The Russian withdrawal from Kyiv, Ukraine, angered by Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin and the counteroffensive in Ukraine

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

Russia’s internationally vilified claim that it had annexed four areas of Ukranian are complicated by Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push further into land that Moscow now illegally claims as its own.

While Russia is more invested in subordinating Ukraine than it was in deploying missiles to Cuba, the logic is the same. In 1962, America persuaded the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, that removing nuclear weapons from Cuba was, however unpalatable, a better choice than deploying them. The West could now try to convince Mr. Putin that his withdrawal from Ukraine is not as dire as fighting. If he understands that a long war threatens his regime, which he values more than anything else, then he will likely be willing to do what it takes to keep his regime alive.

The war in Ukraine ramped up further south as Russia also launched fresh assaults on Kherson overnight, after a wave of fatal shelling in the region earlier this week. One of the most significant discoveries of the war to date has been the retaking of control of the city by the Ukrainian forces.

Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.

On the Russian annexed peninsula, an emergency situation was announced at an airfield. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. The Belbek airfield said in a statement that a plane rolled off the runway and there was a fire on board.

Local police say at least three people have been killed and eight others wounded after Russian forces targeted a residential neighborhood with an Iskander-K missile. Two of the wounded are in critical condition, Honcharenko said.

A Crime against Human Rights and the Constitution of Ukraine in the Context of Democracy and Security: Zelenskyy, Putin, Energoatom, and the Nuclear Watchdog

Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his military have vowed to fight on, despite the fact that Putin claimed to have annexed a number of areas.

The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, said 24 civilians were killed in an attack this week on a convoy trying to flee the Kupiansk district. He called it “сruelty that can’t be justified.” He said there were 13 children and a pregnant woman dead.

The Security Service of Ukranian posted pictures of the convoy that was attacked. At least one truck appeared to have been blown up, with burned corpses in what remained of its truck bed. Another vehicle at the front of the convoy also had been ablaze. There were bullet holes on the side of the road and bodies on the side of the road.

Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, a Ukrainian strike on the occupied city of Makiivka killed dozens of troops, with Russia’s Ministry of Defense claiming its soldiers’ cell phone use exposed their location.

Following Putin’s decree stating that Russia is taking over the Zaporizhia reactor plant, the director of the nuclear watchdog is expected to visit Ukraine this week to discuss the situation. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called it a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” The state nuclear operator, Energoatom, said it would continue to operate the plant.

IAEA warned that Zaporizhzhia’s conditions were not sustainable and could lead to increased human error with implications on nuclear safety. Russian energy companyRosatom took control of the Ukrainian plant and a Russian holding company was established. The deputy director of the plant and the head of human resources have been taken into custody, according to the Ukrainian state nuclear-energy company. The plant’s director, Igor Murashov, was earlier arrested by Russian forces, interrogated and expelled from Russian-held territory.

During this year’s war, civilians came under attack for the first time. The Chernobyl nuclearexclusion zone was taken over by the Russian armed forces as they pushed into Ukraine. Thousands of vehicles stirred up radioactive dust as they moved towards Kyiv. Russian soldiers slept in the red zone near the abandoned city of Pripyat.

Russia’s annexation of 15% of Ukraine was called the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

The Debacle in Lyman, Ukraine During Putin’s Second World War: State of the State and Development of the Nuclear Safety and Security Protection Zone

In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday that provides another infusion — more than $12.3 billion — in military and economic aid linked to the war Ukraine.

The debacle in the city of Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, came just days after President Putin held an event to mark the annexation of Ukrainian territory into Russia.

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.

Russia launched more than 200 attacks on the country’s energy facilities since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in January. More than a dozen attacks on the power grid have been launched in February. Data collected by the office and shared with CNN shows there were strikes on infrastructure in 24 of Ukraine’s 27 administrative regions, with the majority carried out since October.

On his Telegram channel, the governor wrote that a 3-year-old girl was taken to a hospital after being rescued from the multi-story buildings.

One of those regions that was annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on wednesday was Zaporizhzhia, home to a nuclear plant that is currently under Russian occupation. The city is still under Ukrainian control.

Grossi is heading to the Russian Federation soon to reach a compromise on a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the plant. This is an absolute and urgent imperative.”

Kremlin, Russia and the Ukrainian War on Crimea – A European Political Community Mission Towards Security and Prosperity in Europe

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.”

The precise borders of the areas Moscow is claiming remain unclear, but Putin has vowed to defend Russia’s territory — including the annexed regions — with any means at his military’s disposal, including nuclear weapons.

There are concerns about a possible battle for Kherson, a Russian-occupied city in southern Ukraine. Kremlin-installed officials have been evacuating civilians in preparation for a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.

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

Russian troops hastily left behind the bodies of their enemies when they retreated back from the city of Lyman over the weekend. There were people by the side of the road on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian soldiers fought to take it back as Lyman 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.

The Evil Dead is Coming: Zelenskyy’s Tale of the First Battle of the Second Great Patriotic War with the Russian Army

“We want the war to come to an end, the pharmacy and shops and hospitals to start working as they used to,” he said. We don’t have something at the moment. Everything is ruined and destroyed.

In his nightly address Zelenskyy spoke Russians to tell Moscow the war it launched in February was already over.

MOSCOW — For months, Russia’s state media has insisted that the country was hitting only military targets in Ukraine, leaving out the suffering that the invasion has brought to millions of civilians.

In a recent interview with Russian arch- propaganda official Vladimir Solovyov, the head of the defence committee in Russia’s State parliament demanded that officials stop lying to the public.

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

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

The Russian military made a number of mistakes that were very clear, and as such, the military establishment has begun to be called on to take action by some Putin apologists.

Kadyrov has begun to blame Russian commanders after Russia retreated from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman.

The Russian information space has deviated from the narratives preferred by the MoD that things are under control, according to a recent analysis.

The Great Patriotic War, also known in Russia as the World War II fetish, is a central feature of Putinism. The brutal tactics the Red Army used to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht have been praised by those in Russia’s party of war.

Kadyrov, who recently was promoted to the rank of colonel general by Putin, has been an outspoken advocate of the use of harsh methods. He said in a Telegram post that he would give the government incredible wartime powers in Russia if he had his way.

Kadyrov said that he would declare martial law and use any weapon in order to take on NATO, which seemed to echo Putin’s threats that Russia might contemplate.

The plant’s only source of external power is being hit by shelling. Grossi said that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant must be protected.

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that the shelling is irresponsible.

Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Kiev: Moscow, China, and India condemn the Kiev attack on Crimea bridge, and Putin blames Ukraine for attack on Russian territory

What Russian officials say: The plant can be put back into operation, said Vladimir Rogov, who is a senior pro-Russian official in the regional Zaporizhzhia government.

According to the senior official, power and a cellular connection were restored in the city that is near the nuclear power plant that is currently under Russian control.

Rogov wrote in a telegram that the water supply will be restored soon.

Orlov said “the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly tried to deliver humanitarian supplies with food, hygiene products and so on to the city,” adding that Ukraine is “ready to organize prompt delivery and distribution of drinking water in Enerhodar” but that Russian forces have not let humanitarian aid through.

