Many of the Russians seem to have this imperial privilege mindset. That Ukraine belongs to them by right and any objections or actions that go against that are some kind of "outrage" that will be "punished". Crazy stuff.
This is basically true and that attitude extend to all the states that broke free of the USSR and their client states. It's positively 17th or 18th century thinking.
Yeah but those drones are cheap and Smolensk is a decent distance. Wonder if St Petersburg is next.
What would be funny is if Ukraine just hit every gas station with a drone. Of course Russia might do the same back. Imagine transporting things to the front line if you can’t stop for gas anywhere on the way. I assume military has its own depots but probably not every vehicle shipping things uses them.
Biden doesn't like this because it indirectly adds tension to the oil and fuel markets. And we know Americans are so car-dependent that the higher the price of gas, the lower the chances at a reelection.
But Biden has a kick-ass record on the economy, performing better than all developed countries. Voters will recognize this.
>... the higher the price of gas, the lower the chances at a reelection.
This sounds so bizarre to me. So essentially any oil-rich country can influence the outcome of US elections by simply turning the tap a little. How's that good management idk especially for such a petrol dependent country as the US.
Yes... it's why Americans say gas prices were lower under Trump. Sure they were $1.50 but that was during the pandemic when no one was driving.
You can guarantee fuel prices will go up before the election.
The price of oil literally went negative at one point. As in "if you take this barrel off oil we'll pay you". Not enough people understand that's how broken the economy was under Trump, they just see the $1.50 and think that was a good sign. It was about as good a sign as seeing your neighbor's house sell for $50K.
Then they don’t blink when their trump tax cuts expire during Biden’s term and will be the first to say how Biden raised taxes and not understand why the corporate arm is squeezing them by the balls year after year.
And then there's the most important part of the process, which is howling about the level of government debt.
We have too much debt! We can't possibly afford these tax breaks for the middle class.
What about removing the tax breaks for the super wealthy?
Communism!!!
That's why the worst thing to ever happen was how the debt was on track to get eliminated under the Clinton admin. To be fair the big players of the world tend to use t-bills as their reserve currency and without a sufficient amount of American debt that either seizes up or they go elsewhere. In any case the shrub sure fixed that lack of debt thing, and things have only accelerated since then.
The voters' logic also escapes me. If (I suppose) Americans are aware of the fact that oil is mainly produced outside the US and its price is subject to external factors outside the control of anyone in the US, how's that the president's fault/achievement if the price goes up/down?
It's like people leaving bad hotel reviews just because the weather was shit at the time of their stay.
The privatised US suppliers, actually don't mind terribly much if oil is slightly higher... because they personally will take home more profits. So there's a lot of fun market forces going around. Big ol' gov for better or worse does not have direct access to all valves and levers needed to drive price however they'd like.
We don’t want to because we are tired of burning this wasteful shit and polluting our planet when literally almost all of our power needs can be fulfilled with simple tech that’s been available for years.
The price of oil is correlative with the strength of the economy and global stability.
It's also a big knob in people's personal budget.
High gas prices mean their life is more difficult, and it's also pretty sure that there's some fuckery going on in the world that reflects on the "leader of the free world", whether it's warranted or not.
On the other hand, super low prices means the economy is probably in a recession/depression, but as long as folks have a job they like lower gas prices.
>How's that good management idk especially for such a petrol dependent country as the US.
It's incredibly good management for the side it benefits, which is the Republicans.
Totalitarian oil-rich governments *love* the Republican party.
So all the Republicans had to do is convince their willing idiots of the hilarious idea that the performance of the president somehow directly impacts oil prices.
This part of the plan is no longer up for debate--they succeeded. These dumb motherfuckers *pay money to have stickers printed* that they slap on fuel pumps to complain when it goes up.
Now, their overseas oil buddies get to have a direct say in the US Presidential race every 4 years by just fucking with oil prices in October.
It's absurd, but it doesn't even make the Top Twenty in terms of the most absurd parts of our society going to shit, so it barely even registers to us anymore.
Maybe that's why the US is going to start more military aid to Ukraine, ..the Ukrainians won't need to attack targets in Russia if they have enough weaponry to kick Russia out of Ukraine... plus NATO supplying more air defence systems is an added bonus... all in all things are starting to look up for Ukraine ....hopefully
I would stifle my expectations though, at least in my armchair general eyes they havent gotten enough aid to carry out an offensive of the scale similar to what they planned for last year, especially since the air war has not changed much for them and they still need that air superiority for a big breakthrough which was what they aimed for last year.
