Putin wants you to know that he won’t be humiliated

The Kiev Counteroffensive Continued: A United Front-Line Hub, a Crimean Beach, and a Russian Air Field in Kiev

KYIV, Ukraine — After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russia pulled troops out Saturday from an eastern Ukrainian city that it had been using as a front-line hub. The victory was the latest in a long line of victories for the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it inflicted damage on the Ukrainian forces, but that outnumbered Russian forces were withdrawn to more favorable positions. The air force of the country said they moved into the town while the president’s chief of staff posted photos of a flag being hoisted on the outskirts.

These attacks began at the outset of the war and have only increased in scope and virulence after the Ukrainian forces attacked a bridge which was close to Putin’s heart.

Ukrainian forces launched multiple strikes against Russian positions in Crimea and the military claimed it destroyed Russian Kalibr cruise missiles.

The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, blamed the retreat, without evidence, on one general being “covered up for by higher-up leaders in the General Staff.” He called for “more drastic measures.”

On the Russian-annexed peninsula of Crimean, there was an emergency situation at an airfield. The beachgoers at the Russian resort could see huge billows of smoke from a distance. The Belbek airfield had a plane roll off the runway and explode in fire, according to authorities.

Russia began an intense, two-Day nationwide bombardment of Ukrainians that killed at least 19 people and leveled civilian targets, drawing global outrage. The strikes also caused major damage to power systems across Ukraine, forcing people to reduce consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his military have vowed to keep fighting to liberate the regions Putin claimed to have annexed Friday, and other Russian-occupied areas.

U.N. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg: “Unexpected attacks” against the Zaporizhya nuclear power plant

The governor says a group of civilians were killed in an attack this week on their convoy trying to flee the district. He called it “сruelty that can’t be justified.” He said 13 children and a pregnant woman were among the dead.

The Security Service of Ukraine, the secret police force known by the acronym SBU, posted photographs of the attacked convoy. At least one truck appeared to have been blown up, with burned corpses in what remained of its truck bed. Another vehicle at the front of the convoy also had been ablaze. There are bodies lying on the side of the road or in the vehicles which are pockmarked with bullet holes.

The statements followed overnight Russian missile strikes on the city of Zaporizhzhia that brought down part of a large apartment building, leaving at least a dozen people dead.

The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog is planning to visit Kyiv this week after Putin signed a decree saying Russia would take over the six-reactor plant. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called it a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” The state nuclear operator, Energoatom, said it would continue to operate the plant.

Russia did not publicly comment on the report. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Russia told it that “the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was temporarily detained to answer questions.”

“Unfortunately, we already see that they (Russians) are striking at the generating facilities again, trying to cut off our nuclear and thermal power plants, to damage additional key energy hubs, focusing their attacks on these facilities,” Kharchenko said. I urge Ukrainians to be prepared, there won’t be a quick improvement in the situation with electricity.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the land grab by Russia the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War.

Vladimir Putin’s visit to Zaporizhzhia: a city annexed by the Russian war-torn country of Ukraine

More than $12.3 billion in military and economic aid to the war-torn country of Ukraine was added to the bill by President Joe Biden in Washington on Friday.

Whether it is going through with a wedding in the midst of a rocket attack, giving in to make Molotov cocktails and shifting classes to a Kyiv subway station as missiles fly or keeping a family business open against all odds, Putin has galvanized the Ukrainian people.

In an article that was published on Sunday, the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that in the last few days of their occupation they had desertion, poor planning, and the delayed arrival of reserves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the area on Saturday to commemorate the ninth anniversary of its annexation. The visit, which also included a stop in Russian-occupied Mariupol, came just days after the International Criminal Court accused the Russian president of committing war crimes in Ukraine and issued a warrant for his arrest over an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

A trio of people were saved from multi-story buildings, including a 3-year-old girl who was taken to a hospital for treatment, according to the governor.

Zaporizhzhia is one of four regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed in violation of international laws on Wednesday, and is home to a nuclear plant that is under Russian occupation. The city is under the control of Ukrainians.

Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plans to talk with Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will speak about how to establish a secure protective zone around the facility that was damaged in the fighting and has had staff including its director kidnapped by Russians.

Kremlin’s “referendum” in Kiev comes at the end of a long-term Ukrainian occupation: Russian civilians and civilians in Lyman

Meanwhile, leaders from more than 40 countries are meeting in Prague on Thursday to launch a “European Political Community” aimed at boosting security and prosperity across the continent, a day after the Kremlin held the door open for further land grabs in Ukraine.

Peskov did not specify which additional Ukrainian territories Moscow is eyeing, and he wouldn’t say if the Kremlin planned to organize more of the “referendums” in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government and the West have dismissed as illegitimate.

The borders of Moscow’s claimed areas remain unclear, but Putin vowed to defend Russia’s territory with any means at his disposal, including nuclear weapons.

Serhiy says he heard about Kherson’s liberation while fighting in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine. His brigade had helped free parts of that region in September. But he says his commanders told him they couldn’t help with the liberation of their hometown.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Russian soldiers are going to be sent to the area of Crimea after they are restored to their former state.

— In the devastated Ukrainian city of Lyman, which was recently recaptured after a months-long Russian occupation, Ukrainian national police said authorities have exhumed the first 20 bodies from a mass burial site. Initial indications are that around 200 civilians are buried in one location, and that another grave contains the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. The civilians, including children, were buried in single graves, while members of the military were buried in a 40-meter long trench, according to police.

The occupation resulted in heavy damage as Ukrainian soldiers fought to take it back. A man identified as Mykola, who gave only his first name, was a part of a group of people who were waiting for aid.

The collapse of the Zaporizhia nuclear plant: the first human-rights defender in Russia and the prime minister in Kiev

The war needs to end so the pharmacy, shops and hospitals can start working again. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed by pillaging and a complete disaster.

In his nightly address Zelensky switched to speaking Russian in order to communicate with the Kremlin and Russian citizens after Moscow launched a series of strikes that left many people dead in regions of Ukraine.

The attack on Russia and its leader, Putin, came on a day when he was rebuked by the award of the peace prize to human rights activists in Russia.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and the rockets across from it damaged a lot of buildings, as well as power lines and gas pipes. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shooting at and around the nuclear plant. It’s run by its pre-occupation Ukrainian staff under Russian oversight.

The blasts in the city, which sits in a region Moscow has claimed as its own, blew out windows in adjacent buildings and left at least one high-rise apartment building partially collapsed.

The bridge linking Russia and the Crimean Peninsula was hit by a truck bomb, Russian authorities said. Road and rail traffic on the bridge were temporarily halted, damaging an important supply route for the Kremlin’s forces and dealing a sharp blow to Russian prestige.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said Saturday that the Zaporizhzhia plant has since lost its last remaining external power source as a result of renewed shelling and is now relying on emergency diesel generators.

The Kerch Bridge as a Tool for Russia’s Counterattack on Crimea and the Sea of Azov: Traffic, Pedestrians, and Tourists

In the days following the bridge explosion, Putin said, “further acts of terrorism on the territory of Russia will be harsh… have no doubt about that.”

Putin signed a decree late Saturday tightening security for the bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia, and put Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, in charge of the effort.

Faced with growing setbacks, the Kremlin appointed a new overall commander of Russia’s invasion. But there is little sign that Gen. Sergey Surovikin can lead his forces back onto the front foot before the end of the year, given the pace and cost of the Ukrainian counter-offensives.

The 19-kilometer (12-mile) Kerch Bridge, on a strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is a symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge, the longest in Europe, is vital to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine. The bridge’s opening was presided over by Putin.

The think tank said that Russian military bloggers have recently acknowledged that the pace of the Russian advance in the Bakhmut area has slowed down.

Vehicles and trains crossed over the bridge again on Sunday after it was temporarily suspended due to the blast. Russia has resumed a car ferry service.

It’s a popular vacation resort for Russians. People trying to drive to the bridge and onto the Russian mainland on Sunday encountered hours-long traffic jams.

The explosion of the Moscow Medical Aid Distribution Facility hit by enemy fireballs last week: Vladimir Putin and the loyalists of the Russian president

“We have already established the route of the truck,” he said, adding that it had been to Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Krasnodar — a region in southern Russia — among other places.

The facility was hit by the enemy. In a Telegram video on Thursday, Yanushevych said that the medical aid and humanitarian aid distribution point was damaged by shell fragments.

After hearing air raid sirens, the husband and wife hid in the hallway of their top floor apartment. The explosion shook the building and sent their possessions flying. Lazunko wept as the couple surveyed the damage to their home of nearly five decades.

Three people, including a dog owner, dug a shallow grave for the dog that was killed in the strike, and then the dog’s leg was destroyed by the blast.

Abbas Gallyamov, an independent Russian political analyst and a former speechwriter for Putin, said the Russian president, who formed a committee Saturday to investigate the bridge explosion, had not responded forcefully enough to satisfy angry war hawks. He said that the attack and response had inspired the opposition and demoralized the loyalists.

“Because once again, they see that when the authorities say that everything is going according to plan and we’re winning, that they’re lying, and it demoralizes them,” he said.

Kremlin attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure: The impact of Russian drone blitzes and air strikes on the crisis in Kherson

Russian drones exploded in an attack on Ukranian energy infrastructure Monday night, as the Kremlin signaled no let up in its strategy of using bombardments to target the country’s energy infrastructure.

“Power supply is now available to two-thirds of Kyiv residents. But the schedules of emergency power outages are still applied. The shortage of electricity is significant. Power engineers ask to continue to save electricity,” Klitschko added.

In recent months, the US and NATO have been grappling with how they can help protect Ukraine against the onslaught of Russian strikes, which have destroyed half of the country’s energy infrastructure.

In order to cut electricity and heating services because of the cold, Ukraine has seen Russian attack since early October, which mostly targeted the energy infrastructure. The shelling has been especially intense in Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine’s army reclaimed the city in November.

