The Russian withdrawal of Zaporitzky, Russia’s latest counteroffensive against Russia: A warning to Moscow and the Kremlin

After being surrounded by Ukrainian forces, Russia pulled its troops out of the eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporitzky on Saturday. It was the latest victory for the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has humiliated and angered the Kremlin.

Russia’s vilified declaration that it had annexed four regions of Ukraine, including Lyman, was complicated by its withdrawal from the area. Taking the city opens the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push further into land that Russia now claims as its own.

According to the Russian President, he has been creating more victims and new enemies every day in order to strengthen his resolve against those he would seek to conquer. There is no limit to the appetite of Putin to wreak chaos at home and abroad.

Ukrainian forces have retaken vast swaths of territory in a counteroffensive that started in September. They have pushed Russian forces out of the Kharkiv area and moved east across the Oskil River.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, blamed the retreat on one general being covered up for by higher-up leaders in the General Staff. He called for “more drastic measures.”

The governor of the city of Sevastopol in the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula made a public announcement about an emergency at an airfield. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. There was a plane that went off the runway and caught fire.

The assault comes a week after Russia started an intensive bombardment of the country that was decried as a war crime. The strikes caused a lot of damage to the power systems in the country, causing people to reduce consumption during peak hours.

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

Crime against civilians in Zaporizhhia, Ukraine, as a result of Russian attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant

In the Kherson region on Saturday, a total of 16 people had been killed in 71 Russian attacks, including three state emergency workers who were killed demining. He said another 64 people got injuries that ranged in severity.

The Security Service of Ukraine posted pictures of the attack on the convoy. The burned corpses of a truck were left in its bed after it was blown up. Another vehicle at the front of the convoy also had been ablaze. Bodies lay on the side of the road or still inside vehicles, which appeared pockmarked with bullet holes.

There are at least 17 people killed and many others injured in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, after a Russian bombardment.

Russian forces seized the director-general of a nuclear power plant in Ukranian territory on Friday in an attempt to gain control over the territory, the company that operates the plant said.

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

Repair work to fix infrastructure facilities across Ukraine is ongoing. Most power plants are now able to supply energy to the national grid, a Ukrenergo spokeswoman said.

Zelensky claims that with the help of the Western nations, he could force Russia to withdraw from places like the Black Sea peninsula and occupied areas of Ukraine. “We will not talk to anyone under such conditions,” he said.

On the status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant: Russian actions in Ukraine during the first Ukrainian attack on a bridge

In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday that provides another $12.3 billion in military and economic aid for the war in Ukraine.

Two days ago an eruption damaged a key bridge and dealt a blow to the Kremlin. A wounded Vladimir Putin, who has also seen weeks of Russian losses on the battlefield, had been under pressure to respond with force following the explosion, which Putin on Sunday blamed on Kyiv and described as an act of terror.

In an unusually candid article published Sunday, the prominent Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that in the last few days of their occupation, Russian forces in Lyman had been plagued by desertion, poor planning and the delayed arrival of reserves.

The president of Ukraine announced that the military had taken back three more villages in a region that had been illegally annexed by Russia.

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

The nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia is located in a region that was annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in defiance of international laws on Wednesday. The city is controlled by the Ukrainians.

Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plans to talk with Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will discuss the situation surrounding the facility, which was damaged in the fighting and saw the director kidnapped by Russian troops.

The Kremlin and Crimea opened the door for Russian land grabs in Ukraine, and a proposal to reopen the European Political Community

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

Speaking in a conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “certain territories will be reclaimed, and we will keep consulting residents who would be eager to embrace Russia.”

Putin vowed to defend Russia’s territory, including annexed regions, with any means at his military’s disposal, including nuclear weapons.

Serhiy says he heard about Kherson’s liberation while fighting in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine. The region had been freed by his brigade in September. But he says his commanders told him they couldn’t help with the liberation of their hometown.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Once they are stabilized, Russian soldiers are being sent to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The Russian troops retreated so quickly that they left behind the bodies of their fallen mates. Some were still lying by the side of the road leading into the city on Wednesday.

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

Zelensky’s rebuke of Russian forces during the Zaporizhzhia war: “Now we don’t have anything yet”

The war should come to an end so that the stores and hospitals can work as they used to. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is pillaged and destroyed.

In his address on Saturday Zelensky spoke Russian for the first time to send a message to the Kremlin and Russian citizens after Moscow launched a series of deadly strikes in several regions of Ukraine ahead of New Year.

On a day when the Norwegian government awarded the annual Peace Prize to human rights activists in Russia, it was implicit that they were rebuked for their role in the war in Ukraine.

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. Russia and Ukraine have been at each other’s throats for months, accusing each other of firing at and around the nuclear plant. The staff is run by Ukrainians who were pre-occupied by Russia.

“One of the missiles hit between two high-rise buildings, partially destroying apartments and balconies, damaging roofs and breaking windows,” the statement said. “The blast wave and debris also damaged other nearby residential buildings, cars and other civilian infrastructure in the city.”

Russian and Ukrainian authorities have differing theories about what caused an explosion that damaged a vital bridge in the peninsula. But definitive answers remain elusive.

The Russian Army in Crimea: The Case of the Zaporizhhia Nuclear Plant, which was shut down at the end of May 2018, and its Impact on the Kerch 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.

Podolyak claimed the bridge incident gave the Russian military a “clear alibi” of its losses in southern Ukraine.

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.

The Defense Ministry of Russia announced that the air force chief was going to command all of the Russian troops in Ukraine. Surovikin, who this summer was placed in charge of troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a bombardment that destroyed much of Aleppo.

Putin personally opened the Kerch Bridge in May 2018 by driving a truck across it as a symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea. The bridge, the longest in Europe, is vital to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

Unofficial Ukrainian military accounts have given a similar picture of the fighting around Bakhmut, with most access routes to the city from the west and north-west cut off.

Rail traffic was resuming slowly. Two passenger trains left the Crimean cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol and headed toward the bridge Saturday evening. The passenger ferry links from the Russian mainland to the peninsula of Crimea were to be reopened on Sunday.

The Black Sea fleet of Russia has a naval base in the city of Sevastopol. There are a lot of Russian warships here, including surface ships with cruise missiles.

Inspirals, bridge blasts, and death of a German shepherd killed by a missile in the Krasnodar neighborhood

“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.

There were blasts in Dnipro, a major southern city. There is a bus stop between high rise apartment buildings. A missile exploded in front of a bus on its morning route, destroying it and blowing out the windows in a nearby apartment building.

A woman and her son have been in the basement shelter under their building since air raid sirens and an explosion woke them up. They were not surprised and did not let the situation affect their spirits.

About 3 kilometers (2 miles) away in another neighborhood ravaged by a missile, three volunteers dug a shallow grave for a German shepherd killed in the strike, the dog’s leg blown away by the blast.

Russian President Putin formed a committee Saturday to investigate the bridge blast, but an independent Russian political analyst said he had not responded quickly enough to appease the angry war hawks. The attack and response, he said, has “inspired the opposition, while the loyalists are demoralized.”