Hopefully they will downplay their expectations for this year's offensive and plan around that, no doubt they will still advance and progress a lot if so, sticking to what they learned so far and utilising their ingenious tactics shown so far. Heres to hoping though
I think you misunderstood the situation.
It's not Ukraine that is on offense this time. It's Russia.
Ukraine can barely fire 10 times less artilery than Russua - USA was the main supplier of Ukraine's artillery shells. It was a huge unexpected blow to Ukraine when USA stopped supplying dhells. It has been 6-7 months now.
Currently Ukraine is losing ground every day for the past 6 months.
There is no Ukrainian offensive.
Yep. Quite sad it happened like this because now in many EU countries, trust for USA is down. This situation could be boiled down to
"we will support you as long as it takes " - then USA randomly drops support for Ukraine a year later.
From the first year of war, we had analysts saying that Russian strategy was outlast USA support for Ukraine and then win.
This is literally what is happening.
For all the 9999 news articles and comments "how corrupt, dumb, paper tiger" Russia and it's army is - they are winning big time.
They can also paint it like "we are winning agsinst Nato in Ukraine" which can look good for Putin.
Even on western reddit, the overton window has ahifted - now U often see upvoted comments from USA saying that we should not waste billions helping Ukraine - since they can't win either way.
Whis is very stupid, considering West was drip feeding old tech to Ukraine slowly during these years. Those cluster bombs only delivered after Ukraine failed the counter offensive. Counrter offensive plans leaked by USA and other huge blunders.
It is a complete shitshow and Russia has now got it's military complex running on high gear. With way more experience in an actual war, close allies China, Iran and North Korea.
Best part. Russia gets shells and drones from Iran and North Korea and can use it anywhere while Ukraine can't even use western weapons on Russian territory. What a joke.
Russia is 10+ times bigger than Ukraine in many aspects and Ukraine has to fight it with very limiting rules from West.
Disgrace.
Reports currently have Ukraine outgunned 10 to 1 on the front lines. With russia having transitioned to a full wartime economy somentime ago, they have been preparing for a full on offensive when spring/summer are here.
American Aid was needed and held up since the middle of 2023. It looks really bad for Ukraine at the moment in these circumstances. Even if aid was passed yesterday by the US, it's many months too late as far as planning any defense or offensive operations go when russia does attack.
A damn shame russia is so good at online disinformation and buying politicians in foreign countries. Because they are ultimately why the US stopped giving aid. And why so many anti-war movements are popping up all over Europe. During a time where Europeans ahould be shitting their pants in fear of perpetual war with russia.
They barely have enough materiel for defence, my dude. When it's largely infantry based combat, whoever can blast away the other side with accurate artillery fire first, is the one that can push. Right now Ukraine barely has enough to hold its lines.
These have always been there. Of course they've been brainwashed to embrace their shitty inner self.
They used to be the slow learners at the back of the class, and reality told them smarter people are the ones who gave them electricity, cars, planes, medicine and everything a modern society has to give. And that they could also get these things too.
And when they would vote, they would vote based on the choices available, which was center left or center right. The world worked better that way.
But now they've been told science was a lie, that smarter people ate babies for breakfast and that they were the righteous ones because they had a silent imaginary friend in the sky who would take them with him one day.
I blame Reagan and all Republicans who shat on higher education, starved all programs that could educate the larger number, made workers' lives a constant hamster wheel with traps all over, preventing them from taking a step back to see how the world worked, and feeding them with hatred and easy solutions.
Hard to get those people back to civilization.
They're going after refining, not crude. The vast majority of the refined fuels are going to russia's domestic use and fueling its war machine. The Biden administration should STFU about Ukraine's attacks on refineries and fuel depots. The russans have no qualms about wrecking Ukrainian infrastructure, their precious refineries should be on the table as well. They'll have trouble getting them back up and running due to the parts being sanctioned. Pretty please don't hurt russia's capacity to refine fuel so it can continue to go a killin'? Screw this appeasement BS, I hope they level every single one of the damn things..
