Russia accuses Ukraine of trying to use drones in its territory

Ukraine is not the War that you are Winning, you are the War. What you are trying to teach us about Russia and what you don’t want to tell us about it

Shurokin appeared on Moscow television last week to suggest the Kremlin’s new objective – that actually dates back decades – is to force Ukraine into Russia’s orbit and keep it from joining the EU and especially NATO. Shurokin said: “We just want one thing, for Ukraine to be independent of the West and NATO and be friendly to the Russian state.”

On the ground. Russian attacks on the central Poltava region and the eastern Luhansk region have been reported by Ukrainian officials. The General Staff said several civilians were wounded in Russian rocket attacks in the northern region of Kharkiv. It also reported heavy shelling along the frontline that runs north-south on the Luhansk-Kharkiv border.

Putin, however, attempted to claim that the referendums reflected the will of “millions” of people, despite reports from the ground suggesting that voting took place essentially – and in some cases, literally – at gunpoint.

“I want the authorities in Kyiv and their real overlords in the West to hear me: the residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson are becoming our citizens,” Putin said. “Forever.”

The Russian president framed the annexation as an attempt to fix what he sees as a great historical mistake that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He said that despite Putin threatening to nuke the US, there has not been a change in Russia’s nuclear posture.

Russia will now, despite the widespread international condemnation, forge ahead with its plans to fly its flag over some 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) of Ukrainian territory – the largest forcible annexation of land in Europe since 1945.

The Russian leader spoke in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace — the same place where he declared in March 2014 that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was part of Russia.

Putin was joined by the leaders and officials from Moscow-backed regions as well as senior Russian lawmakers and officials looked on.

“All this war that you are waging, you – Russia, it is not the war with NATO, as your propagandists lie,” Zelensky said. “It is not for something historical. It’s for one person to remain in power until the end of his life.

He reeled off a litany of Western military actions stretching over centuries — from the British Opium War in China in the 19th century to Allied firebombings of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

According to him, the United States was the only country that had ever used nuclear weapons. “By the way, they created a precedent,” Mr. Putin added in an aside.

Kiev Decrees on Ukraine During the March 17 War: Russian Defense of the Donbas and “Partially Resolved” Reconciliation

Russia launched waves of attacks on Kyiv, including on Dec. 14, Dec. 16 and again before dawn on Monday. Ukraine said it managed to shoot down many of the incoming explosive drones, but some caused destruction.

There is a celebration on Red Square. Official ratification of the decrees will happen next week, said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman.

The moves follow staged referendums held in occupied territory during a war in defiance of international law. Much of the provinces’ civilian populations has fled fighting since the war began in February, and people who did vote sometimes did so at gunpoint.

Cementing Russia’s hold over the two eastern regions, an area collectively known as the Donbas that Mr. Putin considers his primary prize, could allow the Kremlin to declare a victory at a time when hawks in Russia have criticized Russian forces for not doing enough to prevent recent breakneck gains by Ukrainian forces in the south and northeast of the country.

The war that Mr. Putin ordered the military to wage has brought pain to many Russians, who had not experienced it before. Many men have been drafted who were supposed to be ineligible based on factors like age or disability.

Radchenko says despite Russia’s military setbacks, President Vladimir Putin is doubling down — albeit carefully, such as when he describes it as a “partial” mobilization — to convince his people that they “have no choice but to support the government on this, because if Ukraine and the West have their way, then Russia will simply disappear.”

“The people made their choice,” said Putin in a signing ceremony at the Kremlin’s St. George hall. “And that choice won’t be betrayed” by Russia, he said.

The status of the annexed territories was not something that was discussed by the Russian leader.

Outside the Kremlin, preparations were under way for an evening concert and rally with banners saying Russia and the newly integrated territories are “together forever.”

The move caps a week in which the Kremlin tried to put together referendums in Russian-occupied territories that supposedly delivered overwhelming votes in favor of joining Russia.

Biden said the United States will not recognize the claims of Russia. “This so-called referenda was not a real one and the results were made in Moscow.”

The split of the Soviet Union left the Russian speaking areas separated from their homeland and was framed by Putin as a historical justice.

The western powers accused Russia of using staged votes in order to justify its annexation of Ukraine’s territory and of often resorting to a gun.

The territories will be formally acknowledged by Russia’s parliament and constitutional court, which are likely to approve them.

The Russian government’s annexation has unfolded as it works to deploy an additional 300,000 troops to bolster its military campaign amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has retaken territory in the south and northeast of Ukraine.

Russian officials have openly warned that the newly incorporated territories were entitled to protections under Russia’s nuclear umbrella.

Lyman had been an important link in the Russian front line for both ground communications and logistics. Located 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, it is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk region, both of which Russia annexed Friday after a local “referendum” was held at gunpoint.

“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the town of Lyman.

The reason for Russia’s withdrawal was due to the enemy’s use of both Western-made weaponry and North Atlantic alliance countries.

On the liberation of Lyman village in Ukraine, as revealed by Ukrainian forces in the Luhansk regional military administration and tweeted by Dmitry Medvedev

Ukrainian forces said earlier Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a village neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the military spokesperson for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.

“[The liberation] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,” he said.

The head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday also revealed Saturday further details of the Lyman offensive, suggesting Russian forces had offered to retreat, but to no avail from the Ukrainian side.

The occupiers have been refused the chance to retreat. Accordingly, they have two options. No, they have three options. Hayday said to try to break through or everyone will die.

There are many of them. About 5,000. There is no exact number yet. Five thousand is still a large group. There has never been such a large group in the encirclement before. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the retreat of the group are all completely blocked,” he added.

On Saturday, a video appeared on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank moving up the road with a sign reading the region of Stavky in the background. CNN could not independently verify the original source or the date.

Two Ukrainian soldiers are standing on a car with a flag and tape around their neck in a video that the president’s chief of staff shared on social media.

Kadyrov had said in a post that he would use weapons if he was able to, because the country was at war with NATO.

“In my personal opinion we need to take more drastic measures, including declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. There is no necessity to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.

Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s President between 2008 and 2012, discussed nuclear weapons use on his Telegram channel, saying it was permitted if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by an attack even by conventional forces.

Undoubtedly at the heart of Russia’s aggressive intercept Tuesday was the drone’s gathering of intelligence that could be used to assist Ukraine’s military. But galling as that may be for Moscow, the US and Russia haven’t declared war against each other, and physical attacks on the other’s military in international waters and airspace remain illegal except in self-defense against direct, imminent attack.

The death of the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the first Ukrainian offensive since Vladimir Putin took office

Also on Saturday, the director-general of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of state nuclear company Energoatom.

The director-general was taken out of the car and blindfolded while he was on his way to the plant. There is no information on his fate for the time being, according to Petro Kotin of Energoatom.

The minister of internal affairs of Ukranian said that the detaining ofMurashovjeopardizes the safety of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.

Kotin called for Murashov’s release, and urged the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “take all possible immediate actions to urgently free” him.

Russia’s foreign ministry condemned what it called the “monstrous crimes” of the “regime in Kyiv,” after US President Joe Biden promised more military support to Ukraine during Zelensky’s summit at the White House on Wednesday.

The ministry called for the UN, the IAEA, and the G7 to take decisive measures to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

And in Kharkiv, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found following Russian shelling on a convoy of cars near the eastern town of Kupiansk.

The convoy of cars that were shot dead near the village ofKurylivka were discovered by the SBU and police on Friday.

Russia said it would help evacuate residents of Kherson from the region as the Ukrainian offensive continued. The announcement came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest indication that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have repeatedly hit Ukraine’s capital and other large cities around the country in recent weeks, seeking to wipe out the power grid and forcing millions of Ukrainians to go without electricity, heating and water during the freezing winter months.

Kadyrov accused Lapin of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and not providing enough for his troops.

An emergency situation was declared at the airfield in the city of Sevastopol on the Russian side of the peninsula. There were big billows of smoke visible from a distance in the Russian-held resort. The plane that rolled off the runway in Belbek caught fire, according to authorities.

One year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine believing he’d take Kyiv within days, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky struck a defiant note, insisting that he was “certain” his country would win the war.

The Stability of Crime in Ukraine: NPR’s View of the Violations of the Kiev Convoy and the State of Emergency

The Security Service of Ukraine, the secret police force, posted a picture of the convoy that was attacked. At least one truck appeared to have been blown up, with burned corpses in what remained of its truck bed. The vehicle in front of the convoy was ablaze. Bodies lay on the side of the road or still inside vehicles, which appeared pockmarked with bullet holes.

The power plant repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians continued running it after Russian troops seized the power station, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure amid ongoing shelling nearby.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian cities Wednesday knocked out power and water service and caused at least six civilian deaths in the latest assault on the country’s struggling energy grid, Ukrainian authorities said.

US President Joe Biden is expected to announce an additional $1.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s expected visit to the White House. The significant boost in aid is expected to be headlined by the Patriot missile defense systems that are included in the package, a US official told CNN.

Two days ago, an eruption damaged a bridge and caused a major blow to the Russian government. Putin was wounded in battle and had been under pressure to use force following the explosion, which Putin blamed on Kyiv and condemned as an act of terror.

In an article published Sunday, a prominent Russian newspaper reported that Russian troops were plagued by desertion and delayed arrival of reserves, in the last few days of their occupation.

Sept. 26: Few trainers were on hand when the first troops arrived at military bases, according to British defense intelligence. Putin later said “mistakes” in the call-up should be corrected.

70 countries and the international organizations have pledged more than $1 billion to repair Ukraine’s infrastructure. Last week, the Pentagon announced that an additional $275 million in security assistance for Ukraine had been approved, including weapons, artillery rounds and equipment to help Ukraine boost its air defense. In November, the US announced a $53 million package to support repairs to Ukraine’s power system.

A joint statement was made by the leaders of nine European countries. Pope Francis made a strong plea to end the war.

Here you can read past recaps. 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.

The Russian military may have been left behind to stage sabotage operations in order to engage the Ukrainians in street battles.

The visit by Putin coincides with the ninth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. The International Criminal Court accused the Russian president of committing war crimes inUkraine on the same day a warrant was issued for his arrest over an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

Zaporizhzhia, a city of the Ukrainians annexed by Russian troops in December 2017: a conference call on the introduction of the European Political Community

Governor Oleksandr Starukh wrote on his Telegram channel that many people were rescued from the multi-story buildings, including a 3-year-old girl who was taken to a hospital for treatment.

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 of the same name remains under Ukrainian control.

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has plans to speak with his Ukrainian counterpart about the Russian moves. He will also discuss efforts to set up a secure protection zone around the facility, which has been damaged in the fighting and seen staff including its director abducted by Russian troops.

The leaders from more than 40 countries are holding a meeting in Czech Republic on Thursday to plan for the introduction of a “European Political Community” to boost security and prosperity across the continent.

“We will keep consulting residents who would be eager to embrace Russia, and we will take back some territories,” Peschang said in a conference call with reporters.

In recent battlefield defeats for Russian troops, the Ukrainians have been able to take back villages in Kherson, which have badly hurt the image of a powerful Russian military. They have also fueled fighting among Kremlin insiders and left Putin increasingly cornered.

Military hospitals in Russia have a lot of wounded soldiers and lack supplies, according to the deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government. Russian soldiers will be going to the formerly soviet state of Ukraine in order to reestablish relations with the people there.

Lyman sustained heavy damage both during the occupation and as Ukrainian soldiers fought to retake it. Mykola, a 71-year-old man who gave only his first name, was among about 100 residents who lined up for aid on Wednesday.

The Russia-Ukraine Correspondence: a complete disaster after the February 24 Assassination? A frustrated Russian citizen’s critic critic critics ask the United States

“We want the war to end so that the shops and hospitals can resume working,” he said. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged, a complete disaster.”

In his nightly address, Zelenskyy told Moscow that it had already lost the war it launched on February 24.

“There’s no doubt it was a terrorist act directed at the destruction of critically important civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” Putin said in a video of a meeting Sunday with the chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. The authors, perpetrators and those who ordered it were all from the special services of Ukraine.

While Russia has not retaliated in a specific way for the assassination, the United States is concerned that such attacks — while high in symbolic value — have little direct impact on the battlefield and could provoke Moscow to carry out its own strikes against senior Ukrainian officials. American officials have been frustrated with Ukraine’s lack of transparency about its military and covert plans, especially on Russian soil.

That is the worrisome thing. The talk in Russia isn’t about ending a war, it’s about reversing the mistakes that forced a retreat, reinforcing discipline and doubling down in Ukraine.

A former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party said that we need to stop lying. We brought this up many times before. It’s not getting through to individual senior figures.

Kartapolov complained that the Ministry of Defense was evading the truth about incidents such as Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions neighboring Ukraine.

Valuyki is in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. When it comes to Russian targets across the border, Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance.

Boris Rozhin: Vladimir V. Putin, the Great Patriotic War and the Russian Embassy in Lyman, Ukraine – Comment on “Russian Attacks on World War II”

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.”

Kadyrov is less reticent about naming Russian commanders when he implicates them of being behind the retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman.