“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.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in Donetsk and Kherson: Ukraine’s response to the Christmas holiday season is coming to a close second

Russia decreased its cruise and tactical missiles as a result of the long-range strikes by Ukraine. Russian missiles are enough to hit the electrical grid of Ukranian for two or three waves, according to the Ukrainian military intelligence chief.

Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. Ukrainians were asked to lower their energy usage during peak hours as the Prime Minister warned there was a lot of work being done to fix damaged equipment.

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

The ramped-up strikes in Donetsk and Kherson took place against the backdrop of a harsh winter season in Ukraine inflamed by wide-ranging power outages, caused by Russia’s targeting of critical infrastructure, and a grinding war of attrition on the battlefield.

The terrorist country is shelling civilians in the Russian world. Kherson. He said it was in the central part of the city on the eve of Christmas.

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

The subway system in Kyiv was temporarily suspended on Monday morning. But the air raid alert in the city was lifted at midday, as rescue workers sought to pull people from the rubble caused by the strikes.

Oleh SynieHubv, head of the regional military administration, said that critical infrastructure facilities were hit in the district on Friday.

Putin and the Ukrainians: a warning against the actions of terrorist attacks on the Crimea bridge, a critical reminder of what Ukraine really wants from Russia

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

The Russian-appointed head of annexed Crimea, 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.”

If action were taken to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure everyday, everything would have been finished by May, he said.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that Russians saved one of the largest missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. “They dream that Ukrainians will celebrate the New Year in darkness and cold. But they cannot defeat the Ukrainian people.”

The EU Foreign Policy Chief said that more military support from the EU is on its way, and that Ukraine had doubled down on their support.

“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 does not seem to understand that the will of the Ukrainian people is unbreakable.”

The UN Secretary-General called the attacks unacceptable and said civilians were paying the highest price.

The explosion at the Dnipro metro station as seen by Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a G7 emergency meeting on Tuesday

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

The strikes disproportionately targeted civilian infrastructure in 11 of the 25 regions and included power plants and water heating facilities, President Zelenskyy said in a video posted to social media.

At least two museums and the National Philharmonic concert halls were damaged in Kyiv. The National Railway stated that a strike damaged the main passenger terminal and caused trains to be delayed this morning.

Ihor Makovtsev is the head of the department of transport for the Dnipro city council, and said that the wreck happened at rush hour. He added that the bus driver and four passengers had been taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

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

The first floor balcony on which Viktor Shevenko looked out was once the windows of the bus stop. Shattered glass covered the ground below. He said he had been watering the plants on his balcony just minutes before the blast, but went to his kitchen to make breakfast.

“And then I heard the explosions. She says that she saw the explosions. “One near the airport, then a second. Everything at the third gas station seemed to be red.

On Russian attacks and air raid sirens: the fate of Donetsk, Ukraine, as determined by the recent Kerch Bridge explosion

The Ukrainians are using Western-supplied weapons to help shoot down Russia’s missiles and drones.

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

In the summer Michael Bociurkiw relocated from Canada to Ukranian. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and once worked for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In the aftermath of the huge explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, there was much jubilation in Ukraine but fears of reprisals from the Kremlin were never far away.

“At exactly 7 a.m. the (Ukrainians) subjected the center of Donetsk (city) to the most massive strike since 2014,” the Moscow-appointed mayor, Aleksey Kulemzin, posted on Telegram.

As of midday local time, there were no air raid sirens near my office in Odesa and there were no reports of missiles or drones being shot down. At this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers and chatter of upcoming weddings and parties.

The relative calm in Ukrainian cities far from the country’s battlefields was shattered by two painfully familiar sounds this week: the ominous ring of the air raid sirens, and the eruptions of Russian attacks.

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

With so many people returning to their home countries, the attacks could cause another blow to business confidence.

Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians in the wake of the Kerch bridge explosion on Monday, August 17. The Kremlin’s response to Ukraine is urgent

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with record-setting 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 former Portuguese and British territories of Macau and Hong Kong had to be connected with a world-long sea crossing bridge. The bridge opened after a couple of years of delays.

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

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

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

What is really important now is for Washington and its allies to use emergency phone diplomacy to persuade China and India not to use more deadly weapons, because they still have some leverage over Putin.

High tech defense systems need to be used to protectEnergy infrastructure around the country. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.

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

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

According to preliminary data from the Ukrainian State Emergency Service, at least 19 people were killed and 105 other people were wounded by Russian missile attacks in western and central Ukraine on Monday.

The emergency services said there were over 30 fires in 12 regions and the capital where the fires have been put out.

Kiev attacks on Monday night: Putin’s regime in Ukraine and the role of military power and military technology in the retaliation of Ukraine

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

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

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.

The targets on Monday had little military value and were used by Putin to find new targets because of his inability to cause defeats on the battlefield.

The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President could inflict as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops using Western arms.

The White House didn’t say what the advanced air systems that Biden offered to the Ukrainian president might be.

John Kirby, the information officer for strategic communications at the National Security Council suggested that the United States was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day and that it was looking favorably on their requests. He told CNN that they did the best they could to meet those needs.

Kirby couldn’t say if Putin was shifting his strategy from a losing battle to a campaign to destroyUkrainian cities and infrastructure, since he said it was already in the works.

John Kirby told CNN that the Russians can’t throw together that kind of thing in a couple days. “This was something not in retaliation, but was really much of a continuation of Putin’s designs over the last several weeks to specifically target Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.”

But French President Emmanuel Macron underscored Western concerns that Monday’s rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the prelude to another pivot in the conflict.

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

“So imagine if we had modern equipment, we probably could raise the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or wound and injure Ukrainians,” Zhovkva said.

Everything Putin has done to undermine the nation he doesn’t believe has the right to exist has strengthened and unified it.

Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube, told CNN that she was angry over the resurgence of fear and violence to Ukrainians from a new round of Russian terror.

She claimed that this was a ruse to frighten people in other countries, or to show how powerful he is to his own people.

I would like to thank everyone who helpsUkraine. We’ve made a lot of friends. In order to understand that we have a lot of good things we had to go through a lot of bad things. Many people are doing wonderful things for Ukraine.

But the attacks, which remain sensitive enough that the Ukrainian government has not publicly acknowledged them, have forced Russia to move planes, potentially complicating Moscow’s campaign of aiming cruise missile strikes at Ukraine’s energy grid.

State television reported on the suffering as well as 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.

The explosion of the Oct. 8 Kramatorsk bridge as reported by the Ukraine’s Military Demolition Specialist Mika Tyry ”Try out on a parallel rail bridge”

The Ukrainian military and US intelligence say Russia is using Iranian-made attack drones. The US told CNN in July that Iran began showcasing Shahed drones to Russia at a airfield outside of Tehran.

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

Credible theories abound in Ukraine and abroad about who is responsible for the Oct. 8 attack and how they did it. Despite all of the publicly available pictures and videos, it’s not easy to be certain about this.

He says the bridge has a single section of road floating above several piers and being separated from other sections. A span falling into the water pulls other spans with it.

