Putin’s megalomania unwittingly created a backdoor for those hoping to flee his abuse and tyranny; simply claim an intent to be closer, when actually trying to get further away.

Details are being shared now by Ukrainian refugees who managed to slip through Russian occupation checkpoints.

Much like the Underground Railroad for Black slaves, those seeking to escape were instructed on what to say at the border.

“You never say you are going into Europe,” she said. Nor does one tell border guards their intention is to flee the invasion.

Instead, it is best to say “I’m looking for work because I lost my job,” she said.

It’s best to say because of the situation “I’m heading to Moscow to work,” she said.

That is how those fleeing Ukraine are permitted into Russia.

Her 66-year-old father, meanwhile, could not say he was looking for work. He was retired and had nothing to do with the Ukrainian army.

“They did not particularly care about him,” she said.

Either he was so unimportant or they were stupid, but they let him through, she added.

Moscow elites used to partying in gilded ivory towers (EU reported €17 billion frozen for just 90 Russian citizens) are indeed totally desperate for anyone to do real work, even a 66-year-old.

Factories in Russia producing military equipment are working nonstop and have withdrawn New Year holidays from employees.

While I appreciate the reference to the underground railroad, it was… different.

American slaves were escaping what America had been since its start (under racist tyranny of men like Washington and Lee). They set out to reach freedom in what America was struggling to become (under emancipation by men like Lincoln and Grant).

Ukrainians however (besides not being slaves) escape a foreign occupation to be refugees in a foreign country (Russia first, then elsewhere).

Hopefully it’s clear in Civil War that the American slaves on a railroad weren’t going deeper into the Confederacy. Even areas of the United States occupied by Confederate forces meant escape was towards the remaining Union.

To be fair, Putin claimed Russian troops were sent to occupy Russian territory and shoot at Russians who resisted Russian tyranny.

That does sound a LOT like how the Confederate South had announced their plans for invasion and occupation of the United States to expand slavery (military force used in continuation of the corrupt Missouri “compromise”).

A more historically accurate and exact comparison thus might be if a railroad of Russians were escaping to freedom in unoccupied Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces marched to liberate… Moscow from Russia.

See how the reverse angle, social engineering an appeal to Putin’s absurd ego, is so disarming to Russians?

I point out the broader definitions and differences mainly as a technicality of how Russian security succumbed to a basic and common flaw. A timeless “hack” doesn’t need to be historically grounded to be explained.

If a Ukrainian passed through the Russian ingress test, an egress to safety was almost guaranteed, which is why the modern story about social engineering (use of a trivial fealty phrase for the authority to leave) is so useful as a lesson.

Escape from dictatorship can be unlocked (a trust token achieved) through claims of wanting to gladly be at work for the dictator.

An article in Forbes seems to bend over backwards to emphasize that it’s talking about a defensive support technology.

…exactly the type of “inoffensive” and non-escalatory tool NATO is looking for to help meet Ukraine’s need for modern armor. As an amphibious troop carrier, clocking in at half the weight of an Abrams tank, the Bradley offers Ukraine a defensive, albeit robust, armored presence. Not considered a weapon for offense, the Bradley is still quite capable of dispatching almost any Russian vehicle on the battlefield.

A weapon not considered for offense?

A weapon for what?

Is there any weapon that by design can be used only in defense?

Look, I could understand if someone wrote that cement trucks are effective in traffic assassinations and were never built for that.

They weren’t built for that.

But who would say the cement truck is not ever considered a weapon for offense?

When being used in an attack, they’re in fact being considered by someone a weapon for offense. That counts.

The article ends by calling our attention to U.S. delivery of the M4 Sherman tank to Britain in WWII, which from its very first engagement handily exposed technological (and strategic) inferiority of Nazi armor.

While I agree with this historical analysis (and have written here about it several times before), the article seems to totally contradict itself in its final stages.

Saying weaponized armor — a light “tank” even with tank-busting weaponry — is somehow not considered an offensive weapon sounds very poorly contrived and unnecessary bureaucracy.

The better and simpler narrative is that the modern derivation of the American light tank dropped into Ukraine today could do to Russia what Britain did from 1942 onward with the American M4 Sherman (immediately and continuously drove Nazis out of occupied territories).

