Vladimir Putin’s “Forcible” Plan to Annex the Crimean Peninsula: a Brief History of Russian Independence from the First Year of the Cold War

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech that he wanted to annex almost a fifth of the Ukrainian territory.

Even so, the annexations serve the Kremlin’s interest. Russia only partly occupies the four provinces, and Mr. Putin and his top aides have asserted that Moscow will then be defending its own territory from attacks by Ukraine, rather than the other way around.

Despite unconfirmed reports that voting took place at gunpoint, Putin insisted that the referendums reflected the will of millions of people.

“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. “It is forever.”

The Russian president thought the annexation was an attempt to fix a historical mistake after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The attacks on Ukraine came as Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual New Year’s address and vowed Russian forces would prevail in Ukraine. Speaking surrounded by Russian soldiers rather than the traditional Kremlin backdrop, Putin said 2022 had been a year of “hard necessary decisions” but that Russian forces were fighting in Ukraine to protect Russian “sovereignty” from Western aggression.

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.

Senior Russian lawmakers and officials watched as Putin was joined by Moscow-backed leaders and officials from the four regions.

The claim that Russians were being targeted in the eastern side of Ukraine was made almost a year and a half ago, by Putin, allowing him to cast his invasion of the country as an issue of concern to the West.

The British opium war in China in the 19th century was just one of many military actions by the West over the centuries.

The Russian War of Marching with the West: The Final Days of Putin’s War and the First Steps Toward a Peace Agreement

In response to an increasing influx of advanced Western weapons, economic, political and humanitarian aid to Kyiv and what he saw as Western leaders’ inflammatory statements, Putin has periodically hinted at his potential use of nuclear weapons. When a member of the Human Rights Council asked him Wednesday to pledge that Russia would not be the first to use such weapons, Putin demurred. He said Russia would not be able to use nuclear weapons at all if it agreed not to use them first and then came under a nuclear strike.

Russia rained destruction and death on the Ukrainians as it lost ground, using missiles to hit cities and towns far away from combat.

The celebrations will take place on Red Square. The Kremlin’s spokesman said next week will be when official ratification of the decrees will happen.

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.

The Donbas is a part of Russia that Mr. Putin considers his main prize, and it could allow the Kremlin to declare a victory at a time when they are being criticized for not doing enough.

A recent draft of hundreds of thousands of Russians into military service has stirred opposition in Russia, posing a huge challenge to Mr. Putin’s control over the war.

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.”

Putin said the people made their choice in the signing ceremony. He said that the choice wouldn’t be betrayed by Russia.

Still, he stressed Russia was open for diplomatic solutions, echoing comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent days that he wanted an end to the war. Putin’s claim that he is open to negotiating was roundly dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a ruse.

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.”

Sept. 27: Russia claimed that staged referendums in four occupied regions of Ukraine showed the people chose to join the Russian Federation. United Nations leaders and many countries called the process a sham and a violation of international law.

“The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia’s claims on Ukraine sovereign territory,” Biden said. The results were made in Moscow and the referenda were a sham.

Putin, however, framed the decision as a historical justice following the breakup of the Soviet Union that had left Russian speakers separated from their homeland — and the West dictating world affairs according to its own rules.

Western powers once again accused Russia of using staged votes to justify its annexation of Ukraine’s territory, and it was often at the point of a gun.

Formal ratification of the territories into the Russian Federation will now move to Russia’s parliament and constitutional court — whose approval is widely seen as a foregone conclusion.

In the aftermath of the Russian government’s annexation, a Ukrainian counteroffensive has retook territory in the south and northeast of the country.

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

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in battling to hold Lyman, but said outnumbered Russian troops were withdrawn to more favorable positions. Kyiv’s air force said it moved into Lyman, and the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff posted photos of a Ukrainian flag being hoisted on the town’s outskirts.

“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 pullout was that they were used by the enemy, according to Russian state media.

Vladimir Cherevatyi and the Ukrainian forces in the village of Stavky: Are they ready to go back to the fight against the NATO bloc?

Serhii Cherevatyi, military spokesman for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces, said earlier on Saturday that their forces had entered the village of Stavky.

“[The liberation] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is a great chance to go even further to both of those places. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,” he said.

The head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday revealed details of the offensive on Saturday, suggesting Russian forces offered to retreat but did not get the response they wanted.

“Occupiers asked [their command] for possibility to retreat, and they have been refused. They have two options. No, they actually have three options. Hayday said to try to break through, or everyone will die.

“There are several thousand of them. Yes, about 5,000. There is no idea of the exact number. Five thousand is still a colossal grouping. There has ever been a large group in an encirclement. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the retreat of the group are all completely blocked,” he added.

The deputy head of the parliament’s committee on national security, who is a member of the Ukrainian parliament, posted a video on Telegram showing a Ukraine tank moving up the road in front of the sign that says the region of Stavky. CNN could not independently verify the date or source.

A video posted on social media, and shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, shows two Ukrainian soldiers standing on a military vehicle attaching the flag with tape to a large sign with the word “Lyman.”

“Yes, if it were my will, I would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, because today we are at war with the whole NATO bloc,” Kadyrov said in a post that also seemed to echo Putin’s not-so-subtle threats that Russia might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons.

“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 isn’t need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.

Nuclear threats are Russia’s most effective deterrent. There was a lot ofloose talk from Russia about using nuclear weapons, but it’s died down a bit in the last decade or so, but it’s still important to remind people that an inevitable nuclear response if Russia is cornered or humiliated has already happened.

The gathering of intelligence that could be used to assist the Ukrainian military was at the center of Russia’s aggressive intercept Tuesday. 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.

Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant: Russian forces capture the director-general of the plant and force the Kremlin

In an apparent attempt to wrest control of the annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to the Ukrainian state nuclear company.

The Director General was blindfolded and taken out of the car as he was leaving the plant. For the time being there is no information on his fate,” Energoatom’s Petro Kotin said in a statement.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog is expected in Kyiv this week to discuss the situation after Putin signed a decree declaring that Russia was taking over the six-reactor plant. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called it a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” The state nuclear operator, Energoatom, said it would continue to operate the plant.

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was urged to make immediate actions to be free of the man.

The Russian foreign ministry accused the United States of committing “monstrous crimes” in the context of the Zelensky’s summit at the White House on Wednesday.

The UN, the IAEA and the G7 have been called upon to take decisive measures to address this issue.

The bodies of 22 people including 10 children were found after Russian shelling on a convoy of cars in the east of the country, the regional prosecutors’ office said Saturday.

The cars were shot by the Russian army on September 25 “when civilians were trying to evacuate,” it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation was ongoing.

KYIV, Ukraine — After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russia pulled troops out Saturday from an eastern Ukrainian city that it had been using as a front-line hub. The Kremlin was humiliated and angered by the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The political clock is running and the beginning of winter is approaching so that Putin hopes the will of the Western powers that have destroyed Russia’s military-industrial machine will diminish.

On the situation in Sevastopol and Donetsk during a Russian-annexed invasion of Ukraine: the case of the Belbek airfield

Kadyrov accused Lapin, the Central Military District commander, of moving his headquarters away from subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.

Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. The Belbek airfield is reported to be where a plane rolled off the runway and caught fire.

After Russian President Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, which he believed would take place in a few days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly stated that his country was certain to win the war.

The Security Service ofUkraine, the secret police force, posted pictures of the attacked convoy. The truck bed appeared to have been burned to the ground, with corpses in it. A vehicle at the back of the convoy was on fire. The bodies of people lay on the side of the road or in vehicles with bullet holes.

A part of the region currently in Russian control is home to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The last operating reactor at the European’s largest nuclear power station was shut down last month due to fighting and it was only reopened a short time later.

In other fighting reported Saturday, four people were killed by Russian shelling Friday in the Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. The Russian army struck the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv twice overnight, once with drones and the second time with missiles, according to regional Gov. Vitaliy Kim.

The State of Ukraine: From Ukraine’s Front Line to Crimea and the Crimea Planck-Kimchatsko-Kuzmin Crisis

The US has offered over $60 billion in aid since Biden became president, and only the Republicans voted against the latest aid package.

After President Putin oversaw the insinuation of four Ukrainian territories into Russian, the debacle in the city of Lyman, a rail hub in the eastern region of Donbas, increased pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home.

In an article published Sunday, the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said that in the last few days of their occupation, Russian forces in the area had been hampered by desertion, poor planning and the delayed arrival of reserves.

Russia is sending new recruits to the Front Line in eastern Ukraine but so far, it has proven to be ineffectual, and high Russian casualties are expected.

The war in Ukraine is becoming an engine that fuels a far-right push for more influence; a symbiotic relationship between Putin and his fans in the West. Europe is trying to promote their views by linking the cost of helping Ukraine to their country’s poverty and crime, just as the political action committee linked to the former Trump aide Stephen Miller argued against spending on the country. For now, support for Ukraine remains strong in Europe and the US, although flagging among Republicans.

The European leaders made a joint statement in support of Ukraine joining NATO. And Pope Francis made a strong plea for Putin 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.

IZIUM, Ukraine — Russian forces in Ukraine were on the run Monday across a broad swath of the front line, as the Ukrainian military pressed its blitz offensive in the east and made gains in the south, belying President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims to have absorbed into Russia territories that his armies are steadily losing.

The strike follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Crimea on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of its annexation. Just a few days before the visit, the International Criminal Court accused the president of Russia of committing war crimes in Ukranian and issued an arrest warrant for him.

The city of Zaporizhzhia, the site of Putin’s nuclear plant, is a “Russian” region

The 3-year-old girl was taken to a hospital for treatment after being plucked from the multi-story buildings.

One of the regions annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday is Zaporizhzhia and it is the site of a nuclear plant that is under Russian occupation. The city is controlled by the Ukrainian government.

Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plans to talk with Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. 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 40 countries are going to gather in the Czech Republic on Thursday for the creation of the European Political Community, aimed at boosting security and prosperity across the planet.

According to the spokesman for the Kremlin, this is a Russian region. It has been defined and fixed. There can’t be any changes here.

The Ukrainian military said that the flag had been raised above seven Kherson region villages that were occupied by the Russians. The closest of the liberated villages to the city of Kherson is Davydiv Brid, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Russian soldiers are to be sent to the annexed peninsula of Crimea once they are stable.

During the occupation, it was hit with heavy damage as Ukrainian soldiers fought to take it back. The 71-year-old man named Mykola was among some 100 people who lined up on Wednesday for aid.

Do Ukrainians really want the war to end? The case of Kiev, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the case for a resolution of the Russian-Russian conflict

He said that they want the war to end and the shops and hospitals to open again. We don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged.

The Moscow leadership was told by Zelenskyy that it had already lost the war it launched on February 24.

Russian officials blamed Ukrainians for a rocket attack that hit the mayor’s office in a city controlled by the rebels while Ukrainian officials said Russian rocket strikes hit an area near a nuclear power plant.

The closely held assessment of Ukrainian complicity, which has not been previously reported, was shared within the U.S. government last week. Ukraine denied involvement in the killing immediately after the attack, and senior officials repeated those denials when asked about the American intelligence assessment.