Putin said a huge high-precision strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, military command, and communications happened this morning. “In case Ukrainian terrorist attacks continue on Russian territory, our response will be tough and proportional.”

The mayor said that the power engineers were working to put the power back on after an air raid alarm went off, causing 40% of the city to be without power. “The city is supplying heat and water in normal mode,” Klitschko said on the messaging app Telegram.

Putin blames Ukraine for attack on Crimean bridge: Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the Crimea bridge blast, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukrainian “special services” of the attack. He said Monday’s strikes were in response to the attack, but Ukrainian intelligence says the strikes had been planned since early last week.

China and India also call for de-escalation: After the strikes, China expressed hope that the situation in Ukraine will “de-escalated soon.” India is deeply concerned by the escalation of the conflict and urges an immediate cessation of hostilities and return to the path of dialogue. ” Other European leaders have also condemned the attack.

There’s no doubt this week’s missile attacks, beyond causing dozens of casualties, have inflicted significant damage. About 30% of the energy infrastructure in the country was destroyed by Russian missiles, according to the Energy Minister.

Zelenskyy recalled in the video how difficult it was when dealing with terrorists and how he took a photo of himself while he was there. They’re choosing targets to harm a lot of people.

The damaged buildings of Kharkiv at the height of the 24th millennium, as revealed by the Culture Minister Ihor Terekhov

At least 2 museums and the National Philharmonic concert halls in the Ukrainian capital were damaged, according to the Culture Minister. A nearby strike damaged the country’s main passenger terminal, delaying trains during this morning’s rush hour, according to Ukraine’s National Railway.

At least 10 missiles struck various targets in Kharkiv region, in the north, damaging energy facilities and a hospital, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the regional military administration. The power was knocked out all day in the city, but started to come back on. “There is a colossal infrastructural damage,” Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said, instructing residents to use so-called “invincibility points” – makeshift centers offering relief from power outages – to collect food and hot drinks, and recharge cellphones.

At rush hour a lot of public transportation was running in the city, as explained by Ihor Makovtsev, head of the department of transport for Dnipro city council. He added that the bus driver and four passengers had been taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

“All our transportation is for civilian purposes, and that’s difficult for me to see any logic in the work they are doing,” Makovtsev said.

The first floor balcony where Shevchenko looked from used to be the one next to 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.

He said the explosion blew his cabinets open and nearly knocked him to the ground. Five minutes earlier, I would have been on the balcony.

Kiev War of 2015: The Avatar of the Kerch Straight Bridge, a Trace of Developments in Ukrainian Business and Politics

With the perception in Kyiv that Russia can’t do much more to Ukraine than it already is, curtailing Moscow’s missile prowess at home outweighs any concern about increasing tensions in the region.

Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov wrote that he had warned Zelenskyy that Russia wasn’t really starting yet.

In the summer of 2015, Michael Bociurkiw relocated from Canada to Ukranian. He was a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Fears of a response by the Kremlin were never far away after the explosion that hit the hugely important and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend.

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

The area around my office remained quiet at midday as reports of missiles and drones being shot down came in. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).

Some media organizations in the Ukrainian capital moved their operations to underground bomb shelters because of a similar situation early on in the war. A group of people took cover on the platforms at one metro station as a small group sang patriotic Ukrainian songs.

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

The attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence due to the fact that so many asylum seekers are currently returning to their home countries.

The Xi Jinping Bridge: Opening the Bridge with a Truck: Putin’s Demonstration of Selfish Desperation on the Battlefield

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. Putin personally opened the bridge by driving a truck across it. The world’s longest sea crossing bridge was inaugurated by Chinese President Xi Jinping after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong. The road bridge opened after more than two years of delays.

The explosion lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree, thanks to the humor in the meme. Many people shared their jubilation via text.

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.

Russia’s plans on the battlefield will not fare well. Mr. Putin wants to maintain control of as much of the occupied areas as he can, and to freeze the front line, with Russia’s desired boundaries not yet defined. It would allow for a more sustainable defense as well as the military to be able to deploy troops to various places. Ukraine and its supporters, of course, have made it clear that neither of these conditions is acceptable. And as the Ukrainians’ continued headway in the south suggests, it’s far from clear that Russia will be able to attain either aim.

There is a need for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to get China and India to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.

Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian tourist sites during the Ukrainian Invasion of Kyiv in December, 2003 – the cause of international outrage and humanitarian crisis

Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.

Turkey and Gulf states which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board for further isolation of Russia by the West with trade and travel restrictions.

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

At least 19 people were killed and 105 others were injured in Russian missile attacks across Ukraine on Monday, according to preliminary data, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said Tuesday.

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

Global outrage: International leaders, including US President Joe Biden have condemned the Russian attacks. The US would provide the Ukrainians with advanced air defense systems, according to Biden.

Russian missiles tore into a popular tourist site and crashed into an intersection during rush hour on Monday, after the glass-bottomed footbridge in the city was damaged by missiles. The terror inflicted on civilians in the invasion’s early days hadn’t reappeared in recent months, but the strikes that cut off water and transport in places revived some of the feelings.

The renewed sense of normalcy was disrupted by air strikes on December 31. When missiles hit the city, the family rushed to the shelter, but they decided against going to celebrate on New Year’s Eve.

Putin’s Targets and the War on Crime: Where Do They Stand? When Do They Go? What Will They Do? The Case of Kiev

For the world to see, the message was obvious. Putin does not intend to be humiliated. He won’t acknowledge defeat. And he is quite prepared to inflict civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his string of battlefield reversals.

The targets on Monday had little military value and they were an example of Putin’s need to find new targets because he couldn’t cause victories on the battlefield.

These two headline packages alone could impact the course of the war. Russia’s most potent threat now is the constant bombardment of energy infrastructure. It is making winter colder and unbearable for some, plunging cities into darkness of up 12 hours a day and sometimes longer, in the hope of sapping high Ukrainian morale.

The attacks on innocent people, which killed at least 14 people, renewed debate on what the US and its allies need to do to stop Russia from establishing a proxy war with Ukraine.

Biden not only directed his national security aides to work to get a Patriot battery to Ukraine, but urged officials to intensify efforts to provide Kyiv with more air defense capabilities.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, suggested Washington was looking favorably on Ukraine’s requests and was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day. He told CNN that they do the best they can in subsequent packages.

Kirby wasn’t able to say whether Putin’s strategy was changing from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to degrade civilian confidence and damage Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, or even if it was already in the works.

It was something that they had planned for a long time. Kirby doesn’t think that the explosion on the bridge might have accelerated some of their planning.

U.S. officials say Kiev is not ready for a new round of Russian “terror” and they fear it will become more violent

Russia’s attacks violate international humanitarian law, which prohibits the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, according to the UN. In a report released in December, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that it appeared Moscow’s tactic was primarily designed to spread terror among the civilian population, in contravention of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.

Western concern is that the rush-hour attacks in Ukraine are the beginning of 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.

Zhovkva said that if we had modern equipment, we could raise the amount of drones downed and not kill innocent civilians or hurt Ukrainians.