New photos posted on social media Wednesday show bent support beams on the Russia-bound lanes as well. That side of the bridge reopened to traffic only hours after the blast.

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

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 supply weapons to Ukraine have refused to provide missiles that travel that far.

The “X-ray” and an “examination” of the truck were published by the FSB. Where on the “x-ray” another axle with wheels and a frame disappeared, the FSB does not specify ???? pic.twitter.com/onKbOndxVO

The two images the Russian state media showed of a truck bomb and its cargo were different from each other, as Ukrainian journalists pointed out.

Barr suggests that the truck was loaded with specialized compounds that burned hot enough to cause a fuel train to travel on a parallel rail bridge and weaken it, based on how the flames shot out from the blast site.

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

It’s a successful attack on a guarded structure with advanced explosives and timed with the train. “That’s highly suggestive of a carefully planned military operation rather than a lone actor or other group.”

For the first time, the war is close to an unpredictable new phase. Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House said this is the third, fourth or fifth war they have been observing.

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

“What seemed a distant prospect for anything that could be convincingly described as a Ukraine victory is now very much more plausible,” Giles said. Russia’s response is likely to get worse.

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

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

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

There are so many reasons why it is important for Ukraine to get things done quickly. The resilience of the Ukrainian people is being tested by the energy crisis in Europe and the power failures in the country.

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

“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.

“Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives,” the ISW assessed.

Justin Bronk, a military expert with the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), agreed with that assessment, telling CNN that, “Ukrainian interception success rates against Russian cruise missiles have risen significantly since the start of the invasion in February.”

The barrage of missile strikes will be reserved for shows of extreme outrage because the Russians do not have enough precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future.

Any further Belarusian involvement in the war could also have a psychological impact, Puri suggested. The West and Ukraine have focused on fighting one army. Inside Russia, Belarus joining the invasion “would play into Putin’s narrative that this war is about reuniting the lands of ancient Rus states.”

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

We asked seven people close to the conflict – from “fixers” in Ukraine, to commentators in Moscow – to reflect on the first anniversary of the invasion. This commentary has its own views.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said before a meeting of NATO defense ministers that Ukraine needed more systems to stop missile attacks.

He said that many incoming missiles this week were shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies.

Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States “Bronk said that.”

Russian actions on Ukrainian territory during the October 11 attack in Donetsk, Ukraine, reported by the Institut pour la Study des Wares

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.”

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.

A shooting at a military firing range in eastern Siberia that killed 11 men and injured 15 others was being investigated by Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry said it was a terrorist attack.

However, Ukrainian officials have not commented on the explosions in Crimea or in the Donetsk People’s Republic and CNN is unable to verify the cause of the blasts or the extent of the damage.

In October, Moscow attempted to annex four Ukrainian regions in violation of international law, as they had been held by Russian-backed rebels for eight years.

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

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

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

Russian authorities claimed this week that several thousand children from a southern region that was occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. RIA Novosti reported the original remarks by Russia’s deputy prime minister.

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

The Ukrainian military said that pro-Kremlin fighters evicted civilians in occupied territories to house officers in their homes, which was a violation of international humanitarian law. It said the evictions were happening in Rubizhne, in the eastern Luhansk region. It did not give evidence for its claim.

Russian generals have been decried for being unlearned in principle and unwilling to listen to warnings, because they direct the war effort far from the frontline. A Dutch court found the former minister of defense for the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic guilty of mass murder for his involvement in downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in the summer of 2014, and he was sentenced to death.

Recently, Girkin’s social media posts have lashed out at Moscow’s battlefield failures. The $100,000 reward is being offered by the defense intelligence agency of the country.

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

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

Russia and Donetsk — a Russian Warplane attack on an Eastern Ukrainian city – is not a problem for U.S. diplomats

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

Suicide drones are small, portable weapon systems that are difficult to detect and can be fired at a distance. They can be easily launched and are designed to hit behind enemy lines and be destroyed in the attack.

13 residents, including three children were found dead after hours of searching the debris of the building. Nineteen people were hospitalized with injuries.

On Friday, Putin said there was no need for more strikes. In the eastern region of Donetsk, eight people were killed in a series of Russian attacks over the weekend.

At least 13 people were killed when a Russian warplane crashed into a city on the Sea of Azov on Monday, three of them died when they jumped from the ninth floor of an apartment building to escape the fire.

“According to the report of the ejected pilots, the cause of the plane crash was the ignition of one of the engines during take-off. According to the ministry, fuel from the Su-34 crash happened in the courtyard of one of the residential quarters.

Russian authorities have confirmed that 13 bodies were removed from the debris in a port town of Yeysk on the shore of the Sea of Azov

RIA reported that 13 bodies, including those of three children, were removed from the debris as of Tuesday morning, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Earlier state media reports said at least 25 people were injured.

Yeysk is a port town located on the shore of the Sea of Azov which is separated from Russia by a narrow section of the sea.

The crash caused smoke and fire to start in the residential area. A building, believed to house hundreds of people, was later engulfed in flames, say officials.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told authorities to provide all necessary assistance to the victims of the crash, the Kremlin said in a statement, adding that Putin has received reports from the ministers and the head of the region on the situation.

Officials have opened an investigation into the incident, according to the prosecutor’s office of the Krasnodar Krai region and the military prosecutor’s office of the Southern Military District.

“The remains of the aircraft have been extinguished. The evacuation of residents of nearby houses has been cancelled. The Krasnodar Krai region’s head, Veniamin Kondratyev, said on his Telegram channel that the fire had been contained.

The people of a nine-story building in Yeysk that caught fire will be provided with all the help they need according to the head of the affected district.

The president of Russia was informed about the crash and dispatched the health and emergencies ministers as well as the local governor to the site. A big Russian air base is located in the city of Yeysk.

Ukraine’s nuclear crisis: State of the state at the end of the Monday morning session of the 11th Working Group on Nuclear Deterrence

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.

Eight people, including Russian, Ukrainian and Armenia citizens, were taken into custody by agents of the Russian Federal Security Service.

Russia’s illegal annexation of four regions of Ukraine was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly. Four countries voted with Russia, but three other countries did not vote, and 35 abstentions were recorded.

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

The three victims who died were trying to escape the flames and jumped from the upper floors, according to Anna Menkova, vice governor of the region.

The authorities put emergency rooms at local hospitals. Over 500 residents were evacuated and provided with temporary accommodations.

On the suicide of the Zamchenkos pair killed in a Russian strike at the air base Su-34, a twin-engine bomber

The plane exploded in a giant fireball in some Russian messaging app videos. Other videos showed an apartment building engulfed by flames and loud bangs from the apparent detonation of the warplane’s weapons.

The Su-34 is a supersonic twin-engine bomber equipped with sophisticated sensors and weapons that has been a key strike component of the Russian air force. The aircraft has seen wide use during the war in Syria and the fighting in Ukraine.

The Defense Ministry said there was a incident in the early hours of Monday at the air base that houses the Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bomber that was involved in launching strikes on Ukraine.