“If the Russians thought that the war would not affect anyone in the deep rear (of Russia) or anywhere else, they were deeply mistaken. As we saw, such things are happening more and more frequently, so let’s hope that this will benefit Ukraine.

“First of all, we need to stop lying,” said Andrei Kartopolov, a former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. “We brought this up many times before … But somehow it’s apparently not getting through to individual senior figures.”

The Ministry of Defense was covering up the truth regarding cross-border strikes in Russian regions by Ukrainians, said Kartapolov.

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

Crime and Democracy in Ukraine: The First Day of the Great Patriotic War in Russia: Boris Rozhin and the Russian Embassy in Lyman

Incompetence and an inability to comprehend the experience of war are serious problems, according to Boris Rozhin, who also writes under the nickname Colonelcassad.

But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.

The Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense had preferred narratives that things were under control in the Russian information space.

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.

One of the most prominent voices arguing for the future of the country is Kadyrov who recently announced that he had been promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general. He recently said in another Telegram post that, if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

The peace prize was awarded to human rights supporters in Russia and other countries, an implicit rebuke to Russia’s president for invasion of Ukranian.

The rockets at Nikopol, across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, damaged power lines, gas pipelines, and a raft of civilian businesses and residential buildings, Ukrainian officials said. For months, Russia and Ukraine have been accusing each other of firing at and around the largest nuclear plant in Europe. Russian oversight allows it to be run by its pre-occupation Ukrainian staff.

Multiple explosions rocked Kyiv and several other Ukrainian cities reported blasts and power outages on Monday morning, as Russia lashed out with a massive wave of violent airstrikes that carried echoes of the initial days of its invasion.

The strikes began two days after a huge explosion damaged the Kerch bridge, which was the only crossing between the annexed Crimean peninsula and Russia. The blast that was used by the Kremlin as justification for Monday’s assault made Russians cringe and gave Ukraine a significant strategic boost.

Ukraine’s nuclear power crisis since the Zaporizhzhia explosion ended on Saturday, Oct. 29, 2012. Security at the Kiev High Energy Bridge

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

Many in the country celebrated it as a Ukrainian victory because the bridge’s strategic and symbolic value to Russia.

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.

Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would now command all Russian troops in Ukraine. The man who was put in charge of Ukrainian troops this summer was accused of overseeing the bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Aleppo.

Last week Putin came to the bridge, where he was shown the work that had to be done and drove a car across it.

The attacks came at a time when the war in Ukrainian is nearing the eight-month mark. Russian troops have retreated in other areas after a seven week counter offensive by the Ukrainians, who reported holding the line in the violence around Bakhmut.

The bridge was temporarily closed for traffic. Automobile traffic resumed Saturday afternoon on one of the two links that remained intact, with the flow alternating in each direction, said Crimea’s Russia-backed leader, Sergey Aksyonov.

It is a popular spot for Russians to vacation. People trying to drive to the bridge and onto the Russian mainland on Sunday encountered long traffic jams.

The explosion of a bridge in Kryvyi Rih, Russia, angered by the demoralized loyalists and the Russian president’s response

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

In the city of Kryvyi Rih, officials said a Russian missile had hit a three-story building, killing at least two people and that emergency services were digging through the rubble. “There may be people under the rubble,” the deputy head of the presidential administration, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.

Tetyana Lazunko, 73, and her husband, Oleksii, took shelter in the hallway of their top-floor apartment after hearing air raid sirens. The explosion shook the building and sent their possessions flying. The couple looked at the damages to their home of nearly five decades.

Three volunteers dug a shallow grave for a German shepherd who was killed in a missile strike in another neighborhood, and only a fragment of his leg remained.

According to a Russian political analyst and a former speech writer for Putin, the Russian president’s response to the bridge explosion was insufficient to satisfy angry war hawks. The demoralized loyalists are inspired by the attack and response.

“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.

The Explosions and Rescue of the Kherson Reclaimed Site in Ukrainian Capital: The First 20 Body Searches on Monday, April 21

The Ukrainian national police said that they were exhuming the first 20 bodies from a mass burial site after the city was reclaimed from Russia. Initial indications are that around 200 civilians are buried in one location, and that another grave contains the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. police said civilians and military were buried in single graves, and members of the military were buried in a 40 meter trench.

In western Ukraine, Lviv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi said 90% of the city was without power, cautioning that the city’s waterworks could also to stop working with electricity down.

The US and NATO countries have been grappling in recent months with how to help Ukraine defend itself against relentless Russian strikes, which have, according to Ukrainian officials, destroyed about half of the country’s energy infrastructure.

In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advance toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military reported that its own forces have fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours.

The invasion has caused millions of Ukrainians to leave their homes, decimated the economy of the country and killed thousands of civilians.

“Russia is preparing for maximum escalation. It is gathering all of the necessary things and doing drills. When it comes to an offensive from different directions, as of now, I can say that we are not excluding any scenario in the next two to three weeks.”

At least four explosions were heard in Ukraine’s capital during rush hour on Monday morning. A children’s playground was among the sites hit by a rocket or missile, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, who tweeted images of a smoldering crater in the ground next to the site.

Underground stations were used as a shelter for several hours on Monday. The air raid alert in the city was lifted as rescue workers worked to pull people out of the rubble.

Putin’s attack on Ukraine is unacceptable: Ukraine is not going to be tolerated by the EU but by the European Union, according to the Kremlin

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

The Kremlin added that Putin held a meeting at the command post of the special military operation – Russia’s description of its invasion – in Rostov-on-Don.

The Russian-appointed head of annexed Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, said he had “good news” Monday, claiming that Russia’s approaches to what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine “have changed.”

He said that if the actions to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure had been taken every single day, then the Ukrainian regime would have been defeated in May.

Senseless barbarism is what it is. Dmytro Kuleba said there could be no neutral stance in the face of a wave of attacks by Moscow on Ukrainian cities.

The EU foreign policy chief said that more military support from the EU was on its way after the strikes.

“Again, Putin is massively terrorizing innocent civilians in Kyiv and other cities,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. “[The Netherlands] condemns these heinous acts. Putin doesn’t seem to know that the will of the Ukrainian people is not negotiable.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the attacks were unacceptable and that civilians were being paid the highest price.

The Dnipro City Council, the Ukrainian National Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Ukranian National Railway: the impact of the G7 Emergency Meeting on civilian infrastructure

The office of the German Chancellor confirmed that the emergency meeting of the G7 would take place via video conference on Tuesday, and Zelensky also said he would address the meeting.

The Mayor of Kyiv said that a person was found dead under the rubble of a destroyed building, but it wasn’t clear how many casualties there were. Another remains trapped, Klitschko said.

President Zelenskyy posted a video to social media in which he stated that civilian infrastructure in 11 of Ukraine’s 25 regions was targeted by the strikes.

The Ukrainian Culture Minister says that there is damage to the National Philharmonic concert halls. A nearby strike damaged the country’s main passenger terminal, delaying trains during this morning’s rush hour, according to Ukraine’s National Railway.

“This happened at rush hour, a lot of public transport was in operation in the city,” said Ihor Makovtsev, the head of the department of transport for the Dnipro city council. The bus driver and four passengers were taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

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

I Saw the Explosions of the Second Floor Apartment: I cried,” a Russian Chechen leader tells Zelenskyy

The windows on the first floor balcony were torn down a long time ago and are now next to the bus stop. Shattered glass covered the ground below. He went to his kitchen to make breakfast but had just been watering the plants on his balcony.

I heard the blasts. And then I saw the explosions,” she says. “One near the airport, then a second. The third at a gas station that seemed to turn everything red.”

The old styles and the most barbaric styles are being used by Russia against Ukraine. I was a victim of this. I was under this shelling. So we have all the right to use it against them.”

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

Michael Bociurkiw’s Perspective on the Krasnoyarsk-Kerch-Strange Bridge Explosion

A global affairs analyst named Michael Bociurkiw is on the World Affairs Pro team. He is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and has worked for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a contributor to CNN. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

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).

Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings while people slept on Monday. Several dozens of people were injured.

The sound of the air raid sirens and the sounds of Russian attacks shattered the relative calm in Ukrainian cities far from the battlefields.

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 2018 Ukrainian Independence Day: The Red Line of Russia’s War and the Challenge for the Security and Security of the State of the Republic of Ukraine

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. The world’s longest sea crossing bridge was inaugurated by the Chinese President after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong. The road bridge was open 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.

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

The next day, the 301st since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the new equipment will not bring the conflict any closer to an end (“quite the contrary”) or prevent Russia from achieving the goals of its so-called “special military operation.”

The significance of the strikes on central Kyiv, and close to the government quarter, cannot be overstated. Western governments should see it as a red line being crossed on this 229th day of the war.

The importance of this is that Washington and other allies need to use urgent phone diplomacy to persuade China and India not to use even more deadly weapons.

High tech defense systems are needed in order to protect vital energy infrastructure around the country. There is urgent need to protect heating systems.

The suffering of Ukraine: The first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia had “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure in the Kremlin

Turkey and the Gulf states which receive many Russians need to be pressured to come on board, because the time is now for the West to further isolating Russia with trade and travel restrictions.

Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. A weak reaction will be taken as a sign in the Kremlin that it can continue to weaponize energy, migration and food.

On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. 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.

Drones have played a significant role in the conflict since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, but their use has increased since Moscow acquired the new drones from Iran over the summer.

As Ukraine races to shore up its missile defenses in the wake of the assault, the math for Moscow is simple: A percentage of projectiles are bound to get through.

“The barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians don’t have the stocks of precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future,” Puri said.

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. Western officials said that Russia has large inventories of older and less precise KH-22 missiles, which were originally made as an anti-ship weapon. They’re large enough to take out aircraft carriers. The shopping mall in Kremenchuk had dozens of casualties in June.

The S-300 missile has been changed into an offensive weapon by the Russians. These have wrought devastation in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv, among other places, and their speed makes them difficult to intercept. But they are hardly 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.

Everyone knows aboutUkraine’s losses. The pilots and air crew of the Sikorsky brigade lost friends to Russian SAMs. A helicopter can be sent into a ball of fire in seconds, if the man-portable missiles are shoulder launched.

Iran acknowledged for the first time providing some drones to Russia months before the war in Ukraine but denied continuing to supply them, on Nov. 5. Zelenskyy said that Iran was lying because Ukrainian forces shoot down at least 10 Iranian drones a day.

After Russia launched its attack against the country,Ukraine asked for more air defense systems and ammunition from its allies.

Speaking after the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, he said such a system would not “control all the airspace over Ukraine, but they are designed to control priority targets that Ukraine needs to protect. What you’re looking at really is short-range low-altitude systems and then medium-range medium altitude and then long-range and high altitude systems, and it’s a mix of all of these.”

Western systems are starting to be adopted in other countries. There is a new era of air defense with the arrival of Germany’s first IRIS-T and two units of the US’s National Advanced Surface-to- Air Missile System expected soon according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

This is just the beginning. The agenda for the meeting on Wednesday had to do with bolstering Ukraine’s air defense. Feeling optimistic.”

The NASAMS expected from the U.S. will arrive in Ukraine this week with the IRIS-T that arrived from Germany. , Bronk said.