“It is simply impossible to leave such crimes unanswered,” Putin said in a brief television appearance on Monday. If terrorist attacks continue on our territory, Russia will be very tough in its responses and they will correspond to the level of threats to the Russian Federation.

Monday’s explosions reverberated across central and western Ukraine, far away from the battlefields in the northeast, east and south where a powerful Ukrainian counter-offensive has liberated towns and pushed Russian troops back in recent weeks.

The subway was out of commission for several hours on Monday. Rescue workers were going to pull people from the rubble after the air raid alert was lifted.

Kiev Attacks on Crimea, Ukraine, Tagged Crimea Explosions and Ukraine’s Defense: Putin’s First Russian Prime Minister Revisited

Demys Shmygal, Ukraine’s Prime Minister, said Monday that as of 11 a.m. local time, a total of 11 “crucial infrastructure facilities” in eight regions had been damaged.

Putin held an operational meeting of his Security Council on Monday, a day after he called the explosions on the Crimea bridge a “terrorist attack” and said the organizers and executors were “Ukrainian special services.”

The Russian-appointed head of annexed Crimea said Monday that he had good news and that Russia’s approach to its military operation in Ukraine has changed.

If such actions to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure were taken every day, the regime would be defeated and everything would be done in May.

“They damaged 13 two-story buildings, three four-story buildings, a children’s clinic and school, garages and cars,” Kyrylenko said. Every day, Russians confirm their status as terrorists.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell Fontelles said that additional military support from the EU is on its way, as Western allies doubled their support for Kyiv.

The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, said Putin was terrorizing civilians in other cities. The Netherlands disapproves of these heinous acts. Putin does not seem to understand that the will of the Ukrainian people is unbreakable.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the attacks “another unacceptable escalation of the war and, as always, civilians are paying the highest price.”

The damage of Ukrainian public transport during a G7 strike in Dnipro, Ukraine: Viktor Shevchenko, 38, and Ihor Makovtsev

The G7 group of nations will hold an emergency meeting via video conference on Tuesday, the office of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed to CNN, and Zelensky said on Twitter that he would address that meeting.

President Zelenskyy said in a video posted to social media that the strikes disproportionately targeted civilian infrastructure, including power plants and water heating facilities.

Oleksandr Tkachenko says at least two museums and the National Philharmonic concert halls sustained heavy damage. A nearby strike damaged the country’s main passenger terminal, delaying trains during this morning’s rush hour, according to Ukraine’s National Railway.

“This happened at rush hour, as lots of public transport was operating in the city,” said Ihor Makovtsev, the head of the department of transport for the Dnipro city council, as he stood by the wreckage. He added that the bus driver and four passengers had been taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

“It’s difficult for me to find any logic to their so-called artillery work because all our transportation is only for civilian purposes,” Makovtsev said.

81-year-old Viktor Shevchenko looked out from what once were the windows of his first floor balcony, just next to the bus stop. The ground was covered with shattered glass. He said he went to his kitchen to make breakfast after he was done watering the plants on his balcony.

He said the explosion blew open his cabinets and almost knocked him to the ground. “Only a few minutes before, I would have been on the balcony, full of glass.”

U.S. Response to the Kerch Strain Damned by Spontaneous Missile and Drone Reactions: What Have You Learned since Russia Founded?

What have you seen since Russian missiles first began falling? In the face of attacks of drones and rockets, the fear of Ukrainians has been replaced with anger.

“We warned Zelenskyy that Russia hadn’t really started yet,” wrote Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a loyalist to Putin who repeatedly has attacked Russia’s Defense Ministry for incompetence in carrying out the military campaign.

In the summer Michael Bociurkiw moved to Ukraine from Canada, as a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

There were fears of revenge by the Kremlin even after a massive explosion hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend.

The strikes occurred as people headed to work and while kids were being dropped off at schools. A friend in Kyiv texted me that she had just exited a bridge span 10 minutes before it was struck.

As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained quite quiet with reports of missiles and drones being shot down. Normally at this time of the day nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers and talking about upcoming weddings and parties.

People dressed in winter coats, hats and scarves crowd the underground stations as the sirens wailed. Huddled on escalators, their faces were lit by their phones as they scrolled through updates.

Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.

Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.

Vladimir Putin’s 2017 Kravvich explosion triggered a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, and the threat it poses to the Kremlin

dictators seem to be fond of wiring newly claimed territory with expensive infrastructure projects. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. The longest sea crossing bridge in the world was connected to the former British and Portuguese territories after Beijing reclaimed Macau in the year 2000. The road bridge opened after delays of two years.

The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. Many people shared their jubilation with text messages.

It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.

Before Monday’s strikes, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, had told Ukrainian journalist Roman Kravets in late August that, “by the end of the year at the minimum we have to enter Crimea” – suggesting a plan to push back Russian forces to pre-2014 lines, which is massively supported by Ukrainians I’ve spoken to.

What is crucially important now is for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to urge China and India – which presumably still have some leverage over Putin – to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.

There are high tech defense systems needed to protect the energy infrastructure around the country. With winter on the horizon, it’s crucial to protect heating systems.

The time has also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.

Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. A weak response will signal that the Kremlin can weaponize energy, migration and food.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in an early report that Russia launched 77 airstrikes and 75 rocket attacks.

Critical and civil infrastructure was hit in 12 regions and the capital, where more than 30 fires broke out, the emergency services said, adding the blazes have been put out.

The United States and Ukraine are All Together: Why We Are Trying to Win, But Why We Wrongly Attempt to Win (The War in Ukraine)

The United States and Ukraine have agreed that there will be no use of American weaponry in Russia. The Biden administration has vowed to avoid American involvement that could escalate to direct confrontation with Russia. American officials will not object to Ukraine using its own weaponry.

The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.

The message was clear for the world to see. Putin doesn’t want to be humiliated. He won’t admit defeat. He is prepared to cause civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his battlefield reversals.

The targets on Monday were meaningless because of Putin’s inability to destroy Ukraine on the battlefield.

The bombing of power installations appeared to be a hint of how much misery the Russian President could cause as the cold weather sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops.

President Joe Biden Monday spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and offered advanced air systems that would help defend against Russian air attacks, but the White House did not specify exactly what might be sent.

The National Security Council coordinator suggested that the US was looking favorably on the request of the Ukrainian government, and was in contact with them almost every day. “We do the best we can in subsequent packages to meet those needs,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Kirby was also unable to say whether Putin was definitively shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to pummel civilian morale and inflict devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, though he suggested it was a trend developing in recent days and had already been in the works.

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Now that’s not to say that the explosion on the Crimea bridge might have accelerated some of their planning,” Kirby said.

The Western world was concerned about the possible start of another conflict in Ukraine after Monday’s rush-hour attacks.

A retired Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, former director for European Affairs on the National Security Council, said that by attacking targets designed to hurt Ukrainian morale and energy infrastructure, Putin was sending a message about how he will prosecute the war in the coming months.

If we had modern equipment, we could raise the number of drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or hurt Ukrainians.

But everyone experienced the shock of war differently. Millions of Russians were wiped out by Putin because he destroyed the country’s history.

Olena Gnes, a mother of three, told CNN that she disliked the way that the people of her country had been treated by the Russians.

She said that this is just another scare to provoke panic, to scare you guys in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant.

I want to thank all of you for helping Ukraine. We’ve made a lot of friends. We had to endure terrible things in order to understand that we have a lot of good things. But so many people are doing real miracles for Ukraine.”

A retired colonel, Serhiy Hrabskiy, is a commentator on the war for Ukrainian news media who said that the military of Ukraine has not hesitated to hit legitimate military targets. Targeting sites in Crimea and cross-border artillery duels have become routine as the war has moved closer to Russia and the occupied peninsula.

State television showed the suffering, but also reported on it. It showed a picture of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast of cold weather there for months.

Shahed models are known for crashing into targets with explosives. According to the Ukrainian air defense systems, Russia ordered 2,400 drones from Iran. The Air Force of Ukraine says they have shot down 11 drones.

The attack on Kramatorsk came shortly after a top official from the Ukrainian government said that Russia was preparing for a “maximum escalation” in the war in the country.

He spoke to a group of soldiers who were receiving the awards. He said of the attacks, “yes, we are doing it. But who started it?”

There is a single truck driving across a bridge before a flash of light swallows it. At least three collapsed road spans rested crookedly on piers that were shallow in the water.

Photographs on social media show bent support beams on Russia-bound lanes. That side of the bridge reopened to traffic only hours after the blast.

Nick Waters, an analyst with the digital forensics firm Bellingcat, points out that the bridge’s underside shows barely any blast damage, dismissing a popular Ukrainian theory that a special naval operation destroyed the bridge from below.

Ukrainian experts dismissed the notion of a Ukrainian missile hitting the bridge due to the distance from Ukrainian-held territory. Missiles that travel that far have not been provided by the United States or other countries that supply weapons to Ukraine.

FSB published a video of an “examination of the truck” and its “X-ray”, which allegedly shows explosives. The “x-ray” did not reveal a frame or another axle that was gone. pic.twitter.com/onKbOndxVO

After Russian state media posted the government’s evidence for a truck bomb — the alleged truck involved and a X-ray scan of its cargo — Ukrainian journalists pointed out that the two images showed different trucks.

Based on the ways the flames repeatedly shot out from the blast site, Barr also suggests that the truck was loaded with specialized compounds that burned hot enough to ignite a passing fuel train traveling on a parallel rail bridge, severely weakening it.

Mika Tyry, a retired military demolition specialist, told YLE, Finland’s national broadcaster, that the flames and sparks are consistent with a thermite bomb. Russia’s military has been known to use thermite, though Ukraine could have recovered the substance from unexploded Russian munitions.

“It’s a successful attack on a guarded structure, with advanced explosives, and timed with the train,” Barr says. That’s highly suggestive of a carefully planned military operation rather than a single actor.