“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.

One of the central features of Putinism is a fetish for World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. And those in Russia’s party of war often speak admiringly of the brutal tactics employed by the Red Army to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht, including the use of punishment battalions – sending soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice or wavering against German positions as cannon fodder – and the use of summary execution to halt unauthorized retreats.

Kadyrov was promoted to the rank of colonelgeneral recently by Putin and he’s been an advocate of the past methods. He recently said in another Telegram post that, if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

The barrage continued on a day when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to human rights activists in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, an implicit rebuke to Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, for his invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said that the rockets went across from the nuclear plant and damaged power lines, gas pipes, and a raft of civilian businesses. Russia and Ukraine have for months accused each other of firing at and around the nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest. It is run by its pre-occupation Ukrainian staff.

The mayor’s building was badly damaged by the rocket attack. Plumes of smoke swirled around the building, which had rows of blown-out windows and a partially collapsed ceiling. Cars were burned to the ground. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Kyiv didn’t claim responsibility or comment on the attack.

There have been several attacks on Russian interests in the Black Sea and in the state of Crimea. Russia had threatened for weeks to pull out of the grain deal, in part, analysts said, to seek leverage.

Vladimir Putin’s first visit to Crimea since his 2018 invasion appeared on the Kerch bridge and relaunched ferry links between Bakhmut and Sevastopol

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Europe’s biggest power plant had been restored to the grid after losing its last source of external power due to shelling.

There will be more acts of terrorism on the territory of Russia, Putin stated in the days following the bridge explosion.

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. There is no sign that the counter-offensives can be stopped in time for the end of the year.

Last week Putin appeared on the Kerch Bridge, where he was shown repairs and drove a car across the structure that he himself officially opened in 2018.

Russian units have been pressing an offensive towards the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk for months but have suffered heavy losses as Ukrainian forces have targeted them in what is largely open rural territory.

Rail traffic was resuming slowly. Two passenger trains left the city of Simferopol and the city of Sevastopol on their way to the bridge. Passenger ferry links between Crimea and the Russian mainland were being relaunched Sunday.

The Crimean Peninsula is a popular destination for Russian tourists and home to a Russian naval base. A Russian tourist association estimated that 50,000 tourists were in Crimea on Saturday.

When the enemy hit Krasnodar on Saturday, protester Anastasia Hryn says the Russian president has not responded forcefully enough

The route of the truck was already established, and it had gone to numerous places, including the southern Russian region of Krasnodar.

“The enemy hit a critical infrastructure facility. According to the Telegram video on Thursday, the place where the medical aid and Humanitarian aid distribution point is located was damaged by shell fragments.

When the sound of air raid sirens followed by a blast woke Anastasiia Hryn, she and her son went to the basement shelter. They weren’t surprised, and they didn’t let it affect their spirits.

Three volunteers dug a shallow grave for a German shepherd killed in the strike in a neighborhood destroyed by a missile, the dog’s leg blown away 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 inspired the opposition while demoralizing 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.

Inhuman carpet bombing of Lyman, Ukraine, by Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and the train system suspending in Kyiv

After a months-long Russian occupation, authorities exhumed 20 bodies from a mass grave in the destroyed Ukrainian city of Lyman, Ukrainian national police said. There are currently 200 people buried in one location, and there is another grave that holds the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. According to the police, members of the military were buried in a 40 meter trench, while the civilians were buried in single graves.

The power supply to the capital of Ukrenergo has been stable after some of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missiles. The Prime Minister of Ukrainian warned that there is a lot of work to be done and asked people to use less energy during peak hours.

The US and NATO countries are trying to figure out how to help the Ukrainians fight back against Russian attacks that have destroyed half of the country’s energy infrastructure.

Russia was hit by a depletion of its cruise and tactical missiles. Russia has enough missiles for at least two or three waves of strikes on the electrical grid of Ukraine, according to the military intelligence chief of the country.

But the proximate reason for this action was in fact Putin’s utterly inhumane carpet bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure. This is all part of Putin trying to destroy the nation by throwing rockets at it as winter looms.

Putin stated in a brief television appearance on Monday that it was impossible to leave such crimes unanswered. If attempts to conduct terrorist attacks on our land continues, Russian responses will be tough and will correspond to threats to the Russian Federation.

In the early hours of Thursday, blasts could be heard in the city. The city had been hit four times by 9 a.m. One of the strikes hit close to Kyiv’s main train station, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs. Authorities have asked people to stay indoors.

For several hours on Monday morning Kyiv’s subway system was suspended, with underground stations serving as bunkers. Rescue workers attempted to extricate people from the rubble after the air raid alert was lifted.

Ukrainian terrorist attacks on the bridge: Russia’s approach to the military operations in Ukraine has changed, saying Ukraine’s response has been “thailand”

The Prime Minister said that a total of 11crucial infrastructure facilities in eight regions have been damaged.

Putin convened an operational meeting of his Security Council on Monday, a day after calling the explosions on the bridge a terrorist attack and saying the organizers and people who died were Ukrainian special services.

The head of annexed Crimea claims that Russia’s approach to the military operation it calls special in Ukraine has changed.

“I have been saying from the first day of the special military operation that if such actions to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure had been taken every day, we would have finished everything in May and the Kyiv regime would have been defeated,” he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of “energy terrorism” as the aerial bombardments have left many people without heat amid freezing temperatures. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is “weaponizing winter” in its effort to demoralize the Ukrainian resistance.

Ukraine has allies who understand this need. Ahead of a meeting in Brussels Wednesday of Ukraine’s supporters, General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “after Russia attacked the Ukrainian civilian population, we will be looking for air defense options that will help the Ukrainians.”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that Putin was terrorizing innocent civilians in Kyiv and other cities. “[The Netherlands] condemns these heinous acts. The will of the Ukrainian people seems to be impossible to understand by Putin.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres termed the attacks unacceptable and said that civilians are paying the highest price.

The actions of President Zelensky during the G7 strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 14, 2015: the city’s passenger terminal

Zelensky told CNN that he would address the G7 meeting via video conference on Tuesday, which was confirmed by the office of the chancellor of Germany.

The strikes happened 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.

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

In Kyiv, Ukraine Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko says that at least two museums and the National Philharmonic concert halls sustained heavy damage. The main passenger terminal in the country was damaged by a nearby strike this morning and trains were held up during rush hour.

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

“It’s not easy for me to find any logic to their work because they are only for civilian purposes,” he said.

The explosion of a balcony after a bus stop killed 20+ people, and Russia was not starting yet, wrote Kadyrov, a loyalist to Putin

An elderly man looks out from a first floor balcony next to a bus stop. There was shattered glass on the ground. He said he had been watering the plants on his balcony just minutes before the blast, but went to his kitchen to make breakfast.

“The explosion blew open all of my cabinets, and nearly knocked me to the ground,” he said. I was on the balcony, full of glass, only five minutes before.

The top brass in the country said in a statement that the air defense took down 40 incoming air attacks, but several dozen more managed to get through. Iranian-made suicide drones were blamed for many of the attacks. The Russian government was requested for more assistance from the Russian government in anticipation of Ukrainian retaliation after today’s attacks.

“We warned Zelenskyy that Russia was not started yet,” wrote Ramzan Kadyrov, a loyalist to Putin, who has attacked Russia’s Defense Ministry for incompetence.

CNN Observer’s Correspondence with the Mayor of Kiev following the Kerch Straight Bridge Explosion on Sunday, February 21st

Michael Bociurkiw is 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. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

Even amid irrepressible jubilation here in Ukraine in the aftermath of a massive explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of retaliation by the Kremlin were never far away.

As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).

The mayor said an explosion occurred in one city district as the result of the attack on energy infrastructure facilities. It wasn’t clear whether that was caused by drones or other weapons. Emergency power outages were underway in the capital as a 19-year-old man was hospitalized after being wounded.

Residents gathered in 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.

The explosion of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine during the first two months of the Second World War, and why Putin didn’t want a second gun

It seems that dictators have a penchant for hardwiring newly claimed territory with record-breaking infrastructure projects. Putin opened the Europe’slongest bridge by driving a truck across it. After Beijing regained Macau and Hong Kong, it was one of their first acts to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The bridge opened after two years of delays.

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

Facing increased criticism at home has placed Putin on thin ice, and it was an act of selfish desperation.

In the week, the leader of Ukraine’s military intelligence said he expects Ukrainian forces to move into Crimea by the summer.

The significance of the strikes is large, close to the government quarter. It’s a red line on the 229th day of the war so it should be seen by Western governments.

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.

High tech defense systems are needed to protect vital energy infrastructure around the country. The need to keep heating systems protected is urgent in the winter.

The Russian response to the Ukrainian crisis: The onset of war and the role of militaries in the war-affected region of the Gulf

The time is right for the west to impose travel and trade restrictions on Russia, but only if the Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, agree to it.

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. The weak response will be seen as a sign that the Kremlin is still weaponizing energy, migration and food.

State television flaunted the suffering as it reported it on Monday. It showed plumes of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.

The Russian military seems to have begun a new tactic in its efforts to turn the tide in its war with Ukraine, which is trying to destroy dozens of missiles and drones from multiple directions.

According to Moscow, a percentage of projectiles are bound to get through and that is what the missile defense of Ukraine is being built for.

Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.

The Pentagon’s view at the time was that of its weapons stocks, Russia was “running the lowest on cruise missiles, particularly air-launched cruise missiles,” but that Moscow still had more than 50% of its pre-war inventory.

Some of that inventory was dispatched this week. But Russia has recently resorted to using much older and less precise KH-22 missiles (originally made as an anti-ship weapon), of which it still has large inventories, according to Western officials. Weighing 5.5 tons, they are designed to take out aircraft carriers. Dozens of casualties were at a shopping mall in Kremenchuck in June.

The Russians have also been adapting the S-300 – normally an air defense missile – as an offensive weapon, with some effect. These have wrought devastation in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv, among other places, and their speed makes them difficult to intercept. They are not accurate.

He told CNN’s Richard Quest that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

Jens Stoltenberg told reporters thatUkraine needed more systems to stop missile attacks. He said that the NATO allies provided the air defense systems which shot down many of the incoming missiles. As long as they don’t all go down, there is still need for more.

In August, US officials said Russia had bought drones and was training its forces how to use them. President Zelensky stated that Russia had ordered 2,400 Shahed-136 drones from Iran.

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.”

The system is considered one of the most powerful weapons to defend airspace against missiles and aircraft. Because of its long-range and high-altitude capability, it can potentially shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft far from their intended targets inside Ukraine.

Western systems are beginning to trickle in. The arrival of the first unit of the US National Advanced Surface-to- Air Missile System, from Germany, is considered to be the beginning of a new era of air defense.

“This is only the beginning. And we need more,” Reznikov said Wednesday before tweeting as he met with Ukraine’s donors at the Brussels meeting:” Item #1 on today’s agenda is strengthening (Ukraine’s) air defense. A person is feeling optimistic.

These are not off-the-shelf. It was necessary for the IRIS-T to be manufactured for Ukraine. Western governments have limited inventories of these systems. Ukraine is being attacked from three directions.

How did Ukraine attack Kramatorsk? Analysis of blast damage on a Russian air bridge and missile attack in Ukraine’s Oct. 8 attack

Ukraine’s senior military commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, tweeted Tuesday his thanks to Poland as “brothers in arms” for training an air defense battalion that had destroyed nine of 11 Shaheeds.

The Ukrainian President has long been seeking more long-range missiles from NATO allies. Zelensky asked for more air defense help in a conversation with US President Joe Biden. He told Biden that “Russian missile terror” has destroyed about half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

This week, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told the international community just how much money his country currently needed to rebuild and keep its economy afloat: $57 billion. He gave that figure to the boards of governors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He said that $17 billion was needed to rebuild schools, hospitals, transport systems, and housing, with $2 billion going to expand exports to Europe, and the final $2 billion going to restore Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Surveillance video posted by Russian media shows a single truck driving from mainland Russia toward Crimea before a flash of light swallows he bridge. At least three collapsed road spans are on piers in the shallow water.

Oleg Ignatov, a senior Russia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the long lines for the ferry crossing had been exacerbated by security checkpoints set up after the bridge explosion.

Moscow’s attack in Kramatorsk came after a top Kyiv official said Russia is gearing up for a “maximum escalation” of the nearly years-long war in Ukraine.

There are many theories about who is responsible for the Oct. 8 attack in Ukraine and how it happened. Andrew Barr says that despite all of the publicly available photos and videos, it’s quite difficult to be certain about this.

“The damage is definitely consistent with an explosion in the center of a bridge span, as anything else would have caused damage to the pier,” says Barr, who specializes in analyzing blast damage in war zones.

Nick Waters, an analyst with the digital forensic firm Bellingcat, says that there isn’t much blast damage on the bridge’s underside.

Soon after the explosion, Ukrainian experts quickly dismissed the notion that a Ukrainian missile had targeted the bridge, citing the 180-mile distance from Ukrainian-held territory as a technical limitation. Missiles that travel far have been refused by the US and other countries who supply weapons to Ukraine.