The attack in Kramatorsk in Ukraine during the October 8 attack on October 8, 2009, prompted by the Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s border

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.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long sought more long-range missile systems from Washington and NATO allies. In a conversation with US President Joe Biden last Sunday, Zelensky thanked the US for its continued support and asked for more air defense help. He told Biden that “Russian missile terror” has destroyed about half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the International Community how much money his country needed to rebuild and keep its economy afloat: $57 billion. He handed it to the boards of governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Zelensky said that $17 billion would be needed to rebuild schools, hospitals, transport systems and housing, with $2 billion going toward expanding exports to Europe and restoring 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. Photos posted by independent media outlets show at least three collapsed road spans resting crookedly on piers in the shallow water.

The International Crisis Group analyst said the long lines at the ferry crossing had been increased by security checkpoint set up after the bridge explosion.

After the top Kyiv official said that Russia was planning for a maximum increase in the war in Ukranian, Moscow launched an attack in Kramatorsk.

There are some pretty serious theories about who was responsible for the attack on October 8. But, says Andrew Barr, an impact dynamics researcher at the University of Sheffield, “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.

According to an analyst with the digital forensics firm Belling Cat, the bridge’s underside shows barely any blast damage, dismissing a popular Ukrainian theory that a special naval operation destroyed the bridge from below.

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. The United States and other countries that provide weapons to Ukrainians have refused to supply missiles that travel that far.

FSB published a video of an “examination of the truck” and its “X-ray”, which allegedly shows explosives. Where did the “x-ray” show another frame that was missing, and another wheel that was missing? pic.twitter.com/onKbOndxVO

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

The bridge is intended to have a section in the middle of the road floating above a bunch of piers. When one span falls into the water, it pulls several other spans with it.

Barr believes that a fuel train travelling on a rail bridge was weakened by the fact that the truck was packed with specialized compounds that burned hot enough to cause a fire at the blast site.

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

“It was a successful attack on a guarded structure, timed with the train, and contained advanced explosives,” Barr says. That’s suggestive of a carefully planned military operation rather than just a few people.

“That’s not the kind of thing that the Russians can throw together in a couple days,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Monday. This was a continuation ofPutin’s designs to specifically target Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, even though it wasn’t retaliated to.

The war is not the first time that it is inching toward an unpredictable 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.

With the cold months approaching and likely bringing a lull in ground combat, experts agree that the next few weeks of the war are critical, and that another spike in intensity looms over Ukranian as both sides seek to strike another blow.

“What seemed a distant prospect for anything that could be convincingly described as a Ukraine victory is now very much more plausible,” Giles said. “The response from Russia is likely to escalate further.”

The counter-offensives have given the war new life and disproved a suggestion thatUkraine couldn’t win the war because of its inability 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 playing for the whistle – (hoping to) avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in,” Samir Puri, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine,” told CNN.

If the Russians can get it to Christmas with the front still looking like it is, that would be a huge success.

A major blow to the Ukrainian forces in Donbas would be a signal to everyone that they are on the right track, and it would make them want to improve on their gains before the cold weather sets in.

“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 and the havoc it causes in Ukraine will always be a test of resilience for the western backers of the country.

“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.

In its Daily Update on the Conflict Monday, I SW said that some of Russia’s remaining precision weapons were wasted in the strikes against civilian targets, as opposed to military targets.

The Royal United Services Institute believes that the success rate of Ukrainian intercepts against Russian cruise missiles has risen since the start of the invasion in February.

The impact of such an intervention in terms of pure manpower would be limited; Belarus has around 45,000 active duty troops, which would not significantly bolster Russia’s reserves. But it would threaten another assault on Ukraine’s northern flank below the Belarusian border.

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. Should Putin want to regain control of the region, it would provide Russia with a new route into it.

Zelensky will hope to get more supplies in the short term as he tries to get home those gains. The leader wanted to highlight that more than half of the missiles and drones that were launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.

Ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “more” systems are needed for Ukraine to better halt missile attacks.

The kamikaze of the Ukrainian border region: “attack on your own territory” — a protest in Donetsk, Ukraine

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

The name “kamikaze” refers to the fact the drones are disposable. The larger and faster military drones that leave behind missiles after they hit their target are not designed to hit behind enemy lines.

Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday that 10 of the 15 drones that Russian forces used had been shot down by the Ukrainian army. It was impossible to verify his total.

That’s not to say mobilized forces will be of no use. They might ease the burden on the exhausted professional army if used in support roles. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. They are, however, unlikely to become a capable fighting force. Already there are signs of discipline problems among mobilized soldiers in Russian garrisons.

In that case, Mr. Putin could lash out more broadly against Ukraine. The attacks of the past week, including striking critical civilian infrastructure, could be expanded if missile supplies hold out and Russia attacks the Ukrainian leadership.

Struggling on the battlefield in southern and eastern Ukraine, Russia felt war on its own territory on Sunday as more than a dozen explosions ripped through a Russian border region, and a series of blasts severely damaged the offices of Russia’s puppet government in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

The Russian Defense Ministry, in a statement cited by the state media outlets RIA Novosti and TASS, described the shootings as a terrorist attack. It said the two gunmen were from a former Soviet nation and had fired on the soldiers during target practice at a firing range.

Lengthy prison sentences have been meted out to high profile opposition voices on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army by questioning its conduct or strategy.

France is stepping up military training toUkraine in order to correct perceptions that it has lag in supporting the country. Up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France, rotating through for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs, and training on equipment supplied by France, the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview published in Le Parisien.

— The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, accused Moscow late Saturday of conducting “massive, forced deportations of Ukrainians,” which it said likely amount to ethnic cleansing.

It references statements made by the Russian government this week in which they claim that several thousand children from the southern region occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps. The comments made by the deputy prime minister were originally reported by RIA Novosti.

The Russian government runs a network of at least 40 child custody centers for thousands of Ukrainian children, a potential war crime according to a Yale University team.

The military has hit legitimate military targets since the war began, according to a commentator for the Ukrainian news media. Targeting sites in Crimea and cross-border artillery duels have become routine as the war has moved closer to Russia and the occupied peninsula.

Girkin has long decried Russian generals whom he claims direct the war effort far from the frontline, calling them “unlearned in principle” and unwilling to listen to warnings about putting equipment and personnel so close together in HIMARS range. The Dutch court of mass murder found Girkin guilty of being involved in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, and sentenced him to life in prison.

Moscow’s battlefield failures have been lashed out at by the social media posts from Girkin. TheUkraine’s defense intelligence agency said it would offer a $100,000 reward to anyone who captures him.

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.

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

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

Security and conflict in Ukraine: a European High-Dimensional Analysis of Russia’s actions on Ukraine, Ukraine and the United Nations General Assembly

European Union foreign ministers are scheduled to meet today in Luxembourg. Before the meeting, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, told reporters that the bloc would look into “concrete evidence” of Iran’s involvement in Ukraine.

At least one person was killed and many others were injured as a wave of drones hit the Ukrainian capital early Monday.

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

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

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

Some regional officials — including the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin — appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. Mr. Sobyanin stated on his Telegram channel that no measures have been introduced to limit the city’s normal rhythm.

Despite the new power granted to them by Mr. Putin, the regional governors of Kursk, Krasnodar and Voronezh said they did not plan to impose entry or exit restrictions.

The martial law imposed in Ukraine is sure to cause a warning to many Russians, analysts say.

The people are worried that Mr. Putin will close the borders and that the siloviki will do what they want.

The Russian commander of the invasion admitted his army’s situation in Kherson was difficult and said 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.

Syria’s airspace, bordering Israel, is controlled by Russian forces, which have allowed Israel to strike Iranian weapon flows to Hezbollah, a militia sworn to Israel’s destruction. Gantz has offered to help Ukraine develop defensive systems and it will reportedly provide new military communications systems, but no missile shields.

Editor’s Note: Sébastien Roblin has written on the technical, historical and political aspects of international security and conflict for outlets including 19FortyFive, Popular Mechanics, The National Interest, NBC, Forbes.com, Inside Unmanned Systems and War is Boring. He holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University in conflict resolution and served with the Peace Corps in China. He tweets @sebastienroblin. The author’s opinions are their own in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

First, he’s seeking to distract his nation from the blindingly obvious, namely that he is losing badly on the battlefield and utterly failing to achieve even the vastly scaled back objectives of his invasion.

The French President meets the German Chancellor: Prolonging the European War on Gas Prices through a Winter Adventndelman Conference with the Kremlin

There are a variety of variables that influence this ability to keep going, from the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies to the popular will across a broad range of nations.

In the early hours of Friday in Brussels, European Union powers agreed a roadmap to control energy prices that have been surging on the heels of embargoes on Russian imports and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies at a whim.

There is an emergency cap on the benchmark European gas trading hub and the permission for EU gas companies to create a group to buy gas on the international market.

After leaving the summit, the French President conceded that there was only a clear mandate for the European Commission to begin working on a gas cap mechanism.

Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, is skeptical of price caps. The government of Germany is worried that caps would encourage higher consumption, and that will put additional pressure on restricted supplies.

These divisions are all part of Putin’s fondest 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.

France and Germany are at odds with each other on a number of issues. Though in an effort to reach some accommodation, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have scheduled a conference call for Wednesday.

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

Italy’s First Woman Prime Minister and the Leaders of a Post-Fascist Coalition: Is Russia Enough?

And now a new government has taken power in 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 has expressed admiration for Putin.

Berlusconi, in a secretly recorded audio tape, said he’d returned Putin’s gesture with bottles of Lambrusco wine, adding that “I knew him as a peaceful and sensible person,” in the LaPresse audio clip.

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.”

Poland and Hungary were united against liberal EU policies that seemed to reduce their influence, but now they have differing opinion of what to do about Ukraine. Poland has taken exception to the pro-Putin sentiment of Hungary’s populist leader.

Similar forces seem to be at work in Washington where House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, poised to become Speaker of the House if Republicans take control after next month’s elections, told an interviewer, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.”

On Monday, the influential 30-member congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to open talks with Russia to end the conflict while Russia’s troops are still in place, and its missiles and drones are hitting deep into the interior.

Hours later, Mia Jacob wrote to reporters with a statement “clarifying” her comments in support of Ukrainians. The Secretary of State called Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine to thank him for America’s support.

Thirty Years of Cold War in the West: Russian Warfare in Europe, Nuclear Forces and a Cold Cold Winter in the North and the South

There is a lot of motivation for Putin to prolong the conflict as long as possible 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.

In its two counteroffensives in the northeast and the south, the Ukrainian military has reported step-by-step gains in cutting supply lines and targeting Russian ammunition and fuel depots with long-range rockets and artillery.

The West continues to try and crimp Russian energy profits, by capping the amount countries will pay for Russian oil and limiting seaborne oil imports. The efforts are cutting into profits.

The lack of semi-conductors has led to the complete cessation of Russian production of hypersonic missiles. Aircraft are being cannibalized for spare parts, plants producing anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and “Russia has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks” for replenishment. Thirty years ago, the Soviet era ended.

A day before this report, the US announced seizure of all property of a top Russian procurement agent Yury Orekhov and his agencies “responsible for procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end-users…including advanced semiconductors and microprocessors.”

The Justice Department announced that people and companies are accused of violating sanctions by trying to bring high-tech equipment into Russia.