A friend of a pregnant woman and her husband who were killed in a Russian strike in the Ukrainian city of Kyiv has told CNN they were inseparable.

“They had a lot of plans – they dreamed of their own home, children, a full-fledged family, travel. They had a long-term plan for this life.

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

The Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 were launched from the Sea of Azov, according to the Air Force.

The first strikes by the drones trapped the couple in their apartment, and Victoria died as a result.

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

“The last message from her was at 8:18 a.m. When she heard two more incoming hits. After that, obviously, there was a fifth one. The connection with her was lost.

The Interaction of Russian and Ukrainian Soldiers in a Cold Ukraine. Vlasov-Zamchenko Revisited

Victoria Zamchenko had returned to Kyiv in August from her home city of Rinve in western Ukraine. She had missed her work as a sommelier at a local wine shop, Petrukova said.

She was a deep kind of person, highly intelligent and fun to be around. We had to be silent about something, but we had something to talk about.

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

A growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled against what they are being told to do and not fight. The UK’s Defense Ministry believes the Russian troops could shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

The Russian claims are not verified but a video shows Ukrainian units under fire. Russian forces are not certain whether or not they have been able to advance in the area.

The commander of the Ukrainian military said on Telegram that Russian forces had tripled their 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 commented on the situation at the front. He said that he had told his U.S. colleague that Ukrainian forces were beating back the attacks.

An analysis from the Institute for the Study of War stated that the increase in infantry in the east had not led to a breakthrough in the war between Russia and the east.

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

In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advancing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said Friday morning that its artillery battalions had fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours, but it also reported Russian return fire into Ukrainian positions.

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

The military said on Friday that the troops entered the key city of Kherson, as residents waved Ukrainian flags after the Russian retreat.

Recapturing control of Kherson would also bolster the Ukrainian government’s argument that it should press on militarily while it has Russian forces on the run, and not return to the bargaining table, as some American officials have advocated.

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

The head of the Kherson regional military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevich, urged the tens of thousands of remaining residents in the city to evacuate while Ukrainian forces worked to clear land mines, hunt down Russian soldiers left behind and restore essential services.

The jubilant residents of the towns and villages who had suffered nine months of Ukrainian occupation greeted him with joy when he spoke.

U.S. troops shelled across the river: Evidence of a Russian army attack on the Kherson city after the collapse on Monday

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 through our drones and didn’t see a single car. We haven’t seen how they are leaving. They retreat quietly, at night.”

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.

He wrote that it was not possible to call the fire department at night because the building burned in the center. There was no heat, no electricity, and no water.

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

It was stated that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, and shelling the Ukrainians across the river.

After the Russian city of Kherson fell on Monday, Ukrainian and Russian forces traded fire in the Dnipro River that divides them.

In southern Ukraine, the Dnipro has become the new front line, which officials warned of continued danger from fighting in regions that have already experienced months of Russian occupation.

The southern district of the city was struck by shelling throughout the afternoon, stoking fears that the Russian Army would retaliate for the loss of the city with a bombardment on the eastern bank.

Mortar shells struck near the bridge, sending up puffs of smoke. There were loud, metallic booms near the river. It was not immediately possible to assess what had been hit.

The danger of mines across the river: The deaths of four people and injured railway workers in Novoraysk, a village north of Kherson city

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

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

Mr. Zelensky, the leader of the government, spoke in the main square on Monday, promising to come to all of the country step by step.

Russian forces continued to fire from across the river on towns and villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian military’s southern command. The military said that two Russian missiles hit the town of Beryslav, which is north of a critical dam. It was not immediately known if there were any casualties.

“Occupants rob local people and exchange stuff for samogon,” or homemade vodka, said one resident, Tatiana, who communicated via a secure messaging app from Oleshky, a town across the river from Kherson City. “Then they get drunk and even more aggressive. We are afraid here. She asked that her surname be withheld for security.

“Russians roam around, identify the empty houses and settle there,” Ivan, 45, wrote in a text message. He lives in Skadovsk, which is south of Kherson city, and asked that his surname not be used out of concern for his safety. “We try to connect with the owners and to arrange for someone local to stay in their place. It is not abandoned and not taken by Russians.

The Russian War on Crime: A View of Putin Among the Most High-Energy Diplomacy Leaders in Europe and Asia

An award-winning CNN contributor and author of a book on diplomacy and strategy, David A. Andelman, is also a member of the French Legion of Honor. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views in this commentary are of his own. CNN has a lot of opinion.

The first missile to have landed in Poland – a NATO member – on Tuesday may well have been a Ukrainian anti-aircraft rocket intercepting an incoming Russian missile a short distance from one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Lviv, as suspected by Polish and NATO leaders. (President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian)

Whatever the exact circumstances of the missile, one thing is clear. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday.

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

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

Putin attempted to establish black market networks abroad to source what he needed to feed his war machine, just like Kim did in North Korea. The United States has already uncovered and recently sanctioned vast networks of such shadow companies and individuals centered in hubs from Taiwan to Armenia, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, and Luxembourg to source high-tech goods for Russia’s collapsing military-industrial complex.

Putin is being isolated on the world stage. The only head of state that was not present at the G20 was him. Though Putin once lusted after a return to the G7 (known as the G8 before he was ousted after his seizure of Crimea), inclusion now seems but a distant dream. Russia’s sudden ban on 100 Canadians, including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country only made the comparison with North Korea more striking.

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

One of the leading Russian journalists who has settled in Berlin after fleeing in March said to me last week that he was prepared to accept the reality of not being able to return to his homeland.

Unsustainable dependency on the West, as Ukrenergo and Putin tell the G20 in a speech on Russian strikes in the Future Combat Air System

Rumbling in the background is the West’s attempt to diversify away from Russian oil and natural gas in an effort to deprive the country of material resources to pursue this war. It was an unsustainable dependency that the European Commission learned about, Ursula von der Leyen told the G20 on Tuesday.

The burden it has been on Western countries, as well as Putin’s dream of driving wedges into the Western alliance are proving to be 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.

Still, he continues to hold, as he did in a Tuesday address in the Kremlin, that “attempts made by certain countries to rewrite and reshape world history are becoming increasingly aggressive, ultimately and obviously seeking to divide our society, take away our guiding lines and eventually weaken Russia.”

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

The company said that the nuclear reactors were still not on the national grid after the brief emergency shut them down.

In the southern region of Mykolaiv, the military administrator, Vitaliy Kim, also said the nuclear plant in his area has been cut from the grid, leading to a risky shutdown of the reactors there.

Russian shelling in recent weeks has left most of the country without power and heat, during a harsh winter season.

President Maia Sandu wrote a letter on Facebook where she wrote “We can’t trust a regime that leaves us in the dark and cold when it comes to keeping other peoples poor and humble.”

Putin: Why do we need water? Why do Ukrainian civilians don’t have water? Violation of the Ukrainian military’s attacks on the energy infrastructure

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

He said that they will provide heat, water, phone charging and internet access. Many will be in schools and government buildings.

He ended his speech with a toast to the soldiers who had listened, and then had a sip from his champagne glass.