The war has teetered towards an unpredictable new phase before. Keir Giles is a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House and he said that this is the third war they have been observing.

With the cold months nearing and likely bringing a slowdown in ground combat, experts say the next weeks of the war are now expected to be vital, and another potential spike in intensity looms over Ukraine as each side seeks to strike another blow.

Giles said that the prospect of anything that could be described as a victory for the Ukrainians was much more plausible. The response from Russia will likely go up a notch.

Ukrainians have learned that they are stronger than was expected of them. Did those who underestimated them learn their lesson? Military help has helped to survive, but it hasn’t helped to crush the enemy.

The Russians are playing for the whistle, hoping to avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in, according to a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”

Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

There are many reasons why Ukraine has an incentive to get things done quickly. The resilience of Ukraine and its Western backers will be tested by the winter energy crisis in Europe and the power failures in the country.

While estimating the army’s reserves is difficult, experts believe that Moscow doesn’t have the capacity to keep up with the bombardment because they don’t have enough money.

Russian commanders know that their supplies are running out, and Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, said in a speech on Tuesday.

Russian use of its limited supply of precision weapons may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives.

The US announced a new $1.8 billion aid package to Ukraine, which included the “first-ever transfer to Ukraine of the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System, capable of bringing down cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and aircraft at a significantly higher ceiling than previously provided air defense systems.”

Strikes of the scale like the one launched Thursday’s have become less frequent since they began Oct. 10. Earlier this week Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, said that’s because Russia is running low on its stock of cruise missiles.

Some assistance for Putin is on the way. The announcement by Alexander Lukashenko of the deployment of a joint group of troops between the two countries raised fears of deeper military cooperation between the two countries. Belarus has been complaining of alleged Ukrainian threats to its security in recent days, which observers say could be a prelude to some level of involvement.

There would be a new challenge for Ukrainians from the reopening of the northern front. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.

Now Zelensky will hope for more supplies in the short-term as he seeks to drive home those gains. More than half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukrainian territory in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were taken down by the Ukrainians, according to the leader.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

“These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles [this week] were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said.

Modern systems from Germany and the US arrived this week in Ukraine, which was described as a badly needed system. , Bronk said.

The Donetsk blasts, and the “massive, forced deportations of Ukrainian children” by Vladimir V. Putin, the deputy prime minister and the institute for the study of war

The coming weeks are therefore crucial both on the battlefield, as well as in Europe and around the globe, experts suggest. Giles said that the next move of Putin depended on how the rest of the world responded. Russia’s attitude is shaped by the Western countries’ inability to confront and deter it.

The damage done to the municipal administration building in the city of Donetsk was a powerful sign that the chaos unleashed by President Vladimir V. Putin is spreading far beyond the front lines.

Two men shot at Russian troops preparing to deploy to Ukraine, killing 11 people and wounding 15 before being killed themselves, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Oct. 15.

CNN is not able to verify the cause of the blasts or the extent of the damage due to the fact that Ukrainian officials have not commented.

Donetsk has been held by Russian-backed separatists for eight years and it is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow attempted to annex in October, in violation of international law.

Zelenskyy claimed that Russia included convicts with long sentences for serious crimes in its troops in return for pay and access to drugs, something Western intelligence officials have also said.

— France, seeking to puncture perceptions that it has lagged in supporting Ukraine, confirmed it’s pledging air-defense missiles and stepped-up military training to Ukraine. Up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France, rotating through for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs, and training on equipment supplied by France, the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview published in Le Parisien.

The Institute for the Study of War accused Moscow of conducting “Massive, forced deportations ofUkrainians,” which it said could be considered ethnic cleansing.

It referenced statements made this week by Russian authorities that claimed that “several thousand” children from a southern region occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The comments made by Russia’s deputy prime minister were reported on Friday.

Russian authorities have previously admitted to placing children from Russian-held areas of Ukraine, who they said were orphans, for adoption with Russian families, in a potential breach of an international treaty on genocide prevention.

The Ukrainian military accused the pro-Kremlin fighters of expelling civilians from occupied territories to house their officers in their homes, which is a violation of international humanitarian law. It said the evictions were happening in Rubizhne, in the eastern Luhansk region. It didn’t show the evidence for its claim.

Girkin has long decried Russian generals whom he claims direct the war effort far from the frontline. Girkin was previously minister of defense of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, and was found guilty by a Dutch court of mass murder for his involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Moscow’s battlefield failures have been lashed out at by a certain person on social media. The defense intelligence agency of the country said they would offer a $100,000 reward for his capture.

The trains were moving as usual on Monday despite attacks on infrastructure near the city’s main rail station.

The chief-of-staff of Zelenskyy called on the west to give Ukraine more air defense systems. “We have no time for slow actions,” he said online.

Klitshchko posted a photo of shrapnel labeled “Geran-2,” Russian’s designation for the Iranian drones, but he removed the picture after commenters criticized him for confirming a Russian strike.

Russian plane attacks on a residential area in the Chekhov region of the Sea of Azov: a statement by EU diplomats

Foreign ministers of the EU are expected to meet in Luxembourg. Josep Borrell, EU’s top diplomat, told reporters before the meeting that the bloc would look into “concrete evidence” about Iran’s involvement.

Kamikaze drones, or suicide drones, are small portable weapon systems that can be fired at a distance. They are designed to hit enemy lines and be destroyed, so they can be easily launched.

After hours of combing through the charred debris of the building, authorities said 13 residents, including three children, were found dead. Another 19 were hospitalized with injuries.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there was no need for more “massive” strikes for now. However, a series of Russian attacks over the weekend killed 11 civilians – eight in the eastern region of Donetsk, two in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and one in the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

There were at least thirteen people killed when a Russian plane crashed into a residential area in the city of Chekhov on the Sea of Azov after it had suffered an engine failure.

The cause of the plane crash was the ignition of one of the engines on take off, according to the report of the ejected pilots. The site of the crash of the Su-34 in one of the residential quarters had fuel explode, according to the ministry.

First Russian President Vladimir Putin’s message on the fire in Yeysk, a port town bordering the Sea of Azov

The 13 bodies that were reported removed by RIA were those of three children. Earlier state media reports said at least 25 people were injured.

Yeysk is a port town on the shore of the Sea of Azov and is separated from occupied Russian territory in southern Ukraine by a narrow stretch of the sea.

There were videos and images of the aftermath of the crash. A building, believed to house hundreds of people, was later engulfed in flames, say officials.

The Kremlin said that Putin had received information from the ministers and the head of the region on the situation and that he ordered them to give assistance to the victims.

Roman Busargin said on Monday that law enforcement agencies are investigating the incident at the airfield. The comments, posted on his official Telegram channel, came after reports circulated of an explosion in the city.

“The remains of the aircraft have been extinguished. The residents of nearby houses were supposed to be evacuated. The fire has been contained,” the head of the Krasnodar Krai region, Veniamin Kondratyev, said on his Telegram channel, citing a statement from the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

According to the head of the affected district in Yeysk, Roman Bublik, the residents of a nine-story building that caught fire will be provided with all the necessary support.

Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched ministers of health and emergencies along with the governor to the site of the crash, according to the Kremlin. A Russian air base is located in the city of Yeysk.

NATO drills on Ukraine: State of Ukraine and the U.N. resolution of the October 12 incident on a “bridge to Crimea”

NATO will hold nuclear deterrence exercises starting Monday. NATO has warned Russia not to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine but says the “Steadfast Noon” drills are a routine, annual training activity.

Russian agents detained eight people on Oct. 12 suspected of carrying out a large explosion on a bridge to Crimea, including Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian citizens.

The United Nations General Assembly roundly condemned Russia’s move to illegally annex four regions of Ukraine. Four countries voted along with Russia, but only four voted in favor of Ukraine’s resolution.

You can read past recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find more of NPR’s coverage here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

Vice governor of the region, Anna Menkova, said three of the four victims died when they jumped from the upper floors of the building in a desperate attempt to escape the flames, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency.

The authorities reserved emergency rooms at local hospitals and scrambled medical aircraft. People were provided with temporary accommodations after they were evacuated.

The suicide of Victoria Zamchenkos, a close friend of the couple killed in a Kiev drone strike during the November 11 fighting in the Sea of Azov

The video from the scene of the attack was shared widely on Telegram and an official Ukrainian military channel. It shows a pile of smoking rubble, in which almost no part of the building appears to be standing.

The Su-34 is a supersonic twin-engine bomber equipped with sophisticated sensors and weapons that has been a key strike component of the Russian air force. The aircraft has been used in the fighting in Syria, and battles in Ukranian.

There have been 10 reported crashes of Russian warplane since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine. Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights increased sharply during the fighting, so did the crashes.

According to CNN, a close friend of the couple told them that they were both killed in a Russian ‘kamikaze’ drone strike.

“They had a lot of plans – they dreamed of their own home, children, a full-fledged family, travel. They had very big plans for this life,” Petrukova said.

The Zamchenkos died at home in their apartment in Kyiv on Monday, following a barrage of strikes by Russian-launched, Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones, according to Ukrainian officials.

The Air Force said that the Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 drones were launched from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov.

Petrukova, who was in phone contact with Victoria Zamchenko just minutes before her death, said the first drone strikes Monday had trapped the couple in their apartment.

“They could no longer leave the house because there was an incoming hit at the [thermal power plant] right opposite,” Petrukova recalled. They were sitting in the corridor.

The last text from her was at 8:18 a.m. She heard two more hits. There was a fifth, after that. The connection with her was lost.

A Tale of Two Americans: Vickiv, Rinve, and Petrukova, the First Russian City to Be Occupied by the Ukrainians

Victoria was a native of Rinve in western Ukraine, and returned to Kyiv in August. She had missed her work as a sommelier at a local wine shop, Petrukova said.

She was a deep kind of person according to her friend. We used to have something to talk about and something to be silent about.

“It is impossible to imagine them separately. They hugged and held hands. There was a lot of love between them. It was a pleasure to be around them. They were fun people.”