This horrible war has taught us that everything Putin has done to weaken a nation he doesn’t believe in has only strengthened it.

Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper live from her basement in Ukraine on Monday that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians from a new round of Russian “terror.”

“This is just another terror to provoke maybe panic, to scare you guys in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant, he is still powerful and look what fireworks we can arrange,” she said.

Everyone who helps us in Ukraine, I want to say thank you. We’ve made a lot of friends. Unfortunately, we had to deal with terrible things in order to see that we have a lot of good things. Many people are doing great things for Ukraine.

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

US, UK and Ukrainian officials tell CNN that they are skeptical Moscow has the manpower and resources to make significant gains in eastern Ukraine. “It’s likely more aspirational than realistic,” said a senior US military official.

The math for Moscow is that a percentage of projectiles are bound to get through whenUkraine tries to strengthen its missile defenses.

Budanov claimed that Russia had enough supplies to cause harm, despite having nearly run out of high-precision weapons. He added that Iran has not delivered any ballistic missile to Russia – analysis echoed by John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council (NSC).

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

We see the impact of sophisticated, western-provided fire-and-forget shoulder-launched anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. We’ve seen the impact of select use of anti-ship missiles. And we have seen use of offensive cyber capabilities, though not with enormous success, by the Russians.

“Before then it was only some attacks, one or two missiles or shells per week, and most of them close to the front line … there were very rare cases [of energy infrastructure being hit] around the country and without big damages. But from this moment, they shifted their strategy,” Kharchenko said.

The NATO secretary general said that more systems were needed for the country to stop missile attacks. Many of the incoming missiles were shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems, which made the difference, he said. There’s a need for more as long as they aren’t shot down.

Taking out cheap drones is un economic to waste advanced systems on. Russia has hundreds of attack drones, which may have other answers. According to Zelensky, Russia has ordered 2,400 Shahed-136 drones from Iran.

Missiles for their existing systems were included in the wish-list that was circulating at Wednesday’s meeting.

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

Western systems are beginning to arrive in other countries. The first of two US units of the National Advanced Surface-to- Air Missile System is expected soon and the Ukrainian Defense Minister said Tuesday a new era of air defense has begun.

“I hope that they will send more than one,” she added. She noted that there have been some reluctance in the past by the US and NATO to give advanced equipment to the Ukrainian military.

But these are hardly off-the-shelf-items. The IRIS-T had to be manufactured for Ukraine. Western governments don’t have many of these systems. Ukraine is a large country that is being attacked by missiles.

The rebuilding of Ukraine following the September 11 air attack: How much money is needed to rebuild Ukraine and how much will it take to rebuild it?

The commander of the Ukrainian military thanked Poland on Tuesday for training an air defense battalion that had destroyed nine of 11 Shaheeds.

He claimed that Poland had provided the system to help destroy the drones. Last month there were reports that the Polish government had bought advanced Israeli equipment (Israel has a policy of not selling “advanced defensive technology” to Kyiv) and was then transferring it to Ukraine.

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

The pictures show a lot of trucks waiting to cross from Crimea to Russia by ferry five days after the bombing. There is a line of trucks at the airport that appears to be being used as a staging area in the pictures captured by Maxar Technologies.

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

The War in Ukraine: It’s Coming Towards a New Phase, Its Impact on Europe, and Its Consequences for the Left and for the Right

Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

The impact of the conflict on people around the world has been felt as inflation and energy prices increase. It raises the possibility of another invasion by a different global power.

Giles said that the Ukraine victory is now more plausible than it was a long time ago. Russia’s response is likely to escalate further.

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.”

If a major victory in Donbas happened, Ukraine will be eager to improve on what they’ve achieved, and Europe will feel the impact of rising energy prices.

Within Ukraine, the economy continues to stumble from the impact of war and persistent missile and drone attacks on critical power infrastructure – including at least 76 strikes on Friday. Many Ukrainians endure long periods without heat, electricity or water in the winter. (However, indicative of the resiliency that Ukrainians have displayed since the start of the war, many say they are prepared to endure such hardship for another two to five years if it means defeating Russia).

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

Russia was forced to move planes because of the sensitive attacks that were not acknowledged by the Ukrainian government.

Jeremy Fleming, UK’s spy chief, said in a speech on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground knew that their supplies were running out.

Russia may be unable to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives because of its limited supply of precision weapons.

According to preliminary data, 54 of 69 cruise missiles were shot down by defense forces of the Ukrainian military. Klitschko said 16 missiles were destroyed by Ukraine’s air defenses over Kyiv.

The impact of such an intervention in terms of pure manpower would be limited; Belarus has around 45,000 active duty troops, which would not significantly bolster Russia’s reserves. It would bring about another attack on the northern flank of Ukraine.

Giles said that the reopening of a northern front would be a new challenge for Ukrainians. Should Putin prioritize an effort to gain control of that region, he said, it would give Russia a new route into it.

Zelensky will hope to get more supplies in the short-term, to drive those gains home. The leader has sought to highlight Ukraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying more than half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.

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

Russia and the War on Crimea: the Donetsk Explosion of Oct. 15 in Ukraine and a Cold War Against Ukraine

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

In the past Russian commanders have thrown recent mobilized, inadequately trained and poorly equipped soldiers into tough fights. And supported by massive artillery and rocket fires (assuming they can maintain the supply of artillery rounds and rockets), to achieve grinding, costly, incremental gains – with, perhaps, an occasional limited breakthrough.

In that case, Mr. Putin could lash out more broadly against Ukraine. The attacks of the past week — particularly striking critical civilian infrastructure — could be expanded across Ukraine if missile supplies hold out, while Russia could directly target the Ukrainian leadership with strikes or special operations.

Russia felt war on its own territory as a series of blasts caused damage to the offices of Russia’s government in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk and an explosion ripped through a Russian border region.

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

Several residential buildings have been damaged. He added that rescuers pulled 18 people from the rubble of one building and are looking for two more. Emergency services close many of the city’s central streets.

The infrastructure was attacked near the main rail station, but lines were operating as normal early Monday.

“”The enemy can attack our cities, but it won’t be able to break us. The occupiers will get only fair punishment and condemnation of future generations, and we will get victory,” wrote Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Sullivan and Milley also hold regular joint calls with top Zelensky adviser Andriy Yermak and Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Sullivan and Milley can get the latest reports from the battlefield and assess the needs of the Ukrainian military.

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.

The Kamianske District of Ukraine had a Critical Energy System under Control in the last 24 Hours, EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell told Luxembourg

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

The attack on energy infrastructure in the Kamianske District caused a lot of damage, according to a military official.

The consequences of shelling and electricity supply are being eliminated by all services. Shmyhal said each region had a crisis response plan.

“We ask Ukrainians, in order to stabilize the energy system, to take a united and conscious approach to economical consumption of electricity. Especially during peak hours.”

Ukrenergo said that the power grid in the country is under control, and repair crews are trying to curb the consequences of the attacks.

Shmyhal’s announcement comes as Russia continues to strike critical energy facilities in Ukraine, a situation that has been worsened by recent attacks.

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.