A video of a truck and its X-ray is being published by the FSB. Where on the x-ray did one of the wheels and frame disappear? It is a pic of OnKbOndxVO.

Ukrainian journalists pointed out that the two images posted by Russian state media showed different trucks and not the same one.

He says the Crimean bridge is designed to have a single section of road floating above several piers and detached from other sections. When one span falls into the water, it pulls several other spans with it.

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.

Barr says it was a succesful attack on a guarded structure, timed to coincide with the train. “That’s highly suggestive of a carefully planned military operation rather than a lone actor or other group.”

John Kirby told CNN that the Russians can’t even throw that kind of thing together in a couple days. This wasn’t in response to what happened in Yemen, but a continuation of Putin’s designs to specifically target Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

For the first time, the war is heading towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

“We are on the edge of a very active phase of hostilities, February and March will be very active,” Andriy Yusov, representative of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, said on national television.

The stakes of the war have been raised once more as winter approaches. Giles said there is no doubt Russia would like to keep it up. But the Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a direct message to the Kremlin, too. Giles said that they can do things that take us by surprise so let’s get used to it.

These counter-offensives have shifted the momentum of the war and disproved a suggestion, built up in the West and in Russia during the summer, that while Ukraine could stoutly defend territory, it lacked the ability to seize ground.

Ukrainian troops hoist the country’s flag above a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month. Ukrainian officials say they have liberated hundreds of settlements since their counter-offensive began.

The Russians are hoping to avoid a collapse of their frontline before winter sets in because they want to end the war with Ukraine.

“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 so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. The winter energy crisis in Europe will always be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.

“We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Jeremy Fleming, a UK’s spy chief, said in a rare speech on Tuesday.

That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”

How much manpower each side has left in reserve will be important to determining the direction of the momentum in the coming weeks. It was reported on Tuesday that it had taken down 18 missiles and on Monday it had taken down dozens.

Some help for Putin may be on the way, however. Fears of deepened military cooperation between close allies after Alexander Lukashenko said that a joint regional group of troops will be deployed by both countries were raised. There has been an alleged Ukrainian threat to the security of the country in recent days, which could lead to some level of involvement.

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide a new route into the Kharkiv oblast, which Ukrainian forces have wrested back from Russia, if Putin focuses on getting that territory back.

By flipping the narratives of the conflict over the past two months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has achieved one of his objectives: showing his Western allies that their military aid can help win the war.

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.

Kamikaze Drones: Why Ukraine is Failing in the Western Hemisphere? The case of a Ukrainian suicide drone

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

What are kamikaze drones? Suicide drones, or Kamikaze drones, are aerial weapon systems. They are known as a loitering munition because they are capable of waiting for some time in an area identified as a potential target and only strike once an enemy asset is identified.

In Russia, a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the Bryansk region that borders with Ukraine, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday morning. It was left without power as a result.

Militia in Donetsk during Vladimir V. Putin’s offensive against Ukraine: The France Defense Minister says the Russian Army is mobilized

Mobilized forces will be used in some way. If used in support roles, like drivers or refuelers, they might ease the burden on the remaining parts of Russia’s exhausted professional army. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. They are not likely to become a capable fighting force. There are signs of discipline issues among the soldiers who have been mobilized.

Ukrainian officials have warned for some time of a renewed Russian offensive and have asked for more powerful weaponry from Western allies to counter the threat.

The strikes in the Belgorod region next to Ukraine and the destruction of the municipal administration building in Donetsk, a city firmly controlled by Russia and its proxies since 2014, sent a powerful signal that the mayhem unleashed by President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion is spreading far beyond the front lines.

The blasts came a day after two men opened fire on their fellow Russian soldiers at a training camp in the Belgorod region, killing 11 of them and wounding 15 before being killed themselves.

Zelenskyy accused Russia of including convicts “with long sentences for serious crimes” in its front-line troops in return for pay and amnesty — something Western intelligence officials have also asserted.

— 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. The French defense minister said in an interview published in Le Parisien that between 2000 and 2500 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs and training on equipment supplied by France.

The institute said that Moscow may have committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly deportations of Ukrainians.

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 original comments from Marat Khusnullin were reported by RIA Novosti on Friday.

The Russian government is operating a systematic network of at least 40 child custody centers for thousands of Ukrainian children, a potential war crime, a Yale University team reported.

Pro-Kremlin fighters have been accused by the Ukrainian military of violating international humanitarian law by evicting civilians in occupied territories and housing them in their homes. It said the evictions were happening in Rubizhne, in the eastern Luhansk region. The claim didn’t provide any evidence.

In the past, he’s criticized Russian generals who he claims directed the war effort far from the frontline. The former defense minister of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed DONETSK PEOPLE’S REPUBLIION was found guilty in a Dutch court of mass murder for his involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine.

The social media posts lashed out at Moscow’s battlefield failures. The Ukrainian defense intelligence agency is offering a $100,000 reward for his capture.

Anton Gerashcenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Internal Ministry, reported attacks on infrastructure near the city’s main rail station, but lines were operating as normal midmorning Monday.

Zelenskyy’s chief-of-staff, Andriy Yermak, again called on the west to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems. He said there was no time for slow actions.

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.

Russia is not threatening the people of Ukraine: the latest attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure by the Kremlin and the new Russian invasion commander Sergei Surovikin

The foreign ministers of the European Union are in Luxembourg. The EU’s top diplomat told reporters that there would be concrete evidence to support Iran’s involvement in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Russian drone strikes on the southern port city of Odesa left more than 1.5 million people in that region without power Saturday night, the latest attacks in an ongoing series of assaults on Ukrainian energy infrastructure by the Kremlin.

NATO will hold nuclear deterrence exercises starting Monday. NATO says the “Steadfast Noon” drills are not a threat to Ukraine but a yearly activity.

Russian agents have arrested eight people who are suspected of carrying out a large explosion on a bridge.

It is impossible to imagine any other country being allowed by the world to wage the kind of campaign Russia has in Ukraine and Syria, even with an overt agenda of exterminating the Ukrainian people.

Some regional officials — including the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin — appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. “At present, no measures are being introduced to limit the normal rhythm of the city’s life,” Mr. Sobyanin wrote on his Telegram channel.

And despite the new power granted them by Mr. Putin, the regional governors of Kursk, Krasnodar and Voronezh said no entry or exit restrictions would be imposed.

The martial law in Ukraine will send a warning message to Russians, the first time since World War II that Moscow has declared martial law.

The people are concerned that Russia will close the borders and the siloviki will do what they want, according to Ms. Stanovaya.

On Tuesday, the newly appointed commander of the Russian invasion, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, acknowledged that his army’s position in Kherson was “already quite difficult” and appeared to suggest that a tactical retreat might be necessary. General Surovikin said he was ready to make “difficult decisions” about military deployments, but did not say more about what those might be.

Russia, which has been a dominant military force in Syria since 2015 and helps maintain the government’s grip on power, still keeps a sizable presence there. But the change could herald shifts in the balance of power in one of the world’s most complicated conflict zones, and may lead Israel — Syria’s enemy — to rethink its stance toward the Ukraine conflict.

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 reporter for The New York Times and CBS News. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion at CNN.

He wants to distract from the obvious fact that he is losing badly on the battlefield and failing to achieve even the scaled back objectives of his invasion.

The European Union is Prolonging War Against the Kremlin: An Interpretation of French and German Prime Ministers’ Confidence

A variety of variables affect the ability to keep going, ranging from availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter to the popular will across a broad range of nations with often conflicting priorities.

The European Union agreed a plan to regulate the prices of energy around 4 am on Friday in the Belgian capital, after Russia and the Kremlin embargoed imports and cut gas supplies.

These include an emergency cap on the benchmark European gas trading hub – the Dutch Title Transfer Facility – and permission for EU gas companies to create a cartel to buy gas on the international market.

While French President Emmanuel Macron waxed euphoric leaving the summit, which he described as having “maintained European unity,” he conceded that there was only a “clear mandate” for the European Commission to start working on a gas cap mechanism.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, is skeptical of price caps. Now energy ministers must work out details with a Germany concerned such caps would encourage higher consumption – a further burden on restricted supplies.

All of these divisions are part of Putin’s dream. Manifold forces in Europe could prove central to achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, which amounts to the continent failing to agree on essentials.

Germany and France are already at loggerheads on many of these issues. The German Chancellor and the French President have made a conference call for Wednesday.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-winter-andelman/index.html

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has spoken out about the crisis in the light of his campaign against the extension of the Cold War to Ukraine

A new government took control of Italy. Giorgia Meloni was sworn in Saturday as Italy’s first woman prime minister and has attempted to brush aside the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her far-right coalition partners meanwhile, has expressed deep appreciation for Putin.

Silvio Berlusconi, himself a four-time prime minister of Italy, was recorded at a gathering of his party loyalists, describing with glee the 20 bottles of vodka Putin sent to him together with “a very sweet letter” on his 86th birthday.

The other leading member of the ruling Italian coalition, Matteo Salvini, named Saturday as deputy prime minister, said during the campaign, “I would not want the sanctions [on Russia] to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them.”

At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orban has pro-Putin sympathies and Poland takes offense.

This is trickier. Congress’s likely new Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, has warned the Biden administration cannot expect a “blank cheque” from the new GOP-led House of Representatives.

The influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus said on Monday that they want Biden to start talks with Russia about ending the conflict in order to stop the missiles and drones from striking into the interior.

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Secretary of state called Dmytro Kuleba to talk about America’s support.

The Russian War in Ukraine: The Challenge of the Cold War and High-Tech Smuggles Embedded in the Eastern Hemisphere

There is an incentive for Putin to prolong the conflict, in order to allow the forces in the West to kick in. A long, cold winter in Europe, persistent inflation and higher interest rates leading to a recession on both sides of the Atlantic could mean irresistible pressure on already skeptical leaders to dial back on financial and military support.

The scale of Russian losses in these infantry advances is uncertain. The advances put ill-prepared units on well- dug-in defensive positions of the Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainian military’s estimates of Russian casualties are seen to be inflated, but the relative increase in the reported numbers suggests a rising toll. On Friday, the Ukrainian military said more than 800 Russian soldiers had been wounded or killed over the previous 24 hours.

Russia’s energy profits are being pinched by the West by limiting the amount countries pay for Russian oil and limiting the amount of seaborne oil imports. There are signs that the efforts are decreasing profits.

Russian production of hypersonic missiles has all but ceased “due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors,” said the report. Plants that produce anti-aircraft systems have stopped production, aircraft are being cannibalized, and Russia has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks for replenishment. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.

In terms of setting up black market networks abroad to source what he needs to fuel his war machine, Putin has been stymied by most turns, much as Kim has done in North Korea. The United States has recently imposed sanctions on a number of shadow companies and individuals associated with hubs in Taiwan, Armenia,Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France and Luxembourg to procure high-tech goods for Russia.

The Justice Department also announced charges against individuals and companies seeking to smuggle high-tech equipment into Russia in violation of sanctions.

Why did Russia join the Ukranian-Ukraine Grain-Grain Agreement? Comment on Podolyak, Zelensky and Beasley

The Ukrainian officials said that Russia rejoined the deal because they saw other parties were in no hurry to call off the deal. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, said that the person who is blackmailed with Russian roots is inferior to those who are stronger and can clearly state their position.

Russia has complained about these deliveries a lot, but has not been much of a critic when it comes to the crossing of red lines.

The ministry said that the Russians believe that the guarantees received so far seem enough and that they are going to continue with the agreement.

Russia’s assault on Ukrainian ports and its patrols of Black Sea halted Ukraine’s grain exports just after the war started, causing food prices to skyrocket. The head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, warned in May that the world was “marching toward starvation.”

The United Nations’ envoy for the initiative said on his account that he was glad that Russia had decided to go ahead with it.

Moscow has also said that it wants to facilitate its own exports of grain and fertilizer and address the concerns of its trading partners who fear that, by dealing with Russia, they could violate Western sanctions. It was not immediately clear whether that Russian demand had been addressed.

The Cold War in Ukraine: A Global Analysis CNN ‘Breaking it Out’, CNN’ and CNN’s Ridaghitis

A former CNN producer and correspondent,Fridaghitis is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly panelist on CNN and a columnist for The Washington Post. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN is reporting that Iran is getting ready to send more weapons to Russia for the fight againstUkraine.

Iran’s rivals in the Middle East, NATO members and nations that are still interested in restoring the nuclear deal with Iran, which aims to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic bomb, have found a new interest in the strengthened relationship between Moscow and Tehran.

Everyone is being affected by the war in Ukraine. Fuel prices went up because of the conflict and caused a global explosion of inflation.

The historian Yuval Noah Harari has argued that no less than the direction of human history is at stake, because a victory by Russia would reopen the door to wars of aggression, to invasions of one country by another, something that since the Second World War most nations had come to reject as categorically unacceptable.