Russian soldiers may have been left in disguise to engage the Ukrainians in street battles or sabotage operations.

Grisly videos filmed by Ukrainian drones showing Russian infantry being struck by artillery in poorly prepared positions have partly supported those assertions, as has reporting in Russian news media of mobilized soldiers telling relatives about high casualty rates. The location of the front line for some of the videos could not be determined despite being independently verified.

The commander of the Ukrainian military said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces had tripled the intensity of their attacks. He did not say what the time frame was or where the attacks were coming from.

“If somebody attacks you, you fight back,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who now advises President Volodomyr Zelensky, said in an interview earlier this month, after the first Ukrainian long-range strike on Russian military targets hit Engels and another airfield in central Russia.

An assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, also said that the increase in infantry in the Donbas region in the east had not resulted in Russia’s gaining new ground.

“Russian forces would likely have had more success in such offensive operations if they had waited until enough mobilized personnel had arrived to amass a force large enough to overcome Ukrainian defenses,” the institute said in a statement on Thursday.

More than 30 settlements came under fire with some coming from Russia, according to the Ukrainian military.

The remaining residents of Kherson have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive a battle with Russian and Ukrainian forces who seem to be preparing for it.

The first major city to be occupied by the Russians was Kherson. With Kherson’s deep historical ties to Russia, Moscow did not expect it to be a center of resistance. But the city, like the rest of Ukraine, defied the Kremlin’s expectations.

The move puts Kyiv on the cusp of achieving one of its most significant victories of the war and deals a bitter blow to President Vladimir V. Putin, who just a month ago declared Kherson a part of Russia forever.

Videos shared by Ukrainian government officials on social media showed scenes of civilians cheering and awaiting the arrival of a contingent of Ukrainian troops shortly after Russia said that the withdrawal of its forces across the Dnipro River was complete.

The final hours of the Russians’ occupation were chaotic and confusing according to residents of Kherson.

As he spoke, Ukrainian soldiers continued to move through towns and villages in the region, greeted joyously by tearful residents who had endured nine months occupation.

Night and day the Dnipro River in Kherson, South of Ukraine, warned against the withdrawal of Russian troops from the southern city with the new front line

The commander of a Ukrainian drone unit said he had seen no Russian soldiers or equipment in the zone north of Kherson city.

“The Russians left all the villages,” he said. “We looked at dozens of villages with our drones and didn’t see a single car. We don’t see how they are leaving. They retreat quietly at night.

Serhiy, a retiree living in the city who asked that hislast name not be published for security reason, said in a series of text messages that conditions in the city had changed overnight.

“At night, a building burned in the very center, but it was not possible even to call the fire department,” he wrote. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”

“The Russian military is settling in local houses they seized, schools and kindergartens. Federov said in November that military equipment is in residential areas.

In the south, according to the General Staff, at least 34 places in Kherson region came under artillery attack from Russian positions on the east bank of the Dnipro. It also claimed that “The russian invaders are searching houses and seizing boats and other watercraft.”

After Russia withdrew from the southern city of Kherson on Monday, forces from the Ukrainian and Russian sides traded fire on the other side of the Dnipro River.

The Dnipro is the new front line in southern Ukraine, and officials warned of continued danger from fighting in regions that already have been occupied by Russia.

Through the afternoon, artillery fire picked up in a southern district of the city near the destroyed Antonivsky Bridge over the Dnipro, stoking fears that the Russian Army would retaliate for the loss of the city with a bombardment from its new positions on the eastern bank.

Mortar shells struck near the bridge, sending up puffs of smoke. Near the river, loud, metallic booms rang out when incoming rounds were fired. It wasn’t possible to assess what had been hit.

Exploration of a mine site in Novoraysk, a city south of Kherson city, Ukraine, in the early 1980s and early 2000s

The mines are dangerous. Four people, including an 11-year-old, were killed when a family driving in the village of Novoraysk, outside the city, ran over a mine, Mr. Yanushevich said. The six railway workers were trying to restore service after the lines were damaged. And there were at least four more children reportedly injured by mines across the region, Ukrainian officials said in statements.

The deaths underscored the threats still remaining on the ground, even as Mr. Zelensky made a surprise visit to Kherson, a tangible sign of Ukraine’s soaring morale.

“We are, step by step, coming to all of our country,” Mr. Zelensky said in a short appearance in the city’s main square on Monday, as hundreds of jubilant residents celebrated.

Russian forces continued to fire from across the river on towns and villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian military’s southern command. Two Russian missiles struck the town of Beryslav, which is just north of a critical dam, the military said. There were no casualties immediately, so it’s not known if they were.

“Occupants rob local people and exchange stuff for samogon,” or homemade vodka, said one resident, Tatiana, who communicated via a secure messaging app from Oleshky, a town across the river from Kherson City. They get drunk and even more aggressive after that. We are so scared here.” She asked to have her name kept from public view for security.

Ivan wrote in a message that Russians roaming around identify empty houses and settle there. He wants his name not to be used out of concern for his safety in Skadovsk, which is south of Kherson city. We try to find a local who will stay in the owners place. So that it isn’t abandoned and Russians don’t take it.

War in Ukraine: When Putin stepped out of the NATO, he’s lost his job. The role of the G20 summit in his frustrations with Russia

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He was a CBS News and The New York Times correspondent. The opinions in this commentary are of his own. CNN has more opinion.

Poland is not the only country facing repercussions from these attacks. Despite the Polish incident attracting a lot of attention, Russian rockets caused power to be lost across neighboringMoldova, which is not a NATO member.

Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war.

But beyond these most recent missile attacks lies a laundry list of horrors Putin has launched that only seems to have driven his nation further from the pack of civilized powers that he once sought so desperately to join.

The hotline and Telegram channel launched by the Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live”, designed to assist Russian soldiers who are willing to defect has taken off with some 3,500 calls booking its first two months of activity.

Putin has also tried, though he has been stymied at most turns, to establish black market networks abroad to source what he needs to fuel his war machine – much as Kim Jong-un has done in North Korea. The United States has already taken action against shadow companies and individuals centered in Taiwan, Armenia, Switzerland, Germany, Spain,France, and Luxembourg, all of whom were used by Russia to source high-tech goods for its military-industrial complex.

Diplomatically, Putin finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage. He was the only head of state to stay away from a session of the G20, which Zelensky dubbed the “G19.” Even though Putin once wanted a return to the G7 he is now not in a position to do so. Russia’s sudden ban on 100 Canadians, including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country only made the comparison with North Korea more striking.

The best and brightest in almost every field have moved away from Russia. This includes writers, artists and journalists as well as some of the most creative technologists, scientists and engineers.

Mikhail Zygar, who has settled in Berlin after fleeing in March, told me last week that he was prepared to accept the reality that many Russians are not able to return to their homeland.

Russian shelling of the Ukrainian reactors leaves a bitter blow in the dark and cold: The EU’s leading voice in the fight against the war in the Middle East

Rumbling in the background is the West trying to diminish the country of material resources in order to pursue this war. “We have understood and learnt our lesson that it was an unhealthy and unsustainable dependency, and we want reliable and forward-looking connections,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday.

Putin imagined that the conflict would drive wedges into the Western alliance, but they are not. On Monday, word began to come in that the long-stalled joint project for a next- generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System was beginning to move forward.

He continued to hold that attempts made by certain countries to rewrite and remake world history are becoming increasingly aggressive, ultimately and obviously seeking to divide our society, Take away our guiding lines and weaken Russia in his speech on Tuesday in the Kremlin.

Ukrainian energy operator Ukrenergo reported on Friday that more than 50% of the country’s energy capacity was lost due to Russian strikes.

After a brief emergency shutdown, the nuclear reactors have been turned back on, but were still not reconnected to the national grid, the company added.

Vitaliy Kim, the military administrator in southern Mykolaiv said that the nuclear plant in his area has been cut off from the grid, leading to a risky shut down of the reactor.

In recent weeks, Russian shelling has left much of the country without access to heat and power during a brutal winter season.

In Moldova, President Maia Sandu wrote on Facebook that they could not trust Russia because it left them in the dark and cold.

Zelenskyy: Providing water for civilians, but not in schools or government buildings, and not providing water to Donetsk

Ukraine is scrambling to prepare for the winter. In a Tuesday night address, Zelenskyy said there are 4,000 centers to help civilians in the event of power cuts.

He boasted that they would provide hot water, phone charging, and internet access. Many will be in schools and government buildings.

He ended the speech by saying that it won’t interfere with the combat missions, and then he drank from his champagne glass.

At the awards ceremony, Putin continued to list alleged aggressions: “Who is not supplying water to Donetsk? Not supplying water to a city of million is an act of genocide.”

The airfield in the Kursk region of Russia was the site of an attack on drones, as announced by Russia. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has offered no comment on recent explosions, including in Kursk, which are deep within Russia. Officially, the targets are well beyond the reach of the country’s declared drones.

Putin does not annex Donetsk, Ukraine: water is genocide, not water is given to a million people city

He ended his apparent off-the-cuff comments by claiming there is no mention of the water situation. “No one has said a word about it anywhere. At all! Complete silence ,” he said.

Local Russian authorities in Donetsk — which Putin claimed to annex in defiance of international law — have reported frequent shelling of the city this week.

While at a reception, Putin made rare public comments about the Russian military’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

In his Kremlin appearance Thursday, he continued to say: “Who is not supplying water to Donetsk? Not supplying water to a million person city is genocide.

In a statement in November, Ukrenergo acknowledged that the race to restore power to homes is being hampered by “strong winds, rain and sub-zero temperatures.”

The attacks on the energy grid are considered to be genocide by a top Ukrainian official. The prosecutor general of the Ukranians made comments to the British Broadcasting Corporation last month.

He is present at the school with nearly 1,000 students. The school also serves as a shelter, providing heat, food and water for the community when extended blackouts hit.