The U.N. Resolution to Protect Ukraine from the Threat of Nuclear Explosions: CNN’s View of Andelman’s Contribution to CNN

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

The United Nations General Assembly roundly condemned Russia’s move to illegally annex four regions of Ukraine. Four countries voted alongside Russia, but they were not alone in their support of the Ukrainian resolution.

You can read past recaps here. You can find a lot of NPR’s coverage here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

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

He is trying to distract his nation from the fact that he is losing badly on the battlefield and failing to achieve any scaled back objectives of his invasion.

The European Union, the Kremlin, and Putin: a roadmap to a more sustainable energy supply and consumption problem in the cold winter

This ability to keep going is dependent on a host of variables, from the availability of essential energy supplies during the winter to the popular will throughout a wide range of nations.

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

The Dutch Title Transfer Facility and permission for EU gas companies to create a cartels to buy gas on the international market are included in these.

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

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

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

Germany and France are at odds on many of these issues. The conference call was scheduled in an effort to reach some sort of agreement.

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

Italy’s new prime minister and the U.S. response to the recent Russian-Russian debate on the future of the Cold War with Ukraine

There is a new government that has just been formed in Italy. Giorgia Meloni was sworn in Saturday as Italy’s first woman prime minister and has attempted to brush aside the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her far- right coalition partners has expressed a deep appreciation for Putin.

At an event for his party’s loyalists, Berlusconi said that Putin had sent him 20 bottles of vodka and a letter on his 86th birthday.

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

Poland and Hungary, long-time allies against liberal EU policies that seemed to reduce their influence, have now differed over the future of Ukraine. Hungary’s populist leader, Viktor Orban, is pro-Putin and has taken offense at that.

In Washington, Kevin McCarthy, the House GOP leader who is poised to become Speaker of the House if Republicans take control after the elections, believes that people will sit in a recession and write a blank check. They just won’t do it.”

The Congressional progressive caucus, which has 30 members, said that Biden should start talks with Russia on ending the conflict because its troops are still in most of the country and missiles and drones are hitting inside.

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba to renew America’s support.

Russian War on the War with the US: U.S. and Russian High-Tech Procurement Charged for Bringing High-tech into the Cold War

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

The US began training Ukrainian forces on a modern, combined arms fighting strategy after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine paused the efforts last year, they have restarted with a new sense of urgency. In late December, the US announced that it would dramatically expand the number of soldiers being trained on more sophisticated battlefield tactics, including coordinating infantry maneuvers with artillery support.

The impact of Western sanctions is poised to develop into a crisis over time. Russia’s gross domestic product will be dropped by $190 billion by the end of the century because of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The report said the lack of semi-conductors had led to the complete cessation of Russian hypersonic missile production. Aircraft are being cannibalized for spare parts, plants producing anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and “Russia has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks” for replenishment. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.

The US seized the property of a top Russian procurement agent and his agencies just days prior to this report, because they were procuring US-origin technologies for Russians.

The Department of Justice has filed charges against individuals and companies for trying to bring high-tech equipment into Russia.

The U.S. Air Force, Iran’s War on Intermediate-Rapidity Interactions, and the Politics of World Affairs

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

According to the international team investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight, there was a strong indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the sale of anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels.

The relationship between Russia and Tehran has attracted the attention of Iran’s rivals and foes in the Middle East, NATO members and nations that are interested in restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran which was meant to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic bomb.

In fact, the war in Ukraine is already affecting everyone, everywhere. Fuel prices have gone up as a result of the conflict.

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

There are still consequences to what happens far from the battlefields. When oil-producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, decided last month to slash production, the US accused the Saudis of helping Russia fund the war by boosting its oil revenues. (An accusation the Saudis deny).

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

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

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. When they come with such powerful momentum, they pack a political punch. Political leaders in many countries are under siege because of inflation that worsened during the war.

IAEA Security Principles and Security in the House of Representatives from the Middle East, Europe, and the Future of Nuclear Power and Reactor Systems

And it’s not all on the fringes. Kevin McCarthy said the GOP could reduce aid to Ukraine, if it becomes speaker of the House. The liberals released and withdrew a letter that called for negotiations. Evelyn Farkas was a former Pentagon official and said they were all bringing a smile to Putin.

Next, the IAEA’s seven pillars need to be put into international law, first through a Security Council resolution and then in a concise and focused new convention. Additional protocols are added. I should also be amended to remove any right to attack a nuclear-power plant during conflict. A big-scale radiation release is too grave of a threat.

The integrity of reactor cores and storage pools is the main concern. If fuel rods are exposed, a core meltdown and uncontrolled release of radiation is likely, as happened at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 19792. “And so, one mine or one missile or whatever”, warned Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Halushchenko, “could stop the working of the generators and then you have one hour and probably 30 minutes, not more than 2 hours, before the reaction starts.”

Ensuring there are no further attacks on Zaporizhzhia or its power source is the most urgent priority at the moment. Chernobyl must have the same security as other Ukrainian plants. Following that, a more formal security and protection zone should be established through negotiations between the parties, ideally formalized in a Security Council resolution.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03580-0

The Security of Nuclear Power Plants: Towards a Security Framework for Nuclear Power Facilities in Armed Conflict Zones and Demilitarized Areas

Globally, 57 units to supply 60 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear power are under construction, mostly outside Europe3. China plans to double its nuclear power generation to 185 gigaflops by mid-century at a cost of $450 billion. In addition to India, Bangladesh, Turkey and the U.A.D are building their first reactor.

Also needed are wide-ranging and interdisciplinary risk assessments that consider the interactions between existing and future nuclear builds, the risks of conflict, specific site vulnerabilities, and potential loss of life and land from radiation release. Some limited studies seem to have been done but they remain classified; scholars would need to be given access and the information shared internationally (perhaps under IAEA auspices). This is a significant task and requires investment from the government and industry. It would spur and guide regulators and governments to action.

The five yearly review conference of the treaty ended in a stand-off because of divisions. Russia blocked the adoption of a draft outcome document that would have strengthened the treaty by considering, for the first time, the safety and security of nuclear-power plants in armed conflict zones, including Ukraine.

There is a ban on attacks on other military objectives located in or near the vicinity of nuclear-power stations. If a military attack on a dam or dykes releases dangerous forces, it can cause severe losses to the civilian population.

The get-out clause is in the protocol. If there is an attack on the military objectives located in the vicinity of these works or installations, it is possible to end support for military operations.

The site would be demilitarized if the UN Security Council passed a resolution. But how could such a situation be monitored and secured? There is a small, neutral international force tasked with supporting the IAEA’s mission. If attacks on the plant continued, they would face the need to suppress troop incursions or rocket strikes on the site. This would require rapid access to air power and entail significant risks.

The Russian War in Ukraine and the War on the Nuclear Frontier: Resolving Russia’s Cold War with a Better Nuclear Reactor

Third, the West should make clear to a wide range of Russian audience that it is safe to leave Ukraine and end the war. An orderly withdrawal is unlikely to lead to regime change, let alone the breakup of Russia. Neither outcome is an official goal of Western policy, and talk of them is unhelpful and even counterproductive. Some in the West won’t be reassured by such a reassurance. But if Russia’s elites conclude that it is as dangerous for Russia to leave Ukraine as to stay, they have no incentive to press for an end to the war. Reassurance does not mean compromise.