Many of the actions that happen far from the battlefields have repercussions there. When oil-producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, decided last month to slash production, the US accused the Saudis of helping Russia fund the war by boosting its oil revenues. (An accusation the Saudis deny).

Separately, weapons supplies to Ukraine have become a point of tension with Israel, which has developed highly effective defense systems against incoming missiles. Israel refused to provide the systems that the Ukrainians had asked for, citing its own strategic concerns.

The U.S. Armed Forces and the Crisis in Kyrgyzstan, As reported by the Investigative Report from the Center for Studies of War

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. When they come with such powerful momentum, they pack a political punch. Political leaders in countries have been put in a hard spot because of inflation.

It isn’t all on the fringes. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader who could become speaker of the House after next week’s US elections, suggested the GOP might choose to reduce aid to Ukraine. Progressive Democrats released and withdrew a letter calling for negotiations. Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official during the Obama administration, said they’re all bringing “a big smile to Putin’s face.”

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 videos have not been independently verified and their exact location on the front line could not be determined.

Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday that Russian forces had tripled the intensity of attacks along some parts of the front. The attacks were coming from a time period or place he did not specify.

“We discussed the situation at the front,” General Zaluzhnyi wrote. He said that his US colleague had been told to back off the attacks by the Ukrainian forces.

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.

The institute said on Thursday that Russian forces would have had more success if they had waited until they had enough people to build a force large enough to overcome Ukrainian defenses.

With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, and conflicting signals over what may be coming, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.

Although some Republicans warned that funding for Ukraine might be limited if the Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives, this week will see the results of the election in America.

U.S. troops in Kherson, Ukraine, after a major Russian withdrawal of its force across the Dnipro river: Prime Minister Erdogan meets with the Prime Minister

The Turkish President will meet with the Swedish Prime Minister on Tuesday. Erdogan insists Sweden must meet certain conditions before it can join NATO.

The U.N. General Assembly is currently holding a session on Ukranian issues. Russia asked the Security Council to discuss the Nord Stream pipelines. And Russia’s parliament will hold extraordinary meetings.

More than 4 million Ukrainians were without electricity as attacks on their infrastructure left Russia accused of energy terrorism.

$400 million more was announced by the Pentagon on Nov. 4, to be used for security aid to Ukranian.

BLAHODATNE, Ukraine — Ukraine’s troops entered the key city of Kherson on Friday, its military said, as jubilant residents waved Ukrainian flags after a major Russian retreat.

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 Kremlin still considered Kherson a part of Russia despite soldiers fleeing as Putin annexed it in September.

As he spoke, Ukrainian soldiers continued to make their way through towns and villages, greeting residents with joy after nine months of occupation.

The Russian Civil War in Kherson, Moldova, Revisited: U.S. Forces and Drones Driven by the Khmer Rouge

There were no Russian troops or equipment along the front near Kherson, according to the commander of the Ukrainian drones.

“The Russians left all the villages,” he said. We looked at a lot of villages with drones, but did not see any cars. We have no idea how they are leaving. They are at night.

The apparent final hours of the Russian occupation overnight Thursday to Friday featured several explosions and were chaotic and disorienting, according to residents of Kherson reached by telephone on Friday morning.

Serhiy, a retiree living in the city who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons, said in a series of text messages that conditions in the city had unraveled 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 nothing except a phone signal, no heating and no water.

While there was no visible Russian military presence in the city on Friday, four residents described seeing Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes — some armed — moving about parts of the city.

According to the General Staff, there were 34 places in the south that were hit by Russian fire. The Russians are seizing boats and other watercraft, according to the report.

Now Poland is facing the repercussions from these attacks – and it’s not the only bordering country. Russian rockets have also knocked out power across neighboring Moldova, which is not a NATO member, and therefore attracted considerably less attention than the Polish incident.

One thing is clear, even though it is unclear what the circumstances of the missile are. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday.

His forces have planted mines in vast stretches of territory in Kherson from which they’ve recently withdrawn – much as the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia stretching back to the 1970s. Indeed, Cambodian de-mining experts have even been called in to assist with the herculean task facing Ukraine in 2022. At the same time, Russian armies have also left behind evidence of unspeakable atrocities and torture, also reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge.

A growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they are being asked to do and refuse to fight. Russian troops may be willing to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers, according to the UK’s Defense Ministry.

Indeed a hotline and Telegram channel, launched as a Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live,” designed to assist Russian soldiers eager to defect, has taken off, reportedly booking some 3,500 calls in its first two months of activity.

Putin is more 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.” Though Putin once lusted after a return to the G7 (known as the G8 before he was ousted after his seizure of Crimea), inclusion now seems but a distant dream. 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.

Putin said it was part of a plan to cleanse Russian society of traitors and spies. Russian officials have suggested stripping those who left the country of their passports. Yet there are questions whether Russia can thrive without many of its best and brightest.

While he hoped that it wasn’t the case, one of the top Russian journalists told me last week that he would accept the fact that he may never be able to return to his homeland.

The Ukrenergo shutdown and the fate of a nuclear plant in Mykolaiv: consequences for the Russian-Russian conflict of interest

Rumbling in the background is the West’s attempt to diversify away from Russian oil and natural gas in an effort to deprive the country of material resources to pursue this war. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday that it was an unsustainable dependency and that they want reliable and forward-looking connections.

Putin dreamed that this conflict, along with the enormous burden it has been on Western countries, would drive more wedges into the Western alliance. On Monday, it was reported that the French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the center of the Future Combat Air System could begin to move forward.

Putin does not appear to know that revenge is not an appropriate way to act on or off the field, and in the final analysis is more likely to weaken Russia, perhaps irreversibly.

Ukrenergo, the energy company, has said that Ukraine deliberately disconnected nuclear power plants from the national electricity grid to be safe in response to the 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.

The nuclear plant in the southern part of Mykolaiv has had it’s power cut due to an issue with the grid, according to the military administrator.

The cascading effects of power cuts on the heat and water are stressed by Ukrainian officials. And with temperatures often below freezing, the water in pipes could freeze, adding further complications.

The president ofMoldova wrote on Facebook that they can’t trust a regime that leaves them in the dark and cold.

The War of the World: Proposed Resolution of the Convention on Cluster Munitions with the U.S. Armed Forces and the Cold War in Ukraine

Ukraine is preparing for the winter. In a Tuesday night video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there are now 4,000 centers to take care of civilians if there are extended power cuts.

He said they will provide heat, water, phone charging and internet access. A lot will be in government buildings.

Neither the US nor Ukraine are signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, production, and stockpiling of such cluster bombs because of the potential risk to noncombatants. But the US began phasing them out in 2016 because they “contained hundreds of smaller ‘cluster bomb’ explosives that were often left unexploded across the battlefield, posing a danger to civilians,” according to a 2017 statement from Central Command.

Senior Biden administration officials have been fielding the request for a while and have not completely rejected it, a detail that has not previously been reported.

Cluster munitions are imprecise by design, and scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. They also create “nasty, bloody fragmentation” to anyone hit by them because of the dozens of submunitions that detonate at once across a large area, Mark Hiznay, a weapons expert and the associate arms director for Human Rights Watch, previously told CNN.

If the Biden administration were forced to use the option, they would not have taken it off the table. But sources say the proposal has not yet received significant consideration in large part due to the statutory restrictions that Congress has put on the US’ ability to transfer cluster munitions.

Those restrictions apply to munitions with a greater than one percent unexploded ordnance rate, which raises the prospect that they will pose a risk to civilians. President Joe Biden could override that restriction, but the administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that that is unlikely in the near term.

“We see that, in fact, the United States and other countries are following the path of constantly expanding the range and raising the technical level of the weapons that they supply to Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said during a conference call. “This does not contribute to a speedy settlement of the situation, on the contrary.”

The Defense Ministry tells CNN that it doesn’t comment on reports regarding requests for specific weapons systems, only waiting until an agreement is reached with the supplier.

The US replaced the dual-purpose improved conventional munitions with the M30 A1 alternate warhead. The M30A1 has 180,000 small steel fragments that scatter on impact and do not leave unexploded munitions on the ground. Ukrainian officials, however, say that the DPICMs the US now has in storage could help the Ukrainian military enormously on the battlefield – more so than the M30A1.

Ukraine’s Special Military Operation: A Demonstration of Democracy in the Light of Action of the Great Strikes on Crime

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Wednesday that his “special military operation” in Ukraine is taking longer than expected but said it has succeeded in seizing new territory and added that his country’s nuclear weapons are deterring escalation of the conflict.

Putin said in his meeting with members of the Human Rights Council that the land gains have become Russia’s internal sea. In one of his frequent historic references to a Russian leader he admires, he added that “Peter the Great fought to get access” to that body of water.

“If it doesn’t use it first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it, either, because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” he said.

Putin said his previous comments on nuclear weapons were not a factor in provoking an increase in conflict but a factor of deterrence.

We have not gone mad. Putin said that they were fully aware of what nuclear weapons were. He noted that they are more advanced and state-of-the-art than any other nuclear power has.

Russia’s struggles on the battlefield, its attempts to cement control over the seized regions and its treatment of wounded soldiers were not addressed by the Russian leader in his televised remarks.

The governor of Kursk posted photos of the new “dragon’s teeth” in the open fields. On Tuesday, the governor had said a fire broke out at an airport in the region after a drone strike. In neighboring Belgorod, workers were expanding anti-tank barriers and officials were organizing “self-defense units.” According to the governor of the state, Belgorod has seen a number of fires and explosions from attacks across the border and Russian air defenses have shot down incoming rockets.

The Engels air base, which is home to Russia’s long-range, nuclear-capable bombers, was targeted in a drone attack in early December, according to the Kremlin, slightly damaging two planes. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

Moscow retaliated by attacking residential buildings, civilian infrastructure and the power grid. Ukrenergo said temperatures in the eastern part of the country had fallen to as low as minus 17 degrees Celsius.

“Who is not supplying water to Donetsk? Not providing water to a city of millions is an act of genocide,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Kremlin

He concluded the speech by adding that “it won’t interfere with our combat missions,” before raising a toast to the listening soldiers and sipping from his champagne glass.

At the ceremony, Putin continued to list alleged aggressions. Not supplying water to a city of million is an act of genocide.”

The reference to Kursk appears to reference Russia’s announcement that an airfield in the Kursk region, which neighbors Ukraine, was targeted in a drone attack. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has offered no comment on recent explosions, including in Kursk, which are deep within Russia. The targets are outside of the country’s declared drones.

He ended his apparently off-the-cuff comments by claiming that people seem to refrain from mentioning that water has been cut off from Donetsk. They have not said a word about it. At the very least! Complete silence.”

There have been reports of shelling in the city this week.

President Putin held a glass of champagne at a reception and made comments about the attacks on the energy infrastructure in Ukraine.

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

Investigation of a Russian missile attack on the Melitopol city, Ukraine, in the aftermath of the Russian-imposed sanctions on Crimea

“The pace of restoration [to household consumers] is slowed down by difficult weather conditions,” it said, with the damage “made worse by the freezing and rupture of wires in distribution networks.”

At least two people were killed and 10 others were injured when four missiles destroyed the city of Melitopol, which is now under Moscow-installed administrators.

CNN cannot independently confirm each claim, andUkraine did not comment on the incident. Ukraine has previously declined to comment on attacks inside Russia.

An explosion at a Russian military barracks in Sovietske killed at least one person and injured some others, according to an unofficial media portal.

Sergey Aksenov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, said on Telegram: “The air defense system worked over Simferopol. Services are functioning as usual.

The news comes amid reports that 1.5 million people in the Odesa region of Ukraine have been left without power following strikes by Iranian-made drones.

“In general, both emergency and stabilization power outages continue in various regions,” Zelensky said. “The power system is now, to put it mildly, very far from a normal state.”

The crisis in Ukraine: consequences of the Oslo-Prussian action against the Russian Orthodox Church, and the EU-Afghan anti-Russia collusion

“This is the true attitude of Russia towards Odesa, towards Odesa residents – deliberate bullying, deliberate attempt to bring disaster to the city,” Zelensky added.

A new support package from Norway of $100 million was presented to the Ukrainians on Saturday, Zelensky said.

Ukrainians rely on heat and light from plants and equipment that have been the target of repeated assaults and this has led toUkraine going into a cycle in which crews rush to restore power only to have it knocked out again.

He said the power system is in an acute shortage and urged people to reduce their power use.

There are attacks against civilian infrastructure in our country. The place for festivals was damaged. He wrote that there were dead and injured.

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.

French President Emmanuel Macron hosts European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store for a working dinner Monday in Paris.

On Tuesday, France is going to co- host a conference in support of Ukrainians throughout the winter with a video address from the Ukrainian President.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (President Biden) on Monday: Energy security project in Kyiv prompted by Friday morning attack on Donetsk

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was freed Dec. 8 after nearly 10 months in Russian detention and following months of negotiations. She was released in exchange for the U.S. handing over a Russian arms dealer. She is back in the US with her husband. Bout is back in Russia and is reported to have joined an ultranationalist party.

New measures targeting Russian oil revenue took effect Dec. 5. They have a price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports.