Power cuts have lasted up to 24 hours, he says. The farming equipment and warehouses in this area were destroyed. He estimates business activity is one-third of what it was.

Borodianka: a town in Ukraine that is not governed by a single-power-cutting regime: From the end of the Soviet invasion to the aftermath of the Second World War

About 200 Ukrainians were killed when the Russians occupied Borodianka shortly after the invasion began on Feb. 24 until the end of March, Yerko says. The town’s population dropped to a little more than 1000 before World War II. Despite lack of resources it’s back up to about 9,000.

“The people coming are mostly from the houses on the main street. The ones that were destroyed and burned down,” says Olha Kobzar, a Ukrainian volunteer who is in charge of the temporary housing.

During an interview, the lights go out, leaving her standing in a darkened hallway. She says she’ll wait a while to see if the power comes back. If it starts to get chilly, she’ll turn on the generator. It’s like this every day, she adds.

A bust of Taras Shevchenko is in the center of town. He championed Ukraine’s independence from Russia in the 19th century. He wrote, “It’s bad to be in chains and die a slave.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/10/1141536117/russia-war-ukraine-town-borodianka-banksy-power-cuts

Ukrainian missile attacks against the Odesa region of Ukraine in the wake of Russian-made strikes, according to a Russian artist who painted graffiti on badly scarred walls

A British artist known for his spray-paintings of streets, wrote on several badly scarred walls and then confirmed it was his work on social media.

A boy is throwing a man to the floor. Both are dressed in martial arts gear. The man is widely assumed to be Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a judo enthusiast.

“People are happy we’re getting this attention. There are paintings on buildings that were destroyed. “We’re planning to remove the paintings and put them somewhere else.”

The Melitopol mayor Ivan Fedorov said there had been several explosions, including at the Melitopol Christian Church, “which the occupiers seized several months ago and turned into their hideout.”

Alexei Kulemzin, head of the Russian-backed city administration, said Ukraine launched 20 Grad missiles around 5:54 a.m. local time Sunday in the direction of the Voroshilovsky and Kalininsky districts.

There were reports of explosions in the Black Sea fleet’s headquarters, Sovietske, and a military barracks in Hvardiiske.

The air defense system worked over Simferopol, said Sergey Aksenov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea. All services are working as usual.

Reports that 1.5 million people in the Odesa region of Ukraine were without power, as a result of Iranian-made drones strikes, come as the news.

The damage was still critical and he said it will take a few days to restore electricity in the region.

Authorities in Odesa, in southern Ukraine, said that emergency power outages had been rolled out amid the missile attacks. “They are introduced due to the threat of missile attacks to avoid significant damage if the enemy manages to hit energy facilities,” DTEK, a utility company, said in a statement.

Zelensky said this was the true attitude of Russia toward Odesa, towards Odesa residents.

Oslo-Sonor Energy Assistance for the Restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine During the December 11, 2016 Ukrainian Strikes and World Leaders

The $100 million support package from Norway that was given to Ukraine on Saturday will be used “precisely for the restoration of the energy system after these Russian strikes,” Zelensky said.

The repeated assaults on the plants and equipment that Ukrainians rely on for heat and light have drawn condemnation from world leaders, and thrust Ukraine into a grim cycle in which crews hurry to restore power only to have it knocked out again.

“The power system is now, to put it mildly, very far from a normal state — there is an acute shortage in the system,” he said, urging people to reduce their power use to put less strain on the battered power grid.

There are attacks on civilian infrastructure in our country. Residential buildings, hotel, (a) shop, place for festivals were damaged. There are dead and injured,” he wrote.

Ukrainian authorities have been stepping up raids on churches accused of links with Moscow, and many are watching to see if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy follows through on his threat of a ban on the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen and the Norwegian Prime Minister, Kristofer Gahr Store, are in Paris for a dinner with the French President.

Also in France, on Tuesday, the country is set to co-host a conference with Ukraine in support of Ukrainians through the winter, with a video address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Kherson military administration said on December 11, 2003, that Moscow’s central power plant was shut down by high-energy missile attacks on December 11

Fans of the basketball player and her family are celebrating after she was released from a Russian prison. Some Republican politicians are complaining about the prisoner swap and hold of American citizens by Russia.

Russian oil revenue was targeted in new measures on December 5. There is a Russian oil price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports.

On December 11, President Zelenskyy had a phone call with the leader of the US, President Biden.

He said a key in the city’s intersection center came under fire from Grad rockets.

The city was hit 86 times with “artillery, MLRS, tanks, mortars and UAVs,” in the past 24 hours, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration.

One of the victims was a volunteer on the international organization’s rapid response team. During the shelling, they were on the street, they were fatally wounded by fragments of enemy shells,” he added.

The Kherson military administration stated that the city was completely disconnected from power supplies after the strikes.

Meanwhile, further west Kyiv received machinery and generators from the United States to help strengthen the Ukrainian capital’s power infrastructure amid the widespread energy deficits.

The Energy Security Project, run by USAID, delivered four excavators and over 130 generators, Klitschko said on Telegram. All equipment was free of charge.

Kremlin comments on the attack of the Ukraine air defense system during the Dec 5 attack by a Russian missile and a drone on Ukrainian soil

Russia was open for diplomatic solutions, despite recent statements by Putin that he wanted an end to the war. The claim that Putin was open to negotiation was dismissed by the West as a ruse.

The Ukrainian side should take into account the realities that have evolved over the years, said the Kremlin on Tuesday after Zelensky’s proposal.

He said that these realities show that the Russian Federation has new subjects such as Luhansk, which was claimed to have been annexed.

The missile was destroyed in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted.

The Dyagilevo base was hit by drones for the second time on Dec 5, killing 3 servicemen and wounding four more. After the strikes on the air bases, Ukraine launched a huge volley of missiles that hit and killed civilians.

According to the Ukraine’s armed forces, an air attack on Ukrainian soil was witnessed by a supersonic aircraft capable of carrying a Kinzal hypersonic missile. They did not say whether or not Kinzal was used in the attacks.

Last Monday, Maj. Gen. Budanov claimed that Russia still had enough weapons to cause harm, despite the fact that it had nearly exhausted its arsenal. He added that Iran has not delivered any ballistic missile to Russia – analysis echoed by John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council (NSC).

Two US officials and a senior administration official say that the Biden administration plans to send the most advanced ground-Based Air Defense system, the Patriot, to Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has long sought the system to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks. It would be the most effective long-range defensive weapons system sent to the country and officials say that it will help secure airspace for NATO members in eastern Europe.

He declined to announce any details on the next security assistance package for Ukraine, but said that there “will be another one” and that additional air defense capabilities should be expected.

The Russian missile attacks in the city of Kryvyi Rih: civilian casualties, emergency services, Christmas trees, and artificial Christmas trees

Everyone in the capital has access to water. Half of the inhabitants of Kyiv already have heating, and we are trying to get it for everyone, said the city’s mayor in a post on Telegram.

The body of a baby boy was pulled out of the rubble of an apartment block that was destroyed by a Russian missile on Friday in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

A total of 16 people have been killed, according to the official, including three emergency workers killed in the process of demining the Berislav district of the region. Yanushevich said that 64 more have been wounded.

More than 100 people lived in the apartment block that was struck, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih city military administration. They and residents of neighboring homes which also suffered damage are being looked after in a temporary accommodation, he said Friday.

Sections of the Ukrainian railway system in Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk region were out of power following the missile strikes, and back-up diesel locomotives were replacing some services.

Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said that nine power-generating facitilites were damaged in Friday’s attacks, and warned of more emergency blackouts.

There were emergency services sent to several locations. There are videos that show injuries, including severed limbs and bloodied faces, on one residential street.

Zelensky thanked those who carry out the repairs in all weather and around the clock. “It is not easy, it is difficult, but I am sure: we will pull through together, and Russia’s aggression will fail.”

The repeated attacks come as Ukrainians far from the eastern and southern frontlines of the ground war seek for some semblance of normality in the run-up to Christmas.

An artificial Christmas tree in the center of Kyiv was installed and decorated over the weekend, set to be illuminated with “energy-saving garlands” that will be powered by a generator at specific times, the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

Roughly 1,000 blue and yellow balls and white doves will decorate the tree in Sophia Square, with a trident placed at the tree’s summit. The flag of countries that support Ukraine will be placed at the bottom.

Zelensky noted in his virtual address that Ukrainian children are asking St. Nicholas for air defense and weapons for victory.

Maria Zakharova said that no matter how much military support the West gives to the Ukrainian government, they will not achieve anything.

Zakharova went on to say that the tasks set within the framework of the special military operation will be fulfilled taking into account the situation on the ground and the actual realities.

Zelensky asked for more American aid in fighting Russian aggression after he delivered a historic speech from the US Capitol.

Peskov added that “there were no real calls for peace.” Zelensky emphasized during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday that “we need peace,” repeating the 10-point plan devised by Ukraine.

The US is acting as a proxy war against Russia against the last Ukrainian, according to Peskov.

Vladimir Zelensky visited the city of Kherson and celebrated Christmas with a large crowd of young Ukrainians. He declared that December 25 is coming to an end

Photographs of the wreck were posted to President Zelenskyy’s social media accounts when he returned from Washington. The destruction happened as Ukrainians began Christmas celebrations and many Orthodox Christians will celebrate the traditional celebration on January 7.

“This is not sensitive content — it’s the real life of Kherson,” Zelenskyy tweeted. The images showed cars on fire, bodies on the street and building windows blown out.

The governor of the Kherson region stated on television that the death toll in the latest shelling of the city has risen to 10.

There were no casualties when Stepne was hit by shelling, according to the governor.

In his Christmas address President Zelensky told Ukrainians to have patience and faith in the face of the onslaught of Russian strikes on Kherson.

He urged the nation to stand firm in the face of a grim winter of energy blackouts, the absence of loved ones and the ever-present threat of Russian attacks.