Scholars, non-governmental organizations, the civilian nuclear industry, and the IAEA also need to devote more resources to research into making nuclear plants safer5.

It’s necessary that a new reactor, fuel-storage and site design be put in place to defend against armed and terrorist attacks. The 9/11 Commission found that al-Qaeda was considering crashing planes into US nuclear plants, so a 2006 report was commissioned by Congress to suggest better fuel-pool designs and faster transfer of fuel to dry storage. It did not consider the danger of military attack. Industry resisted the recommendations because of the cost, while similar analyses for nuclear plants outside of the United States are sparse.

Russia, Ukraine and much of eastern Europe will be lucky if the Ukraine war ends without disaster at Zaporizhzhia. It is a shame that people are relying on luck just 70 years after the president of the United States declared the era of “atoms for peace”. The governments of the world have the authority to prevent disasters. Will they act?

For the last eight years before Russia’s horrible invasion of its neighbor, Moscow had waged limited war in the east of the country, throwing that eastern border region into a state of turmoil, all while raining down cyberattacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Many military and cybersecurity observers around the world warned that Russia’s scorched-earth hacking was demonstrating a playbook that would, sooner or later, be used outside of Ukraine too—a warning that soon proved true, with cyberattacks that struck everything from American hospitals to the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Cyber operations aimed at industrial plants can take many months to plan, and after the explosion in early October of a bridge linking Crimea to Russia, Putin was “trying to go for a big, showy public response to the attack on the bridge,” the senior US official said.

Ukrainian cybersecurity officials have for months had to avoid shelling while also doing their jobs: protecting government networks from Russia’s spy agencies and criminal hackers.

Four officials from one of Ukraine’s main cyber and communications agencies — the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) — were killed October 10 in missile attacks, the agency said in a press release. The four officials did not have cybersecurity responsibilities, but their loss has weighed heavily on cybersecurity officials at the agency during another grim month of war.

“We should not discard the probability that [Russian government hacking] groups are working right now on some high-complexity attacks that we will observe later on,” Zhora told CNN. It is highly unlikely that all of the Russian military hackers are taking a break.

In 2017, as Russia’s hybrid war in eastern Ukraine continued, Russia’s military intelligence agency unleashed destructive malware known as NotPetya that wiped computer systems at companies across Ukraine before spreading around the world, according to the Justice Department and private investigators. The incident cost the global economy billions of dollars.

That operation involved identifying widely used Ukrainian software, infiltrating it and injecting malicious code to weaponize it, said Matt Olney, director of threat intelligence and interdiction at Talos, Cisco’s threat intelligence unit.

“All of that was just as astonishingly effective as the end product was,” said Olney, who has had a team in Ukraine responding to cyber incidents for years. It can take a long time and sometimes opportunities that are not available can be conjured.

The Ukrainian Embassy at the Crimeanese Consultative General Assembly (CENA) on Cyber Security and Ukraine’s Next-Generation Collider

The deputy chairman of SSSCIP, Zhora, who is Ukrainian, has called for Western governments to tighten sanctions on Russia since it could feed its hacking arsenal.

The Russians could increase their level of cyberattacks as their battle struggles continue, the ambassador-at-large for cyber affairs of Estonia told CNN.

“Our main goal is to isolate Russia on the international stage” as much as possible, Sepp said, adding that the former Soviet state has not communicated with Russia on cybersecurity issues in months.

Preparing for emergency: The city’s Director for the Department of Municipal Security, Roman Tkachuk, relayed fears later in the afternoon on Sunday that all possible action plans are being considered in the case of an emergency but there were no plans to evacuate the city, according to a statement from the Kyiv City Council.

“If you have extended family — this is for if we consider the worst case, if we were left without electricity and water supply — or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time,” the mayor said.

“His goal is for us to die, to freeze, or to make us flee our land so that he can have it. That’s what the aggressor wants to achieve,” Klitschko said regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the event of an emergency, Tkachuk said each district in the city would have about 100 heating centers. An ambulance crew and warm clothes will be on duty near the heating centers, which will have heat, lighting, toilets, canteens and places to rest.

This week’s election results in the US will be watched by Ukraine, even though Republicans warned that funding for the country could be limited if the GOP won control of Congress.

The conflict between Kiev and Kherson in the Dnipro River: a moment of crisis in Kiev during the recent U.N. nuclear energy deal

Turkish president will hold a meeting with Swedish prime minister on Tuesday. Before it can join NATO, Sweden needs to meet certain conditions.

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday is scheduled to discuss an International Atomic Energy Agency report, in which Ukraine is expected to be on the agenda.

The attacks on the country’s energy grid are considered to be genocide by a top Ukrainian official. Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin made the comments while speaking to the BBC last month.

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

Yes. An enormous $45 billion aid package is in the works and will be part of a constant drumbeat from the Biden administration. The message is simple: Ukraine is receiving as much aid as Washington can provide, short of boots on the ground, and that aid will not stop.

The fighting took place across the broad expanse of the Dnipro River that now splits the two countries after Russia withdrew from the southern city of Kherson.

The Dnipro has become the new front line in southern Ukraine, which has already experienced months of Russian occupation.

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

Mortar shells struck near the bridge, sending up puffs of smoke. Near the riverfront, incoming rounds rang out with thunderous, metallic booms. It was not immediately possible to assess what had been hit.

A surprise visit to Kherson City: Russian troops are roaming around, as stated by the head of the Kherson regional military administration in Novoraysk

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 mines can be 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. Ukrainian officials said there were at least four more children that were injured by mines.

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

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

According to the Ukrainian military’s southern command, Russian forces continued to fire from across the river on newly-reclaimed towns and villages. The military claimed that two missiles hit Beryslav, which is just north of a critical dam. It was not known if there were any casualties, but it was not immediately known.

One resident in Kherson City talked to another through a secure messaging app that saidOccupants were robbing locals and exchanging items for homemade vodka. “Then they get drunk and even more aggressive. The people are scared here. She asked that her name be kept out of the news.

Ivan wrote in a text message that “Russians roam around, 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-” He asked his name not to be used because of his safety concern, he lives south of Kherson city. To find someone local to stay in the place, we try to connect with the owners. So that it is not abandoned and Russians don’t take it.”

The first missile to land in Poland may well have been a Ukrainian Anti-aircraft rocket that intercepted an incoming Russian missile, a fact that Polish and NATO leaders believe to be true. (President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian)

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

The Khmer Rouge planted mines in vast areas of Cambodia, similar to what he has done in Kherson. Cambodian experts have been called in to help with the task of preparing for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The Russian armies have left evidence of atrocities and torture, which is similar to that of the Khmer Rouge.

That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. The Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

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 has become increasingly isolated on the world stage. He was not present at the G20 session, which Zelensky dubbed the “G19.” Despite the fact that Putin once wanted to return to the G7 before his ousting from the G8 he is not a candidate now. Russia temporarily banned 100 Canadians,including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country, making the comparisons with North Korea more striking.