Russia rejoined a U.N.-brokered deal to safely export grain and other agricultural goods from Ukraine, on Nov. 2. Moscow had suspended its part in the deal a few days prior after saying Ukraine had launched a drone attack on its Black Sea ships.

A UN and Turkey-brokered agreement allowed Ukraine’s maritime corridors to reopen, but this week Moscow temporarily suspended that agreement after Russian Navy ships were struck at the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Wheat prices went up on global commodity markets immediately after Putin made his announcement. The prices that people pay for bread in Africa and around the globe are related to them.

The Russian Federation is restarting the implementation of the agreement after obtaining sufficient guarantees, according to the ministry.

World Affairs Report on the U.S. Response to the Russia-Ukraine War on Drugs, Food, and Nuclear Matter from the Cold War to the Early 2000s

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. David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, said in May that the world was heading toward starvation.

Amir M. Abdulla, the United Nations’ coordinator for the initiative, said in a tweet that he welcomed Russia’ decision and was “grateful for Turkish facilitation.”

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.

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. You can look at more opinions on CNN.

According to a western country closely monitoring Iran’s weapons program, Iran is about to send more powerful weapons to Russia for the fight against Ukraine.

The growing relationship between Moscow and Tehran has made Iran’s rivals in the region and NATO members interested in restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran which aimed to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic weapon.

Everyone is currently affected by the war in Ukraine. The conflict has also sent fuel prices higher, contributing to a global explosion of inflation.

The historian Yuval Noah Harari said that a victory by Russia could open the way to invasions of one country by another, something that nations had come to reject since the Second World War.

Much of what happens today far from the battlefields still has repercussions there. The Saudis helped Russia fund the war by boosting oil revenues when they decided to slash production, accused the US. (An accusation the Saudis deny).

The United States is expected to provide Patriot missiles to Ukraine, an apparent response to the Ukrainian government’s urgent call for more weapons to shoot down Russian missiles, according to several U.S. news reports. The surface- to-air guided missiles can be used to target aircraft. It may not be a game-changing solution, as some analysts say that the single battery the U.S. is expected tosupplied would help.

The Attacks of the Ukrainian Army on the Front During the Second World War II: The Case of Bakhmut and Avdiivka

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. When they come with a lot of oomph, they make a lot of noise. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.

There is more to it than just 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. He did not say what the time frame was or where the attacks were coming from.

General Zaluzhnyi wrote that they had a discussion at the front. Ukrainian forces, he said he had told his U.S. colleague, were beating back the attacks, “thanks to the courage and skills of our warriors.”

The Institute for the Study of War said in its assessment that the increase in infantry in the east did not lead to Russia gaining new ground.

The assessment stated that the Russian Army was attacking on marginal gains in order to mass enough troops for success. The attacks have been directed at several towns and villages, including Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

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.

Even if the Republicans win the House, they might limit funding forUkraine, as a result of their predictions that it will be in control.

Russian Defense Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s Visit to the Kherson Reionization Region: Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich on Friday

The Turkish President will have a meeting with the Swedish Prime Minister on Tuesday. Sweden must meet certain criteria before it can join NATO according to Turkey’s president.

Also on Wednesday, the U.N. General Assembly holds a special session on Ukraine. The Security Council discusses Nord Stream pipelines at Russia’s request. Russia’s parliament will hold extraordinary meetings.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “energy terrorism,” as attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure left more than 4 million Ukrainians without electricity.

The new deal will likely include the supply of guidance kits, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which Ukraine can use to bolt on to their unguided missiles or bombs. This will increase their accuracy and the rate at which they burn through bullets. A lot of the $1.8 billion is expected to fund munitions replacements and stocks.

The military of the country said that its troops entered the key city of Kherson on Friday as 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.

Even as its soldiers fled, the Kremlin said that it still considered Kherson — which President Vladimir V. Putin illegally annexed in September — to be a part of Russia.

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

Nightmares of the Khmer Rouge: Russian forces have planted mines in the Kherson city, and Ukraine is preparing to attack Ukraine

Oleh Voitsehovsky, the commander of a Ukrainian drone reconnaissance unit, said he had seen no Russian troops or equipment in his zone along the front less than four miles north of Kherson city.

He said that the Russians left all the villages. We looked at many villages with drones and didn’t see a single car. We don’t see how they are leaving. They retreat quietly, 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 no phone signal, no electricity, and no heating.

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.

In the south, at least 34 places came under attack from Russian forces on the east bank of the Dnipro. The report states that the Russians are searching houses and taking boats and other watercraft.

Poland is one of a number of countries that are facing repercussions from these attacks. Russian rockets have knocked out power in neighboring Moldova, which is not a NATO member, and thus attracted less scrutiny than the Polish incident.

There is nothing that can be said about the exact circumstances of the missile. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday.

His forces planted mines in large portions of Kherson, similar to the actions of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, who planted mines in large portions of Cambodia for more than 30 years. The Cambodian de-mining experts have been called in to assist Ukraine with their gargantuan task. At the same time, Russian armies have also left behind evidence of unspeakable atrocities and torture, also reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge.

That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating soldiers according to the UK 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.

Diplomatically, Putin finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage. He was the only head of state to stay away from a session of the G20, which Zelensky dubbed the “G19.” It’s no longer possible for Putin to return to the G7 after he was ousted from it. Russia stopped 100 Canadians, including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country and made a comparison with North Korea more striking.

Above all, many of the best and brightest in virtually every field have now fled Russia. Writers, artists, Journalists and some of the most creative technologists are included.

One leading Russian journalist, Mikhail Zygar, who has settled in Berlin after fleeing in March, told me last week that while he hoped this is not the case, he is prepared to accept the reality – like many of his countrymen, he may never be able to return to his homeland, to which he remains deeply attached.

Russia’s failure to cooperate in the Cold War: Implications for the Future Combat Air System, Ukraine, Moldova, and the European Commission

Rumbling in the background is an attempt by the Western world to remove the country of material resources to pursue this war. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission said on Tuesday that the commission has learned to stop dependency and want reliable and forward looking connections.

Moreover, Putin’s dream that this conflict, along with the enormous burden it has proven to be on Western countries, would only drive further wedges into the Western alliance are proving unfulfilled. On Monday, word began circulating in aerospace circles that the long-stalled joint French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System – Europe’s largest weapons program – was beginning to move forward.

Above all, Putin still does not appear to have learned that revenge is not an appropriate way to act on or off the battlefield and in the final analysis is most likely to isolate and weaken Russia, perhaps irreversibly.

Also, Ukraine intentionally disconnected three nuclear power plants from the national electricity grid as a precautionary measure in response to the Russian strikes, the energy company Ukrenergo said.

The company said that the nuclear reactor were still not connected to the national grid after the brief emergency shutdown.

Vitaliy Kim, the military administrator for the south of Mykolaiv, said the nuclear plant in his area has been cut off and there is a risk of a reactor shutdown.

Russian shelling in the last few weeks has left a lot of the country without power and heat at a time of harsh winter weather.

In Moldova, President Maia Sandu wrote this about Russia on Facebook: “We can’t trust a regime that leaves us in the dark and cold, that purposely kills people for the mere desire to keep other peoples poor and humble.”

The United States’ role in supplying munitions to the Ukrainian warfields: the case of cluster exploded Ordnance in Ukraine

Ukraine is scrambling to prepare for the winter. According to President Zelenskyy, there are 4,000 centers that can take care of civilians if there is an extended power cut.

He said they will provide a lot of services, such as phone charging and internet access. They will be in schools and government buildings.

Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko is among the officials who has been pushing the US to provide the munitions. He told CNN that it’s extremely important because it will change the situation on the battlefield. “With these, Ukraine will finish this war much faster, to the benefit of everybody.”

Senior Biden administration officials have been fielding this request for months and have not rejected it outright, CNN has learned, a detail that has not been previously 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. A weapons expert and associate arms director for Human Rights Watch told CNN that the dozens of sub-munitions that explode simultaneously across a large area creates nasty, bloody fragment to anyone hit by them.

The Biden administration has not taken the option off the table as a last resort, if stockpiles begin to run dangerously low. The proposal has not received enough attention because of the restrictions on the US ability to transfer cluster explosives, sources say.

The risk to civilians from bombs with a one percent unexploded Ordnance rate is higher than the limits apply to them. President Joe Biden could override that restriction, but the administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that that is unlikely in the near term.

“The ability of Ukraine to make gains in current and upcoming phases of conflict is in no way dependent on or linked to their procuring said munitions,” a congressional aide told CNN.

The Defense Ministry told CNN it does not comment on reports regarding requests for particular weapons systems or ammunition, choosing to wait until any agreement with a supplier is reached before many any public announcement.

The M30A1 alternate warhead was the replacement for the dual-purpose improved conventional munitions. The M30A1 contains 180,000 small tungsten steel fragments that scatter on impact and do not leave unexploded munitions on the ground. Ukrainian officials say that the US has in storage DPICMs that the Ukrainian military can use much more effectively than the M30A1.

Ukraine’s Special Military Operation: Putin’s “Seaf Operation” and the “Source of the Sea of Azov”

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.

The Sea of Azov has become Russia’s internal sea as Putin noted in a meeting with Human Rights Council members. 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.

Western criticism that Putin’s previous nuclear weapons comments amounted to saber-rattling was wrong, as he claimed they were a factor of deterrence.

We have not gone mad. “We know what nuclear weapons are because of our experience with them,” Putin said. He said that the nuclear power we have is more advanced and state-of-the-art than anything else.

In his televised remarks, the Russian leader didn’t address Russia’s battlefield setbacks or its attempts to cement control over the seized regions but acknowledged problems with supplies, treatment of wounded soldiers and limited desertions.

The governor of the region posted pictures of the new concrete anti-tank barriers 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.” The governor of Belgorod said on Wednesday that Russian air defenses have shot down incoming rockets and that there had been fires from cross-border attacks.

There were also air strikes along the other side of the front line, according to the General Staff. Russian forces have tried to break down Ukrainian defenses in recent weeks and that area has seen a lot of fighting.

Moscow responded with strikes by artillery, multiple rocket launchers, missiles, tanks and mortars at residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, worsening damage to the power grid. The private Ukrainian power utility Ukrenergo claimed the temperatures in the eastern parts of the country had dropped to as low as minus 17 degrees Celsius.

Comments on “Water Cutoff from the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant” by Jerzy Szemeredevskii During the Kremlin Lecture at the Fermilab Tevatron

He gestured to a group of soldiers who were receiving the awards, holding a glass of champagne.

He had a number of events that he blames on the Ukrainians. Who blew up the power lines from the Kursk nuclear power plant?”

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 country has declared that its drones are over the targets.

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. No one has said anything about it. At all! Complete silence.”

Vladimir Zelensky, the secretary of state of Ukraine, and the president of the Kremlin region of Odesa, Ukraine

In parts of the Kharkiv region that were regained by the Ukrainian forces last September, there has been an increase in Russian shelling.

The Russian president made a special public appearance Thursday to address Russian military attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

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

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

The recreation center where people, civilians and military base personnel were dining was destroyed by the missile attack on Melitopol, said the acting governor of Zaporizhzhia.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry was silent at the time about the strikes, though a presidential adviser offered a hint that the Ukrainian government was behind the attacks.