There may be empty chairs around it. And our houses and streets can’t be so bright. And Christmas bells can ring not so loudly and inspiringly. Through air raid sirens, or even worse – gunshots and explosions.”

He said that Ukraine had been resisting evil forces for three hundred days and eight years, however, “in this battle, we have another powerful and effective weapon. The hammer and sword of our spirit and consciousness. The wisdom of the Almighty. Courage and bravery. Good and evil are inclines to us by virtue.

Addressing the Ukrainian people directly, he said the country would sing Christmas carols louder than the sound of a power generator and hear the voices and greetings of relatives “in our hearts” even if communication services and the internet are down.

We will find each other when we are in darkness and hug each other tightly. We will give each other a big hug if there is no heat.

Zelensky said they would celebrate their holidays. As always. We will smile and be happy. As always. The difference is one. We will not wait for a miracle. We do it ourselves after all.

One branch of Ukraine’s Orthodox church announced last month that it would allow its churches to celebrate Christmas on December 25. And many younger Ukrainians are now choosing to observe the holiday on December 25 in a bid to move away from Russia and towards the Western world.

Putin’s comments on drone attacks in Mykolaiv: a protest against the Kiev invasion as a crime against humanity – a statement from the Ukrainian prime minister

“These are not military facilities,” he wrote on Telegram Saturday. “This is not a war according to the rules defined. It’s a killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.

Putin said in a state television interview, excerpts of which were released on Sunday afternoon that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with all the participants of this process.”

He said that “it’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them” — something the Kremlin has repeatedly stated in recent months as its 10-month old invasion kept losing momentum.

Russia continues to conduct offensive actions at the Bakhmut directions and is trying to improve their situation at the Avdiivka directions.

Gov. Vitali Kim said that seven drones were shot down over the southernMykolaiv region.

He added that there were “no emergencies in the residential areas of the city,” and that no civilian infrastructure had been damaged. He also extended his condolences to the families of the servicemen, saying the government would provide them with assistance.

The Ukrainian military has not directly confirmed the strike, but seemed to acknowledge what appeared to be the same attack that Russian authorities reported.

Earlier this month, it appeared that there was an explosion in the sky. Governor Busargin assured residents that no civilian infrastructure was damaged and that information about incidents at military facilities was being checked by law enforcement agencies.

First quiet night in Ukraine since the Kremlin invaded Kherson and Zaporizhhia, and Russian attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear power grid

The night of Sunday into Monday in Ukraine was quiet. For the first time in weeks, the Russian forces didn’t shell the Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the partially occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, its Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko reported on Telegram.

“This is the third quiet night in 5.5 months since the Russians started shelling” the areas around the city of Nikopol, Reznichenko wrote. Nikopol is located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under control of the Russian forces.

The Ukrainian General Staff also reported an uptick of cross-border shelling into the Kharkiv region, saying 23 communities had been affected – including the border town of Vovchansk.

Since some cruise missiles are launched from bombers that fly from the airfields hit in the attacks, the strikes could potentially destroy the missiles on the ground at the Russian airfields before they can be deployed.

He added, “You cannot consider this person will attack you, because you are fighting back.” There is absolutely no excuse to not attempt this.

The Kinzhal, a hypersonic weapon that is impossible to shoot down, is in even less supply than before, according to Mr. Budanov.

For eight long years prior to Russia’s disastrous and brutal invasion of its neighbor in February, the Kremlin instead waged a limited war in the east of the country, throwing that eastern border region into a state of turmoil, all while raining down cyberattacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure far beyond any war zone. Many military and security experts warned that Russia’s hacking was a good indicator that it would be used outside of the country, and it eventually turned out to be true, with attacks on American hospitals and the Olympics.

“It’s like the central nervous system of the human body: If you mess with it, you put all sorts of systems out of whack,” says Rajan Menon, a director of the Defense Priorities think tank who recently returned from a trip to the Ukrainian capital, speaking about Russia’s power grid attacks. “It is an economic cost and not only an annoyance.” It is an attempt to create pain for the civilians to show the government can not protect them adequately.

The lead of disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office stated that several residential buildings in the capital had been destroyed.

The windows of nearby homes were woken by an explosion. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko urged residents to charge their electronic devices and fill water containers in case of shortages.

Maksym Marchenko, the regional administrator for that region along the Black Sea, said that the air defense systems shot down 21 cruise missiles near Odesa. But successful missile strikes left the city without electricity or water.

Russian attacks on Donetsk, the capital of Ukraine, and disruption of Kiev’s power grid: a statement by Vladashenko Lavrov

In separate comments to Russian media Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Moscow would continue to pursue its objectives in Ukraine with “perseverance” and “patience.”

Russia attacked the electrical infrastructure of the country on Thursday, causing power problems in several regions. Engineering crews were racing to restore services as the New Year’s holiday approaches this weekend.

Hryn said: “After the sirens gave the all clear, life in the capital went back to normal, and my neighbors and their child were in hurry to go to the cinema for the movie.” People went to work while parents took their children to school, as others continued holiday plans in defiance.

The first strike on Kramatorsk was heard by the CNN team at the scene. CNN saw the second attack, with two impacts about one minute apart. Two women jumped out of their car and ran yelling, while other people took shelter. The bullet went off the blastproof glass of the CNN vehicle.

At least three people, including a 14-year-old, were injured and two people pulled from a damaged home on Thursday, Klitschko said earlier. There are homes, an industrial facility, and a playground in the capital damaged due to attacks on Kyiv.

The targets have been neutralised. The attack has resulted in stopping the production and maintenance of military hardware and ordnance, as well as in terminating the redeployment of reserve forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from western regions of Ukraine,” the defense ministry said in a statement.

Ukrainian officials have said that both Ukrainian and Russian forces are suffering significant losses in Donetsk. CNN could not confirm Russia’s claims.

But in spite of Russia’s purported victories on the battlefield, the ministry did not claim any territorial advances against Ukrainian forces, adding credibility to reports that the two sides are locked in a stalemate.

The head of the armed forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, said that his air defenses successfully shot down a total of 12 incoming attacks. The total number of incoming attacks was unclear.

Russian missiles hit a four-star hotel in Kyiv’s entertainment district, according to a top emergency adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration. Ukraine’s power grid operator said it preventatively shut off electricity to several areas of the capital region, but did not report any damage to their infrastructure.

The Russian leader later bestowed the country’s highest military honor – the Order of Saint George – on the commander of its forces in Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin.

The return of a number of Russian prisoners of war, who had been in the grips of the Ukrainians, was also announced by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Zelensky said that the war with NATO was not the war with Russia. It isn’t for something historical. It’s for one person to remain in power until the end of his life.

The death of two civilians and three more wounded in Kharkiv, Sumy and Luhansk: the municipal life support system

The Office of the President of Ukraine said three people died and three more were wounded in the Donetsk region. Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram.

Kharkiv, Sumy and Luhansk regions: Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said two civilians were killed in Dvorichna, a village east of the city of Kharkiv. Russian forces occupy positions on the east bank of the nearby Oskil River.

“26 of the enemy’s air strikes were on civilian infrastructure. In particular, the occupants used 10 Shahed-136 UAVs, but all of them were shot down. In addition, the enemy made 80 attacks from multiple rocket launchers, civilian settlements were also hit,” the General Staff said in its latest operational update.

“The municipal ‘life support system’ of the capital is operating normally. 30% of consumers do not have electricity. He said on Telegram that it was due to emergency shutdowns.

The open section of the red metro line in the city was checked for remnants of missile debris.

Russian Defense Minister Vladimir Karasin has confirmed the killing of 63 Russian troops by a Ukrainian strike in Makiivka (South Caucasus)

I want to win and also to have a brighter future with my friends and family. I miss it a lot. I also want to travel and open borders. And I also think about personal and professional growth, because one should not stand still. I have to develop and work for the benefit of the country,” said Alyona Bogulska, a 29-year-old financier.

“This year, it’s a symbol, not that it’s a small victory, but a symbol that we survived the year,” said Tatiana Tkachuk, a 43-year-old pharmacy employee.

A large number of Russian troops are said to have been killed by a Ukrainian strike in eastern Ukraine, which is close to an ammunition cache.

The Russian defense ministry claimed on Monday that 63 Russian troops died in the attack and that it was one of the worst episodes of the war.

Russian senator Grigory Karasin said that those responsible for the killing of Russian servicemen in Makiivka must be found, Russian state news agency TASS reported Monday.

“Greetings and congratulations” to the separatists and conscripts who “were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the building of vocational school,” the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”

The high command is still unaware of the weapon’s capabilities, as stated by a former official in the Russia-backed DONETSK administration.

“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bezsonov said. “There are enough abandoned facilities in Donbas with sturdy buildings and basements where personnel can be quartered.”

A man who works for a Russian newspaper claimed that the building was almost destroyed by the secondary detonation of the ammunition stores.

“Nearly all the military equipment, which stood close to the building without the slightest sign of camouflage, was also destroyed,” Girkin said. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”

Boris Rozhin, who also blogs about the war effort under the nickname Colonelcassad, said that “incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war continue to be a serious problem.”

“As you can see, despite several months of war, some conclusions are not made, hence the unnecessary losses, which, if the elementary precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, might have not happened.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ilyashenko condemns attack on Bakhmut, a critical target of the Ukrainian counter-offensive

Russian forces lost 760 people when they tried to attack Bakhmut, the general staff said on Sunday.

A defense ministry statement said Ukrainian forces fired six rockets and two wereshot down. It did not say when the strike happened.

The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”

The governor of the southern Kherson region said five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling.

A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.

The Bryansk region in Russia has an energy facility that is next to the border with Ukranian. A village was left without power as a result, he said.

A search for mass destruction in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine: a CNN search for massive casualties and a warning to avoid bomb shelters

A CNN team on the ground has seen no indication of any massive casualties in the area. There is no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk, including in the vicinity of the city morgue, the team reported.