Above all, many of the best and brightest in virtually every field have now fled Russia. This includes writers, artists and journalists as well as some of the most creative technologists, scientists and engineers.

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

The failure of the future combat air system to push back Russian interests in a global war on the Axis of terrorism and the Cold War

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. “We have understood and learnt our lesson that it was an unhealthy and unsustainable dependency, and we want reliable and forward-looking connections,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday.

Putin has a dream that this conflict would drive wedges into the western alliance, and in reality it hasn’t happened. 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.

In a statement, the energy company Ukrenergo said that the three nuclear power plants — Rivne, South Ukraine and Khmelnytskyi — were disconnected from the grid as a safety measure.

The nuclear reactors are back on but are not connected to the national grid, the company said.

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.

Ukrainian officials stress that the power cuts have the cascading effect of turning off the heat and water in many cases. The water in pipes could potentially freeze if the temperatures get too cold.

President Maia Sandu wrote a post about Russia on Facebook, stating that they can’t trust it because it leaves them in the dark and cold.

The Attacks on the Ukrainian Infrastructure: President Zelenskyy, the Heroes of Russia, and the Kremlin Senator Sergei Kyrylenko

Ukraine is scrambling to prepare for the winter. In a video address on Tuesday night, President Zelenskyy stated that there are 4,000 centers to take care of civilians in the event of power cuts.

He called them “points of invincibility,” saying they will provide heat, water, phone charging and internet access. Many of them will be in government buildings.

A group of soldiers were recipients of the “Heroes of Russia” awards at the Kremlin, and he spoke to them, holding a glass of champagne.

Russia’s announcement of a drone attack at an airfield in theKursk region, which neighbors Ukranians, appeared to reference that. The Ukrainian DefenseMinistry has not commented on recent explosions in Russia. Officially, the targets are well beyond the reach of the country’s declared drones.

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

He ended his apparently off-the-cuff comments by claiming that people seem to refrain from mentioning that water has been cut off from Donetsk. “No one has said a word about it anywhere. At all! Complete silence.”

Local Russian authorities in the city of Donetsk have stated that they’ve had to deal with constant shelling this week.

President Putin made a speech at a reception that dealt with the attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine.

He’s not the only Russian war blogger casting doubt. “As expected, the blame for what happened in Makiivka began to be placed on the soldiers themselves,” said a post on the Telegram channel known as “Grey Zone,” linked to longtime Kremlin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group of mercenaries. This is an attempt to throw off the blame and it is to 99% a lie.

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

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

U.K. drone strikes and the failure of the power system to restore power to civilians: Address of a Russian president in the Odesa region

The Russian president said that as soon as they made a move, do something in response, which was similar to the reaction to the attacks on Russia.

The pace of restoration is slowed down by difficult weather conditions and the damage was made worse by the freezing and rupture of wires in distribution networks.

In his Saturday address, Zelensky said that 10 of the Russian drones had been shot down by the Ukranian army. It was not immediately possible to verify his tally.

Nonetheless, he said, the strikes, using Iranian drones, had left many in the dark. The situation in the Odesa region was very difficult, according to Mr. Zelensky. He warned that although repair crews were working “nonstop,” restoring power to civilians would take “days,” not “hours.”

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.

He said that the power system is far from normal and urged people to reduce their power use.

It must be understood. Even if there are no heavy missile strikes, this does not mean that there are no problems,” he continued. There are missiles and drones all the time in different regions. Most energy facilities are hit every day.

Ukrainian anger at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant: In the wake of the Soviet Revolution, Ukrainian environmentalists went out against the soviet government

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Sophia Arkadiyivna remembers when the Soviet Union built the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1977, just 20 miles from the village where she served as mayor.

“Moscow developed nuclear energy above all to control everything — to keep it close and protected from possible conflict,” says Oleksandr Sukhodolia, a Ukrainian energy policy expert.

She heard from friends and relatives who worked at the Chernobyl plant that authorities would cut corners and pump up power production for the USSR to export to other Eastern bloc countries.

The Chernobyl Cleanup took a significant amount of money from the national budget in new independent Ukraine. Meanwhile, dependence on nuclear energy crept up to 55% of the country’s production, according to the IAEA. That rate of production is second only to France.

I did not understand why we needed to be independent before Chernobyl. Samoilenko understands that they are no less deserving of dignity than Russians.

Soon other environmental scientists joined with the dissidents, and established an organization called Green World. The group pushed for Ukrainian independence despite the soviet government’s tolerant attitude to environmental groups.

“The only way to protect the environment is through democratic action — because everybody has to be involved in protecting the things that affect everybody,” says Samoilenko.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/11/1138382531/ukraine-fears-nuclear-disaster-zaporizhzhia-chernobyl-memories

Sophia Arkadiyivna, whose hometown is still the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, Ukraine: “Fears” nuclear disaster and memories of her childhood

Sophia Arkadiyivna is no longer the mayor of her hometown. The village was erased from the map in 1999. That’s because it’s in the 60-mile-wide “exclusion zone,” which was deemed too dangerous for the public after the Chernobyl disaster.

She returned to teaching despite the risks even after retiring from her other job. The government turns a blind eye to pensioners like her who opted to return to their abandoned houses. She spends most days now alone, tending to her garden, her main source of sustenance.

She speaks Ukrainian, with a few Belarusian words peppered in. This village is closer to the border with Belarus — just 10 miles to the east — than to the former Chernobyl plant. She used to believe that there wasn’t much difference between Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians.

She angrily chopping vegetables for the winter and telling them to not steal, not kill, and not bother anyone as a way to believe in God.

Hundreds of other retirees like her lived through the Russian occupation of the exclusion zone in March, as did thousands of Ukrainian officials and workers who continue to maintain the vital power infrastructure that passes through the zone.

The safety chief in the exclusion zone says the Russians stole everything from his fleet of vehicles. Some of them had damaged the doors with bullet holes.

After the Russian occupation, the team of people are still cleaning up the zone. They can’t imagine how people are stressed out working at a nuclear power plant.

“I’m very, very scared,” says Serhiy Biruk, a top official with the Ukrainian agency that manages the exclusion zone. He’s been involved in the Chernobyl cleanup for 37 years.

Ukrainian nuclear workers were forced to sign new contracts acknowledging Russian control over the power plant, after Russia annexed the territory in September.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/11/1138382531/ukraine-fears-nuclear-disaster-zaporizhzhia-chernobyl-memories

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks out against Russian oil prices and sanctions on Ukrainian cities in Luhansk and Bakhmut

It’s being said that people want their energy production to be more local. They are looking to the lifestyles of people like Arkadiyivna who rely on batteries and solar panels to survive.

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

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the prime minister of Norwegian will be in France for a dinner on Monday.

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.

Fans, friends and family are celebrating the basketball player’s return to the U.S. following her release from a Russian prison. Meanwhile, some Republican politicians have been complaining about the prisoner swap and other U.S. citizens still held by Russia.

The new measures targeted Russian oil revenue. They include a price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports and a Russian oil price cap.

