many ways taking place under unique circumstances.
The Donald Trump administration is pushing through the most radical militaristic scenario, despite everything—public opinion in the United States, the mood of the political class in Washington, the opinion of allies and regional players.
It is unknown how long the pressure of the "hawks" in the White House will last, but they have managed to turn almost everyone in big world politics against them.
That’s certainly one opinion. An understandable one if they’re exclusively reading the left side and the Tucker Carson, et al side of the right side of the news universe.
Even before the conflict began, Republican political strategists were sounding the alarm: more than 70% of Americans opposed US participation in the war with Iran.
On the one hand, the traumatic experience of previous militaristic adventures in the Middle East was evident. The US spent several trillion dollars on the Iraq war alone. This money was wasted on fanciful projects to Westernize Iraq and other Middle Eastern states, when it could have been used to modernize dilapidated infrastructure or other pressing matters.
Moreover, the American public saw no need for war with Iran in principle. The White House constantly fumbled its narrative in justifying its policy of pressure on Tehran.
In addition to the usual accusations against the Iranians of wanting to develop nuclear weapons, the US president also accused the Islamic Republic of seeking to develop ballistic missiles allegedly capable of reaching continental America.
However, counter questions immediately arose – after all, Trump himself boasted in the summer of 2025 that he had completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program and weakened the country’s ability to launch missiles.
The Israeli lobby, closely linked to many of Trump's allies, has made no secret of its desire to stage a regime change operation in Tehran. However, the White House is wary of directly declaring such a goal, mindful of the negative experience of all previous similar campaigns in the Middle East over the past thirty years.
Just a year ago, during a tour of the Persian Gulf countries, Trump promised to leave behind the period when the country tried to change regimes and “export democracy.”
Therefore, representatives of the presidential team are forced to squirm like snakes in a frying pan, trying to explain the war with Iran with some abstract factors like a “civilizational conflict.”
Moreover, it's clear that the current escalation didn't go according to the White House's initial plan. They were hoping for a "shock and awe" effect, a lightning strike that would decapitate Iran's leadership and lead to a rapid change of elites. After which, they could begin to quickly negotiate with the new government on terms favorable to the United States.
The Iranians prudently worked on the mistakes of last year's twelve-day campaign and this time began to act according to a new scenario.
They don't launch massive attacks on Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones. Instead, they pursue a "thousand-prick" strategy with small but frequent drone and missile strikes against American military bases and the infrastructure of the Persian Gulf monarchies.
Iran has two goals. The first is to inflict as much damage as possible on the American military presence in the region, forcing the enemy to suffer losses and lose expensive equipment—such as billion-dollar radars and fighter jets—and to deplete its stockpiles of missiles for air defense systems like Patriot and THAAD.
Even during the Iran-Israel war last summer, the Pentagon was forced to expend about 150 missiles for the 650 missile systems produced. Each missile costs over ten million dollars, and only thirty are produced per year. And these costs are being spent on destroying cheap Iranian ballistic missiles.
The second goal is to force US allies, particularly the Gulf monarchies, to experience economic hardship and begin demanding that the White House end the war.
They have leverage—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have promised multibillion-dollar investments to both the US economy in general and the Trump family in particular. It will be difficult to invest anything with the Strait of Hormuz closed and their position in the global energy market eroded.
Approximately 30% of all seaborne oil and about 20% of liquefied natural gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz daily. A loss of these volumes would cause an energy shock in many countries from Europe to Asia.
The US will also suffer, as it receives a significant amount of oil from Iraq. Trump is clearly trying to create problems for exporters trading with China. But in the end, he could significantly weaken his own position, especially domestically.
After all, the higher the gas prices, the lower the level of support for the White House occupant. For example, in 2022, the price of gasoline in the US consistently exceeded five dollars per gallon, which led to a collapse in then-President Joe Biden's approval ratings to 30% and even lower.
Trump's opponents in the Democratic Party are already actively exploiting these developments. They call the conflict against Iran an "illegal war of aggression," emphasizing that the decision to launch it was made without Congress's consent.
Formally, the American president has the authority to conduct military operations for two months without legislative approval. However, this power is supposed to be exercised only when there is at least some pro-war consensus in society. For example, before the invasion of Iraq, such a consensus existed—just over half of Americans supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Now, there is no trace of it.