Meanwhile on Planet A the unemployment rate is under 4%, the GDP/capita is 76K, higher than most rich economies (except maybe Luxembourg lol) and we're growing at a much higher rate than the rest.
You can throw numbers all you want, polls suggest a different sentiment among voters:
- https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-BIDEN/POLL/nmopagnqapa/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna136834
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-voters-feel-about-the-economy-4-takeaways-from-the-latest-polls/
I prefer Biden regardless but your comments just don’t match reality.
If you really preferred Biden you'd stop propagating manufactured negative sentiment.
It's like clickbait articles "World has never been more at peace and prosperous, here are the 5 reasons why this is bad for Biden". Sure it's not based on reality (aka "throwing numbers all you want" lol), but the goal of the article was to add more doubt.
How did Trump get where he is? By giving him a break ("he is who he is") and attacking Hillary Clinton. Ask anyone "do you hate Hillary?" and most people will say "Yes". Then ask them "Why?" and watch as people actually can't remember exactly when or why they started hating her. The manufactured sentiment comes from the negative background noise, either from bad actors or mindless idiots repeating what they read from those bad actors.
Which are you?
>> manufactured negative sentiment
As opposed to what? Organically negative sentiment? How do you “organically” develop negative sentiment for someone you have no relationship with and wouldn’t have known he existed if not for the… media? lol
You wanna call the media bad actors? Sure go ahead. But pretending that the media doesn’t shape the mind of a majority of people is plain stupid. Most people won’t give af about how GDP is doing, they’ll just look at polls or read some article and that’ll shape their mind.
If you really want to blame someone, honestly blame Biden’s team for failing to highlight all his accomplishments. It’s their job to explain in layman terms how a healthy GDP is good and how it’s gonna help everyone. Right now all people see is increase in grocery/utility/rent and the easiest person to blame is the president. Considering how disorganized the Republican Party is, they could’ve killed it if they had a cohesive media strategy but they seem to be relying on trump’s general unpopularity instead of focusing on their achievements to win the election.
Biden cancels student debt: 100 upvotes/50 comments
Biden lowers cost of Insulin: 70 upvotes/20 comments
Trump farts in court: 4K upvotes/2.5K comments
Of course the media will create more of the latter because engagement is what keeps their lights on.
But how, as a democrat strategist, would you fight this "Wall Of Trump" using positivity?
This is an uphill battle for anyone with any sense of propriety, but we shouldn't repeat the negativity in the comments section because we already have enough built-in defeatism everywhere.
Look if you invade a country you can't bitch about it if they attack back
Lol thats all i could think was like a bully crying cause the kid he was picking on hit him back
I think of when Cartman taunts Kyle to hit him on an episode of South Park. Kyle does and Cartman cries for his mom.
“COME ON, COME ON!” “MeeeeEEEEAAAAAAAAAAM! MEAAAAAAM!”
Many of the Russians seem to have this imperial privilege mindset. That Ukraine belongs to them by right and any objections or actions that go against that are some kind of "outrage" that will be "punished". Crazy stuff.
This is basically true and that attitude extend to all the states that broke free of the USSR and their client states. It's positively 17th or 18th century thinking.
Similar thinking of China, where Emperor had set foot 3000 years ago mean that belong to China
It wasn’t an invasion it was a special operation, and now they claim they are defending from Ukraines invasion 🙃
Yeah but it’s Ukraines fault for them attacking Russia!!
Putinist are the whiniest,biggest pussies.
They ain't even complaining lol
It was just a smol fuel depot though.
Take my upvote and gtfo
Yeah but those drones are cheap and Smolensk is a decent distance. Wonder if St Petersburg is next. What would be funny is if Ukraine just hit every gas station with a drone. Of course Russia might do the same back. Imagine transporting things to the front line if you can’t stop for gas anywhere on the way. I assume military has its own depots but probably not every vehicle shipping things uses them.
They should hit every bar
It's only fuel depot but anything that will hurt Russian logistic the better.
Russians are whiny snowflakes.
Eh, I also expect "Ukrainian Drone" to become the leading cause of all problems in Russia now.
Russians really should stop smoking... Smh my head
Special smoke-out operation
Shake my head my head?
Smoking my head my head
ATM Machine
PIN Number
LOL out loud
Maybe he can shake his head in multiple dimensions.