The visit by President Biden to Kyiv on Monday was meant to show his solidarity with Ukrainians as Russia’s invasion of their country heads into another year. Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and announced new aid as Russian forces make a new push to take control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which Russia illegally annexed last September.

The strike took place just after midnight on Sunday, targeting a vocational school housing Russian conscripts in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region, according to both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts.

A key in the city’s intersection center was damaged by 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.

A member of the rapid response team was one of the victims. During the shelling, they were on the street, they were fatally wounded by fragments of enemy shells,” he added.

The energy industry research center director said on tv that power cuts had been implemented as a preventative measure to prevent the grid from collapsing. Despite what he said, the result of the attacks Friday morning would be unpleasant.

Further west Kyiv received machinery and generators from the US in order to strengthen the Ukrainian capital’s power infrastructure.

Four excavators and more than 130 generators were delivered by the Energy Security Project. All equipment was free of charge.

Russian Defense Minister Kamilli Zakharova criticized Zelensky’s Plan to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s soil during Christmas

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to object to the peace solution of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, that called for Russia to begin withdrawing troops from Ukrainian soil this Christmas.

Zelensky proposed a three-step plan, but the Kremlin said the realities of the time need to be taken into account.

He said that the realities show that the Russian Federation has new subjects, such as DONETSK and Luhansk.

The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot, the US’ most advanced ground-based air defense system, to Ukraine, according to two US officials and a senior administration official. Ukraine’s government has long requested the system to help it defend against repeated Russian missile and drone attacks. The most effective weapon system sent to the country is the one that officials say will help secure the airspace for NATO in eastern Europe.

Zakharova said that many experts outside of Russia questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the danger of US soldiers being dragged into combat.

The US Army has one of the most capable long-range air defense systems on the market, which is why the Ukrainian government has been asking for it many times.

The Russian warnings that the Patriot system would be provocative were asked Thursday by a Pentagon press secretary. The comments would not affect US aid to Ukranian.

That officials from a country that brutally invaded its neighbor, using an illegal and unprovoked invasion as the motivation, would use words like provocative to describe defensive systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians is very telling.

He said there had been no calls for peace or signs of willingness to “listen to Russia’s concerns” during Zelenskyy’s visit, which he said proves that the U.S. is fighting a proxy war with Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” Reuters reports.

In what may be a no less subtle message than calling the Patriot deployments provocative, Russia’s defense ministry shared video of the installation of a “Yars” intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo launcher in the Kaluga region for what Alexei Sokolov, commander of the Kozelsky missile formation, called “combat duty as planned.”

Appearing this week on Russian state TV, Commander Alexander Khodakovsky of the Russian militia in the Donetsk region suggested Russia could not defeat the NATO alliance in a conventional war.

The Russian attack on the Patriot missile battery: Syria, Ukraine, and the era of cooperation between NATO and the United States has been severely violated

Unlike smaller air defense systems, Patriot missile batteries need much larger crews, requiring dozens of personnel to properly operate them. The training for the US’s missile batteries usually takes a long time and will now be put under intense attack from Russia.

In an interview with The Economist published Thursday, Zelensky also rejected the idea recently suggested by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Ukraine seek to reclaim only land seized by Russia since February 2022 and not areas like Donbas and Crimea, which have been under Russian control since 2014.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the French news outlet France 24 this week, before the Patriot missile development, that the alliance still has two main objectives: provide aid to Ukraine and also make sure that NATO forces don’t become directly involved and escalate the war.

Compounding the problem, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said after the recent Makiivka strikes that “the Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage from well before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate.”

An official said that if you load the cannon and it does not fire, you cross your fingers that it explodes.

Russia meanwhile continues to stockpile arms and ammunition in large quantities close to the troops they will supply and well within range of enemy weaponry. Standard military practice dictates that large depots be broken up and scattered and that they be located far behind enemy lines — even within Russian territory that western powers have declared off-limits to Ukrainian strikes.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile was also destroyed, according to Reznichenko. He said the energy infrastructure in the area was being targeted.

The southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia was hit by more than a dozen missile strikes, according to Oleksandr Starukh, chief of the regional military administration, but it was unclear what had been targeted.

An MiG-31K, a supersonic aircraft capable of carrying a Kinzal hypersonic missile, was also seen in the sky over Belarus during the air attacks on Friday in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. It was not clear from the statement if a Kinzal was used in the attacks.

The enemy planned to distract the attention of air defense, said a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force. Valeriy Zaluzhny, the top military chief of Ukraine, later said that 60 missiles were downed.

Kirby said that Russia’s defense industrial base is being taxed. They are having trouble with the pace. We know that he’s (Russian President Vladimir Putin’s) having trouble replenishing specifically precision guided munitions.”

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 Iranian-Made Drones, and the Ukraine’s Christmas Tree, as declared by the Joint Expeditionary Force in Kiev on Monday

The Iranian-made, self-detonating Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 drones were launched from the “eastern coast of the Sea of Azov,” the Air Force said in a statement on Facebook.

“I thank everyone who carries out these repair works in any weather and around the clock,” Zelensky said. “It is not easy, it is difficult, but I am sure: we will pull through together, and Russia’s aggression will fail.”

As the Ukrainians are far from the eastern and southern frontlines of the ground war, they are seeking some semblance of normality in the run-up to Christmas.

The artificial Christmas tree in the center of the city will be powered by a generator at specific times and will be illuminated with energy-saving garlands.

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. Flags of countries that are supporting Ukraine will be placed at the bottom.

Ukrainian children are asking St. Nicholas for air defense and weapons for “victory for all Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in his virtual address to the Joint Expeditionary Force leaders’ summit on Monday.

An official announcement is expected on a European Union cap on natural gas prices, the latest measure to tackle an energy crisis largely spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nuclear Warfare, the Cold War, and the War Between the US and the West: The Case of Prime Minister Sunak and Russian President Putin

On Tuesday, the Commons Liaison Committee is where British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will make his first appearance as prime minister. That follows Sunak’s meeting on Monday in Latvia with members of a U.K.-led European military force.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is visiting Russia to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There are unconfirmed reports that there will be a virtual meeting with the Ukrainian President.

Ukrainians and Russians have not celebrated their first Christmas or Hanukkah since the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in February.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Dec. 13 it made an agreement with Ukraine’s government to send nuclear safety and security experts to each of the country’s nuclear power plants.

An American was freed from Russian-controlled territory as part of a 65-person prisoner exchange. Suedi was tortured in a basement and spent months in a prison in eastern Ukraine.

The repetition of a narrative about a variety of events that Russia dislikes will make it easy for them to make a war with the US and Western democracies.

That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. It says if you hold nuclear weapons you can wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors.

If that’s not the message the US and the West want other aggressor states around the world to receive, then supply of Patriot should be followed by far more direct and assertive means of dissuading Moscow.

There are two key headline deliverables: first, the Patriot missile systems. They have been described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO requires the personnel who operate them to be properly trained in order to protect them.

More precision weapons are vital: they ensure Ukraine hits its targets, and not any civilians remaining nearby. Russia appears to burn through hundreds and thousands of shells while bombarding areas it wants to capture.

But Moscow is struggling to equip and rally its conventional forces, and, with the exception of its nuclear forces, appears to be running out of new cards to play. China and India have joined the West in open statements against the use of nuclear force, which has made that option even less likely.

Whatever the eventual truth of the matter – and military aid is opaque at the best of times – Biden wants Putin to hear nothing but headline figures in the billions, to sap Russian resolve, push European partners to help more, and make Ukraine’s resources seem limitless.

The remnants of the Trumpist “America First” elements of that party have echoed doubts about how much aid the US should really be sending to the edges of eastern Europe.

Realistically, the bill for the slow defeat of Russia in this dark and lengthy conflict is relatively light for Washington, given its near trillion-dollar annual defense budget.

Zelensky wants the Republicans to know how important a victory for the Ukrainians will be to Moscow, and how a loss for them will send the US into a war with Russia.

He is an inspiring rhetorician, and the embodiment of how Putin has turned ordinary Ukrainians into wartime heroes.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that no matter how much military support the West provides to the Ukrainian government, “they will achieve nothing.”

“As the leadership of our country has stated, 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,” Zakharova added, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Her comments came after Zelensky delivered a historic speech from the US Capitol, expressing gratitude for American aid in fighting Russian aggression since the war began – and asking for more.

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

The Wednesday meeting showed that the US is in a proxy war with Russia, Peskov told journalists.

CNN has reached out to the Kremlin, which has not yet publicly commented on Biden’s trip. But Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the trip, accusing the US of warmongering support for Ukraine.

“You could say that the majority of Russian people, although they are weary of the conflict, they still see this as an existential struggle between Russia and the West in which Ukraine is being played for a pawn,” he tells NPR’s Morning Edition.

Dismissing accusations of a proxy war, Sloat says Zelenskyy and Ukraine have made clear that they want a “just peace,” and all the U.S. has been doing is help the country defend itself against Russian aggression.

Also on Monday, a spokesperson for South of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Forces warned of a possible retaliatory Russian strike, referencing a similar incident earlier this month in the same region.

“Patriots are a defensive weapons system that will help Ukraine defend itself as Russia sends missile after missile and drone after drone to try and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure and kill Ukrainian civilians,” she said. “If Russia doesn’t want their missiles shot down, Russia should stop sending them into Ukraine.”

Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.

Deputy Governor Roman Busargin of Saratov Oblast in response to a December 5 attack on the western port city of Engels

The incident took place in the western port city of Engels, some 500 miles (more than 800 kilometers) southeast of Moscow, located on the Volga River. It is the second such attempted attack on the city, which houses the Engels-2 military airfield, a strategic bomber airbase, this month.

Governor Roman Busargin of Saratov Oblast said on Monday that law enforcement agencies were looking into the incident at the airfield. The comments, posted on his official Telegram channel, came after reports circulated of an explosion in the city.

There were no emergencies or damage to civilian infrastructure in the residential areas of the city. He said the government would give assistance to the families of the servicemen.

The events of December 5 remind us of that situation, after which the Russians launched a massive missile strike. It’s important to take it into account in our plans, and to proceed to the shelter.

The explosion was shown in the footage on the closed circuit television. At the time, Gov. Busargin also reassured residents that no civilian infrastructure was damaged and that “information about incidents at military facilities is being checked by law enforcement agencies.”

The quiet night in Ukraine after the Kremlin invaded Kherson and Zaporizhhia in February, but Russia didn’t invade

The night between Sunday and Monday inUkraine appeared to be 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.

Since Russians started shelling areas around the city of Nikopol about six months ago, there has been three quiet nights. Nikopol is located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under control of the Russian forces.

The border town of Vovchansk was reported to have been hit by cross-border shelling by the Ukrainian General Staff.

The missiles on the ground at the Russian airfields are vulnerable to being destroyed by the strikes since they are launched from the bombers that hit the airfields.

He said he did not speak for the government or confirm the strikes, but that a person would attack you because you were fighting back. There’s no reason not to try and do this.

The most sophisticated missile in Russia’s arsenal, the Kinzhal, a hypersonic weapon that can reach targets in minutes and is all but impossible to shoot down, is in even shorter supply, Mr. Budanov said.

“If the Russians thought that no one at home would be affected by the war, then they were deeply mistaken,” Colonel Ihnat said. He said that the explosions at Russian airfields made the bombing campaign complicated and led to Moscow relocating some of its aircraft.

The United Nations Secretary General, Antnio Guterres, will try to arrange a peace summit for Ukraine in February but Russia won’t be invited if it first faces the issue, the Ukrainian foreign minister said on Monday. It was the latest in a string of claims by each country to be open to peace talks — but only on terms that are unacceptable to the other.

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. The warning that Russia’s hacking would be used in other places was given by many military and cyber observers around the world, which is a sign that it will be used outside of Ukraine as well.

Rajan Menon, Director of the Defense Priorities think tank spoke about Russia’s role in the crisis and compared it to the central nervous system of the human body. It’s an enormous cost to have it. It’s an effort to create pain for the civilian population, to show that the government can’t protect them adequately.”

The lead for disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office said that several buildings in the capital were destroyed.

An explosion near a playground rattled the windows of nearby homes. In case of shortages, the mayor urged residents to charge their electronic devices and fill water containers.

Ukraine is covered with a wave of joy and hope: the attack on Kiev on New Year’s Eve by Russia on December 7, 2022

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 is planning to launch an all-out assault on the power grid to force the country into darkness in December 2022, as Ukrainians celebrate Christmas and New Year on January 7.

After the sirens gave the all clear, life in the capital went back to normal, Hryn said: “In the elevator I met my neighbors with their child who were in hurry to get to the cinema for the new Avatar movie on time.” Some people continued with holiday plans despite the fact that parents went to school and people went to work.

Cities should be covered with a wave of joy and hope on New Year’s Eve. Zelenska said that Ukrainian cities were again covered by missile wave from Russia.

At least three people, including a 14-year-old, were injured and two people pulled from a damaged home on Thursday, Klitschko said earlier. Homes, an industrial facility and a playground in the capital were damaged in attacks on Kyiv, according to the city military administration.