Related blog posts:

• Ronald Reagan’s “Special Unit” Soldier Sentenced to 5,160 Years in Jail… because mass murder using American troop carriers
• Toyota Bans Resale of Land Cruisers… because they become highly effective weapons for offense
• All Teslas May Be Trash But GM’s War Buggy is Garbage… because not a Toyota

Update January 5: The U.S. is planning to send 40 Bradley vehicles to Ukraine, perhaps in time for a spring (March) “defensive” push.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to equip Ukraine with Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, while German officials said they would send Marders, decades-old weapons of a comparable class, as well as Patriot air defenses. The joint announcement by Berlin and Washington follows a similar move by France earlier this week. Paris pledged to send an unspecified number of AMX-10 RC vehicles, billed as light tanks on wheels boasting armor-breaking 105 mm guns.

Stephen Norris, Russian history professor at Miami University, offers this comparison:

One of the more worrisome trends in Putin speeches, especially in the last six or seven months, has been how amorphous, almost existential they’ve been. The Ukrainian war has been framed in existential terms — it’s a war to save Russian civilization. In the speech when he signed the treaties that annexed the four territories, he said Western culture is nothing less than satanism and this is the new threat against Russia. It was kind of scary and quite apocalyptic in the way his speeches had ever been. And in that speech, Putin actually referenced Goebbels. He said what the West has done is create a culture of lies about Russia that’s reminiscent of Goebbels.

[…]

In a speech in May of 1943, Goebbels said weirdly similar things. This was after Nazi Germany had lost at Stalingrad after the Soviet Union was turning the tide of the war. Goebbels gave a speech that turned the seeming defeat into victory and into a more existential question, saying the allies are trying to eliminate German culture, German history, the German people.

It’s always been a huge figurative problem for Elon Musk that he screws his workers. It goes all the way back to his start in tech, when PayPal was successful because they fired him.

He got rich anyway, simply holding stocks for a company that threw him out. That was his big break, which probably never should have happened. Since then he’s been at war with everyone; if you don’t let him screw you, he just throws you away to find someone who will.

For some reason his tactics aren’t yet illegal in America (hint: tragic history of rapid wealth based on slavery and genocide).

For over a decade we see Tesla become a robotic killing machine, Neuralink torture and kill animals, Twitter now being setup to foment hate crimes. All of it unnecessary and yet somehow the message is… “but Musk has taken so much money from others, his false profiteering matters more than people dying.”

Compare that message with Stanford’s FTX. It lost others’ money and America within months is claiming a serious crime must be prosecuted ASAP.

It may seem like we’re taking about young men exploiting a new domain of technology in need of regulation, yet it’s not new at all.

It’s more like a repeat of the worst chapter in history, which has Union Generals rolling in their graves. The U.S. says it carefully monitors and protects assets (ready to dispatch the slavecatchers to recover lost assets), yet totally disregards the value of humans let alone the planet (ignores the loss of life inherent to slavery).

We are watching growth of an intentional racist tyranny in Twitter, total rejection of freedom. It’s a “let them lean in and eat cake” moment for anyone left under Musk’s detached and cruel control.

It reminds me very much of the German factories saying they expected Hitler’s lack of morals would make them rich quick, yet complained as bombs rained down to end the toxic fraud.

I warned how Musk himself was messaging obvious hate to workers recently when I explained the nuance behind his “future vision” was actually nothing but apartheid South Africa:

Indian men are tasked to deliver their white master a black woman “robot” who will “bend over” for his needs. Musk not only said this to everyone publicly, he emphasized by design she would be unable to escape from his control.

Such unjust and immoral thinking gets worse and worse as he touches more lives, becoming literal now.

Beds are installed in the Twitter offices. It’s obvious why.

Anyone with compassion towards others, wider sense of responsibility (family, community) or a life outside, is fired. A weekend? A home? They don’t exist in Musk’s bid to create modern labor camps.

Absolute weakness in his workers is required because independence and strength only makes him angry and jealous.

It’s not an exaggeration either that he’s moved staff to being literally screwed.

A direct report at Neuralink was used to give birth to his own children, while the company ruthlessly tortured and killed animals in its care.

That’s a horrible enough step (again reminiscent of racist whites in Africa) yet her role also was laced overtly with racism, like an old South African apartheid plan of “boss men” using women at work to increase the white birthrate.

Don’t miss all these warning signs from history.

Working for Elon Musk means getting screwed by him in the worst ways possible. If his staff don’t all flee (as reported widely), it may soon be a question of intervention to save them from his tyranny.