“This book is a confession. I am guilty for not reading the signs much earlier. I too am responsible for Russia’s war against Ukraine. The forebears and my peers are the same. Russian culture is to blame for all these horrors.

The reference to Kursk appears to reference Russia’s announcement that an airfield in the Kursk region, which neighbors Ukraine, was targeted in a drone attack. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has offered no comment on recent explosions, including in Kursk, which are deep within Russia. The targets are not accessible by the country’s declared drones.

He ended his comments bystating that people don’t mention that water was cut off from the city. There has been no word of it anywhere. At all! Complete silence.”

Russian authorities report shelling the city this week, despite Putin’s claims to annex in defiance of international law.

President Vladimir Putin made rare public comments specifically addressing the Russian military’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure Thursday, while clutching a glass of champagne at a Kremlin reception.

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

Crime as genocide: the impact of the Ukrainian power grid on rural livelihoods and agricultural trade – comments of a prosecutor-general

The pace of restoration to consumers is slowed by bad weather, and the damage was made worse by the frozen wires in the distribution networks.

A top Ukrainian official said the attacks on the country’s energy grid amount to genocide. The prosecutor-general of Ukraine made the comments while speaking to a television network.

During the week, he shares the school with nearly 1,000 students. The school also serves as a shelter, providing heat, food and water for the community when extended blackouts hit.

He says that the power cuts lasted up to 24 hours. In this agricultural region, farming equipment and warehouses were destroyed. He thinks business activity is not as much as it used to be.

Ukrainian War Kievrainetown Borodianka Banksy-Power Cuts: A Memorino with Taras Shevache

About 200 Ukrainians died after the Russians occupied the area, according to Yerko. The town used to have a population of more than 15,000. It’s back up to about 9,000 despite the lack of resources.

“The people coming are mostly from the houses on the main street. Olha Kobzar is a Ukrainian volunteer who is in charge of the temporary housing.

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

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

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

Banksy, the sculptor, and the commander of the Odesa air defense complex: warnings on the situation in Zaporizhzhia

A British artist well-known for his street spray-paintings, Banksy, snuck on to some badly scarred walls last month and painted on several of them.

The boy is playing with the man on the floor. Both of them are in martial arts gear. The man is widely assumed to be Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a judo enthusiast.

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

Yevgeny Balitsky, Russia’s acting governor of Zaporizhzhia, said the missile attack on Melitopol had “completely destroyed” a recreation center where “people, civilians, and [military] base personnel were having dinner on Saturday night.”

The head of the Russian-backed city administration said that Ukraine launched 20 Grad missiles at 5:54 a.m. local time on Sunday.

There were also reports of explosions at Russian military barracks in Hvardiiske, as well as in the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

The Russian-appointed head of Crimea said that the air defense systems worked over Simferopol. The services are working the way they always are.

Nonetheless, he said, the strikes, using Iranian drones, 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 the restoration of power to civilians would take days, not hours.

He said “Ukrainian sky defenders” had shot down 10 of the 15 drones, but the damage was still “critical” and he suggested it will take a few days to restore electricity supply in the region.

Zelensky said that both emergency and stabilization power outages are still happening. The power system is not a normal state at the moment.

Kiev’s power system is an acute shortage, and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine is deposed of its obligation to defend itself against bullies

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

On Tuesday, about 70 countries and international organizations pledged more than $1 billion to help repair Ukraine’s infrastructure. The Pentagon approved more than $250 million in security assistance for Ukraine last week, which was included in equipment to boost the Ukrainian air defense. In November, the US announced a $53 million package to support repairs to Ukraine’s power system.

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

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

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

The threat of a ban on the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has many watching to see if he follows through.

The Battle of Kherson in the Cold War: The U.S. Support of Brittney Griner and a Video Address by Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Norwegian Prime Minister will be in Paris for dinner with the French President.

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

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. The bride is in the U.S. with her husband. Bout is back in Russia and is reported to have joined an ultranationalist party.

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

President Zelenskyy had a phone call with President Biden on Dec. 11, as well as the leaders of France and Turkey, in an apparent stepping up of diplomacy over the 9 1/2-month-long Russian invasion.

He said that a key intersection in the city was under fire, and that 40 rockets from BM-21 had been fired at civilians.

They hit Kherson every day with rockets, missiles and artillery. More than 80 people have died. The city’s prewar population was 300,000.

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

Yanushevych’s city of Kyiv is disconnected from power supplies due to Russian air attacks on Ukraine, and the Kremlin has no problem keeping up with the pace

The Kherson military administration’s head, Yanushevych, said the city was completely disconnected from power supplies because of the strikes.

The US government gave machinery and generators to the city of Kyiv, according to the mayor.

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

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 Ukrainian side needs to take into account the realities that have developed over all this time,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday in response to Zelensky’s three-step proposal.

“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.

An explosion happened in the city as a result of the attack on energy infrastructure facilities. It wasn’t immediately clear if that was caused by drones or other weapons. Emergency power outages were occurring in the capital, and a wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized.

The incident took place in the western port city of Engels, some 500 miles (more than 800 kilometers) southeast of Moscow, located on the Volga River. The city houses a strategic bomber air base and is the scene of two attempted attacks this month.

An aircraft with a Kinzal hypersonic missile was seen over the Republic of Belarus during Friday’s air attacks on Ukraine. It was not clear if a Kinzal was used in the attacks.

“We know that their defense industrial base is being taxed,” Kirby said of Russia. They are having trouble keeping up with that pace. We know that Putin is having trouble with replenishment of precision guided munitions.

Two US officials and one senior administration official believe that the Biden administration is about to send the most advanced ground-based air defense system in the US to Ukraine. Ukraine’s government has long requested the system to help it defend against repeated Russian missile and drone attacks. It would be the most effective long-range defensive weapons system sent to the country and officials say it will help secure airspace for members of the North Atlantic Treaty and America (NATO) in eastern Europe.

He didn’t say much about the next security package, but he said that more air defense capabilities would be expected.

Ukrainians are rallying in Kyiv to demand that we win victory – the first 100 days of the ground war. The response of Kiev to Russia’s missile attacks

The capital’s water supply has been restored. The Mayor of the city of Kyiv wrote on Telegram that he is working to restore heating to everyone in the city.

The head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration was quoted as saying that rescuers pulled the body of an 18-month-old boy from the rubble of an apartment block which was destroyed by a Russian missile on Friday.

Three emergency workers were killed in the process of removing landmine in the Berislav district, according to the official. More than 50 people have been wounded.

More than 100 people lived in the apartment block that was struck, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih city military administration. He said that people who have suffered damage in their homes, as well as neighbors, are being looked after in a temporary home.

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

The energy minister said that 9 power-generating facilities were damaged in Friday’s attacks, and warned of more emergencies.

emergency services were dispatched to several locations around the city Some videos on social media show injuries such as bloodied faces and partially severed limbs.

Zelensky said he was thankful for everyone who carried out the repairs around the clock. I am confident that we will pull through and that Russia’s aggression will fail.