All 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.

Despite claims of victories by Russia on the battlefield, the ministry did not make any claims of territorial advances against Ukrainian forces, which adds credibility to reports of a stalemate.

At the time, Putin insisted his forces were embarking on a “special military operation” — a term suggesting a limited campaign that would be over in a matter of weeks.

War against Ukraine Has Left Russia Isolated and Struturing with More Tortuttle Ahedrahedral State Propaganda

The war has profoundly changed the lives of Russians, disrupting a post-Soviet period in which the country was pursuing democratic reforms and financial integration with the West.

Draconian laws passed since February have outlawed criticism of the military or leadership. A leading independent monitoring group says more than 20,000 people have been arrested for demonstrating against the war.

Organizations are added weekly to a growing list of “foreign agents” and “non-desirable” organizations intended to damage their reputation in the Russian public.

Even Russia’s most revered human rights group, 2022’s Nobel Prize co-recipient Memorial, was forced to stop its activities over alleged violations of the foreign agents law.

The state has also vastly expanded Russia’s already restrictive anti-LGBT laws, arguing the war in Ukraine reflects a wider attack on “traditional values.”

For now, repressions remain targeted. Some of the new laws are not enforced. Should the moment arise, the measures are intended to crush wider dissent.

Leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant, online investigative startups were forced to shut down or relocate abroad when confronted with new “fake news” laws that criminalized contradicting the official government line.

Internet users are also subject to restrictions. The social media giants were banned in March. Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s internet regulator, has blocked more than 100,000 websites since the start of the conflict.

Technical workarounds such as VPNs and Telegram still offer access to Russians seeking independent sources of information. But state media propaganda now blankets the airwaves favored by older Russians, with angry TV talk shows spreading conspiracies.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

War Against Ukraine Has Left Russia Isolated And Strushing With Russia: A Counterexample To Russia’s Self-Suspected Successes

Thousands of perceived government opponents — many of them political activists, civil society workers and journalists — left in the war’s early days amid concerns of persecution.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian men were forced to flee to border states including Georgia, as a result of Putin’s order to mobilize 300,000 additional troops in September.

Meanwhile, some countries that have absorbed the Russian exodus predict their economies will grow, even as the swelling presence of Russians remains a sensitive issue to former Soviet republics in particular.

In the initial days of the invasion, Russia’s ruble currency cratered and its banking and trading markets looked shaky. Hundreds of global corporate brands, such as McDonald’s and ExxonMobil, reduced, suspended or closed their Russian operations entirely.

President Putin thinks that Europe is going to blink first on sanctions, and that they will pull back on their support for Ukrainians because of the high energy costs in Europe. He banned the export of oil to countries that accepted the price cap, a move he said would make European pain worse.

Putin’s reputation for providing stability was once a key base for his support among Russians, who remember the chaotic years that followed the collapse of the USSR.

The government’s tone is unchanging when it comes to Russia’s military campaign. daily briefings from the Defense Ministry showcase endless successes on the ground. The president assures that everything is going according to plan.

Yet the sheer length of the war — with no immediate Russian victory in sight — suggests Russia vastly underestimated Ukrainians’ willingness to resist.

Russian losses are officially just under 6,000 men, but they are not discussed at home. Estimates from the west place the figures much higher.

NATO’s main aim has backfired thus far, with the addition of long-neutral states Sweden andFinland, which would more closely resemble Russia’s borders.

It would have been impossible for Central Asia to criticize Russia for its actions out of concern for their own sovereignty. India and China have eagerly purchased discounted Russian oil, but have stopped short of full-throated support for Russia’s military campaign.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

Russian attacks on Ukraine in April and December: the state of the nation and the return of 82 prisoners of war in the Kyiv regime

The state of the nation address was originally scheduled to take place in April but has been repeatedly delayed. Putin’s annual “direct line” — a media event in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians — was canceled outright.

The December “big press conference” is a semi-staged affair that allows the Russian leader to take questions from pro-Kremlin media.

The Kremlin has given no reason for the delays. Many suspect it might be that, after 10 months of war and no sign of victory in sight, the Russian leader has finally run out of good news to share.

Video reportedly from the scene of the attack is circulating widely on Telegram, including on an official Ukrainian military channel. It shows a pile of rubble, almost none of which resembles a building.

Russian missiles hit a four-star hotel in the entertainment district of the Ukrainian capital, according to a top emergency adviser to the presidential administration. In order to protect their infrastructure, the power grid operator of Ukraine shut off electricity to several areas of the capital region.

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.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also announced the return of 82 Russian prisoners of war following what it said were negotiations with “territories under the control of the Kyiv regime.”

The explosion of UAV attacks on civilian infrastructure in the DONETSK region of the capital, Ukraine, according to the deputy head of the OPR of Ukraine

Three people died and three more were wounded in the DONETSK region, according to the deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. Tymoshenko said it on Telegram.

One person was wounded in the Zaporizhzhia region. Two people died and one was wounded in the region. One person died and two others were wounded in the Kherson region.

“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. Currently, 30% of consumers are without electricity. Due to emergency shutdowns,” he said on Telegram.

The open section of the metro line was checked for the presence of remnants of missile debris.

63 dead in Makivka, Ukraine: a “strange tragedy” for the armed forces of the Donetsk administration

“From 2023 I really want to win, and also to have more bright impressions and new emotions. I miss it very much. I would love to travel and open borders. One shouldn’t stand still, that’s why I also ponder about personal and professional growth. 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.

I would like to thank everyone who helps Ukraine. We’ve made a lot of friends. We had to go through a lot of difficult things in order to understand that there are a lot of good things. Many people are doing wonderful things for Ukraine.

The Russian defense ministry on Monday acknowledged the attack and claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died, which would make it one of the deadliest single episodes of the war for Moscow’s forces.

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.

The Strategic Communications Department of the Chief Commander-in- chief of the armed forces of Ukrainian 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 was happy to welcome the people who were brought to occupy the Makiivka and crammed into the school building. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”

Daniil Bezsonov, a former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration, said on Telegram that “apparently, the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon.”

“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 Russian propagandist who blogs about the war effort on Telegram, Igor Girkin, claimed that the building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores.

The military equipment, which was close to the building without a sign of camouflage, was destroyed. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”

“Despite several months of war, some conclusions are not made, therefore the unnecessary losses, which, if the elementary precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, might not have happened.”

The Russian Attack on Bakhmut: A New Year’s Resolution for Moscow, Russia and the Region of Beryslav, Kyiv

The military said Russian forces lost 760 people and continued to attempt offensive actions on Bakhmut.

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.

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

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 the New Year’s address “it was a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”

The governor of the southern Kherson region said on Telegram that there were 5 people wounded in Monday’s shelling.

The Russian forces attacked the city of Beryslav, the official said, firing at a local market, likely from a tank. The three wounded are in serious condition and being transported to Kherson.

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 resident of the city of Kyiv, died on Monday morning.

Kremlin leader Semyan Pegov and the Donetsk People’s Republic leader questioned by military experts in the aftermath of the Ukrainian strike

A rare public blame game broke out between the Russian government and some pro-Kremlin leaders and military experts in the aftermath of the strike, after Moscow appeared to blame its own soldiers’ use of cell phones.

But that account was angrily dismissed by an influential military blogger and implicitly contradicted by the leader of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, pointing to discord in the Russian command over Moscow’s response to the attack.

Semyan Pegov, who was personally awarded the Order of Courage by the president two weeks ago, was angry at the Ministry of Defense’s statement as “not convincing” and an attempt to paint them as blameless.

He wondered how a ministry of defense could be so certain about where soldiers were staying that they wouldn’t use drones or a local source to figure it out.

He again raised suspicions about the official death toll and wrote that their number will still be growing.

Pegov warned in a Wednesday post that apathy on the battlefield will lead to more tragedies. He said: “If you ask me personally what is the most dangerous thing in war, I will answer categorically: not to bother.”

Pegov was joined in his sentiments by Denis Pushilin, the pro-Russian DPR leader, who pointedly praised the “heroism” of the soldiers killed in the strike shortly after the government pinned the blame on them.

Pushilin said on Telegram that they know what it’s like to suffer losses. “Based on the information I have, I can say with certainty that there were many displays of courage and real heroism by the guys in this regiment.”

The Russian Defense Ministry has apologized for the Ukraine’s cybercrime during the September 26 attack against a Russian school in Kyiv

Russia’s defense ministry statement also drew mockery from Ukraine’s military. “Of course, using phones with geolocation is a mistake. It is clear that the version is a bit ridiculous according to Serhii Cherevatwei, the spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian military.

“Of course, this is a mistake I think that the Russians are searching for who is to blame. They are putting the blame on each other,” he continued.

The main reason was not the use of phones. The main reason was that they were unable to covertly deploy these personnel. And we took advantage of that, having detected the target powerfully and destroyed it,” Cherevatyi added.

The strike had sparked criticism of Moscow’s military from pro-Russian websites, who claimed that the troops lacked protection, and were next to a large cache of bullets, which is said to have exploded when the school was hit.

Meanwhile, Margarita Simonyan, the influential editor-in-chief of state-run network RT, on Wednesday welcomed the Russian Ministry of Defence’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the strike, writing on Telegram that she hoped “the responsible officials will be held accountable.”

“This is the first time, it seems, that this has been done publicly during the entire special military operation. She said she hoped the names of these people and the extent of punishment would be announced.

The Russian Army: What Has Been Done in the Last Three Years? The Case of the Makiivka Attack against the Soviet Army

According to RIA Novosti, the governor of the southwestern region of Russia held talks with the defense ministry leadership in Moscow.

If the Russian account is accurate, it was the cell phones that the novice troops were using in violation of regulations that allowed Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately. Ukraine, however, has not indicated how the attack was executed. The implications are more significant for how Russia is conducting its war now.

It is telling that days after the deadliest known attack on Russian servicemen, President Vladimir Putin called for a temporary ceasefire, citing the Orthodox Christmas holiday. The move was rightly dismissed by Ukraine and the US as a cynical attempt to seek breathing space amid a very bad start to the year for Russian forces.

The satellite-guided HIMARS — short for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — currently have a range of 80 kilometers. A longer-range 300-kilometer HIMARS has not yet been authorized, despite repeated Ukrainian pleas. (The Biden administration has worried that the longer-range system could expand the war beyond Ukraine’s frontiers and lead to an escalation of hostilities.)

Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow for the Defense Program and co-head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for New American Security in Washington, has told me that Russia’s failure to break up or move large arms depots is largely a function of the reality that their forces cannot communicate adequately.

Other experts share a view of it. James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me in an email that bad security communications are a standard practice in the Russian Army.

The troops killed in Makiivka seemed to be conscripts and were part of a larger picture of Russian soldiers being sent to the front lines with less-than-ideal equipment and weapons.

Indeed, a number of the most recent arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons, freed and transferred immediately to the Ukrainian front. One can only imagine how appealing the use of cell phones would be to prisoners accustomed to years of isolation with little or no contact with the outside world.

A month earlier, the defense ministry underwent a shakeup when Col. Gen. Mikhail Y. Mizintsev, known to Western officials as the “butcher of Mariupol,” was named deputy defense minister for overseeing logistics, replacing four-star Gen. Dmitri V. Bulgakov, who had held the post since 2008. The location of the arms depot, adjacent to the Makiivka recruits, would likely have been on Mizintsev’s watch.

Sergei Shoigu was the defense minister as of Saturday before the Makiivka attack, telling his forces in a celebratory video that their victory was inevitable.

The Kramatorsk massacre last week: Russia’s intentions in Ukraine and their impact on the city, its militaries and civilians

Germany will increase its commitment to 18 tanks by sending more Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also pledged to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials on Sunday dismissed Moscow’s claim that a large number of Kyiv’s soldiers were killed in a Russian attack last week in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.

There has been no sign of any huge casualties according to a CNN team on the ground. There is no unusual activity around Kramatorsk and the city morgue, according to the team.

There was no sign of a Russian strike on the college dormitories that Russia claimed had been home to hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, as reported by a reporter in Kramtorsk.

The Russian conscript school in Makiivka was the target of a strike just after midnight on New Years Day, according to both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts.

Russia is gearing up for a “maximum escalation” of the war in Ukraine, potentially as soon as the next few weeks, according to a top Ukrainian national security official.

In an interview with Sky News, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of the Ukraine said that these would be defining months in the war.

“During the week, military representatives from the two countries will practice joint planning of the use of troops based on the prior experience of armed conflicts in recent years,” the ministry said in a statement.

A fresh barrage of missiles ripped through the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine Thursday, sending flames and thick plumes into the air as screaming civilians scrambled to find shelter.

Paramedics raced to the scene to perform emergency treatment on a 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 combed through the rubble in an effort to locate survivors of Wednesday’s attack. People were put in a school for shelter.

The decision of the Malaysian Airlines missile attack on June 5th and 6th of 2014 by the separatists remains with the president of the Russian parliament

“A country bordering absolute evil. That country has to overcome it in order to reduce the chance of tragedies happening again. We will find and punish the people who did it. They aren’t deserving of mercy.