A Reuters reporter in Kramtorsk also reported no signs of a significant Russian strike on two college dormitories that Russia claimed had been housing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.

The Russian Defense Ministry said “the main cause” of the Makiivka strike was the widespread use of cell phones by Russian soldiers, “contrary to the ban,” which allowed Ukraine to “track and determine the coordinates of the soldiers’ locations.”

The account was angrily dismissed by an influential military post and the leader of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, which is in eastern Ukraine, disagreed with it.

A bombardment of missiles hit the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, sending flames and a thick cloud of smoke into the air as people tried to escape.

Paramedics rushed to the scene to treat at least one wounded civilian. Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko also confirmed that there had been a strike on the city, and urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.

Rescue workers searched for survivors after eight apartment buildings were damaged in Wednesday’s attack. People were put into a local school for shelter.

Ukrainian War in Ukraine – What Do We Expect to Learn from the Latest European Union Leaders and the Redefinition of Ukraine’s Cold War?

A country of absolute evil. And a country that has to overcome it in order to reduce to zero the likelihood of such tragedies happening again. We will make sure we find and punish all of the perpetrators. They do not deserve mercy.”

In an interview with Sky News, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, stated that these will be defining months in the war.

In the area of Seredyna-Buda, near the Russian border, “the occupiers continued to shell the border of Sumy region with mortars,” according to Operational Command North. There were no casualties reported.

The General Staff said there were also air strikes along other parts of the front lines in the Donetsk region, southwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Russian forces have been trying to break down Ukrainian defenses, and the area has seen some intense fighting in the last few weeks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a surprise Europe tour, meeting leaders in London, Paris and Brussels, and reiterating his call for allies to send fighter jets to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova attended President Biden’s State of the Union speech, for the second year in a row, but the war in Ukraine received far less attention in the address this time.

The international team looking into the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was downed in eastern Ukraine, said that there is strong evidence that Russian President Putin gave the go-ahead to give anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels.

On February 24, 2022: A Day in the Life of a Million People: The Last Year in Crime in Ukraine and the Resolved Action of the West

On February 24, 2022, I was supposed to be in Kyiv. My husband and I had to stay in Moscow after he broke his shoulder. He had surgery that morning.

The next morning, my phone was full of missed calls and messages. There is a headline in all caps on the Kyiv Independent website.

In the space of a year, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions more. It has wreaked havoc and caused a food and energy crisis which tested the resolve of western alliances.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/18/opinions/one-year-anniversary-putin-war-ukraine-russia-wrap-opinions-ctpr/index.html

The Birth of Russia: One Year Upon The Coming Of The War: A Russian War on Ukraine Wrapped During The Last Days Of The Invasion

February 23, 2022. I went to bed anticipating a celebration for my husband’s birthday. Our life was getting better. My husband was running his own business. Our daughter had started school and made friends there. We were lucky to have arranged support services and found a special needs nursery for our son. I have been waiting for time to work. I felt like I was happy.

We had to come to terms with our forced displacement after being exhausted, crushed and scared. I will be eternally grateful for the help I received when I came toPrague and began my life in a foreign land.

Thanks to the opportunities for Ukrainians provided by the Czech Republic, my husband got a job. I found special needs classes for my son. He now attends an adaptation group for Ukrainian children and has a learning support assistant. My daughter goes to a Czech school while studying in her Ukrainian school remotely.

Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of several books on the political and social history of Russia. Russian Modernization and Egor Gidar’s Legacy are from the beginning.

We were awoken that morning and found out that the invasion was about to begin. I wrote an open letter denouncing the war, which was co-signed by 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures. Soon it was published, and tens of thousands of Russian citizens added their signatures.

On the third day we, my husband and I, left Russia. I believed it to be a kind of moral obligation. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

We moved to Berlin. My husband went to work as a volunteer at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, where thousands of Ukrainians had been arriving every day. And I started writing a new book. It starts like this.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/18/opinions/one-year-anniversary-putin-war-ukraine-russia-wrap-opinions-ctpr/index.html

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, a bloody war of history for the Canadian immigrant child in Canada, whose father was a Soviet soldier in 1917-1932

I am sure that the Russian people are connected to the outside world. We have to heal ourselves from the disease of Russia’s idea of a great empire, because we failed to see how deadly it was.

This year has been filled with tears and worries. The people killed by Russians were people close to me, including a teammate, the team director, and a friend’s parents.

If anything, for me, the son of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, this has been a war of history repeating itself – from the forced deportation of upwards of 2.5 million Ukrainians, including 38,000 children, to the stealing of Ukrainian grain to the wanton destruction of Ukrainians museums, libraries, churches and monuments.

Time and again since the Russian invasion started, I’m haunted by the darkness in my father’s eyes during the re-telling of chilling dinnertime stories of relatives shipped off to the Soviet gulag, never to return. Millions of Ukrainians died in Stalin’s famine of 1932-33.

An associate lecturer in Ukrainian at the School of Slavonic and East- European Studies, University College London, and a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London, as well as an assistant professor at the School of Slavonic and East- European Studies. She splits her time between London and Ukraine where she works as a translator and producer for foreign journalists.

A year into the full-scale invasion, my passport is a novel in stamps. I teach Ukrainian literature in London, while in Ukranian I get my lessons in courage.

My former classmates from Zaporizhzhia whom, based on our teenage habits, I expected to perish from addictions a long time ago, have volunteered to fight. My hairdresser, whom I expected to remain a sweet summer child, turned out to have fled on foot from the Russia-occupied town of Bucha through the forest with her mother, grandmother and five dogs.

The Russian government and the West had predicted a fall of my capital in three days. These dark winter nights, one sees so many stars over Kyiv which the Russians have only managed to bring closer to eternity.

It seems that there have been many eras since February 22nd. The first was euphoria, when the population gave Putin a huge amount of approval after years of poor ratings.

And in the fall, public demobilization was replaced by mobilization – Putin demanded that citizens share responsibility for the war with him with their bodies. This provoked unprecedented anxiety, but instead of serious protests, the bulk of the population again preferred adaptation.

By aborting the past, he canceled the future. It is easier to live this way when your superiors decide everything for you, and you take for granted what you are told by propaganda.

For me personally and my family, what happened was a catastrophe to which it is impossible to adapt. I was labeled a foreign agent because I was an active commentator on the events, which led to increased personal risk and made people think I was living in a utopian world.

On the evening of February 23 I washed my dog, cleaned the house, took a bath and lit candles. I have a small apartment in the northern part of the city. I loved taking care of it. I loved the life I had. The small routines and the struggles are all involved. The last time I mattered was that night.

I tried to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. And calling my parents to organize buying supplies.

The life I knew began to fall apart after that. I no longer cared what cup of tea I used to drink, how I dressed, or whether or not I took a shower. Life itself no longer mattered, only the battle did.

It is difficult to remember the good times of the pre war era even after a full-scale invasion. I couldn’t relate to my upset about my boyfriend. On February 24, my life was taken from me.

Life values have changed. I like to see my family and friends at least once a year. I believe in our victory, and that all of us will return to our beloved country. We need the world to help us.

I was not concerned with my personal ambitions anymore. Only the common goal was crucial – to raise our flag and show that we are fighting even under these circumstances.

I couldn’t enjoy my victories on the track. They were possible because of the many defenders who had died. But I got messages from soldiers on the frontline. It was my primary motivation to continue my career, as they were so happy to follow our achievements.

The Russian Defense Ministry has warned against the invasion of Kherson (Ukraine) by the late Catherine the Great (Tetiana Horobstova)

Fighter from the private military company had “attacked in several directions at once” around Bakhmut according to WarGonzo, a prominent Russian military blogger. He claimed a slight advance to the east of the city and also stated that Berkhivka, a village to the north-west of Bakhmut, is now under its control.

Mariinka, which was almost obliterated by the fighting, has been reported as one of the offensive actions in several areas of this front.

What Russia says: The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces have carried out attacks with aviation and artillery along the Luhansk-Kharkiv region border and claims to have “defeated enemy units in the areas of the settlements of Masyutovka, Ivanovka in Kharkiv region and Novoselivske” in Luhansk.

KHERSON, Ukraine — Tetiana Horobstova, a retired physics teacher born in Russia, did not believe Russians would attack this city founded by Catherine the Great.

There were warnings from the West that Russia was about to invade Ukraine in February of 2022, but Horobstova woke up bright and early to see the sun rise on her balcony. The sky became pink and green fields were bursting with harvest.

“She said, ‘What are you doing? Maybe the Russians will come back? Pohomii recalled something. “But soon she realized that we would make sure that Kherson is Ukraine forever. She left for Russia. And many others like her left, too.”

The Ukrainian military needed the help of civilians. Oksana Pohomii, a 59-year-old accountant and city council member, had been warning for years that the Kremlin could not be trusted and says at first President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t take the Russian threat seriously.

“They ask me, ‘Oksana, are you going to leave Kherson?’ and I always tell them ‘No, no, no. No way!’ ” she says. I will cook bread for 24 hours straight, load loaves onto a motorboat and bring it to them personally once wefree them, I tell them.

“I was a Viking,” she tells Ukrainian soldiers during COVID. She eventually became a spy for the Soviet Union (Katusha)

With her dyed-fire-red hair braided into a rattail, Pohomii looks like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and a Viking. The recruiting office turned her down because they were flooded with applications, but before the invasion she applied to train as a soldier.

“And you’re listening to this cruelty, listening to his screams, and then all of sudden they’re forcing him to sing the Russian national anthem or ‘Katusha,’ this old Soviet song,” she says. “Insane things.” The fear and psychological pressure were enormous.”

Pohomii took photos and videos of people he suspected of being collaborators, and then passed that information on to Ukraine’s security services.

The suspects included some of her fellow city council members, a prominent doctor who helped the city survive COVID, and even a childhood classmate who was a teacher of Ukrainian history.

“I told them everything I saw about Russian troops — where they live, where they put their vehicles,” Chupikova recalls, adding that she followed them wherever she could.