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

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

There are 1,000 balls and doves hanging from the tree in Sophia Square. 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.

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 the 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 actual realities.

Zelensky delivered a speech from the US Capitol, thanking American aid in fighting Russian aggression and asking for more.

There weren’t real calls for peace. Zelensky stressed during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday that we need peace.

The US is in a proxy war against Russia down to the last Ukrainian, as shown by the meeting Wednesday, said Peskov.

The Decay of Kherson and the Promise of Happiness in the Coming Christmas Season: Commentary of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, just back from his quick trip to Washington, posted photos of the wreckage on his social media accounts. He noted the destruction came as Ukrainians were beginning Christmas celebrations that for many Orthodox Christians will culminate in the traditional celebration Jan. 7.

Zelenskyy said that it is not sensitive and that it is the real life of Kherson. The images showed cars on fire, bodies on the street and building windows blown out.

Yaroslav Yanushevych, the governor of the Kherson region, said in televised remarks that the number of people killed in the latest shelling of the city has risen from seven to 10.

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

In his Christmas message, Zelensky called on the citizens of Ukrainians to be patient and faith in the country’s future.

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

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

The Ukrainians had been fighting evil forces for hundreds of days and eight years, but they had another powerful and effective weapon. Our spirit and consciousness are supported by a hammer and sword. God’s wisdom. Courage and bravery. There are virtues that guide us to do good and overcome evil.

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

“And even in total darkness – we will find each other – to hug each other tightly. We will give each other a warm hug if there is no heat.

Zelensky concluded: “We will celebrate our holidays! As always. We will be happy. As always. The difference is one. We won’t wait for a miracle. After all, we create it ourselves.”

Ukraine has traditionally celebrated Christmas on January 7 in line with Orthodox Christian customs, which acknowledge the birth of Jesus according to the Julian calendar.

State news: Putin is prepared to negotiate and attack on a military facility in Engels, Russia, after the December 5 attack of December 5

He wrote on Telegram that they are not military facilities. “This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

The excerpts from the state tv interview were released on Sunday afternoon and show that Russia is prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes.

He said that it’s them who refuse talks, something that the Kremlin has stated in recent months as its invasion continued to lose steam.

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

Russian state news agencies say three Russian servicemen were killed after a Ukrainian drone was shot down by air defenses as it approached a military airfield.

There were no emergencies in the residential areas of the city, and no civilian infrastructure had been damaged. The government will give assistance to the families of the servicemen, he said.

There may be some repetition after the massive missile strike that the Russians carried out after the events of December 5. We should make sure we take it into account in our planning and do not forget to go to the shelter.

Earlier this month, CCTV footage appeared to show an explosion lighting up the sky in Engels. 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.”

First quiet night since Russian invasion of Kherson and Zaporizhhia by a Kremlin-dominated country: The attack on Dnipropetrovsk

It appeared that the night from Sunday to Monday had been quiet in Ukraine. The Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, was spared bombardment by the Russian troops for the first time in weeks.

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

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

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

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.”

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

There was a limited war waged by the Kremlin in the east of the country for eight years before Russia invaded its neighbor in February of this year. Many military and cybersecurity watchers around the world warned that Russia’s hacking was an example of a plan that would soon be used in other countries, and that cyberattacks that hit everything from American hospitals to the Winter Olympics proved it.

“If you mess with it, you put all sorts of systems out of whack, like in the human body, which is the central nervous system,” says the 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.”

Several residential buildings in the capital Kyiv were destroyed, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the lead for disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office.

An explosion near a playground rattled the windows of nearby homes. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko urged residents to charge their electronic devices and fill water containers in case of shortages.

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

Russian-Ukraine fighting in the wake of Thursday night’s Silent Sturm and Goliathnev attack on Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure

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

Russia’s onslaught on Thursday was aimed at the country’s electrical infrastructure, and knocked out power in several regions. As the New year approaches, engineering crews are racing to restore services.

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

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 sounds of explosions after almost two hours. “It seemed to me that they were really close to our area but it turned out to be air defense,” she told CNN. “Not a single attack will cancel the fact that we will celebrate the new year with the family.”

Further north, close to the Russian border, five people were injured in Russian shelling of the town of Vovchansk, which regularly comes under fire, according to Syniehubov. “At least seven apartment buildings and two private residential buildings were damaged by artillery fire in Vovchansk,” he said on Telegram.

The targets have been neutralised. The attack resulted in a halt to the production and maintenance of military hardware and the re- deployment of reserve forces from western regions of Ukraine, according to the defense ministry.

Russian and Ukrainian forces are suffering significant losses in the same area. CNN could not verify Russia’s claims.

The ministry did not claim any territorial advances against the Ukrainian forces despite the fact that both sides are in a stalemate.

Ukraine’s air force said Wednesday’s attacks involved a volley of 21 drones that were launched against Ukraine from the north, of which it shot down 16.

A member of the Ukrainian presidential administration, who is an emergency adviser, said that the four-star hotel in the entertainment district was hit by missiles. Ukraine’s power grid operator said it preventatively shut off electricity to several areas of the capital region, but did not report any damage to their infrastructure.

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

The return of the Russian prisoners of war was announced by Russia’s Defense Ministry, which said they had been in contact with people under the control of the Ukrainian regime.

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

Air Attacks on civilian infrastructure in Donetsk, the capital of Ukraine, according to Deputy Head of the General Staff of the Ministry of Defence

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

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

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

“The municipal ‘life support system’ of the capital is operating normally. About 30% of consumers are without electricity. He said on Telegram that this was due to emergency shutdowns.

Klitschko also reported that the restrictions were applied to check the open section of the red metro line in the city “for the presence of remnants of missile debris.”

The collapse of a military facility near a Ukrainian military compound in Makiivka, Ukraine, according to an unnamed official

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

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

An apparent Ukrainian strike in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine appears to have killed a large number of Russian troops housed next to an ammunition cache, according to the Ukrainian military, pro-Russian military bloggers and former officials.

According to the Russian defense ministry, 63 Russian soldiers died and it was one of the worst episodes of the war.

The Russian news agency reports that Grigory Karasin said that the people responsible for the death of Russian servicemen in Makiivka must be found.

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

Apparently the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon, according to a former official in the Russia-backed edmonton administration.

He hopes those responsible for the decision to use the facility will be reprimanded. There are abandoned facilities in the area that can be used for quarters.

The building was almost destroyed, according to a Russian propagandist who wrote about the war effort on Telegram.

Most of the military equipment that stood close to the building, without any signs of camouflage, was destroyed. The number of casualties and the number of missing people are still unknown.

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

If the precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, the unnecessary losses could have been avoided.

Yanushevich’s shelling of the southern Kherson region: A New Year’s Eve attack on a Ukrainian-controlled area

Russian forces have lost 760 people since yesterday, the general staff of the military said on Sunday.

Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a defense ministry statement said. It did not specify the time of the strike.

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

The invasion of Moscow on Feb. 24 went awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces try to hold their ground. In his New Year’s address, he stated that it would be a difficult year of 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.