Dutch investigators said Wednesday that there were strong indications that Russian President Putin approved of the decision to give the missile that shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight.

Investigators nonetheless said that “the high bar of full and conclusive evidence is not met,” and that regardless, as a head of state, Putin has immunity from prosecution. The families of the 298 people who died were given the findings by the Joint Investigation Team.

The Dutch investigators decided that the missile that downed the Malaysian Airlines plane was fired from a Russian anti-aircraft system. The two Russians and a Ukrainian found guilty of mass murder were sentenced by a Dutch court.

DPR leaders were said to be in contact with Kremlin advisers and the Russian intelligence service.

“After the separatists ask for anti-aircraft guns with higher range, their request is in the second half of June 2014 discussed at the Presidential administration in Moscow. The state supports the president. After this, the request for a heavier air defense system is presented to the minister of Defense and the president,” investigators told the Dutch court on Wednesday.

The Joint Investigation Team said that recorded telephone conversations show that the decision about military support rests with the president. The decision is delayed a week because the person at the summit is the only one who makes the decision. On June 5 and 6 of last year, President Putin went to France to attend the D Day commemoration.

“Because at this moment it cannot be determined who the operators of the Buk-TELAR were, and other concrete information about this is lacking, it cannot be determined why they fired a Buk rocket at MH17, what their mission was, and what information they had at the moment of firing.”

The Russian Operational Command North commander of the Sikorsky Brigade, Sergeiy and Ivan Hennady, tells CNN he clipped a tree

The Ukrainian military said Wednesday that more than 30″ settlements came under fire after some of the shelling directed from Russian territory.

“The occupiers continue to shell the border of Sumy region with mortars” 12 times on Wednesday evening in the area of Seredyna-Buda — which is right near the Russian border — according to Operational Command North. No casualties were reported.

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.

The war in Ukraine did not receive much attention in President Biden’s speech this year, even though Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova attended for the second year in a row.

The horizon disappears for a moment as the nose of the helicopter rears. As the rockets follow brown smoke, there is a faint thump. The aircraft banks as if flicked on its side by an outside force.

Somewhere in the battle for the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, Russian soldiers are being torn apart, and burned, as the ground itself erupts when the rockets find their target. There is no time to think because the effect of the rockets is already passed onto the pilots. Their task now is to stay alive.

“We’re always surprised that we’re here. But, well, we are and we’re never going to stop,” says the deputy commander of the Sikorsky Brigade – his name and location are military secrets.

Serhiy and Hennady have been pilots for more than two decades. In the early 2000s they were flying for the United Nations on mission in countries such as Sudan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Kaliningrad.

They say the experience has been valuable. The ongoing civil war in the DR gave them a lot of experience flying low and in difficult situations.

Still this week Serhiy, who commands a flight of two Mi-8s each flying about three combat sorties a day, tells CNN he clipped a tree. Three of his five rotor blades were damaged and caused a forced landing – a drop of about 20 feet. The venerable Mi-8s – all made before the collapse of the Soviet Union – are over three decades old, their flanks are streaked black with exhaust and oil.

He was close to the front line and had damaged his blades, so he took off after an inspection. He flew to a rear location where engineers could swap the damaged equipment with three others cannibalized from a different helicopter.

The Zelensky Crisis: The United Kingdom, Portugal, and Ukraine are worried about the future of the Helicopter Airborne Combat Forces

Zelensky has asked NATO and other allies to provide jets and other aircraft. The response so far has been close to nil.

The United Kingdom offered to provide Ukraine with a number of retired Sea King aircraft in order to bolster its helicopter fleet. Portugal, meanwhile, has given six Russian-made Ка-32А11VS – none of which are even airworthy and which, its defense minister said, Ukraine would have to fix itself.

A young flier named Yuri has racked up more than 100 combat missions with a co-pilot this year. “All we have are skillful pilots who are flying old helicopters,” he says. “If we had new machines, we would be able to fulfill tasks much better. We would support the infantry better during combat, and of course there would be fewer casualties. Because the system that protects the helicopter is much better in Western models of helicopters.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/europe/ukraine-pilots-helicopter-russia-intl-cmd/index.html

A Ukrainian pilot who can hide behind trees and hide behind hills – and how he flees from Ukraine without a warning from the drone operators

His team has created temporary locations near the front line where they hide fuel and bullets. The support teams are covering themselves out of sight. There is perimeter security, but it is invisible.

Ukrainian pilots have lost many many friends in a war of attrition. Their main weapon is, arguably, better motivation than their Russian enemies. They would like Western aircraft just as much as their lives depended on them.

But he had to wait 24 hours to learn this from Ukrainian drone operators who’d called him in to give him the news. His rockets hit the ground, but he was running away below tree height.

“The Russians can find and hit us from more than 30km away. We have radar that can track them, so sometimes we know they’re shooting at us and can land, or hide behind hills,” he explains.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/europe/ukraine-pilots-helicopter-russia-intl-cmd/index.html

How Cold Is South Africa? The Times of Bereavement and the Making of a Deal with the Warped United States and the United States

The pain of bereavement though remains raw. “In December, a very close friend of mine died,” says Serhiy. “A lot of people I knew, friends have already died, unfortunately. It is very painful, I am very upset… I cannot move on…”

A Russian naval ship armed with one of Moscow’s most powerful weapons was in a port on South Africa’s east coast this weekend.

The frigate Admiral Gorshkov – carrying hypersonic Zircon missiles, according to President Putin – has a “Z” and “V” crudely painted in white on its blackened smokestack, just like the Russian tanks and artillery pieces that rolled into Ukraine a year ago.

It is participating in a 10-day naval exercise in the Indian Ocean alongside South African and Chinese warships, war games that South Africa says have long been planned.

The timing of the exercises has Western diplomats privately incensed and publicly critical and that could cause an embarrassment for the government in South Africa.

“It is very disturbing, that South Africa is hosting a military exercise with the country – an aggressor, invader – that is using its military force against a peaceful country, bringing destruction and trying to eliminate the Ukrainian Nation,” said Liubov Abravitova, Ukraine’s ambassador to Southern Africa.

European Union and US two-way trade with South Africa outstrips Russian economic ties many times over. Russia promises more trade deals but they are unlikely to give South Africa the direct investment it needs.

“By default, we are on the side of Russia. And to us Ukraine what we call a sell-out. Obey Mabena, a veteran of the ANC’s armed wing, told CNN last year that it is selling out to the west.

Many people in his generation fled South Africa in the 70s due to police brutality. Many South Africans in exile joined the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress.

There is a country in the Soviet bloc that was ready to give us everything we needed. Give us food, they gave us uniforms, they trained us, they gave us weapons,” said Mabena, “For the first time we came across White people who treated us as equals.”

Liberation fighters and politicians have a very different experience with the West. The US government supported economic sanctions in the 1980’s after the apartheid regime took power.

Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa was put on a terror watch list because of the Cold War. Many ANC members are convinced that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a hand in Mandela’s capture, something that has never been proven.

Some of the movement’s most powerful allies in the U.S. were in the anti-apartheid movement. In Congress, then-senator Joe Biden famously lambasted Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state for backing the White South African government.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/19/africa/south-africa-russia-china-military-drills-intl-cmd/index.html

What will Russia do if Ukraine decides to leave the Cold War behind? After the Soviet Union, South Africa is the only country that does not condone a war

We received a reply that you can either take it or leave it. And in the face of that arrogance, we thought the only decision we could take was to abstain,” Naledi Pandor, minister of international relations and cooperation, told CNN in June.

She believes that there should be a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine that complies with the rules of the United Nations. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has offered to mediate in those talks.

Neither side was willing to accept his offer. South Africa has not stopped the nation from participating in the war. Since the start of the war, the US Secretary of State and other senior US diplomats have traveled to South Africa.

It is hard to argue that it is the moral one if South African officials think their stance is pragmatic. Certainly with a pedigree of moral giants like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu – the late Archbishop of Cape Town whose foundation said this was no time to “sit on the fence.”

Pretoria may come under even more criticism if, as rumored, Russia test-fires a hypersonic Zircon missile from the frigate Admiral Gorshkov during the naval exercises.

Showing them off in the joint drills could be another propaganda highlight for the Russian leader, whose weapons haven’t lived up to expectations in the Ukraine war.

The surprise visit by President Joe Biden to Ukraine made many Russians angry and embarrassed, as the Russian leader prepared to justify his invasion in a national address.

“Biden, having received security guarantees in advance, finally went to Kyiv,” Medvedev said in a statement on Telegram. There were disagreements between people who thought new weapons and a brave people would win the war. It is important to note that the West supplies weapons and money to Kyiv a lot. In huge quantities, the military-industrial complex of NATO countries can earn money and steal weapons to sell to terrorists around the world.

Russian army veteran and former Federal Security Service (FSS) officer said that Biden could have escaped unharmed if he had traveled to eastern Ukraine.

Even if the grandfather is brought to Bakhmut, there won’t be anything done to him.

Girkin is among a number of hardline military bloggers – some of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers and provide analysis of the conflict for large swaths of the Russian population – who have repeatedly criticized what they consider a “soft” approach on the battlefield by Putin’s generals.

Medvedev, Russia’s deputy head of the Security Council is known for making statements that appear to be aimed at bolstering his nationalist credentials.

Participants of the event will be present but foreign guests or representatives will not be invited, a Kremlin spokeswoman told reporters.

The opening of the conference was performed via video link by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The vice president later told the gathering that Russia had committed “crimes against humanity.”

The NATO defense ministers met in Belgium and the Secretary General urged more help forUkraine, warning that the Kremlin is about to launch a new offensive.

Kyiv War Annihilation: A Critical Rejoinder for the U.S., Russia and the United Nations Security Council

We have everything we need for it. We have a lot of motivation, certainty, friends and diplomacy. Zelensky said that you have all come together for this. “If we all do our important homework, victory will be inevitable.”

On Friday, the former Russian President and the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council said that Russia wanted to push the borders of threats to its country even if those are on Poland’s borders.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian leader addressed members of the military in Kyiv. He told them it was they who would determine the future of the country.

Ukraine’s international allies showed their solidarity on Friday, with landmarks around the world lit up in colors of the Ukrainian flag, and new weapons and funding announcements.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the international community not to let Putin’s crimes “become our new normal,” at the United Nations Security Council.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he will propose new sanctions against Russia when he and other G7 leaders meet with Zelensky.

While air-raid sirens are a daily fixture in Kyiv, there hasn’t been a major attack on the city in a few weeks, which means that whenever the alarms are activated, people are left gauging the level of risk.

Kathalina Pahitsky, a 16-year old student, went to the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv to lay flowers in memory of two former students from her school who lost their lives fighting in the war.

Pahitsky was the student president of her school and she had to pay her respects to the fallen heroes in the bitterly cold morning.

“Their photographs are here on the main street. It’s a great honor. They died as heroes. It is very important for us. She said that it would have been for them.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/europe/kyiv-war-anniversary-intl-cmd/index.html

The story of Olexander Atamas, a soldier in the Luhansk-Kharkiv district of Bakhmut

It was hard to describe the feelings of Olexander Atamas on Friday, he served with the naval forces of armed forces of Ukranian.

“I would prefer to describe what I don’t feel now, I don’t feel a fear, but [I] feel confidence in my abilities,” he told CNN. “One year ago … I felt fear, I was stressed, psychologically it unsettled me. But currently there is no fear at all.”

WarGonzo, who goes by the name WarGonzo, said fighters of the private military company attacked in several directions at the same time. He said that there is a slight advance to the east of the city and that it is in control of Berkhivka, the village north-west of Bakhmut.

Russian military bloggers have also reported offensive actions in several areas of this front, including Mariinka, which has been almost obliterated by the fighting.

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.

When she was a teacher, she believed Russians would not attack the city founded by Catherine the Great.

On Feb. 24, 2022, despite warnings from the West that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, Horobstova remembers waking to a beautiful morning and watching the sunrise from her balcony. There were bright green fields bursting with winter harvest as it turned the sky pink.

She began to cry. She called her friends and family to make sure they were all ok. Some were packing their bags to flee west. But Horobstova, her husband, Volodymyr, and her youngest daughter refused. Their loyalties were clear even with their Russian roots.

He said he heard about Kherson’s liberation when he was fighting in northeastern Ukraine. His brigade had helped free parts of that region in September. His commanders told him they couldn’t help with the liberation of their hometown.

Many civilians wanted to help the Ukrainian military. For years, Oksana Pohomii has been warning that the Kremlin can’t be trusted, and says the first President of Russia to take it seriously was Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

She says that she has been worried about the Russians invading Kherson for the last two and a half years. My nightmare came true.

Crime, cruelty, and the Ukraine’s security services: Agent Chupikova and a Viking in the war-kherson-spies

With her dark hair braided into a rattail, Pohomii looks like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and a Viking. Just before the invasion, she applied to train as a soldier with the territorial defense, but the recruiting office turned her down, saying they were flooded with applicants.

