President Vladimir Putin says that Russia is not planning to attack European countries but will respond to aggression with “all weapons” in its arsenal. nbcnews.com/world/russia/put…
— @NBCNews Oct 2, 2026
Author: wawiimuy
BREAKING:
Russia plans to launch 1000 missiles,drones and bombs to destroy Ukrianain energy infrastructure.
Russia says Ukriane must evacuate these areas to avoid civilians casualties.
source New York times
— @World_Affairs11 Oct 2, 2026
Putin’s speeches should be listened to through a special filter. Criminal and prison language is now the primary language of Putin’s power.
Therefore, the Valdai speech should be listened to as a kind of street-criminal conflict scenario: “you don’t respect me,” “they started it first,” “we warned you,” “you didn’t get it the nice way,” “now we’ll have to respond.” This is not just a style of speech, but a ready-made scheme through which the Kremlin explains and justifies escalation.
I would interpret the Valdai speech as follows:
◾️”He started it first.” This is the basic scheme of the entire argumentation. Not “I decided to use force,” but “I was forced to respond.” Putin literally says about Ukraine: “it wasn’t us who wanted it and it wasn’t us who started the war,” and then that Russia was “deliberately put” in a situation where it was “forced” to take up arms. This is a classic street-domestic formula for removing responsibility from oneself: violence is acknowledged, but moral responsibility is shifted onto the one who supposedly “started it first.”
◾️”He asked for it.” The next step is to make the victim responsible for what will happen to them. This is especially visible in the logic regarding NATO: if Western states provide intelligence, technical support, and help Ukraine strike deep into Russia, Putin already defines this as their “involvement in the war with Russia.” He does not say that Russia will not strike; he only says that Russia is not going to do it “tomorrow.” The structure is simple: if a strike happens, the previous argumentation already allows one to say – “you were warned, you yourselves crossed the line.”
◾️”You don’t respect me.” The question of status constantly looms behind the security language. Putin returns again and again to the fact that after the collapse of the USSR the West did not accept Russia as an equal, did not listen to its objections, expanded NATO, and supposedly tried to finally weaken Russia. This is very close to the logic of conflict through “disrespect”: the problem is not only in concrete harm, but in the fact that the other side demonstrates that it does not recognize your status. In street and criminal culture, precisely the inability to respond to an insult calls status and authority into question.
◾️”For something like that you have to answer.” In this logic, a response ceases to be a choice and becomes an obligation. Putin constantly uses precisely such a causal construction: Ukraine started hitting tankers – “we began to respond”; started hitting oil refineries – “got a mirror response.” Linguistically this is very close to the concept of “payback”: after a certain action the response is supposedly already dictated by the code of behavior itself. The subject does not say “I decided to strike,” but “you can’t not respond to something like that.”
◾️”If you swallow it – they’ll stop respecting you.” This directly links violence to the preservation of status. In yard and criminal culture it is important not only to win, but not to allow a situation where others decide that you can be humiliated with impunity. That is why the question from Lukyanov about European factories is formulated so interestingly: if Moscow has already named them potential targets, “the warning… will have to be confirmed by something.” This is pure logic of reputational compulsion: a public threat itself creates a problem, because refusal to realize it under certain conditions can be treated as weakness.
◾️”You don’t understand the nice way.” Violence is presented as a last resort after supposedly repeated warnings. In Putin’s narrative about NATO and Ukraine it is constantly repeated: we said “don’t do it,” “stop,” they didn’t listen to us – and therefore what happened, happened. This is a familiar scenario of domestic violence: “I warned you,” “you didn’t get it the nice way.” Its function is to turn a conscious choice of aggression into a supposedly inevitable result of the other side’s behavior.
◾️”If they can – then we can too.” Here the yard code already directly transitions into a normative theory of international relations. Explaining Yugoslavia, Putin essentially formulates it literally: the West used force, everyone saw that “if someone is allowed to, then everyone else is allowed too.” This is a very important pattern. Law or a universal norm stops working here. The main thing becomes the precedent of the other’s behavior: “you violated the rules – therefore I am no longer bound by them.” This is already international relations “according to the code.”
◾️”It’s not that we’re like that – life is like that.” This is another strong Russian domestic formula, although it is not purely criminal. In the speech it manifests through the words “inevitably,” “we will be forced,” “we have no other way out.” Even the possibility of using all means against NATO Putin explains not by his own decision, but by the balance of forces: NATO is bigger and stronger, therefore Russia “will be forced” to use its “competitive advantages.” This creates an image of a world where Russia supposedly does not choose escalation – circumstances force it into it.
◾️And there is one more pattern that is very important for the current situation – “the client answers together with the executor” / “you’re fighting with someone else’s hands.” Putin literally uses the formula “fighting against us with someone else’s hands” when speaking about Western support for Ukraine. Its practical significance is great: it allows gradually transferring the status of the adversary from Ukraine to the states that help it. Then a European factory, a satellite system, or a military specialist ceases in the Russian construction to be a “third party” and becomes part of the conflict itself.
If this is reduced to one scheme, it sounds almost like a typical yard conflict: “You don’t respect me → I warned you → you started it first → you didn’t get it the nice way → for something like that you have to answer → you asked for it → now don’t complain.” This formula allows the Kremlin to simultaneously be the initiator of the next step and psychologically and rhetorically not recognize itself as its author.