“Sometimes I’d pretend I was going to the grocery store or waiting for the bus, and I tried to change my clothes as often as I could,” she says. “I’m not saying I’m Agent 007. I did what made sense to me.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

The Ukrainian patriot Iryna and her husband, Valeriii Chupikova, were arrested for giving dirty looks to the soldiers of Ukraine

Chupikova was hard to track, in part, because “I do not look like a threat,” she says. She looks like she is going to give you an apple pie with her short hair and bright blue eyes.

“They want us to look average, not easy to remember so we can work undetected, as if we were moving between puddles of rain,” she says.

She recruited her husband, Valerii Chupikov, to work with her. They used a computer to find coordinates of Russian convoys and then transmitted them to Olha’s in the military of Ukraine.

She would climb on top of her house to attempt to get a signal for her message when the internet was down.

The Russians seemed to be watching everyone. Residents were being arrested for giving Russian soldiers dirty looks.

“There were 11 guys, armed to the teeth, with their faces covered, wearing military fatigues and waving machine guns and pistols,” Horobstova recalls. “Six went upstairs to our apartment and right to her room. She was not denied anything. She said, ‘Yes, I’m a Ukrainian patriot, and I hate you.’ And they took her away.”

The armed men confiscated Iryna’s phones, laptop and memory stick, and Horobstova’s laptop, too, which she says was only filled with lessons for her physics classes.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

A YELLING MAN FROM THE VUKRAINE WAR-KHERSON-SPIANS OF THE UNIVERSE

She says she kept asking what a breeding ground was. “I said, ‘This is the flag of our country, where I live and where my daughter lives. You have a flag of your own. He just kept yelling.”

Diakov, a shy, bearded apartment manager, had spent months spying on Russian-installed politicians for Ukraine’s security services. He suspects the Russians may have found a way to listen to partisans’ conversations. The Russians also got information about cells from the captured partisans.

Almost immediately the torture began. His hands shake as he recalls four long torture sessions, three of them especially brutal. They electrocuted him and beat him with clubs, metal pipes and their boots. They asked him about a man in his espionage cell.

People were screaming in the jail. Russian soldiers raped a man in a corridor, according to another imprisoned partisan, Natalya Havrylenko.

But the Russians did end up taking Diakov for medical care. He had surgeries. Over the next several weeks, he recuperated with Russian soldiers stationed outside his door.

“I thought they were taking me not to the doctor, but to the forest” to be executed, he says. He had heard in prison that other people had died that way.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

Oksana Pohomii, the city councilwoman and partisan on the lookout for collaborators and traitors in Ukraine

Oksana Pohomii, the city councilwoman and partisan on the lookout for suspected collaborators, saw a list of locals who helped organize the referendum and recognized many names, including the son of her former classmate. The classmate forced the residents to vote, according to her.

“She was a teacher of Ukrainian history and yet, here she was, proud to be part of this referendum organized by the butchers,” Pohomii says, referring to the Russians. “She didn’t even try to hide it.”

Politicians installed by the Russians were assassinated. Military officials say that when the U.S. gave the Ukranian army missiles, they helped them target sites that cut off Russian supply routes.

On Oct. 24, when a doctor helped Oleksandr Diakov escape from the hospital, Russian forces were already looting the city and starting to evacuate. Russian-installed officials even removed the bones of Grigory Potemkin, the 18th century Russian commander, from St. Catherine’s Cathedral.

“They were blasting Ukrainian music, and I realized our guys were entering the city,” he says. “Every day we were waiting for this. I kept imagining the day when the Ukrainian soldiers would come home, and all our work would mean something.

Ukrainian troops were in control of Kherson the next morning. Residents poured into the streets and cheered. He was able to cheer from his bed.

Serhiy, the soldier from the local brigade, is back in Kherson. He runs reconnaissance missions to the left bank of the Dnipro and is in touch with partisans there who tell him where collaborators and traitors are hiding.

“I guess they were nervous and afraid that we would seek vengeance on traitors and collaborators,” he says. “I felt bad not to be there. But I understand why I wasn’t.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

The bakery Oksana Pohomii-Olha Chupikova lives in: War Kesteven spies in Ukraine

Oksana Pohomii and Olha Chupikova were once friends, and the two now run a bakery together. Just outside the bakery, a missile strike has left a huge crater.

On a recent morning, they are dusted in flour as they stack the warm loaves they call “Kherson Undefeated Bread.” The bread is free. Pohomii says they deliver it to stressed residents.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

The family of the missing soldier Iryna Horobstova in Bakhmut. They’re back in touch with their mother, Tetiana, and a friend

She says that they don’t try to force anyone to stay. People who don’t leave their homes are people I know. People who can handle the shelling first. After people were killed by the shelling, something broke inside them. They stopped eating and drinking. And I said, “It’s time to leave.’ “

She’s still in touch with the Ukrainian soldier she worked with during her spy days. He’s in Bakhmut, where the fiercest fighting of the war is taking place. She says she worries about him and looks back on the work they did together with pride – and bewilderment.

Many partisans are still missing, presumed to be somewhere in Russian custody. Iryna is a daughter of Tetiana Horobstova. Horobstova hasn’t spoken to her daughter in a while and isn’t certain where she’s being held, though there’s evidence that she’s imprisoned in Russian-occupied Crimea.

“I worry that she is cold, because when they took her away, she was only wearing a summer top,” Horobstova says. There is no underwear, no hygiene pads, and nothing to wear.

Russian Airspace Closures Due to Ukraine’s alleged Attacks on a Small, Multi-Agent UJ-22 in St. Petersburg (Krosnodar)

The UJ-22 is relatively small and versatile, able to fly through poor weather and to travel up to 500 miles (800 kilometers). It is not clear when the photo of the crashed drone was taken.

The defense ministry has claimed that there were two more strikes that were successfully stopped through the use of drone jamming technology in the Krasnodar and Adygea regions.

The defense ministry said that the drones lost control and deviated from their flight path. One vehicle fell in a field, but the other didn’t harm a civilian infrastructure facility.

At least one drone appeared to have evaded Russian defenses, with footage posted on social media overnight and geolocated by CNN showing a fire at energy firm Rosneft’s oil depot in Tuapse, on Krasnodar’s Black Sea coast.

CNN is unable to independently confirm the claims for each alleged attack, and Ukraine did not immediately comment on the incident. Attacks inside Russia have not been commented on by the Ukrainian government.

According to state media, the second-largest city of Russia closed its airspace for a short time Tuesday because of the alleged attacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had been briefed about the closures – but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov had declined to discuss whether it was related to the “incidents in St. Petersburg and Tuapse,” state media reported.

Around the same time, Ukraine’s state-owned weapons manufacturer Ukroboronprom indicated that it is close to finishing work on a new long-range drone – though there is no public indication that such a device has been readied for deployment or was involved in explosions inside Russia.

At the time, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry offered no comment on the strikes – though a presidential adviser tweeted a cryptic message hinting at the possibility Kyiv was indeed behind the December attacks.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/europe/russia-ukraine-drones-alleged-attacks-intl-hnk/index.html

The collapse of a Russian cruise missile in the Dzhankoi town in Crimea and the first prosecution of Russian astrophysics by Putin

“The Earth is round – discovery made by Galileo. Court astrologers were preferred over the study of astronomy in Kremlin. If it was, they would know: If something is launched into other countries’ airspace, sooner or later unknown flying objects will return to departure point,” he said at the time.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said late Monday that a strike destroyed Russian “Kalibr” cruise missiles that were being transported by train in the town of Dzhankoi, in Russian-occupied Crimea.

The region’s air defense system was activated and the head of the annexed peninsula confirmed there was a strike. One person was injured and two buildings were damaged, Askyonov said.

Amateur video geolocated by CNN shows a large explosion and resulting fireball. A person is overheard saying that the train station was hit by the strike. The video did not clearly show what was hit, but CNN could not confirm the exact location of the strike.

The first charges against Moscow officials have been lodged at the International Criminal Court. The Kremlin has labeled the ICC’s actions as “outrageous and unacceptable.”

Putin is in Moscow where he is having dinner with the Chinese leader. During a meeting on Monday, Xi told Putin that China and Russia have “similar goals” and he expressed support for Putin to be reelected. The war in Ukraine was raised in the first hours of their meeting, and is expected to be a key point of discussion throughout Xi’s three-day visit.

Russian attacks on civilians in Zaporizhzhia: The story of Chorniy, the attackers and the Ukrainians

Inside, all the windows are blown out. Chorniy said his father was standing by a window when the explosion happened and narrowly avoided being killed. Chorniy’s parents say they won’t be forced out of their home.

We are angry. We are not afraid. Why would we be? He said that it was their home. I will sleep in my bed. My parents will sleep at their beds. It will be a little bit cold because we don’t have windows but we are not going anywhere.”

Volodymyr Zelensky said the wave of Russian strikes Wednesday would be met with a reply from Ukraine after he called the attack “bestial savagery” on Telegram.

The Biden administration on Wednesday stopped short of accusing Russia of targeting civilians with missile strikes in Zaporizhzhia but said it “certainly” is consistent with previous such attacks.

John Kirby said it was obvious that the Russians were out to target civilians and show no regard for avoiding them.

Zelensky made a surprise visit to the front lines in the east of the country as fighting raged with Russian forces.

Video from the Ukrainian Presidential Office shows Zelensky awarding medals to soldiers in Kharkiv and visiting wounded servicemen at a hospital near the front lines in the Donetsk region.

“It is distressing to look at the cities of Donbas, to which Russia has brought terrible suffering and ruin,” Zelensky said in his nightly address Wednesday.

After a state visit to Moscow by the Chinese president that failed to achieve any breakthrough on resolving the conflict, there was another wave of attacks in Ukranian on Wednesday.

In recent weeks, China has called for a ceasefire in the conflict in Ukraine and released its position on a political solution to the conflict.