“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. “Deficiency things.” The fear and psychological pressure were enormous.”

Pohomii took photos and videos of suspected collaborators and eavesdropped on their conversations, then gave the information to Ukraine’s security services.

The suspects included her fellow city council members, a prominent doctor who helped the city survive COVID and her childhood friend who was a teacher.

“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 just did whatever made sense to me.”

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

“I hate you, I’m a Ukrainian patriot,” says Iryna Chupikova, a soccer mom from Ukraine

Chupikova was difficult to track because she didn’t look like a threat. With her bright blue eyes, she appears to be a Minnesota soccer mom about to bake an apple pie.

“They wanted us to look average, unremarkable, not easy to remember so we could work undetected,” she says, “as if we were moving between drops of rain.”

She recruited her husband, Valerii Chupikov, to work with her. They used Suval’s military contact in Ukraine’s military to find coordinates of the Russian convoys, and then sent them out via signal.

She climbed the roof of her house and threw her cellphone up in the air in a bid for a signal when internet and cellphone service was weak.

Russian troops seemed to be watching everyone closely. Olha says residents were getting arrested for giving Russian soldiers dirty looks.

Horobstova remembers that there were 11 guys with guns and their faces covered, with one of them wearing military fatigues. Six people went upstairs to our apartment and then to her room. She didn’t deny anything. She said, ‘Yes, I’m a Ukrainian patriot, and I hate you.’ And they took her away.”

The men took Iryna’s phone, Horobstova’s laptop, and memory stick because they only had physics lessons on them.

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

A Ukrainian citizen spying on the War-Kenya-Seyfert-Liouville regime and its espionage cell

She keeps asking if there is a breeding ground of what. “I said, ‘This is the flag of our country, where I live and where my daughter lives. You also have a country, and you have your own flag.’ He kept yelling.

The apartment manager spent many months spying on politicians for the Ukrainian security services. The Russians may have found a way to listen to people’s conversations. But he says Russians also got information about cells by torturing captured partisans.

The torture began almost immediately. He recalled four long torture sessions, three of which were brutal. They beat him with clubs, pipes and boots after they killed him. They inquired about the man in his espionage cell.

The screamed out of the political prisoners filled the jail. Natalya Havrylenko, another imprisoned partisan, remembers hearing Russian soldiers rape a man in a corridor.

Oleksandr Dianikov could barely walk after being tortured for two weeks. His left leg broke after being kicked so badly by his Russian abductors. He pleaded for a doctor.

He thought that they would be taking him to the doctor and then executing him in the forest. He had heard in prison that others there had died that way.

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

Ukrainian War Kherson Spies: A Teacher of Ukrainian History and a Soldier to the Rescue of Diakov from Kherson’s Hospital

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. She claims a classmate forced people to vote, and drove them to the polls herself.

She was a teacher of Ukrainian history and yet, here she was, proud to be part of this referendum organized by the Russians, says Pohomii. She did not try to hide it.

Politicians installed by the Russians were assassinated. Military officials say that when the US gave missiles to Ukraine, the partisans 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 playing music from Ukraine, and I knew our guys were in the city,” he says. We had been waiting every day for this. When I was tortured, I used to dream that the Ukrainian soldiers would come home and all our work would mean something.

After the next night, it was obvious that Ukrainian troops were in control of Kherson. Residents poured into the streets and cheered. Diakov, unable to walk, cheered from his bed.

Serhiy is a soldier from the local brigade. 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

Oksana Pohomii and Olha Chupikova: an old Ukrainian spy on the war-kherson-spies

Oksana Pohomii now runs a volunteer bakery with her friend Olha Chupikova, the landscape designer who used to spy on the Russian military near the Antonivka Bridge. Just outside the bakery, a missile strike has left a huge crater.

As they stack warm loaves they call ” Kherson Undefeated Bread”, they are dusted in flour. The bread is free. They deliver it to residents who are stressed.

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

Iryna, the fiercest fighting of the war in Ukraine, and her relationship with Tetiana Horobstova, a soldier she worked with

She says that they never try to make anyone stay because some people can’t. “I know people who don’t leave their homes. I know people who can handle shelling in the beginning. but then something broke inside them after the shelling killed people. They stopped drinking and eating. I said, “Now’s the time to leave.” “

She was in contact with the Ukrainian soldier she worked with. The fiercest fighting of the war is in Bakhmut where he is. She says she worries about him and looks back on the work they did together with pride – and bewilderment.

Many of the partisans are thought to be in Russian custody. Iryna is the daughter of Tetiana Horobstova. Horobstova isn’t sure where her daughter is and there’s evidence that she’s imprisoned in Russian-occupied Crimea.

Horobstova said she was concerned that she was cold because she only wore a summer top when she was taken away. “She has no change of underwear, no hygiene pads, nothing.”

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

Moldovan Defense Minister Mario Sandu tells Moldovan President Maia Sandu that Russia is ready to “prevent armed provocation” against Transnistria

The reporting came from Kherson andJulian Hayda. Editing by Mark Katkov and Pam Webster. Chad Campbell produced a version of this story for broadcast.

Then on Thursday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense accused Ukraine of “preparing an armed provocation” against Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria “in the near future,” state-media TASS reported.

The President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, said that Russia used “saboteurs” to stoke unrest and that the Ukrainian President had also warned of this.

The White House said he supported the territorial integrity of Moldova, even though he has not accepted her invitation to visit.

Sandu said that people dressed as the opposition were going to try to force a change of power in Chisinau. CNN is unable to independently verify those claims.

The appetite to escalate the war towards us is very high, according to Iulian Groza, the former deputy foreign minister and current director of the Chisinau based Institute for European Policies and Reforms.

He said thatMoldova was the most damaged country after the war in Ukraine. “We are still a small country, which has still an under-developed economy, and that creates a lot of pressure.”

During the last years of the Cold War, the Russian military outpost was located in a 1,300 square mile enclave on the eastern bank of the Dniester River. It declared itself a Soviet republic in 1990 in defense of its borders, against any attempt by Moldova to create an independent state after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The conflict withMoldovan forces ended in stalemate in 1992. Russia did not recognize Transnistria as a state, but it was left a de facto independent state by the people of Chisinau. The estimated 500,000 inhabitants of Chisinau have been trapped in limbo with Chisinau holding virtually no control over it.

Should Russia launch a Spring offensive that centers on Ukraine’s south, it may seek again to creep towards Odesa and then link up with Transnistria, essentially creating a land bridge that sweeps through southern Ukraine and inches even closer to NATO territory.

The St. Petersburg Airspace Closed due to an Explosion of a UJ-22 by an MQ-9 Reaper Drone

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

One of Russia’s Su-27 planes collided with the tail of the MQ-9 Reaper drone, causing it to crash into the sea. Since the start of the Ukraine war, the military aircraft have not been in direct contact with each other.

The defense ministry said in a statement that the drones deviated from their flight path. One of the drones fell in a field, and another did not harm the facility that was attacked.

At least one drone made it past Russian defenses with the most recent being a fire at an oil depot located on Krasnodar’s Black Sea coast.

Following the alleged attacks, Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg closed its airspace Tuesday within a 200-kilometer (124-mile) radius, briefly banning incoming flights, according to state media.

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.

There is no public indication that the device is ready for deployment or has been involved in explosions outside of Russia, but Ukroboronprom seems to be close to finishing work on a new long-range drone.

Russian President Xi and the Security Council of the Organization of the World’s Largest Nuclear Arms Reduction (STEART)

“The Earth is round – discovery made by Galileo. Astronomy was not studied in Kremlin, giving preference to court astrologers. He said that if something was launched into other countries, sooner or later unknown flying objects would return to the departure point.

The strike comes as Putin is having a meeting with a Chinese leader. During their meeting on Monday, China’s Xi expressed his support for Putin to be reelected, as he told the Russian president that China and Russia had similar goals. 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.

Russia’s START note: Russia handed an official note to the United States on Tuesday on the suspension of Moscow’s participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian state media RIA Novosti Wednesday. The note stated that Russia will abide by the treaty’s central provisions. It comes after Putin signed a law suspending Russia’s participation in START, imperiling the last remaining pact that regulates the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. The US is still in compliance with the treaty, but State Department spokesperson Ned Price suggested that could change depending on “how Russia chooses to proceed.”

Wagner update: Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said there are no Serbian nationals among the mercenary group’s fighters in Ukraine, after “the last one” left the area two months ago. The Serbian president accused the Wagner of trying to recruit Serbians to fight in Ukraine.

What the U.S. and Russia can do about the Black Sea: Implications for the United States and for the Indian-American Interaction

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, visits the White House Friday for talks with President Biden, following her trip to Canada.

The top U.S. and Russian government diplomats made their first contact since the invasion when they met for the first time after the meeting of the Group of 20 nations in India.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Europe’s staunchest supporters of Ukraine, is set to remain in her post after her center-right party overwhelmingly won Sunday’s election.

A sustained, deliberate pattern of destructive Russian attacks on drones would merit a response, but that’s not the case with the Black Sea collision — yet. The United States can continue to occupy the high ground from a position of strength, defending a mutual norm which gives the United States and its allies transparency regarding each other’s military actions.

Washington shouldn’t go to Moscow’s level. The best way to deal with schoolyard bully is to not listen to their provocations.

That doesn’t mean the US should stop its surveillance flights, both manned and unmanned, over this (and other) international airspace. The US needs to continue its missions. But an excessively dramatic American reaction could destabilize the current norms surrounding such flights and lead to a tit-for-tat spiral with the Kremlin that could escalate unpredictably.

Even though this incident is far from isolated, and encounters such as these are likely to increase, it would be detrimental to jeopardize that with a heated response to Russia.

Russia would like to pretend the Black Sea is its personal pond, but these are international waters bordered by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Turkey as well — all but one are NATO members. The rules surrounding international waters and airspace make it clear: national sovereignty can’t be more than 12 nautical miles from the nearest coastline or border. If Russia wants to send nuclear- capable bomber’s just more than 12 nautical miles from the coast of Alaska, then it can and has done so without a major incident.

It’s worth unpacking which surveillance encounters violate common norms and which don’t. In order to show they are being watched and kept out of harm’s way, rival military bases often send fast planes and ships to intercept each other’s aircraft. It is legal under international law if neither side makes dangerous maneuvers close to the other.

Russian and American pilots do a lot of safe intercepts. According to a study conducted in 2022, Russian pilots were ordered to conduct unsafe intercepts to try to drive foreign forces away from sensitive areas.

Russia is saying the drones were in an exclusion zone around Ukraine for a special military operation. While countries claim all kinds of additional jurisdictions like exclusive economic zones and air defense identification zones, the 12 nautical mile rule is the only one that has indisputable weight internationally.

In the current case, the US has responded so far by dressing down the Russian ambassador over the incident. The Pentagon might also decide to send manned fighters to escort drones to dissuade harassment. But this is something that couldn’t be sustained indefinitely; the point of drones is they’re generally much less costly per hour to operate than fighters and put personnel at less risk. Alternatively, the drones could be armed with their own air-to-air missiles.

Crime against Crime against the People: The Crime against Mariupol, a Crime against Russia and Crime Against Ukraine in the First Full-Scale War on Crime

Mariupol, a Russian-occupied town, was Putin’s first visit to territory captured by his forces in the full-scale conflict.

The defense ministry of Ukraine accused Putin of being a “thief” because he visited under the cover of night and the city had been destroyed by Russia.

The charges were lodged against officials in Moscow, the first of their kind, since they began their attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin has labeled the ICC’s actions as “outrageous and unacceptable.”

During the last several weeks of last year, Mariupol was a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Famously, even when most of the city had fallen, its defenders held out at the Azovstal steel plant for weeks before the stronghold finally fell.

Marat, the Russian deputy prime minister, spoke to Putin about the ongoing construction and restoration work in the city.

It was in Mariupol that Russian forces carried out some of their most notorious strikes, including an attack on a maternity hospital last March and the bombing of a theater in which hundreds of civilians had sought refuge.

The rule change the International Monetary Fund made could allow for a multi-billion dollarloan to the war-battered country.

The first NATO countries to send jets to fight Russian forces will be Poland and Slovakia. The U.S. has refused Ukraine’s request for F-16s.

Russia and Ukraine extended the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to safely ship Ukrainian grain and seed abroad, which was due to expire Saturday.

The explosion of an annexed Russian-Peripheral peninsula and its connection to a Russian-French train station

The leaders of the two countries met in Tehran. Wedged between Ukraine and Russia, Belarus is a Kremlin ally and has followed its footsteps in warming up to China and Iran, which has supplied attack drones to Russia.

According to Gallup, Russia has the lowest approval rate in America since the Soviet times with just 9% saying they have a favorable view of the country.

Sergei Askyonov, the Russian-installed head of the annexed peninsula, confirmed there was a strike and the region’s air defense system was activated. Two buildings were damaged and one person was injured.

CNN has a amateur video showing a large explosion and fireball. An individual is heard saying off-camera the strike hit the train station. The exact location of the strike wasn’t shown in the video and CNN couldn’t confirm what had been hit.