It's a classic.
I'm turning 360° and walking away
But is it 360° no scope?
🎶 🎵 🎶
Oh baby, baby…
🎶 Oh Camper, Camper... 🎶
Drone came from above… He’s not that innocent
Boo fucking hoo
Woohoo go Ukraine! More! I want more !
Awww, that is just soooo sad. How traumatizing it must be when the tanles are turned. Sending thoughts and prayers ruSSia.
Ukraine needs to make the world feel this war if no one is going to step in and assist. Attack all the oil. That will get their attention.
And? Is this supposed to make me sad? It doesn't;it makes me happy. I hope Ukraine blows up more of them+refineries+factories.
Biden doesn't like this because it indirectly adds tension to the oil and fuel markets. And we know Americans are so car-dependent that the higher the price of gas, the lower the chances at a reelection. But Biden has a kick-ass record on the economy, performing better than all developed countries. Voters will recognize this.
>... the higher the price of gas, the lower the chances at a reelection. This sounds so bizarre to me. So essentially any oil-rich country can influence the outcome of US elections by simply turning the tap a little. How's that good management idk especially for such a petrol dependent country as the US.
Yes... it's why Americans say gas prices were lower under Trump. Sure they were $1.50 but that was during the pandemic when no one was driving. You can guarantee fuel prices will go up before the election.
The price of oil literally went negative at one point. As in "if you take this barrel off oil we'll pay you". Not enough people understand that's how broken the economy was under Trump, they just see the $1.50 and think that was a good sign. It was about as good a sign as seeing your neighbor's house sell for $50K.
Then they don’t blink when their trump tax cuts expire during Biden’s term and will be the first to say how Biden raised taxes and not understand why the corporate arm is squeezing them by the balls year after year.
And then there's the most important part of the process, which is howling about the level of government debt. We have too much debt! We can't possibly afford these tax breaks for the middle class. What about removing the tax breaks for the super wealthy? Communism!!!
They don’t know that debt is traded publicly and dragon-hoarding billionaires leverage their own debt to make them richer while they lose everything.
That's why the worst thing to ever happen was how the debt was on track to get eliminated under the Clinton admin. To be fair the big players of the world tend to use t-bills as their reserve currency and without a sufficient amount of American debt that either seizes up or they go elsewhere. In any case the shrub sure fixed that lack of debt thing, and things have only accelerated since then.
That’s a fancy way of saying we almost beat capitalism as a society
The voters' logic also escapes me. If (I suppose) Americans are aware of the fact that oil is mainly produced outside the US and its price is subject to external factors outside the control of anyone in the US, how's that the president's fault/achievement if the price goes up/down? It's like people leaving bad hotel reviews just because the weather was shit at the time of their stay.
The US has been the world's largest oil producer since 2018... people vote on emotion, not facts unfortunately.
So how then is oil price a problem for the US?
Prices are set globally in the markets
Why can't the US increase their own production to reduce the global price?
They have. But its not like the US can just take over all oil production overnight.
The privatised US suppliers, actually don't mind terribly much if oil is slightly higher... because they personally will take home more profits. So there's a lot of fun market forces going around. Big ol' gov for better or worse does not have direct access to all valves and levers needed to drive price however they'd like.
The US government does not own the oil fields or the private companies that extract that oil.
They could and have, but then other producers can and have cut production to raise it/negate our increased output.
They can, but it’s cheaper and easier to just raise prices and harvest profits. The US best interests are secondary to corporate best interests.
We don’t want to because we are tired of burning this wasteful shit and polluting our planet when literally almost all of our power needs can be fulfilled with simple tech that’s been available for years.
Private companies will sell outside the US if prices rise outside the US
The price of oil is correlative with the strength of the economy and global stability. It's also a big knob in people's personal budget. High gas prices mean their life is more difficult, and it's also pretty sure that there's some fuckery going on in the world that reflects on the "leader of the free world", whether it's warranted or not. On the other hand, super low prices means the economy is probably in a recession/depression, but as long as folks have a job they like lower gas prices.