A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, who was a resident of Ukranian, died in the hospital on Monday.

The governor of Bryansk reported on Monday that a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the region. A village was left without power as a result, he said.

Russian strike on a college dormitory housing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers was never reported by a journalist at the Kramatorsk high-velocity university

A CNN team on the ground has seen no indication of any massive casualties in the area. There are no unusual activities in or around Kramatorsk, including in the vicinity of the city morgue.

The Russian strike on college dormitories that Russia claimed had been housing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers was not reported by a reporter in Kramtorsk.

After the strike, Russia’s government and some of its pro-Kremlin advocates began playing a blame game, after Moscow claimed that it was the soldiers who used cell phones.

The account was dismissed by an influential military Blogger and contradicted by the leader of the self-declared DPR in eastern Ukraine, who said that there was no difference of opinion between the Russian and Ukrainian commands.

A fresh blast of missiles hit the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine Thursday, sending flames and thick smoke into the air and forcing screaming civilians to find shelter.

Paramedics rushed to the scene to treat at least one wounded civilian. The mayor urged residents to stay in bomb shelters after he confirmed that there was 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 evacuated to a school for shelter.

Operational Command North: Search for the occupiers of the Crimea de Sitter front line on Wednesday night – a day after President Biden visited Ukraine

“A country bordering absolute evil. It is important for the country to overcome it so that tragedies won’t happen again. We will definitely find and punish all the perpetrators. They are not deserving of mercy.

“These will be defining months in the war”, said a secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

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

The General Staff said there were also air strikes along other parts of the front lines in the Donetsk region, southwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Russian forces tried to break down Ukrainian defences in the area and have seen intense combat in recent weeks.

In a surprise visit to Europe, the President of Ukraine made a renewed call for allies to send fighter jets to his country.

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.

There is a strong indication that the Russian president gave the go-ahead to give anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels in Ukraine.

One Year After Putin War: Ukraine Wrapped in a Cold Dark Cloud of Pretending Thousands of Lives for the First Year of World War II

It is February 23, 2022, the evening of this date. The editor of a news site relaxes with a bath and candles. In Zaporizhzhia, a young woman goes to bed planning to celebrate her husband’s birthday in the morning. In Moscow, a journalist happens to postpone his travel plans to Kyiv.

Their lives are transformed within an hour. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukranian.

Over the course of a year, the war claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions more. It has unleashed unfathomable atrocities, decimated cities, driven a global food and energy crisis and tested the resolve of western alliances.

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

Five Years in the War: Why We Are Inloved, How We Left Ourselves in Ukraine, and How We’re Going to Keep On The Road

Zaporizhzhia, February 23, 2022. I went to bed thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our lives was getting better. My husband was running his own business. We made friends at our daughter’s school. We were lucky to have arranged support services and found a special needs nursery for our son. It had been some time since I had time to work. I felt happy.

We’re trying to live here. But the truth is, we are heartbroken. While physically we are in Prague, our hearts have remained in Ukraine.

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

Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The author of “Five Five- Year Liberal Reforms” is an authorized historian of the political and social history of Russia. Origins of Russian Modernization and Egor Gaidar’s Legacy.”

That morning we woke up to learn that the invasion started. I wrote an open letter denouncing the war, which was co-signed by 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures. Thousands of Russian citizens added their signatures after it was published.

I and my husband left Russia on the third day. I thought it was a moral obligation. I could no longer live in a state that has become fascist.

We moved to Berlin. The main railway station was where thousands of Ukrainians arrived every day, and my husband worked at a refugee camp next to it. And I started writing a new book. This is how it begins:

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

The Russian Invasion of 1932-1933: Years of War, Millions of Crimes, and the Rise of the First Great Empire

I know that Russian people are infected with imperialism. We have to come a long way from the idea of Russia being a “great empire,” because we didn’t spot how deadly it was.

The year has been filled with tears and worries. I read the news about people who were killed by Russians and my friends who were killed.

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

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

From Kherson, and from Kyiv, was contributed reporting by Hanna Palamarenko. Editing by Mark Katkov and Pam Webster. Chad Campbell produced a version of this story for broadcast.

A year into the full-scale invasion, my passport is a novel in stamps. I teachUkrainian literature in London, but I also get my lessons in courage in Ukraine.

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

My capital, which the Kremlin and the West expected to fall in three days, has withstood 12 months of Russia’s terrorist bombings and energy blackouts. One can see many stars over Kyiv in the winter and the Russians have only succeeded in bringing them closer to eternity.

It seems that since February 2022 we have experienced several eras. The first was euphoric, when Putin suddenly, after a significant time of stagnant ratings, received more than 80% approval from the population.

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

By aborting the past, he canceled the future. Those who were disoriented, preferred to support Putin: it is easier to live this way when your superiors decide everything for you, and you take for granted everything you are told by propaganda.

It’s impossible to adapt to a catastrophe like this, which was for me and my family. The authorities labeled me as a foreign agent because I was an active commentator on the events, which increased risk and made people think I lived in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

On the evening of February 23 I washed my dog, cleaned the house, took a bath and lit candles. I have a cozy, one-bedroom apartment in a northern district of Kyiv. I enjoyed taking care of it. I liked the life I had. The struggles and the small routines were part of it. That night was the last time my life mattered.

I remember talking to colleagues, trying to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. My parents told me to organize buying supplies.

The life I knew started falling apart soon after, starting with the small things. It didn’t matter what cup of tea I drank, how I dressed, or whether or not I took a shower. The battle mattered more than life.

Just a few weeks into the full-scale invasion it was already hard to remember the struggles, sorrows and joyful moments of the pre-war era. I no longer relate to being upset about my boyfriend. February 24, 2015, was when my life was taken from me.

By March, my fear of the war turned to a desire to play sports. Athletes could fight against Russian propaganda in the best way. We just had to tell the truth about the war and Ukrainians – how strong, kind and brave we are. How we have united to defend our country.

I was no longer concerned with my personal ambitions. It was the common goal to raise our flag and show that we are still at war even under these circumstances.

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

Russian military blogger in Ukraine: What is the fate of Bakhmut and why does she want to leave Kherson? – A Russian president says she loves her Russian heritage

A prominent Russian military blogger, who goes by the name WarGonzo, said that fighters of the Wagner private military company had “attacked in several directions at once,” around Bakhmut. He claimed that there was a slight advance to the east of the city and that it controls Berkhivka, a village to the west of Bakhmut.

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

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

“I did not think that Russians would attack this city built by the great Catherine the Great, I was born in Russia,” said Horobstova.

Despite warnings from the West, Horobstova woke up a beautiful morning and watched the sunrise from her balcony. The sky turned pink and the fields burst with the winter harvest.

She began to cry. She called her friends and family to see if they were OK. Some were moving to the west. Horobstova and her husband, Volodymyr, refused. Their loyalties were clear even though they had Russian roots.

Many people wanted to help the military of Ukraine. The Kremlin can’t be trusted and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t take the threat seriously after being warned by accountant Oksana Pohomii, a city council member.