And this, in my opinion, has direct significance for assessing the risk of a strike on NATO. A dangerous signal will not necessarily be the phrase “we have decided to attack.” It is much more important to watch whether this linguistic sequence is completed: “this is already direct participation in the war” → “we warned” → “they didn’t understand” → “we are forced to respond.” In such a linguistic system a decision to strike can be presented not as a new aggression, but as the fulfillment of an already announced “rule of response.”
Video
Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en)Putin once more blames the West for starting the war: “We did not want to fight and did not start fighting; rather, a war was brought upon us.”“There was no need for NATO to begin military development of our historical territories in the interest of the organization itself and to plan bases there.”
Comment from me:
Of course, these are all lies. Russia carries the blame entirely for starting the war of aggression in 2014 and then launching a full-scale invasion in 2022.
Putin wants to present the war as an existential event when it was, in fact, his conscious and unprovoked choice. Impunity pushed Russia towards more aggression.
Video
— https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/2105689091899601317— @Gerashchenko_en Oct 2, 2026
Citing six diplomats familiar with the event’s planning, *Politico* reported that several European countries have not received an invitation to a NATO working meeting scheduled for October in Poland. Notably, the Pentagon has removed Great Britain, France, and the Baltic states from the list of participants.
The publication highlights that this comes against the backdrop of earlier reports claiming Trump had compiled a list of “good” and “bad” NATO allies; he reportedly intends to find ways to “punish” those countries that refused to support the war against Iran that he had instigated.
— Don’t grumble. God sends us trials in difficult times. But only those we are capable of passing.
— And what about Trump, Reverend?
— Well, Trump is a bit of an exaggeration, of course—I agree with that…— @jurgen_nauditt Oct 2, 2026
Rote Armee Fraktion / Baader-Meinhof gang were the footsoldiers of the KGB and the Stasi committing murder and acts of sabotage in West Germany. They were provided military equipment, guns and money by the KGB’s station in Dresden where Putin was their contact.
1/4— @ReneDuba Oct 2, 2026
There’s some real shady shit going on here.
Trump knows he is gonna lose the midterms so he brings in Musk to fix the win for him – by any means necessary.Sarrah Bellus (@sarrah_bellus)Musk returning to the tRump administration 35 days before the midterms…….That should be very concerning 😳😳😳😳😳😳😳— https://x.com/sarrah_bellus/status/2105789481131602314
— @KremlinTrolls Oct 2, 2026
news – Google Search google.com/search?q=news&num…
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) Oct 2, 2026
The charges against the Massachusetts man were not the first time the Miller family has raised concerns about its security.
The charges against the Massachusetts man were not the first time the Miller family has raised concerns about its security.Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, with his wife, Katie Miller. Prosecutors say a Massachusetts man sent more than 40 phone and text messages to Ms. Miller.Credi
 |
Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
The charges against the Massachusetts man were not the first time the Miller family has raised concerns about its security.
Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, with his wife, Katie Miller. Prosecutors say a Massachusetts man sent more than 40 phone and text messages to Ms. Miller.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
A Massachusetts man was indicted on Thursday on charges of cyberstalking after sending dozens of threatening phone and text messages to Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, one of President Trump’s most senior White House aides.
The man, John Anthony Proia III, 41, was also accused of sending threatening messages to Ms. Miller’s parents. The charging document identifies the recipient of the threats only as Victim-1, but an official familiar with the case said the person in question was Ms. Miller.
Over the past two months, according to an indictment filed in Federal District Court in Boston, Mr. Proia sent more than 40 phone and text messages to Ms. Miller, including some calls late at night. Prosecutors said that he often used expletives and “a menacing tone” in his communications, which came from an ever-changing series of numbers. Mr. Proia, they added, employed an internet-based phone system known as voice over internet protocol that allowed him to obfuscate his identity and change his phone number.
According to the indictment, some of the text messages sent to Ms. Miller used obscene and disturbing sexual language. In one message sent to her parents, the indictment said, Mr. Proia referred to Mr. Miller as “a Jewish Nazi/white supremacist” and asked Ms. Miller’s mother if it disturbed her that her daughter was married to him.
The case against Mr. Proia comes at a moment when threats against public figures of all political stripes are on the rise.
“Terrorizing someone isn’t some sick game; it’s a crime, which is why the F.B.I. and our partners take it so seriously,” Ted E. Docks, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Boston division, said in a statement.
Mr. Docks also said that Mr. Proia had been arrested by members of the F.B.I.’s joint terrorism task force, an unusual show of force for a cyberstalking case. Mr. Proia was scheduled to appear in court on Thursday evening.
The charges filed against Mr. Proia were not the first time the Miller family has raised concerns about its security.
In November, state and federal investigators scrutinized a Virginia woman, Barbara Wien, who distributed leaflets disclosing the Millers’ home address. Those inquiries prompted a secret court fight over the balance between personal safety and free speech at a moment of sensitivity over political violence: just weeks after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed by an assassin at an event at a Utah college campus.
Before Mr. Proia was indicted, two senior F.B.I. counterterrorism supervisors in the bureau’s Washington field office were demoted after expressing concern about the case involving the messages to Ms. Miller, according to another person familiar with the case.
Darren Cox, the assistant director in charge of the Washington office, said this week that he had made that decision, not Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director.
“Director Patel did not order this decision,” Mr. Cox wrote in a statement. “This was a personnel decision made at the Washington field office level alone based on our constant evaluation of mission needs. Any suggestion otherwise is false.”
Alan Feuer is a reporter for The Times who covers the effects President Trump has had on the courts, the Justice Department and the broader rule of law.
Related Content
Advertisement