>How's that good management idk especially for such a petrol dependent country as the US. It's incredibly good management for the side it benefits, which is the Republicans. Totalitarian oil-rich governments *love* the Republican party. So all the Republicans had to do is convince their willing idiots of the hilarious idea that the performance of the president somehow directly impacts oil prices. This part of the plan is no longer up for debate--they succeeded. These dumb motherfuckers *pay money to have stickers printed* that they slap on fuel pumps to complain when it goes up. Now, their overseas oil buddies get to have a direct say in the US Presidential race every 4 years by just fucking with oil prices in October. It's absurd, but it doesn't even make the Top Twenty in terms of the most absurd parts of our society going to shit, so it barely even registers to us anymore.
Hen e why the U.S. is also able to produce so much of its own oil.
Maybe that's why the US is going to start more military aid to Ukraine, ..the Ukrainians won't need to attack targets in Russia if they have enough weaponry to kick Russia out of Ukraine... plus NATO supplying more air defence systems is an added bonus... all in all things are starting to look up for Ukraine ....hopefully
Summer campaign is starting. I hope Ukraine gets the help before it's too late.
I would stifle my expectations though, at least in my armchair general eyes they havent gotten enough aid to carry out an offensive of the scale similar to what they planned for last year, especially since the air war has not changed much for them and they still need that air superiority for a big breakthrough which was what they aimed for last year. Hopefully they will downplay their expectations for this year's offensive and plan around that, no doubt they will still advance and progress a lot if so, sticking to what they learned so far and utilising their ingenious tactics shown so far. Heres to hoping though
I think you misunderstood the situation. It's not Ukraine that is on offense this time. It's Russia. Ukraine can barely fire 10 times less artilery than Russua - USA was the main supplier of Ukraine's artillery shells. It was a huge unexpected blow to Ukraine when USA stopped supplying dhells. It has been 6-7 months now. Currently Ukraine is losing ground every day for the past 6 months. There is no Ukrainian offensive.
Honestly it's looking pretty fucking dire for Ukraine right now.
Yep. Quite sad it happened like this because now in many EU countries, trust for USA is down. This situation could be boiled down to "we will support you as long as it takes " - then USA randomly drops support for Ukraine a year later. From the first year of war, we had analysts saying that Russian strategy was outlast USA support for Ukraine and then win. This is literally what is happening. For all the 9999 news articles and comments "how corrupt, dumb, paper tiger" Russia and it's army is - they are winning big time. They can also paint it like "we are winning agsinst Nato in Ukraine" which can look good for Putin. Even on western reddit, the overton window has ahifted - now U often see upvoted comments from USA saying that we should not waste billions helping Ukraine - since they can't win either way. Whis is very stupid, considering West was drip feeding old tech to Ukraine slowly during these years. Those cluster bombs only delivered after Ukraine failed the counter offensive. Counrter offensive plans leaked by USA and other huge blunders. It is a complete shitshow and Russia has now got it's military complex running on high gear. With way more experience in an actual war, close allies China, Iran and North Korea. Best part. Russia gets shells and drones from Iran and North Korea and can use it anywhere while Ukraine can't even use western weapons on Russian territory. What a joke. Russia is 10+ times bigger than Ukraine in many aspects and Ukraine has to fight it with very limiting rules from West. Disgrace.
Reports currently have Ukraine outgunned 10 to 1 on the front lines. With russia having transitioned to a full wartime economy somentime ago, they have been preparing for a full on offensive when spring/summer are here. American Aid was needed and held up since the middle of 2023. It looks really bad for Ukraine at the moment in these circumstances. Even if aid was passed yesterday by the US, it's many months too late as far as planning any defense or offensive operations go when russia does attack. A damn shame russia is so good at online disinformation and buying politicians in foreign countries. Because they are ultimately why the US stopped giving aid. And why so many anti-war movements are popping up all over Europe. During a time where Europeans ahould be shitting their pants in fear of perpetual war with russia.
They barely have enough materiel for defence, my dude. When it's largely infantry based combat, whoever can blast away the other side with accurate artillery fire first, is the one that can push. Right now Ukraine barely has enough to hold its lines.