I always tell them no when they ask if I’m going to leave Kherson. No way! ” 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.”

Ukraine’s Warkherson Spies: I Followed Ukrainian Soldiers, Doctors, City Council Member, Teacher of Ukrainian History, and Agent Pohomii

Pohomii has dyed her hair red and is wearing a rattail. 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.

She says that if you listen to the sound of his screams and then listen to the sound of him singing the Russian national anthem, they are forced to sing an old Soviet song. “Insane things.” The fear and psychological pressure were enormous.”

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

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

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

“I would pretend to go to the grocery store, or the bus, and then I would try to change my clothes as frequently as I could,” she says. “I’m not saying I’m Agent 007. I just did what made sense to me.

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

Iryna, a patriot in Ukraine, was kicked from her room by the armed men, not the women they are trying to kill

Chupikova was hard to track due to her not looking like a threat. She has a cut like a soccer mom with bright blue eyes and is about to give you a freshly baked apple pie.

She says they wanted them to look average, not easy to remember so they could work undetected.

She recruited her husband to work with her. They used Google Maps to find coordinates of Russian convoys and sent them via Signal to a contact of Olha’s in Ukraine’s military.

When the internet was down and the cellphone service was bad, she climbed to her house’s roof and threw her phone up in the air to get a signal to send her messages.

Russian soldiers appeared to be following everyone closely. Olha Chupikova says residents were getting arrested for simply giving Russian soldiers dirty looks.

“There were 11 guys, armed to the teeth, with their faces covered, wearing military fatigues and waving machine guns and pistols,” Horobstova recalls. Six people went upstairs to her room. She did not deny anything. She said she was a Ukrainian patriot and hated her. And they took her away.”

Iryna’s phone, laptop, and memory stick were taken away by the armed men, she says they only filled it with lessons for physics classes.

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

Espionage and torture for a Ukrainian war-kherson-spies: Oleksandr Diakov tells a story of how the Russians killed him

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

A shy and bearded apartment manager named Diakov spent a long time espionage on Russians for the security services of Ukraine. He thinks the Russians might have found a way to listen to conversations. But he says Russians also got information about cells by torturing captured partisans.

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

The screams of tortured partisans filled the jail. Natalya Havrylenko, another imprisoned partisan, remembers hearing Russian soldiers rape a man in a corridor.

Oleksandr Diakov was barely able to move after being imprisoned for two weeks. His left leg broke when he was kicked by the Russians. He pleaded for a doctor.

“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 local brigade leader of Ukrainian war crimes, recalls her hometown of Kherson, Ukraine

Oksana Pohomii, a partisan on the lookout for suspected partners, saw a list of locals who helped organize the referendum and even recognized the son of her former classmates. She says a classmate forced residents to go to the polls.

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

Russian politicians were killed. Military officials say the partisans helped cut off Russian supply routes when Ukraine got missiles from the U.S.

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

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

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

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

He thinks that they were afraid of revenge on traitors. “I felt bad not to be there. I know why I wasn’t.

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

Oksana Pohomii and Olha Chupikova: Ukrainian War Kherson 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. There is a crater just outside of the bakery.

They dusted in flour as they stack warm loaves that they refer to as “Kherson Undefeated Bread.” The bread is free of charge. Pohomii says they deliver it to stressed residents.

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

Tetiana Horobstova’s daughter Iryna is still in contact with the Ukrainian soldier she worked with during a spy war in Bakhmut

She says that they don’t try to force anyone to stay. I know people who can’t leave their homes. I know people who could handle the shelling at first but then something broke inside them after the shelling killed people. They stopped drinking and eating. I said, “It’s time to leave.” “

She’s still in touch with the Ukrainian soldier she worked with during her spy days. The fighting of the war is taking place in Bakhmut, where he is. She looks back on the work they did together and she is worried about him.

Many partisans are still missing, presumed to be somewhere in Russian custody. Tetiana Horobstova’s daughter Iryna is among them. Horobstova has not spoken to her daughter in a while and she isn’t sure where she is being held.

Horobstova says that she’s concerned that she’s cold due to the fact that she only wore a summer top when taken away. She has no new underwear, hygiene pads, or anything else.

Russian Defense Ministry Accretion of State-Owner Drones into a Field and into an Oil Depot in Tuapse

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 defense ministry claimed two more strikes were stopped through the use of drone-jamming technology in the Adygea and Krasnodar regions, despite state media’s claim that the crash was one of several attempted strikes.

The defense ministry said in a statement that the drones deviated from their flight path. One of the ungrated aerial vehicles fell in a field, but another did not harm a civilian infrastructure facility.

There are social media postings showing a fire at an oil depot in Tuapse on the Black Sea coast and CNN has pictures of it.

CNN is unable to independently confirm the claims for each alleged attack, and Ukraine did not immediately comment on the incident. Ukraine has previously declined to comment on attacks inside Russia.

The airspace of the second-largest city of Russia was closed Tuesday after the alleged attacks.

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

Ukroboronprom, a state-owned weapons manufacturer in Ukrainian, has indicated that it is closing in on completing a new long-range drones, though there is no indication that such a device has been prepared for deployment or has been involved in explosions inside Russia.

In the wake of the December attacks, the Defense Ministry of Ukraine offered no comment and the presidential adviser had implied that Kyiv was behind them.

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

The attack of the Kremlin on two cruise missiles in Dzhankoi, Ukraine: a first probe of Russian-Russian astrophysics and Russian-China relations

“The Earth is round – discovery made by Galileo. Court astrologers were preferred over astronomy in Kremlin. If it was, they would know if something is launched into other countries’ airspace and unknown flying objects will come back to the departure point.

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

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

Amateur video geolocated by CNN shows a large explosion and resulting fireball. An individual is heard saying off-camera the strike hit the train station. However, the video did not clearly show what had been hit and CNN hasn’t been able to confirm the exact location of the strike.

The ICC charges are the first to be formally lodged against officials in Moscow since it began its unprovoked attack on Ukraine last year. The Kremlin has labeled the ICC’s actions as “outrageous and unacceptable.”

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

Vladimir Zelensky, the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, During a State Visit to Kiev, Russia, on the Front Lines of the War

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

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on the social media app Telegram that the wave of Russian strikes would be met with a reply from Ukraine.

The Biden administration wasn’t accusing Russia of hitting civilians with missile strikes, but it did say that it was consistent with previous attacks.

John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, said it was obvious that the Russian government was targeting civilians in order to show no regard for avoiding them.

Zelensky made an unexpected visit to the Ukrainian troops on the front lines of the war with Russia, and the strikes occurred as he was there.

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

Zelensky said in his address that it was distressing to see the cities of Donbas which have been ruined by Russia.

Wednesday’s wave of attacks in Ukraine came as Putin wrapped up hosting his Chinese counterpart in Moscow following a three-day state visit billed by Beijing as a peace mission, but which failed to achieve any breakthrough on resolving the conflict.

In recent weeks, China had appeared to position itself as a Ukraine peace broker, releasing its position on a “political solution” to the conflict, calling for a ceasefire and peace talks.