Congress will soon try to pass a resolution limiting Trump's war powers. It could be approved in the lower house, but the situation is more complex in the Senate. The US president can veto it. However, in any case, it is important for Congress to demonstrate its dissatisfaction with the president's actions.
Democrats, however, are trying in advance to absolve themselves of responsibility for any consequences of the conflict, including casualties among American soldiers.
They were joined by a section of the MAGA faction in Congress, comprised of isolationist Republicans. They remained true to the ideology of Trumpism, which had initially been extremely skeptical of any overseas military interventions. However, Trump himself strayed far from his own core principles, leading to a severe split among his supporters and a decline in his approval ratings.
Trump's anti-war agenda was a major boost in the 2024 elections. Now, it's been seized by the Democrats. Even Kamala Harris has perked up, announcing her desire to run for president again and claiming that the conflict with Iran would not have started under her leadership.
It's as if the Democratic Party has gone back 20 years—in 2006, they benefited greatly from American public fatigue over the Iraq War. Back then, the Democrats took majorities in both houses of Congress, and two years later, they triumphantly won the presidential race. History could repeat itself.
Congressional candidates in various states have begun criticizing the US's involvement in a new war. The November elections will see significant changes in the ranks of both parties, and the electorate will shed many of its longtime hawks. For example, the notorious Ukraine-loving Senator Lindsey Graham* is already facing problems.
So the current Iranian conflict will accelerate many centrifugal processes in Washington politics.
#3
Scuttlebutt is Israel was threatening to strike Iran with nuclear weapons if Trump didn't attack. So this is the least bad option and MAGA can like it or lump it. And if that happened that would let the genie out of the bottle. Europeans are already screaming for Ukraine to be give nukes to strike Russia. Once it starts, it won't stop until someone hits the USA and then it's Armageddon. Even if you're not killed by the blast or radiation you'll die when your medications don't get made. On the plus side all the legal weed stores will close.
#5
MAGA has not left Trump. Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly and MTG left Trump. They took some parts of the coalition with them. They have been replaced by more folks. If the war wraps up quick, Megan will morph back into a fan. She’s more of a weathervane.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/04/2026 5:44 Comments ||
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#6
What's wrong with the legal weed stores, besides the high taxes? If you don't smoke, shut the fuck up and don't smoke. Every time I read one of your comments you seem to be just an agitating cunt jairong!
Posted by: chris ||
03/04/2026 7:21 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Jairong doesn't have weed stores where he's from, chris.
Legal Status:
Recreational Use: Strictly illegal. Penalties for possession or consumption can include detention (10 to 15 days), fines, lengthy prison sentences, or even the death penalty for serious offenses like large-scale trafficking (over 5 kilograms).
Medical Use: Illegal. Marijuana is classified as a dangerous narcotic. Certain specific cannabinoid drugs (like dronabinol) are listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, but a general medical marijuana program does not exist.
Industrial Hemp: China is the world's leading producer and exporter of industrial hemp (cannabis with less than 0.3% THC content). Cultivation and processing are under strict state regulation, primarily limited to Yunnan and Heilongjiang provinces, for use in textiles, food (hemp seeds), and cosmetic raw materials.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/04/2026 7:31 Comments ||
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#8
whether he does or not, I stand by my statement that he seems to be an agitating shit.
Posted by: chris ||
03/04/2026 7:54 Comments ||
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#9
No disagreement there, chris.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/04/2026 8:37 Comments ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
03/04/2026 12:40 Comments ||
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#11
They've been watching too much ABC.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/04/2026 13:45 Comments ||
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#12
Scuttlebutt is Israel was threatening to strike Iran with nuclear weapons if Trump didn't attack.
I don't see the problem here.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/04/2026 13:49 Comments ||
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#13
Anyway, the "scuttlebutt" I heard is that Mossad found out where and when the Ayatolla would be meeing with all the other Shiite bigwigs and it was just too tempting a target to resist.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/04/2026 13:56 Comments ||
Top||
Footnotes can be seen at the link. Give him the click — they’re hilarious.