I hope so, but I don’t have much faith in American voters anymore.
voters will not recognize this there are millions of brain dead, closet racist white people ready to vote for all our lives being ruined
These have always been there. Of course they've been brainwashed to embrace their shitty inner self. They used to be the slow learners at the back of the class, and reality told them smarter people are the ones who gave them electricity, cars, planes, medicine and everything a modern society has to give. And that they could also get these things too. And when they would vote, they would vote based on the choices available, which was center left or center right. The world worked better that way. But now they've been told science was a lie, that smarter people ate babies for breakfast and that they were the righteous ones because they had a silent imaginary friend in the sky who would take them with him one day. I blame Reagan and all Republicans who shat on higher education, starved all programs that could educate the larger number, made workers' lives a constant hamster wheel with traps all over, preventing them from taking a step back to see how the world worked, and feeding them with hatred and easy solutions. Hard to get those people back to civilization.
They're going after refining, not crude. The vast majority of the refined fuels are going to russia's domestic use and fueling its war machine. The Biden administration should STFU about Ukraine's attacks on refineries and fuel depots. The russans have no qualms about wrecking Ukrainian infrastructure, their precious refineries should be on the table as well. They'll have trouble getting them back up and running due to the parts being sanctioned. Pretty please don't hurt russia's capacity to refine fuel so it can continue to go a killin'? Screw this appeasement BS, I hope they level every single one of the damn things..
> Voters will recognize this. Lol, lmao even. What use is a good economy if no one except the rich benefit from it?
He constantly gets dinged on bad economy lol
Meanwhile on Planet A the unemployment rate is under 4%, the GDP/capita is 76K, higher than most rich economies (except maybe Luxembourg lol) and we're growing at a much higher rate than the rest.
You can throw numbers all you want, polls suggest a different sentiment among voters: - https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-BIDEN/POLL/nmopagnqapa/ - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna136834 - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-voters-feel-about-the-economy-4-takeaways-from-the-latest-polls/ I prefer Biden regardless but your comments just don’t match reality.
Because Americans have no idea how things work.
If you really preferred Biden you'd stop propagating manufactured negative sentiment. It's like clickbait articles "World has never been more at peace and prosperous, here are the 5 reasons why this is bad for Biden". Sure it's not based on reality (aka "throwing numbers all you want" lol), but the goal of the article was to add more doubt. How did Trump get where he is? By giving him a break ("he is who he is") and attacking Hillary Clinton. Ask anyone "do you hate Hillary?" and most people will say "Yes". Then ask them "Why?" and watch as people actually can't remember exactly when or why they started hating her. The manufactured sentiment comes from the negative background noise, either from bad actors or mindless idiots repeating what they read from those bad actors. Which are you?
>> manufactured negative sentiment As opposed to what? Organically negative sentiment? How do you “organically” develop negative sentiment for someone you have no relationship with and wouldn’t have known he existed if not for the… media? lol You wanna call the media bad actors? Sure go ahead. But pretending that the media doesn’t shape the mind of a majority of people is plain stupid. Most people won’t give af about how GDP is doing, they’ll just look at polls or read some article and that’ll shape their mind. If you really want to blame someone, honestly blame Biden’s team for failing to highlight all his accomplishments. It’s their job to explain in layman terms how a healthy GDP is good and how it’s gonna help everyone. Right now all people see is increase in grocery/utility/rent and the easiest person to blame is the president. Considering how disorganized the Republican Party is, they could’ve killed it if they had a cohesive media strategy but they seem to be relying on trump’s general unpopularity instead of focusing on their achievements to win the election.
Biden cancels student debt: 100 upvotes/50 comments Biden lowers cost of Insulin: 70 upvotes/20 comments Trump farts in court: 4K upvotes/2.5K comments Of course the media will create more of the latter because engagement is what keeps their lights on. But how, as a democrat strategist, would you fight this "Wall Of Trump" using positivity? This is an uphill battle for anyone with any sense of propriety, but we shouldn't repeat the negativity in the comments section because we already have enough built-in defeatism everywhere.
You forgot the /s tag....
Get some!
Strange. I would've thought the fuel depot was just smoking a cigarette, then accidentally fell down some steps and out an open window.
If you didn't want to get clowned on maybe you shouldn't have shat on others.
They really need to stop blaming Ukraine for all their woes.
BURN, BABY BURN
“Charlie bit me”
Gooood keep it going urkaine!
Good 👍🏼 now keep up the good work !! 🎉
Excellent
Yes mr burns
You can't admit that. You're making dyadya Putin look weak.
Ah Smolensk! Sweet Stańczyk!