The unofficial Crimean media portal “Krymskyi veter” said an explosion at a Russian military barracks in Sovietske had set the barracks on fire and there were dead and wounded.

The air defense system was used in Simferopol, said Sergey Aksenov on Telegram. All services are running as usual.

He said that the strikes had left many in the dark. Mr. Zelensky called the situation in the Odesa region “very difficult,” noting that only the most critical infrastructure there remained operational. He warned that although repair crews were working “nonstop,” restoring power to civilians would take “days,” not “hours.”

The authorities in Odesa said that emergency power cuts had been implemented because of the missile attacks. DTEK said that they are introduced due to the threat of missile attacks to avoid significant damage if an enemy hits an energy facility.

Zelensky said that Russia is trying to bring disaster to the city with its treatment of Odesa residents.

Zelensky’s crackdown on Russian strikes on Ukraine has provoked a grim cycle in recent diplomatic relations between Europe and the United States

Ukraine on Saturday received “a new support package from Norway in the amount of $100 million” that will be used “precisely for the restoration of our energy system after these Russian strikes,” Zelensky added.

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

The power system is far from normal, and he urged people to reduce their power use to not strain the power grid.

There are attacks on infrastructure in different parts of the country. Residential buildings, hotel, (a) shop, place for festivals were damaged. There are dead people and injured people.

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.

The conference with Ukraine is going to take place in France on Tuesday and will be hosted by the French government with a video address by the Ukrainian president.

The U.S. response to the Dec. 8 shooting of a vocational school in Donetsk in the aftermath of the December 17 December Russian invasion

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was freed Dec. 8 after nearly 10 months in Russian detention and following months of negotiations. Her release came in exchange for the U.S. handing over convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner is back in the U.S. and reunited with her wife. Bout is back in Russia and is reported to have joined an ultranationalist party.

Russian oil revenue was targeted with new measures on December 5. They include a price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports and a Russian oil price cap.

On the 11th of December President Zelenskyy phoned President Biden and other leaders, in an apparent step up of diplomacy over the Russian invasion.

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.

“Forty rockets from BM-21 ‘Grad’ MLRS were fired at civilians in our city,” he said Thursday, adding that a key intersection in Donetsk city center had come under fire.

They hit Kherson every day with rockets, missiles and artillery. More than 80 people have died. Only a fifth of the city’s prewar population of 300,000 remains.

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

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center, a Ukrainian research and consulting company, said on Ukrainian TV that power outages had been rolled out prior to the strikes as a preventative measure to protect the grid from blackouts. He said that despite this, the result would be unpleasant.

The United States sent machinery and generators to help strengthen the Ukrainian capital’s power infrastructure.

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

U.S. Defense Assistance to Ukraine in the Eleven-Month War: The Kremlin’s Rebuke Revisited

This week, the Kremlin also appeared to rebuff Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace solution that involved asking Russia to start withdrawing troops from Ukraine this Christmas – as the war approaches the 10-month mark.

The realities have developed over all this time, and the Ukrainian side needs to take account of that, according to the Kremlin.

“And these realities indicate that the Russian Federation has new subjects,” he said, referring to four areas Russia has claimed to have annexed, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

But news, first reported by CNN, that the US is finalizing plans to send the system to Ukraine triggered a cryptic warning from Russia’s US embassy Wednesday of “unpredictable consequences.”

“Earlier, many experts, including those overseas, questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the risk of directly dragging the US army into combat,” Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow.

Kyiv has repeatedly asked for the US Army’s Patriot – an acronym for Phased Array Tracking Radar for intercept on Target – system, as it is considered one of the most capable long-range air defense systems on the market.

The Pentagon press secretary asked if the Russian warnings wereprovocative. The comments would not affect aid to Ukranian.

“I find it ironic and very telling that officials from a country that brutally attacked its neighbor in an illegal and unprovoked invasion … that they would choose to use words like provocative to describe defensive systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians,” Ryder told reporters.

NATO does not have troops on the ground. NATO planes aren’t in the air over Ukraine. But we are supporting Ukraine in their right to defend themselves,” he said.

Russia’s defense ministry shared video of the installation of a “Yars” missile into a silo in the Kaluga region for the head of the Kozelsky missile formation, which may be a less subtle message than calling the deployment provocative.

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.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: “Results on a Plan for a Russian Army in the Light of the Makiivka Attacks”

Unlike smaller air defense systems, Patriot missile batteries need much larger crews, requiring dozens of personnel to properly operate them. The United States usually training for missiles takes a long while, and now is under a lot of attack from Russia.

Zelensky rejected the idea in an interview with The Economist of a plan to take back only land seized by Russia and not areas under Russian control.

The NATO alliance still has two main objectives, according to the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, who spoke with France 24 this week.

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.”

“You load the ammunition and you cross your fingers and hope it’s gonna fire or when it lands that it’s gonna explode,” said the official, speaking to reporters.

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. Russian territory has been declared off-limits to Ukrainian strikes because western powers want large depots to be broken up and scattered.

According to Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the regional military administration, there were at least 10 missiles hit in the north of the region. Power was beginning to be restored in Kharkiv city after being knocked out for much of the day. The mayor of our city said that there was a great deal of damage to the infrastructure, so he asked residents to go to the so-called immunity points to collect food, and also to charge their cellphones.

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. Their statement didn’t clarify if a Kinzal was used in the attacks.

The commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, said his air defenses had been able to repel a total of 12 incoming attacks. The total number of incoming attacks was unclear.

Kirby said that Russia’s defense industrial base is being taxed. They are having trouble keeping up with the pace. We know that the Russian president is struggling to replenish precision guided munitions.

He did not say what the next security assistance package for Ukraine would be, but added that additional air defense capabilities should be expected.

Ukraine’s artificial Christmas tree in Kyiv: An artificial tree to mark the end of the ground war on the Sea of Azov

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.

Zelensky thanked everyone who carries out the repairs in any weather or time of day. It is difficult, but I am certain that we will pull through, and Russia will fail.

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

An artificial Christmas tree in the center of Kyiv is going to be illuminated with garlands that are energy-saving and will be powered at certain times, according to the city’s mayor.

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 in their letters to St. Nicholas are asking for air defense, for weapons, for victory – a victory for them, a victory for all Ukrainians,” he said.

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.

The War in Ukraine: The First Prime Minister’s Preliminary Report from the House of Commons Liaison Committee on Nuclear Security and Security

On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak makes his first appearance as prime minister before the Commons Liaison Committee, where the Ukraine war and other global issues are discussed. Sunak met with members of the U.K. led European military force in Latvia on Monday.

According to Russian news reports, the Russian and Chinese leaders will have virtual talks sometime this month.

And Ukrainians and Russians are heading into their first Christmas or Hanukkah festivities since the Kremlin launched its full-on invasion of Ukraine in late 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 Murekezi told ABC News he spent weeks in a basement, where he was tortured, and months in a prison in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.

The US has felt its way forward through gradual increases in the capabilities of weapons supplied to Ukranians, even though they are wary at each stage of Russia’s supposed “red lines”.

That is a poor example for other aggressive powers. Nuclear weapons allow you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors, because other nations won’t intervene.

If that isn’t the message US and the West want others to hear, then there should be more direct and assertive means of making sure that Moscow doesn’t get it.

The first item is the Patriot missile systems. They have been characterized as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO preciously guards them, and they require the personnel who operate them – almost 100 in a battalion for each weapon – to be properly trained.

More precision weapons are vital: they ensure Ukraine hits its targets, and not any civilians remaining nearby. Russia appears to fire hundreds or thousands of shells at areas it wants to capture, but Ukraine doesn’t.

Moscow seems to be running out of new cards, as it is struggling to equip and rally its conventional forces. 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 is in Washington to remind Republicans of the necessity of the fight between Moscow andUkraine and the likelihood of the US ending up in a war.

He is an inspiring rhetorician, and – as a former reality TV star turned unexpected president – the embodiment of how Putin’s war of choice 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.

Zelensky’s speech from the US Capitol called for more American aid in fighting Russian aggression since the war began.

There were no real calls for peace, according to Peskov. Zelensky emphasized that we need peace during the address to the US Congress on Wednesday.

Peskov told reporters that the meeting showed that the US is in a proxy war against Russia.

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.

Moscow said last week that it would see the reported delivery of missiles to the Ukranian side as “another provocative move by the U.S.”

“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.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the three soldiers were killed in an incident at the air base that houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine.

It is the second time Engels has been targeted by Ukrainian drones; on Dec. 5, unprecedented drone strikes on Engels and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia killed a total of three servicemen and wounded four more. The strikes on the airbases were followed by a massive retaliatory missile barrage in Ukraine that struck homes and buildings and killed civilians.

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

State Department of Ukraine and Security Service in the Building of the Dnipropetrovsk Reactor Complex. The response of the Ukrainian Government to the December 5 incident, according to a spokesperson

No emergencies in the residential areas of the city had been reported, and no civilian infrastructure had been damaged. He also extended his condolences to the families of the servicemen, saying the government would provide them with assistance.

“This reminds of the events of December 5, so there may be some deja vu, some repetition of this situation, after which [the Russians] launched a massive missile strike,” the spokesperson said. “Therefore, we should be prepared for this, take it into account in our plans and do not forget to proceed to the shelter.”

There was a video that appeared to show an explosion in the sky. 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.”

In Ukraine, the night from Sunday into Monday was quiet. Russian forces didn’t shell the Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time in a long time.

There have been 3 quiet nights since the Russians began shelling the area around the city of Nikopol. Nikopol is located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under control of the Russian forces.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian army reported shelling into 23 communities, including the border town of Vovchansk.

If the Russian airfields were hit, the missiles on the surface could be destroyed before they could be deployed.

Mr. Zagorodnyuk, clarifying that he did not speak for the government and could not confirm the strikes, added: “You cannot consider, this person will attack you because you are fighting back. There is absolutely no strategic reason not to try to do this.”

Ukraine isn’t a nuclear powerhouse, but the Kremlin had a long war in February, and is ready to respond to the crisis

The Kinzhal is the most sophisticated missile in Russia’s arsenal and it is hard to shoot down because it is hypersonic.

“If the Russians thought that no one at home would be affected by the war, then they were deeply mistaken,” Colonel Ihnat said. He stated that the bombing campaign against Ukraine was complicated by explosions at Russian airfields and that Moscow moved some of its aircraft, though no one is saying that the strikes impeded the Russian bombardment.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told The Associated Press on Monday that his government wanted to hold a “peace summit,” hopefully mediated by the United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, by late February, but that Russia could not be invited unless it first faced prosecution for war crimes. It was not the first time that each country claimed to be open to peace talks 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. It was warned by many military and cyber observers around the globe that Russia’s hacking was a means to an end, and that it would be used outside of Ukraine too, with cyberattacks that struck everything from American hospitals to the Winter Olympics.

The human body is like the central nervous system, with all sorts of systems out of whack if something is messed with, says a director of the Defense Priorities think tank. “It’s not only an inconvenience but an enormous economic cost. It’s an effort to create pain for the civilian population, to show that the government can’t protect them adequately.”