Russian forces began their next major offensive in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, attacking Ukrainian defensive lines and making marginal advances, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Analysts at the Atlantic Council also said Russian forces are pushing to encircle Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Violation of the Geneva Convention on Crime and Human Rights in Kherson, Ukraine: Zelensky, Putin, Petrov, Klitschko and the United States

It was 2019. And the successful TV comedian turned commander in chief had traveled to Paris for a summit to negotiate a peace deal with Putin. Despite the doubts of many, Zelensky managed to walk away giving few concessions.

The Russian official in charge of the eastern region said that the Ukrainian army had launched the biggest attack on the occupied region since the start of the war.

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

Meanwhile, artillery and rocket attacks continued in the southern city of Kherson, which was liberated by Ukrainian forces in November, targeting critical infrastructure, residential buildings, medical aid and public transport, leaving four dead, according to the head of the region’s military administration. Shelling also set a multi-storey apartment building ablaze, and the body of a man was found in one apartment, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office said. Basic services are not restored in the city.

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

The strikes in Kherson left the city “completely disconnected” from power supplies, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration, Yanushevych.

The U.S. Government gave machinery and generators to operate boiler houses and heat supply stations, 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.

Russian response to Zelensky’s proposal for a peace agreement with the Ukrainians: a critical look at the Kremlin’s response

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Thursday that Moscow won’t negotiate with the Ukrainians on the basis of President Zelensky’s 10-point peace plan.

“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.

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

Zakharova claimed that many experts questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an increase of the conflict and drag the US army into combat.

The US Army has a long-range air defense system that is considered to be one of the most capable in the world, and it has been requested by the Ukrainian government many times.

The Pentagon press secretary was asked if the Russian warnings about the Patriot system were provocative. Those comments wouldn’t affect US aid to Ukraine, said Gen. Pat Ryder.

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

The United States and other countries are following a path of constantly expanding the range and raising the technical level of the weapons they supply to Ukraine, according to the Kremlin. “This does not contribute to a speedy settlement of the situation, on the contrary.”

In what is potentially a subtle message, the Russian defense ministry shared a video of the installation of a intercontinental missile into the Kaluga region by the commander of the Kozelsky missile formation.

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

Russian aggression against Ukraine in the wake of the Makiivka strike: The case of Kateryna, Oleg, and Viatrovych

Unlike smaller air defense systems, Patriot missile batteries need much larger crews, requiring dozens of personnel to properly operate them. The United States has to train for Patriot missiles batteries in multiple months because of attacks from Russia.

Zelensky disagreed with the idea recently floated by a US secretary of state that Ukraine should not want to regain territory lost to Russia, such as Donbas and Crimea, since it is under Russian control.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the French news outlet France 24 this week that the alliance still has two main objectives: provide aid to Ukraine and keep NATO from getting involved in the war.

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

The official said that the person would cross his fingers and hope for the best when loading the gun.

In the trenches. CNN’s Will Ripley reported from trenches and fortifications being built along the Ukrainian-Belarus border, where people are worried about Russia once again assembling troops. Ripley talks to a man who works on sewing machines.

Russia began to expand with Ukraine. In the mind of many Russians, their empire cannot exist without Ukraine. That’s the reason why they keep returning, said Volodymyr Viatrovych, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

When the invasion began last year, Kateryna and Oleg moved from the capital to a safer area in western Ukraine. But they never wanted to leave the country. They felt the attraction of home pulling them back to the city.

He went to parliament in order to declare martial law. By 2 p.m. that day, he received a rifle so he could join the security forces defending the capital.

It was a day of high drama in a war that’s still playing out. But as an historian, Viatrovych also sees the actions of President Vladimir Putin as part of a pattern of behavior by Russian leaders.

The Building where Russia’s Independence from Ukraine was Declared in 1918, and it’s now the end of the Russian Empire, not Putin’s era

The offices of the Kyiv House of Teachers are in the center of the city, which is where Russia’s independence from Ukraine was declared in 1918.

The blast blew out the windows, as well as parts of the glass ceiling in the hall where independence was declared in 1918. The windows have been boarded. The glass still covers the floor.

Steshuk Oleh, the director of the House of Teachers said that there were parallels to a century ago. The building was damaged during the fighting. And now it’s damaged again. But don’t worry. We will rebuild everything.”

“If you look at all the hardships that Ukrainians have gone through in the 20th century, it’s time where all the wrongs of the last hundred years need to be corrected,” he said.

Ukrainians thought this matter was finally resolved in December 1991, when they held a referendum on independence. Ninety-two percent voted in favor of going their own way. The Soviet Union fell that month.

Our generation has the chance to put an end to this. Ukrainians are more united, more mobilized, more ready to fight than in 1918,” he said.

“If he’s losing a war, he’s not going to survive,” he said. “The outcome may signal the end, not just of Putin’s era, but the era of the empire. It’s 21st century. It’s time for the empire to end.

When he joined politics 15 years ago, Kasparov challenged Putin’s hold on power. When it became clear his safety was at risk, he left Russia, and now lives in New York.

Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities and urban areas during the December 11 air attacks: Why Ukraine is going to have a tough time on the battlefield

Military analysts say the war is not likely to produce an outcome on the battlefield. They believe it’s going to need negotiations and compromises.

He thinks a buffer zone or gray zone is not good for a country’s security. “If you are a gray zone between two security blocs, two military blocs, everybody wants to make a step. This has happened with Ukraine.”

“They have set a goal to leave Ukrainians without light, water and heat,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a government meeting, adding that 60 of the 76 missiles fired at Ukraine were intercepted by its air defense forces.

As I write, Russia has just fired dozens of Kalibr missiles towards several cities in Ukraine, including my adopted city of Odesa. Air raid sirens blare as we bolt for shelter into enclosed hallways. My landlady brings me a pot of borscht to help create a sense of normalcy.

The mayor said three districts of the city had been hit by rockets and the water supply was disrupted in the capital. He suggested that residents prepare a stock of water and not leave their shelters as the attacks continued.

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

During the air attacks on Friday in Ukraine, a supersonic plane, capable of carrying a hypersonic missile, was seen in the sky over Belarus. But it was not clear from their statement whether a Kinzal was used in the attacks.

Kirby said that Russia’s defense industrial base is being taxed. “We know they’re having trouble keeping up with that pace. Russian President Vladimir Putin is having difficulty resupplied with precision guided weapons.

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

The attack of a Russian missile on Friday killed a 4-year-old boy in the city of Kryvyi Rih and reports of power outages in Odesa

The water supply in the capital has been restored. Half of Kyiv residents already have heating and we are working to restore it to all residents of the city,” the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on Telegram on Saturday.

In the central city of Kryvyi Rih, the body of a young boy was pulled from the rubble of an apartment block destroyed by a Russian missile on Friday.

The boy’s parents and a 64-year-old woman were also killed, according to local officials. There were 13 people hurt, including four children.

The apartment block that was hit had more than 100 people in it, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city military administration. They and residents of neighboring homes which also suffered damage are being looked after in a temporary accommodation, he said Friday.

