Steve Gutterman

@yarotrof And Fico has said he does not plan to attend the parade itself. Kremlin list does not specify whether any will.

Last year, Xi Jinping served as Putin’s human shield during the May 9 parade. The only foreign dignitaries coming this year are 🇧🇾Lukashenko, 🇸🇰 Fico, the president of Laos, the figurehead sultan of Malaysia and the leaders of non-recognized Abkhazia, South Ossetia and of the Srpska part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. For a leader of a NATO and EU member, Fico is in great company again!

@MrKevinRothrock So Russia is substantially misstating the supposed threat.

@MrKevinRothrock Since he says they're trying to protect Moscow at the expense of protecting other places and that this creates opportunities, I would read that as suggesting possible strikes on other places. But the MID statement suggests the trigger for Russia would be Moscow attacks.

Is Zelenskyy's supposed threat here just his saying that Putin/Russia fears a parade attack, or did I miss something?

Re-up (includes iconic moss bouquet image): rferl.org/a/week-in-russ…

@ABarbashin Yes, very plainly. In that vein, also note that the word for 'complex' can almost always be translated, sometimes more accurately, as the more straightforward 'difficult.'

Speaking at the All-Russian Forum on Infrastructure for Entrepreneurship Support «My Business» in Vsevolozhsk, Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov spoke plainly about the situation facing business. «When we understood that yes, of course, everyone has a labor deficit—of course finding labor is difficult, pay is rising—but nevertheless, we could make do because there were reserves somewhere in the economy. Now we’re seeing these reserves are largely exhausted. The situation is really such and macroeconomically significantly more complex.» To translate, Reshetnikov effectively admitted that business is in an impossible position. Check the latest @ntrickett16 economic summary of the week in the first comment