[LawDogFiles] In the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps1 the department responsible for unconventional warfare, foreign intelligence, and "covert extraterritorial operations" is the Quds Force2.
Formed in 1988 by combining Department 900 of the IRGC — responsible for military intelligence during the Iran-Iraq War — and the IRGC’s "Special External Operations Department" — which helped set up Hezbollah, and various other Shi’a militias to be pains-in-the-arse to various governments — the Quds Force (IRGC-QF) is best thought of as the result if you took a dash of wish-dot-com CIA, a smidgen of Temu JSOC, a hefty dose of inshallah, a giant glug of Twelver fanaticism, and ran it all through an absentee Russian blender.
Where the IRGC makes sure that the Iranian military doesn’t Get Ideas, and keeps a firm boot on the necks of the Iranian citizenry, the Quds Force runs around fomenting turmoil in the rest of the world.
The Quds Force manages paramilitary training camps for Budding Young Terrorists3, sets up weapons factories for militias and terrorist groups4, handles mullah bank accounts in China, dabbles in the drug trade, recruits terror cells, and putters about in the occasional Direct Action.
If you listen to the Media, or to various pundits, the Qods Force is composed of "highly-disciplined", "highly-talented", "extremely capable", and "best of the IRGC" folks.
I am ... less impressed.
First off, being the "Best of the IRGC" is much like being the "Best chihuahua in the pound". Very laudable and impressive ... for chihuahuas.5 Not so much to the people with Dobermanns.
Secondly, one of the primary qualities required as a Quds Force recruit is an unwavering devotion to the Twelver doctrine. Religious fanatics tend to be ... less reliable than one might wish.
Thirdly — the late, unlamented Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei (long may he rot) micromanaged the hell out of the IRGC-QF. A clinically-paranoid little bugsnipe Khamenei (Democrat-Hell) was pretty aware of what happens to Third World leaders when their subordinates have a sudden attack of conscience and/or ambition, so he kept his black operations guys on a really tight leash.
"Ok, Ian, so why the lecture?"
Well, in the Quds Force world view, the world is divided into four Command Centres, and another six "Corps". Guess who’s in the Ninth Corp of the Sepah-e Qods?
If you answered "North America", congratulations, you get the kewpie doll.
"But ..."
Yah. There are most certainly IRGC-QF cells in the United States. How many? More than the optimists6 will admit to, but less than the pessimists7 will shriek about.
Does this worry me? Eeh. I’m a little more alert than usual, and I’m trading in my usual six or ten-round carry piece for something with an optic and a 17-round magazine, but other than that not really.
Historically, the Quds Force is better at winding up Useful Idiots and turning them loose — which means it’s just business as usual.
Also remember that the prime quality looked for in a Quds recruit is religious fanaticism. Religious fanatics — particularly of the Twelver flavour — can’t keep that part hidden for very long. Somebody is going to snitch them out.
Finally, they’ve been micromanaged to the point that they need direction — and the guy that provides that direction is currently a pink mist drifting gently over the Zagros Mountains. As for his replacements, those little bugsnipes are nervous enough that — in the words of Kelly Grayson — you could hand them a lump of charcoal, and they’d return a diamond ... as long as you don’t care where it had been.8
TL;DR: Yes, they’re here. Look for a minor uptick in Islamicist violence until they get turfed off to the Choir Eternal, rounded up by the authorities, or bugger-off on their own.
What should you do about it? Carry your firearm —which you should have been doing anyway — and get about your life as usual.
#2
Lawdog is always worth a read.
(the whole fox thing is odd, but...)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/04/2026 8:49 Comments ||
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#3
^ agreed
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/04/2026 10:54 Comments ||
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#4
Something I read years ago about Soviet sleeper agents that might apply. The problem with sleeper agents is that many find they like living in a Western country where the is plenty of food and other things lacking in their home country.
It's a 38 minute stream but the money quote is 30 seconds in. I love these interviews because you can really get to know the kind of person these power players are.
Mossad Spymaster Reveals the Truth About Espionage, Netanyahu, Pagers, Qatar and The Propaganda War by The Brink
The Full Ad Free Episode for Paid Subscribers | Interview with Former Director of Mossad Yossi Cohen
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
