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127
Updates and events in the War in Ukraine 2025
A bad peace deal is worse than no peace deal -
2
More Thais Staying Single, Impact on Weddings and Florists
Ditch the dowry culture and you may see an improvement in the numbers. -
22
Elon's Son Really Knows How to Pick Winners!
It's a blatant show of disrespect for the office of the president, always a room of austere esteem under Democrats. Remember the early pics of Kellyanne Conway sitting on the oval sofa with her feet curled up on the couch? -
66
Thai PM Considers Easing Alcohol Sales Rules to Boost Tourism
Expat from the Latin "ex patria" fundamentally meaning not living in your birth or home nation. Nothing to do with percentages of anything. Ever. Ergo snowbirds are expats, just the same as foreign workers in Thailand, retirees living in Thailand, those with Thai families and/or spouses, and digital nomads pitching their tents in Thailand are expats. Two week millionaires, sponsors of sick buffalo owners, "resident tourists" (a dying breed), sexpats, mongers (more rare species) and others just passing through who complain about Thailand's archaic daytime alcohol bans, not so much. -
127
Updates and events in the War in Ukraine 2025
thank you for your service and don't let pro-Russian trolls disturb you. Slava Ukraini ! -
85
BBC with a brutal takedown of Ukrainian hopes
Biography Highlights Leonid Ragozin was born in Moscow on October 28, 1972. From 1989 to 1994, he studied in the prestigious Moscow State University at two departments at the same time, majoring in geology and foreign languages. He got two diplomas as both Geologist/Hydrogeologist and Translator/Interpreter. He worked as an English-to-Russian translator and a travel agent till 1998. From 1998 to 2006, he worked for BBC as a journalist in Moscow and London. Later, he was a reporter and later an editor with Russian Newsweek magazine till 2010. From 2010 to 2013, he worked as a producer for BBC’s English-language office in Moscow. After 2013, he cooperated with Lonely Planet. As a freelance journalist, he is working with Al-Jazeera, Bloomberg, Guardian, Politico, The New Republic, Time, Washington Post, and other English-language media. According to a brief bio piece on BBC Russian, Leonid Ragozin “used to help Australian gold diggers in Siberia”. Biography Pointers to the Potential Recruitment by the Russian Intelligence Services During the Soviet era, English was taught on a professional level at Moscow State University not to everyone but to a special category of people deemed to be of interest as potential agents for work abroad. The tourism industry offers ideal cover for the intelligence work abroad, especially in 1998 Russia, when travel to Western Europe, let alone the Americas or Southeast Asia, was an exception for ordinary Russian citizens, rather than a rule. Even more out of the ordinary are his contacts with foreigners from Australia in Siberia. It is still unclear why Leonid Ragozin—a geologist, an interpreter, and an agent (of a tour company, of course)—decided to radically change the focus of his career from “helping Australian gold diggers” to working for the British press in 1998. He was immediately hired by the trophy employer—British Broadcasting Corporation’s office in Moscow. Ragozin worked as a producer with a three-year break, doing an important and influential job until December 2013. During this period, he managed to work as the foreign news editor for Russian Newsweek from January 2007 to July 2010. It bears mentioning that anyone working for foreign media in Russia, including the BBC office in Moscow, and especially a Russian citizen, becomes a target of attention for the Russian intelligence agencies, FSB counterintelligence and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Therefore, successfully doing the jobs mentioned above for many years always comes with cooperation with the Russian intelligence operatives. Preparations for Russia’s Aggression against Ukraine In late 2013, events culminating in the Revolution of Dignity started in Ukraine. In the meantime, Russian intelligence agencies have been preparing for the active phase of the assault on Crimea. Ordinary Russians suspected nothing. However, the Russian intelligence agencies were tasked with new priorities—shape the Western public opinion along the lines that it is not cut and dried, dilute facts of the Russian aggression, conceal it, and push the West toward withholding support from Ukraine. It is a strange coincidence that journalist Ragozin’s prestigious and well-paid employment in Moscow came to an abrupt end exactly in December 2013. It coincided with the mobilization of officers of Russia’s SVR who were given new assignments. At that time, Ragozin, a journalist with numerous contacts with media abroad and experience of working in an English-speaking environment, suddenly decided to move house to Riga, when hardly anyone could imagine the open phase of the annexation of Crimea and sanctions associated with Russia’s aggression. Ragozin’s first stories were published by Al-Jazeera in December 2013—the time when his emigration to Latvia accidentally coincided with the commencement of active protests in Ukraine. His first article about Ukraine ambitiously titled “Ukraine protests:The view from Moscow” was published by Al-Jazeera on December 23, 2013. There, Ragozin peremptorily and without adducing any proof made strong claims about “problems faced by the Russians in Ukraine,” “the danger posed by the Ukrainian nationalists,” made provocative claims about “Russian regions of Ukraine” and the “artificial nature of Ukraine’s borders” that were a perfect match to the Kremlin’s propaganda. At the same time, he made false claims about “Russia’s indifference to the events in Ukraine” to distract the Western audience. One must admit that Leonid Ragozin’s emigration to Latvia has been prepared quite well, although the cover story is not ideal. The willingness to emigrate to the closest NATO country to Russia (the Kremlin still considers it a post-Soviet country that is easily penetrable) was explained by Leonid Ragozin’s purported “opposition activism” and “difficulties faced in doing the job of a journalist” in Russia. To demonstrate his opposition credentials, Ragozin claimed in his interview to DELFI, a Latvian news portal in Russian, that he faced “difficulties in doing his journalist work” in Russia, albeit “without any persecution”; for this reason, he and his wife “bought an apartment in Riga” and moved house there. The exquisite explanation of Ragozin’s purchase of an apartment in Riga deserves a special mention—he claimed the proceeds from the sale of his purportedly only apartment in Moscow to be the source of funds for buying an expensive flat in Riga. However, this is not true because, according to the documents, there were at least two apartments owned by Leonid Alekseyevitch Ragozin, a citizen of the Russian Federation, in Moscow [the addresses of these apartments are at the disposal of the editorial office, they can also be found in open sources]. In 2014, Ragozin easily obtained a temporary 5-year permit to reside in Latvia and embarked on promoting Russia’s aggressive propagandist narratives. In addition, he became a source of destructive anti-Latvian and anti-Ukrainian publications pushed to the leading English-speaking media in the West. Sample Ragozin’s Narratives and Publications On July 19, 2014 (just two days after the tragedy), Al Jazeera published an English-language feature about the crash of the Malaysian Boeing-777 on the flight MH17 authored by Ragozin. The article had a telling title “Who is responsible for the MH-17 tragedy?” In this article intended for the international English-speaking audience, Ragozin, while formally condemning the conflict in Ukraine, obstinately and purposefully promoted various erroneous “versions of the tragedy,” quoting the example of the Russian civilian airplane “downed by Ukraine during the military exercises in 2001”.
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