More and more I’ve seen evidence of Russian women stepping into power as Putin loses his grip.

Women in Russia make up a rising proportion of those being detained in protests against President Vladimir Putin’s mobilisation for the war in Ukraine, data show, as many Russian men fear being sent to the frontlines if they demonstrate.

That helps explains the decades of Putin undermining women, as if he knew his abject cruelty would never last if more women had a say. His completely botched invasion of Ukraine, impossible to cover up, has highlighted the problem.

The following story is a perfect example.

The BBC tries to report with a straight face that a hardy young Russian man has gone “off-grid” during winter to save himself from serving in Putin’s suicide squads.

Someone literally titled this “Ukraine war: Hiding from Putin’s call-up by living off-grid in a freezing forest”

“Leaving would have been a difficult step out of my comfort zone,” Kalinin, who is in his thirties, told the BBC. “It isn’t exactly comfortable here either but nevertheless, psychologically, it would be really hard to leave.” And so he took the unusual step of saying goodbye to his wife and heading for the forest, where he has lived in a tent for nearly four months. He uses an antenna tied to a tree for internet access and solar panels for energy.

Man, that sounds sort of rough, although not really off the grid… and then you get to the giant buried BBC lede.

He has endured temperatures as low as -11C (12F) and exists on food supplies brought to him regularly by his wife.

Giant record scratch.

Hold on…

You’re telling me a Russian guy focused on staying comfortable is hanging out in a forest tent with Internet while his wife preps meals for him?

That? That is “hiding” and “off grid”? If I read that again it almost sounds like he is complaining about his wife’s cooking. “Hey, how about some more fruit?!”

Dear BBC that is called a remote man cave, garden, or even a basement and pretty much the opposite of getting off-grid.

He could be sitting in his backyard for this story, a really really big backyard. We can’t be sure. But he’s clearly still very connected while being barely hidden.

I won’t get into the obvious security issues here as much as stick to the main point: his primary line of defense against authority is to have his wife open the front door while he sits outside a back one.

That inversion of Russia says a lot, especially with a dictatorship that has been furiously trying for decades to block women from having any authority at all.

The story title really should have credited her more, and the bulk of the story should have been about her rise into prominence and power.

I couldn’t help but notice local news wrote their headline with a clearly suicidal tone: “Driver takes his own life in BVR Tesla crash”

A 26-year-old man has been killed in a crash on Bear Valley Road. Victorville Police say the man, who was driving a 2015 Tesla Model S, slammed into the back of a semi-truck. The accident occurred in the slow lane, going westbound toward the 15 Freeway.

Who in the slow lane is prepared for any Tesla to slam into them at 100MPH like a VBIED?

Or should I ask this another way… is there a better explanation than suicide for why someone would still be driving a Tesla, after so many have slammed at high speed into the back of a truck?

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Tricia Blake told VVNG that based on recent statements made by the victim, his last conversations, and the evidence at the scene the deputy and coroner investigator determined it to be intentional. […] The coroner’s office recorded Vieira’s cause of death as suicide on a city street.

Driving into a truck is definitely a uniquely Tesla designed way to die.

• 2016: Tesla Autopilot slammed at high speed into back of truck
• 2016: Tesla Autopilot slammed high speed into side of truck
• 2018: Tesla Autopilot slammed into the back of a truck
• 2019: Tesla Autopilot slammed into a semi truck
• 2019: Tesla Autopilot slammed into side of truck
• 2020: Horrifying moment Tesla crashes into truck
• 2021: Tesla slammed into back of bus
• 2021: Tesla slammed into back of another truck
• 2021: Tesla slammed into back of yet another truck
• 2021: Tesla slammed into side of truck… again
• 2022: Tesla slams into rear of a parked semi truck
• 2022: Mother drives Tesla into truck, killing herself and three children

And I’m saying all this as someone who has spent decades researching vehicular suicide investigations and theory (including of course the 1930s Tatra T87).

It raises the serious question of whether mentally disturbed — angry, violent, hateful — people are being lured by “free speed extremist” branding to cause damage to themselves and society. Witnesses said there were no brakes applied, which is exactly what I was writing about recently here and here… and here.

…ethics questions of whether and when it’s justified to shoot at Teslas.

Or, perhaps even more importantly, a Kamikaze news story is why I’ve been warning since at least 2016 that any Tesla should be considered a loitering munition.

Update January 23: Police in Florida investigating multiple crashes describe Tesla as a catastrophic threat.

This is our third catastrophic crash with Teslas in just the last couple weeks,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said Saturday. “We’re seeing an overall pattern here in Martin County of more aggressive driving, greater speeds and just a general cavalier sense towards their fellow motorists’ safety.”

The third crash Snyder is referring to was a Tesla driver intentionally running a red light, which I’ve also written about before.

This doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention, given what we know from history of war. Institute for Study of War (ISW) is a legit source, and they’re not mincing words here.

[Videos claim that] Russian officials have evacuated over 150,000 children from Donbas in 2022 alone. It is unclear exactly how Russian sources are calculating this figure, and Ukrainian officials previously estimated this number to be 6,000 to 8,000.

[…]

Forced adoption programs and the deportation of children under the guise of vacation and rehabilitation schemes likely form the backbone of a massive Russian depopulation campaign that may amount to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and constitute a wider ethnic cleansing effort, as ISW has previously reported.

Russian invasion objectives seem clearly to center on genocide, intentional destruction of Ukrainian identity.

An ISW report that is two months old already should have raised more mainstream alarm. I mention it here for war crimes investigators in context of Microsoft reporting around the same time that it will continue working with Russian “schools”, which could in fact mean ethnic cleansing (including turning the children into waves of infantry suicide missions against their own families, as witnessed in Mozambique).

When you read far more generic statements about Russian aggression in the coming months, such as trying to mobilize 700,000 soldiers to achieve something, now you know.

In a report published last November, Amnesty International said: “Russian authorities forcibly transferred and deported civilians from occupied areas of Ukraine in what amounted to war crimes and likely crimes against humanity”.

In December 2022, the French association Pour l’Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre (“For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours”), asked the International Criminal Court to examine allegations of “genocide” amid the deportation of Ukrainian children.

Moscow has made no attempt to conceal its policy of child deportation. Removing Ukrainian children from occupied territories is part and parcel of the Kremlin’s propaganda, and in keeping with the “de-Ukrainisation” called for by Putin, who passed a law in May 2022 that made it easier for Russians to adopt Ukrainian children. It also made it harder for Ukrainian families to reclaim their kidnapped children.

Russia is basically repeating a Nazi German strategy in WWII of turning children into cannon fodder. I’m just waiting now for confirmation that the new “re-education” centers used in these war crimes all run on Microsoft.