According to the leader of disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office, several residential buildings in the capital were destroyed.

An explosion frightened the windows of nearby homes. In case of water shortages, the mayor encouraged residents to charge their electronic devices and fill water containers.

Kiev attacks on Thursday and “special military operations”: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kyiv Mayor Anna Kovalchuk, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Halyna Hladka

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.”

Anna Kovalchuk, another Kyiv resident, said she was determined not to let the Russians ruin her upcoming celebrations. I am more concerned that New Year’s Eve will have to be spent in the dark because most likely there will be no electricity. She told CNN that she had stocked up on power banks and garlands to ensure that the power outage wouldn’t stop her.

Hryn said: “After the sirens gave the all clear, life in the capital went back to normal, after my neighbors and their kid got to go to the cinema for the new movie on time.” Some people continued with holiday plans despite the fact that parents took their children to school.

Elsewhere in the capital, Halyna Hladka stocked up on water as soon as the sirens sounded and quickly made breakfast for her family so they would have something to eat. They heard the loud noises of explosions for nearly two hours. She thought they were close to her area, but they turned out to be air defense. We will celebrate with the family on the new year even though there have been attacks.

A 14-year-old was hurt and two other people were pulled from a damaged home on Thursday. In the capital there were homes, an industrial facility and a playground that were damaged.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has claimed that a wave of missile attacks against Ukraine on Thursday, believed to be one of the biggest barrages yet in the war, “neutralized’” all their assigned targets.

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

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

Putin claimed his troops were embarking on a “special military operation” which would conclude in a matter of weeks.

War Against Ukraine Has Left Russia Isolated And Ststruggling With More Tumult Ahedriah: Social Media, Investigative Startups and Investigative News

Yet the war has also fundamentally upended Russian life — rupturing a post-Soviet period in which the country pursued, if not always democratic reforms, then at least financial integration and dialogue with the West.

The military or leadership have been subject to the strictest of laws since February. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against the war — 45% of them women — according to a leading independent monitoring group.

The repressions extend elsewhere: organizations and individuals are added weekly to a growing list of “foreign agents” and “non-desirable” organizations intended to damage their reputation among 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 still unenforced. Should the moment arise, the measures are intended to crush 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 have restrictions as well. 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. The older Russians like to watch angry TV talk shows and listen to state media propaganda.

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

The Russian Exodus During Putin’s First Year in Afghanistan: State and Politics of Moscow’s Armed Forces and Military Operations

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.

Yet Putin’s order to mobilize 300,000 additional troops in September prompted the largest outflow: Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled to border states including Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Georgia in an attempt to avoid the draft.

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.

Russia’s ruble currency collapsed and its banking and trading markets were shaky as a result of the invasion. Hundreds of global corporate brands, such as McDonald’s and ExxonMobil, reduced, suspended or closed their Russian operations entirely.

Ultimately, President Putin is betting that when it comes to sanctions, Europe will blink first — pulling back on its support to Ukraine as Europeans grow angry over soaring energy costs at home. He announced a five-month ban on oil exports to countries that abide by the price cap, a move likely to make the pain more acute in Europe.

The economic damage has already put an end to Putin’s two-decades strong reputation for providing “stability” — once a key basis for his support among Russians who remember the chaotic years that followed the collapse of the USSR.

The government’s tone isn’t any different when it comes to Russia’s military campaign. Russia’s Defense Ministry gives daily briefings on every successes on the ground. Putin assures everyone 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.

The number of Russian losses is officially at under 6,000 men, but that is still a subject that is taboo at home. Western estimates place those figures much higher.

Indeed, Russia’s invasion has — thus far — backfired in its primary aims: NATO looks set to expand towards Russia’s borders, with the addition of long-neutral states Finland and Sweden.

Longtime allies in Central Asia have criticized Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty, an affront that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. India and China have both bought discounted Russian oil, but they have yet to offer their full support to 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

The Kremlin’s “Big Press Conference” and “State of the Nation”: The Russian President and the “Secretary” of Ukraine

A state of the nation address, originally scheduled for April, was repeatedly delayed and won’t happen until next year. Putin’s annual “direct line” — a media event in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians — was canceled outright.

An annual December “big press conference” – a semi-staged affair that allows the Russian leader to handle fawning questions from mostly pro-Kremlin media – was similarly tabled until 2023.

The Kremlin gave no explanation for the delays. The Russian leader has been unable to share good news since 10 months of war, with many suspecting that he has run out of good news to share.

There is a video from the scene of the attack circulating on Telegram and an official Ukrainian military channel. The pile of rubble is so dense that almost no one is left in the building.

A top emergency adviser to the Ukrainian president said Russian missiles hit a four-star hotel in the entertainment district. The power grid operator shut off the electricity to a few areas of the capital region but did not cause any damage.

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.”

On the operation of the city’s life support system in the wake of the attack on a village east of the river Kharkiv

Three people were killed and three more were wounded in the eastern part of the country. Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram.

Two people were killed in a village east of the city ofKharkiv, said Oleh SynieHubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration. On the east bank of the river, there are Russian forces.

“26 of the enemy’s air strikes were on civilian infrastructure. The Shahed-136UAVs were used by the inhabitants 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. He said on Telegram that it was due to emergency shutdowns.

The metro line in the city was put under restrictions to make sure that no remnants of missile debris were found.

The death of Russian servicemen in occupied Makiivka and a symbol of the Russian-Russian war for Russia, according to a TV news agency

“From 2023 I really want to win, and also to have more bright impressions and new emotions. I miss it a lot. I would like to travel and open borders. I also think about my personal and professional growth, as I shouldn’t stand still. I have to develop and work for the benefit of the country,” said Alyona Bogulska, a 29-year-old financier.

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

She says she’s seen three types of people in Kherson. “Those who will die for Ukraine. Those people who will die for Russia. Those who don’t care, like that Russia has taken over and that it’s ok. “

The Russian defense ministry claims 63 Russian servicemen died in the attack, which is one of the deadliest episodes of the war for Moscow.

Russian state news agency Tass reported that Grigory Karasin, the senator from Russia, said that the people who killed Russian servicemen must be found.

The strategic communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of Ukralia sent greetings and felicitations to the people who were crammed into the building of the Vocational School in the occupied Makiivka. Santa packed the 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.”

Bezsonov hoped that those who made the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded. There are sturdy buildings in abandoned facilities and basements for personnel to quarters in.

A Russian propagandist on Telegram claims that a building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores.

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

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

New blow for Russia: an attack by the Ukrainians on Bakhmut, as reported by the U.S. on Feb. 24, and on Tuesday, January 24

Russian forces “lost 760 people killed just yesterday, (and) continue to attempt offensive actions on Bakhmut,” the military’s general staff said Sunday.

A new blow for Russia was delivered in the form of a U.S.-supplied precision weapons strike by the Ukrainians which allowed them to hit key targets.

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. The president said in his New Year’s address that the year of 2022, was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”

Five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling of a Ukraine-controlled area of the southern Kherson region, its Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Telegram.

An official said that the Russian forces shot at a market in the city of Beryslav. Three of the wounded are in serious condition and are being evacuated to Kherson, Yanushevich said.

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

WarGonzo: What is the most dangerous thing in war?” Vladimir Putin and the Donetsk People’s Republic chairman Semyon Pegov weighed in on Moscow’s response to the Russian 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.

Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the alias WarGonzo and two weeks ago was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, attacked the Ministry of Defense’s statement as “not convincing” and “a blatant attempt to smear blame.”

He questioned how the Ministry of Defense could be “so sure” that the location of soldiers lodging in a school building could not have been determined using drone surveillance or a local informant.

And he again raised suspicions about the official death toll, which was revised upward by Moscow to 89 from 63, writing that “their number will still be growing.”

In another post on Wednesday, Pegov warned that apathy on the battlefield will lead to more “tragedies.” Referring to the conflict both by its Kremlin euphemism – “special military operation” – and also by the word “war,” he said: “If you ask me personally what is the most dangerous thing in war, I will answer unequivocally: not to bother.”

Pegov and Denis Pushilin praised the soldiers who died in the strike shortly after the government pinned the blame on them.

Pushilin said on Telegram Wednesday that they know what it is 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.”

Russian media attention on the school shooting in the early stages of the RUS-Military operation: condemnation by the Ukrainian military and investigation by state media

The Russian defense ministry statement drew some mockery from the Ukrainian military. “Of course, using phones with geolocation is a mistake. The spokesman for the eastern group of the Ukrainian military said the version looked a bit ridiculous.

“Of course, this is a mistake [of the Russians], and I think that now they are engaged in [searching for] who is to blame. They are putting the blame on each other,” he continued.

It is clear that the main reason is not the use of phones. They were not able to covertly deploy these personnel. We were able to detect the target and destroy it, as a result of that.

Russian officials said that four rocket attacks hit the school where the forces were housed, located next to a big arms depot. Russian air defenses shot down two HIMARS rockets.

A day after the Russian Ministry of Defence launched a probe into the circumstances surrounding the strike, the editor in-chief of state-run networkRT welcomed the investigation and hoped that the responsible officials would 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 extent of punishment would also be announced.

On the Security of Mobile Phones in the War-Force Russia: When Russian Soldiers Left Crime and Its Promised Freedom to Go Home

RIA Novosti reported that the governor of Russia’s southwestern Samara region had talks with the leadership of the country’s defense ministry.

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 for how Russia is conducting it’s war now are deeper and broader.

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 a cynical attempt to seek breathing space despite the poor 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 longer-range system could cause a war beyond Ukraine’s frontiers, which the Biden administration fears could lead to an increase in hostilities.

Chris Dougherty has told me that Russia has failed to break up or relocate large arms depots because they can’t communicate adequately.

The view is shared by other experts. James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me in an e-mail that bad security communications are standard practice in the Russian Army.

He is not the only Russian war writer who doubts. The soldiers themselves were to blame for the events in Makiivka according to a post on theGrey Zone Telegram channel, which was linked to the leader of the group of mercenaries. It’s to 98% a lie and an attempt to throw off the blame.

Many inmates from the Russian prisons freed and sent to the Ukrainian side were arrivals in the war. 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 is likely to have been watched by Mizintsev.

Still, Putin-favorite Sergei Shoigu remains defense minister — as recently as Saturday, before the Makiivka attack, telling his forces in a celebratory video: “Our victory, like the New Year, is inevitable.”

No evidence of armed conflict between Ukraine and Germany from the attack on a Ukrainian college dormitory building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine on Thursday

Germany plans to send four additional Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, increasing the total to 18. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also pledged to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Russia claimed that many of Kyiv’s soldiers were killed in an attack in eastern Ukraine last week.

A CNN team on the ground has seen no indication of any massive casualties in the area. The team said that there is no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk.

The reporter in Kramtorsk reported that there were no signs of a strike on the two college dormitories that Russia claimed had been housing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.

There was an attack on a school that housed Russian conscript in Makiivka on New Year’s Day according to both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts.

According to a top Ukrainian national security official, Russia is likely to conduct amaximum escalation of the war in Ukraine as soon as the next few weeks.

The Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council told Sky News that the months ahead would be defining.

The ministry said military representatives from the two countries will practice joint planning of the use of troops based on the experiences of armed conflicts in recent years.

There was a lot of missiles in the city of Kramatorsk on Thursday and the missiles sent flames and thick puffs of smoke into the air.

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

Rescue workers searched through piles of rubble to try and locate survivors in the aftermath of Wednesday’s attack, which damaged eight apartment buildings. People were taken to a school for shelter.

Investigating the decision of Vladimir Putin on the provision of Buk-TELAR to separatists of the Donetsk People’s Republic

“A country bordering absolute evil. It’s important for the country to overcome it in order to reduce the chance of tragedies happening again. We will definitely find and punish the bad guys. They do not deserve mercy.”

Citing intercepted telephone conversations by Russian government officials, the Public Prosecution Service’s Joint Investigation Team said there were “strong indications that in Russia, the president made the decision about the provision of the Buk-TELAR to separatists of the DPR,” or the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine.

Regardless, as a head of state, Putin is immune from prosecution, because investigators said the high bar of full and conclusive evidence is not met. The families of the 298 victims were told of the findings by the Joint Investigation Team.

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down the flight on July 17, 2014, while it was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The people on the plane were all killed.

In a new finding, investigators have said that the DPR leaders were in close touch with the Russian intelligence service and Kremlin advisers.

In the second half of June, a request was made for anti-aircraft guns that have higher range, by the separatists. That is a state body that 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 Russian government officials said the decision about military support was up to the president. “The decision is even delayed a week ‘because there is only one who makes a decision […] the person who is at a summit in France.’ The D Day commemoration in France took place on June 5 and 6 of last year.

“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.”

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Commander of the Sikorsky Brigade, Sergey and Hennady

The Ukrainian military also reported Wednesday that more than 30 settlements in the regions of Kharkiv and Sumy came under fire, with 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. There were no casualties 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.

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

The helicopter’s nose rears as the horizon disappears. There’s a faint thump as rockets trailing brown smoke arc ahead. The aircraft is touching its side in a way that looks like it has been hit.

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’s no time to reflect – the effect of the rockets will get passed back to the pilots later. 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 are both middle-aged pilots with more than two decades of flying behind them. They flew for the United Nations on several peacekeeping missions in Africa in the early 2000s.

The experience, they say, had been invaluable. It gave them a chance to fly Low and in Difficult Scenarios, like the ongoing civil war in the DR.

The Mi-8s in this flight were conceived as transport helicopters in the 1960s, but are now mounted with rockets. Unlike modern, or even Soviet-era attack helicopters, they’ve got no armor to protect the pilots.

Dangerously close to the front line, he could not stay on the ground so, after a quick inspection, took off on his damaged blades. He flew to a rear location where engineers could swap the damaged equipment with three others cannibalized from a different helicopter.

Ukraine’s Helicopter Fleet in the Light of Recent Military and Military Cross-Section Measurements and a More Experienced Pilot

President Volodymyr Zelensky has begged NATO and other allies for, among other things, jets and other aircraft. The response has been close to zero.

The UK is interested in giving Ukraine’s helicopter fleet a boost and has offered to help with the acquisition of old Sea King aircraft. 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.

Yuri is a younger flier who is paired with a more experienced co-pilot, but nevertheless has a tally of more than 100 combat missions this year alone. “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

Invisible pilots: hiding behind hills or hiding behind hilly tarmacs? A tale of Kiev pilots and Russian drone operators from a conflict of attrition

His team hides fuel near the front line. Support crews tuck themselves out of sight. Perimeter security exists but it’s invisible.

In a war of attrition, many Ukrainian pilots have lost friends. Their main weapon is, arguably, better motivation than their Russian enemies. They covet Western aircraft as if their lives depended on them – which they would.

He had to wait 24 hours for the news from Ukrainian drone operators, who called him in to tell him. He was racing away below the tree height when his rockets hit the ground.

The Russians can find us from more than 30 km 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

The Pain of Bereavement: The Ugly Warped Ship Observed by a South African Naval Force on the anniversary of the Crimea of Ukraine

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…”

Russian warships with powerful weapons pulled into a South Africa port this weekend as the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine approaches.

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.

South Africa says war games have been planned for a long while and it is participating in a naval exercise in the Indian Ocean.

But the timing of the exercises has Western diplomats privately incensed and publicly critical, and they risk an embarrassing backlash for the government in Pretoria.

“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. And though Russia promises more trade deals, its battered economy is unlikely to provide the direct investment that South Africa desperately needs.

“By default, we are on the side of Russia. The sell-out to us Ukraine is called a sell-out. It is selling out to the west,” said Obey Mabena, a veteran of the ANC’s armed wing in an interview last year with CNN.

In the 70s, like many in his generation, he fled South Africa because of its police brutality. In exile, many South African youth joined the armed wing of liberation movements like the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress.

There is a country like the Soviet bloc that was ready to give us what 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 only supported comprehensive economic sanctions in mid-1980s – decades after the apartheid regime took power.

Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, was on a terror watch list until 2008 when the Cold War ended. 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.

And the anti-apartheid movement had some of its most powerful allies in the US. Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state was lambasted by then-Senator Joe Biden for supporting the White South African government.

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

The Story of Joe Biden in Kyiv: Military Particles, Military Bloggers, and the War Between South Africa and the United States

“The response we got is you can take it or leave it. The minister of international relations and cooperation said in June that they were forced to abstain from making decisions in the face of arrogance.

She believes that a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukranian should be the goal for the global community. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has offered to mediate in those talks.

Neither side has taken him up on the offer. The country has not been frozen out by South Africa’s stance. The Secretaries of State and Treasury, as well as other senior US diplomats, have visited South Africa since the start of the war.

But if South African officials believe their stance is the pragmatic approach, it is difficult to argue that it is the moral one. The late Archbishop of Cape Town said this was not a good time to sit on the fence.

It is rumored that Russia might test- fire a hypersonic Zircon missile during the naval exercises.

If they show them off in the exercises, it will be another way for the Russians to show that they are taking care of their people.

President Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine sparked anger and embarrassment among many of Russia’s hawkish military pundits on Monday, increasing pressure on Vladimir Putin as the Russian leader prepares to justify his stuttering invasion in a national address.

Biden in Kyiv. Demonstrative humiliation of Russia,” Russian journalist Sergey Mardan wrote in a snarky response on his Telegram channel. “Tales of miraculous hypersonics may be left for children. Just like spells about the holy war we are waging with the entire West.”

Biden could have risked his life to visit the frontlines of eastern Ukraine, according to a Russian army veteran and former fsb officer.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if the grandfather (he is not good for anything but simple provocations anyway) is brought to Bakhmut as well… AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO HIM,” Girkin said.

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.

The deputy head of Russia’s Security Council is known for making controversial statements in an effort to strengthen his nationalist credentials.

The Kremlin stated that foreign guests and representatives would not be invited to the military operation that Russia calls a special military operation.

The Ukrainian President spoke from a video link to the attendees including the German Chancellor and the French President. The vice president later told the gathering that Russia had committed “crimes against humanity.”

NATO defense ministers met in Brussels, where Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged a boost in ammunition to Ukraine, warning that the Kremlin is preparing for new offensives and attacks.

Kyiv War-anniversary Annihilation: Where Do We Stand? How Do We Go From Here To Where And Why Does Russia Want?

“We have everything for it. The motivation, certainty, friends, and diplomacy is what we have. You have all come together for this,” Zelensky said. “If we all do our important homework, victory will be inevitable.”

In Russia, the former president and deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council said that Russia wanted to push the borders of threats to our country even if these were the borders of Poland.

The leader of the Ukrainians spoke to military members in Kyiv. He told them it was they who would determine the future of the country.

landmarks around the world lit up in colors of the Ukrainian flag, while new weapons and funding announcements were made.

The UN Security Council needs to prevent Putin’s crimes from becoming our new normal.

During a virtual meeting with G 7 leaders and Zelensky, the Japanese Prime Minister said he will present the idea of new sanctions against Russia.

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.

It was a bitterly cold morning in Kyiv, but Pahitsky said she felt it was her duty as the student president of her school to represent her classmates and pay her respects to the fallen heroes.

“Their photographs are here on the main street. It is a great honor. They died as heroes. It is very important for us. And it would have been for them,” she said.

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

How Ukrainian troops invaded the city of Kreminna in Luhansk in February 20, 2022, and how Russian troops threatened to invade the village of Berkhivka

Olexander Atamas, who was an IT worker before the war and currently serves with the Naval forces of the armed forces of Ukraine, admitted on Friday that it was hard to describe his feelings.

“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. There is no fear at the moment.

WarGonzo, who writes under the name WarGonzo, said fighters from the private military company had attacked in several different directions. He claimed “a slight advance” to the east of the city and repeated Wagner’s claim that it now controls Berkhivka, a village north-west of Bakhmut.

Mariinka has been almost obliterated by the fighting and has been reported as one of several offensive actions in that area.

The ministry said Russian forces had carried out artillery and thermobaric attacks on Ukrainian positions in areas west of the city of Kreminna in Luhansk, and it claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Ukrainians in that area.

The city founded by Catherine the Great was not believed to be attacked by Russians, according to a retired physics teacher from Russia.

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. It turned the sky pink and illuminated green fields bursting with the winter harvest.

She began to cry. She called her friends and family to see if they were OK. Some were packing their bags to flee west. But Horobstova, her husband, Volodymyr, and her youngest daughter, Iryna, refused. Even with their Russian roots, their loyalties were clear.

Russian soldiers crossing the Dnipro River into the city of Kherson were kept out of the Antonivka Bridge by Ukrainian soldiers. Serhiy wondered if the bridge would have been blown up on the first day of the invasion.

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

I tell them ‘No, no, no,’ when they ask if I am going to leave Kherson. No way! “I say that.” she says. “I tell them that as soon as we free them, I’m going to bake bread for 24 hours straight, load the loaves onto a motorboat with the Ukrainian flag, cross the Dnipro River and bring it to them personally.”

The Underground Resistance of Ukraine: Agent 007. She followed along wherever she could with a viking-like hair for a few years before the invasion

Pohomii’s hair looked like a rattail and she looked like a woman from the vikings. 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.

“I remember this boy with an amputated leg in the central market,” she says. He played the guitar and sung the Ukrainian national anthem. It was really brave. We would gather around him and sing along quietly, like bunnies.”

Just as quietly, an underground resistance formed. Hundreds of people became partisans and began reporting to the Ukrainian security services. Pohomii was a member of one. Her job was to document who was collaborating with Russian forces and to send her findings to Ukraine’s security services via the secure messaging app Signal.

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

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

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

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

A mom in Ukraine, Iryna, and Valerii Chupikova: a patriot, a spy in the army

Chupikova was hard to track, in part, because “I do not look like a threat,” she says. She has a green hair and blue eyes and looks like a Minnesota soccer mom.

She says they wanted them to look average, unremarkable and hard to remember so they could work undetected.

She recruited her husband, Valerii Chupikov, to work with her. They used Signal to send coordinates of the Russian convoys to a contact in the Ukrainian military.

When the internet was out and cellphone service was weak, she would climb to the roof of her house and throw her phone up in the air, hoping for a signal to send her messages.

Russian troops seemed to be watching everyone. Residents were getting arrested for giving Russian soldiers dirty looks.

Horobstova remembers how many men were armed to the teeth, with their faces covered, and waving machine guns and pistols. Six of them went upstairs 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 armed men confiscated Iryna’s phones, laptop and memory stick, and Horobstova’s laptop, too, which she says was only filled with lessons for her physics classes.

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

Espionage, torture, and the birth of a nation: a case study of the Ukraine’s war-kherson-spies

“And I kept saying ‘a breeding ground of what?’ ” she says. “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 just kept yelling.”

The apartment manger had spent months espionage on Russian-installed politicians for the Ukrainian security services. He suspects the Russians may have found a way to listen to partisans’ conversations. But he says Russians also got information about cells by torturing captured partisans.

The torture began very quickly. His hands shake as he recalls four long torture sessions, three of them especially brutal. They electrocuted him and beat him with clubs, metal pipes and their boots. They inquired about a man in his cell.

The screams of tortured partisans filled the jail. A prisoner of a partisan remembers hearing Russian soldiers rape a man.

But the Russians eventually took Diakov for medical care. He had two surgeries. Over the next several weeks, he recuperated with Russian soldiers stationed outside his door.

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

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

Oksana Pohomii: The first teacher of Ukrainian history who helped organize the referendum against the butchers. She lives in Kherson, Ukraine

Oksana Pohomii, the city councilwoman and partisan on the lookout for suspected collaborators, saw a list of locals who helped organize the referendum and recognized many names, including the son of her former classmate. She says that classmate also forced residents to vote, driving 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 butchers,” Pohomii says, referring to the Russians. She didn’t try to hide it.

The politicians were assassinated by the Russians. When Ukraine got sophisticated missiles from the U.S., military officials say the partisans helped Ukrainian troops target sites like the Antonivka Bridge, which cut off Russian supply routes.

Russian forces were already in the city when a doctor helped Oleks andr escape from the hospital. The bones of Grigory Potemkin, the 18th century Russian commander, were removed from the cathedral.

He says that he realized that our guys were in the city after they were listening to Ukrainian music. We were waiting for this all the time. I kept imagining the day when the Ukrainian soldiers would come home and that all our work would mean something.

The next morning, it was clear that Ukrainian troops controlled Kherson. People poured into the streets. Diakov, unable to walk, cheered from his bed.

The soldier from the local brigade, Serhiy, is in Kherson. He runs missions to the left of the Dnipro where he gets intel from partisans about where traitors and traitors are hiding.

He says that they were worried that we would seek vengeance against traitors. 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: a Ukrainian Army Soldier Spies at the Antonivka Bridge

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.

They stack warm loaves that they call “Kherson Undefeated Bread” while they are dusted in flour. The bread is free of cost. Pohomii claims they deliver it to residents who are stressed.

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

Miss Iryna Horobstova: A daughter of the Ukrainian soldier who was with her father during the spying for the Russian army in Bakhmut

“We never try to force anyone to stay because not everyone can take it,” she says. “I know people who don’t leave their homes. I know people who are capable of handling the shelling. but then something broke inside them after the shelling killed people. They stopped eating and drinking. I told them that it was time to leave. “

She still talks to the Ukrainian soldier who worked with her during her spy days. He’s in Bakhmut, where the fiercest fighting of the war is taking place. She looks back at the work they did together and thinks she worries about him.

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

“I worry that she is cold, because when they took her away, she was only wearing a summer top,” Horobstova says. She doesn’t have anything except underwear, hygiene pads, and nothing else.

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

Moldova’s First Prime Minister: 2002-2003 Unrest in the Censorship of the Transnistrian Republic Founded in 1991 by the Serbian Revolution

Hanna Palamarenko contributed reporting from Kherson, and Julian Hayda from Kyiv. Mark and Pam worked on the edits. A version of the story was produced by Chad Campbell.

The resignation of the country’s prime minister followed a period of crises that included soaring gas prices and high inflation. Moldova’s new prime minister has continued the government’s pro-EU drive, but pro-Russian protests have since taken place in the capital, Chisinau, backed by a fringe, pro-Moscow political party.

Both Maia Sandu and Volodymyr Zelensky warned against the use of saboteurs as a way to stoke unrest during a time of political instability.

Although there is no sign he has accepted her invite to visit, the White House did say he reaffirmed support for Moldova’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Sandu said the government last fall had planned for “a series of actions involving saboteurs who have undergone military training and are disguised as civilians to carry out violent actions, attacks on government buildings and hostage-taking.”

“It was the case before – we have seen constant activities of Russia trying to explore and exploit the information space in Moldova using propaganda,” Groza said.

“Moldova is the most affected country after Ukraine (by) the war,” he said. “We are still a small country, which has still an under-developed economy, and that creates a lot of pressure.”

When Moldova became independent the following year, Russia quickly inserted itself as a so-called “peacekeeping force” in Transnistria, sending troops in to back pro-Moscow separatists there.

War with Moldovan forces ensued, and the conflict ended in deadlock in 1992. Even though it wasn’t internationally recognized, Transnistria was left as a de-facto independent state by theMoldovan forces. That deadlock has left the territory and its estimated 500,000 inhabitants trapped in limbo, with Chisinau holding virtually no control over it to this day.

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.

UJ-22: Close Airspace after a UAV-like Drone Becomes Collided with a Russian Warplane

The UJ-22 is relatively small and versatile, able to fly through poor weather and to travel up to 500 miles (800 kilometers). It’s unclear where or when the photo of the crashed drone was taken.

The military said that a Russian warplane collided with a U.S. drone and crashed into the Black Sea. U.S. officials said the drone was flying in international airspace when two Russian fighter jets intercepted it, one of them clipping the drone’s propeller. Russia’s government denied the collision but awarded the pilots of the two fighter jets.

The defense ministry said that both drones deviated from their flight path. “One UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) fell in a field, and another UAV, deviating from the trajectory, did not harm the attacked civilian infrastructure facility.”

A fire at an oil depot in Tuapse on the Black Sea coast appeared to be the result of a fire on a drone, with footage posted on social media overnight and uploaded by CNN.

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 Putin had been briefed about the closures but his spokesman had declined to discuss whether they were related to the Tuapse incidents.

There is no public indication that the new long-range drone being worked onby Ukroboronprom may have been involved in any of the explosions inside Russia or that it is ready for deployment.

Moscow’s START note: Russia’s suspension of Russian participation to the new strategic arms reduction treaty signed in December 2016 by the United States

“The Earth is round – discovery made by Galileo. Astronomy was not studied in Kremlin, giving preference to court astrologers. If it was, they would know: If something is launched into other countries’ airspace, sooner or later unknown flying objects will return to departure point,” he said at the time.

According to a Chinese translation of the president’s meeting with Lukashenko, China’s stance on the Ukrainian crisis is clear and consistent. Xi urged involved countries to “stop politicizing and instrumentalizing the world economy” and take steps to resolve the war. According to the Kremlin, Putin said that he is ready for a visit by China’s president to Moscow.

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. Moscow will observe the treaty’s central provisions, according to the note. 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. Serbian president accused Wagner of trying to recruit Serbs to fight in Ukranian.

The U.S. and Russia’s attention to schoolyard bullying: lessons from a diplomatic meeting with the US, Europe, and India

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 met for the first time since the invasion began, in a brief walk and talk alongside meetings of the Group of 20 nations’ foreign ministers 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.

The Russian jets’ activities were bullying, pure and simple — at best an attempt to muscle aircraft out of airspace that’s open to all, if not outright destroy it. Sen. Lindsay Graham recently said on Fox that the US should threaten to shoot any future Russian aircraft that comes close to the US military.

But Washington shouldn’t stoop to Moscow’s level. The best reaction to schoolyard bullying is to show you aren’t rattled by provocations, and this arena is no different.

That is something to avoid unless absolutely necessary, since the US is getting valuable intelligence from these flights. Russia has been paying a price every day for the intelligence collection activities of MQ-9 drones.

Even though this is an isolated incident, a heated response to Russia’s bad behavior would be counter-productive and it would not change the fact that these encounters are likely to increase.

In October, the UK said that a Russian Su-27 tailing a British RC-135W plane over the Black Sea fired a missile nearby (Russia said it was an accident). No damage was done. Russian bomber buzzed the US destroyer Donald Cook in the Black Sea while it was on patrol. And there was even a 2019 incident where a Russian warship intentionally came within 50 feet of colliding with the USS Chancellorsville, per the US military. The invasion of Crimean by Russia in the summer of 2014 and the subsequent Western backlash has led to more encounters.

It is worth unpacking the encounters which didn’t violate common norm. Rival militaries that are not at war routinely shadow each other’s activities and intercept each other’s aircraft and ships — in other words, send fast planes and vessels to come within close visual range of their adversaries’ craft to show they’re being watched and kept at bay. It’s legal under international law and generally perceived as acceptable over international waters so long as neither side performs maneuvers dangerously close to the other.

Russian pilots often practice safe intercepts in more routine encounters, as do American pilots. According to a study conducted by the Rand Corporation, Russian pilots were told to conduct unsafe intercepts in order to drive foreign forces away from sensitive areas.

In the current case, Russia is insisting the drone was in an exclusion zone it asserted around Ukraine for its “special military operation” (i.e. a full-fledged war of conquest). The 12 nautical mile rule is the only rule that has international weight because of all the other jurisdiction claims.

In the current case, the US has already shown its displeasure by dressing down the Russian ambassador. The Pentagon may want to send fighter jets to escort drones. The point is that drones are less expensive to operate than fighters and have less risk because they are more portable. Alternatively, the drones could be armed with their own missiles.

Vladimir Putin and the Black Sea Grain Initiative: An Update on the Mariupol Monument, a Crimeahorsev Square, and the Status of Ukraine

Putin visited Mariupol, a Russian-occupied area that was captured by his forces during the full-scale conflict.

Ukrainians were incensed by it, with the city having been reduced to ruins in Russia’s offensive.

News of the visit comes after the ICC issued arrest warrants on Friday for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia. Putin is yet to comment on the warrant.

Mariupol became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance during weeks of relentless Russian attacks last year. The defenders of the city held out at the Azovstal steel plant for weeks before they were finally defeated.

In a video, the inspector tells Putin that he will reconstruct it by the end of the third year. We plan for it to be a fully functional airport capable of making flights to all cities of Russia and abroad.”

The bombing of a theater and an attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol were some of the most notorious strikes by Russian forces.

The International Monetary Fund made a rule change that may allow for a multi-million dollar loan to the war-battered country.

Poland and Slovakia will become the first NATO countries to share their warplanes to fight Russian forces when they dispatch their jets to Ukranian. 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.

Is a Russian Air Defense System Activated in a Violation of the Law of Fundamental Relativity in the Annexed Peninsula?

Leaders of Belarus and Iran hailed their countries’ ties in meetings 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.

The approval rating in America is the lowest since the Soviet times, and just 9% of the US citizens say they have a favorable view of Russia.

The annexed peninsula’s air defense system was activated after a strike was confirmed by the Russianinstalled head of the peninsula. Two buildings were damaged, and one person was injured.

CNN recorded amateur video of a large explosion and fireball. An individual is heard saying off-camera the strike hit the train station. CNN was not able to confirm the exact location of the strike and the video did not clearly show what had been hit.