The “critical infrastructure facilities” were hit in Chuhuiv district on Friday, according to Oleh SynieHubv, head of the regional military administration.

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

Ukrainians were warned Monday of more emergency power cuts after the energy minister said that many power-generating facilities were damaged in Friday’s attacks.

Zelensky versus Putin: From a comedian’s travels to the lysée Palace during World War II, in Paris, France

I was in Paris at the time and saw how Zelensky and Putin traveled to the lysée Palace. The French President hugged Putin but did not shake hands with Zelensky.

Zelensky was the instantly recognizable wartime president, in trademark olive green, as well as being known for stirring the imagination of people worldwide, as he named and shamed allies for not arming his military.

Failure to demonstrate further progress on the battlefield with billions of dollars worth of military kit could stir unease among Western backers. capitulation to Russia would be a political death sentence.

Zelensky was able to achieve the thing Putin most wanted to achieve but failed to do, in order to distract from his failures at home. Michael Popow told me that Putin was deeply pained by being shown up by a mere decadent comedian.

“After the full-scale invasion, once he got into a position of being bullied by someone like Vladimir Putin he knew exactly what he needed to do because it was just his gut feeling,” Yevhen Hlibovytsky, former political journalist and founder of the Kyiv-based think tank and consultancy, pro.mova, told me.

When the US offered to evacuate the leader, it was because he needed bullets, not a ride.

Zelensky stood up to a bully in his career, that being US President Donald Trump who tried to ruin a novice politician’s political career.

Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. He looked in disbelief when he stood on stage and saw what had happened to Petro Poroshenko.

The war appears to have turned his ratings around. Zelensky received a huge increase in his ratings after the invasion, and they remain high today. Zelensky was rated highly by Americans for his handling of international affairs, ahead of US President Joe Biden.

He was a TV comedian in Kvartal 95 and his bubble includes many of his former colleauges. The press conference held on the platform of a metro station in the middle of the war was well lit and had great camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.

His nightly televised addresses bring solace in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv, as he did as comforter in chief.

Influence of Zelensky in the Changing Faces of the Global Continuum: From Putin to the United States, to the Soviet Union and beyond

Zelensky is projecting himself as a modern professional in a younger, global audience that understands him as such by wearing hoodies and T-shirts.

She said he was more comfortable in front of a camera than Putin was as a digital native. Zelensky is doing a better job balancing authority and accessibility, which I believe both of them want to come across as.

Journeying to where her husband can’t, Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora – projecting empathy, style and smarts. Most recently, she met with King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. (Curiously, TIME magazine did not include Zelenska on the cover montage and gave only a passing reference in the supporting text).

Despite the strong tailwinds at Zelensky’s back, there are subtle signs that his international influence could be dwindling. For example, last week, in what analysts called a pivotal moment in geopolitics, the G7 imposed a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude – despite pleas from Zelensky that it should have been set at $30 in order to inflict more pain on the Kremlin.

As Zelensky said in a recent nightly video address: “No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor, determines how events develop.”

There are two main deliverables, the first one being the Patriot missile systems. They are described as the “gold standard” of air defense in the US. NATO preciously guards them, and they require the personnel who operate them – almost 100 in a battalion for each weapon – to be properly trained.

The second are for Ukrainian jets. Ukraine, and Russia, largely are equipped with munitions that are “dumb” – fired roughly towards a target. Ukraine has been provided with more and more Western standard precision artillery and missiles, like Howitzers and HIMARS respectively.

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

Western analysts have noted Russia has grumbled consistently about these deliveries, but been relatively muted in its practical response to the crossing of what, as recently as January, might have been considered “red lines.”

It is important to note that the White House has a pledge of consequences made directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a two-hour secure video teleconference more than two months before the invasion.

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

The fight against Russia in the dark and lengthy conflict costs relatively little for Washington, given the huge annual defense budget.

Vladimir Zelensky: “Whatever happens in Ukraine, how does it go… and what will happen in the end of the crisis”

Zelensky’s historic speech strengthened both Democrats and Republicans who know what is at stake in this fight against Putin and Russian aggression and with their ally, Iran, as well.

The speech “connected the struggle of Ukrainian people to our own revolution, to our own feelings that we want to be warm in our homes to celebrate Christmas and to get us to think about all the families in Ukraine that will be huddled in the cold and to know that they are on the front lines of freedom right now,” Clinton said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Wednesday.

Clinton met Putin while he was US secretary of state, but he said the leader was “probably impossible to actually predict” as the war goes on and his popularity fades.

Clinton thinks Putin will use Russian conscripts to throw more bodies into the fight in Ukraine.

Maria Zakharova said that the Ukrainian government will achieve nothing even with a lot of military support from the West.

Zakharova said that the tasks set inside the framework of the special military operation will be fulfilled, taking into account the situation on the ground.

At Zelensky’s request, US officials have provided input on a 10-point peace plan Zelensky has been showcasing since November, National Security Council official John Kirby said last week.

Peskov told journalists, however, that Wednesday’s meeting showed the US is waging a proxy war of “indirect fighting” against Russia down “to the last Ukrainian.”

On February 24, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine and the country has been in a state of instability since. Ukrainians had to learn to think of what is daily, weekly, monthly, or hourly.

The war’s outward signs were less apparent during the summer months. “Normal” then meant bustling restaurants and bars — at least until curfew — and the mood throughout the city was jovial, as people celebrated Russian withdrawals and Ukrainian victories.

The fall chorus of birds and street musicians were replaced by more ominous sounds such as the sound of generators. Electricity, water and internet connections go out frequently in the winter due to Russia’s missile and drone assaults on the city.

As Ukraine nears the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Kyiv’s newest normal may be darker and colder, but life goes on: Volunteers sew camouflage netting and build power banks, soldiers go to church, and people visit Christmas markets, wearing headlamps to navigate darkened streets.

Crisis in Ukraine: Attacks from Russian air defense systems on civilians and power grids during the Christmas and New Year epochs

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

He said, “You cannot consider this person, this person will attack you because you are fighting back.” There is absolutely no strategic reason not to try to do this.”

Serhiy Hrabskiy, a retired colonel and commentator on the war for Ukrainian news media, said that Ukraine’s military has not hesitated to hit airfields, fuel tanks and ammunition depots that are legitimate military targets. As the war has moved closer to Russia, there have been more sites where the war has been targeting.

The Kinzhal, a hypersonic weapon that can reach targets in just minutes and is virtually useless to shoot down, is in shorter supply than other missiles.

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

According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the lead for disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office, several residential buildings were destroyed in Kyiv.

Maksym Marchenko, the administrator for the region along the Black Sea, said that Ukrainian air defense systems shot down 21 missiles near Odesa. There was no electricity or water due to successful missile strikes.

Strikes of the scale have been less frequent since Oct. 10. In an interview this week, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence said that Russia was running out of cruise missiles.

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.”

As Ukrainians prepare to celebrate Christmas and New Year in January, authorities are worried about Russia launching an all-out assault on the power grid that would plunge the country into darkness.

When the sound of air raid sirens and an explosion woke up Hryn, she and her son went to the basement shelter. But they were not particularly surprised, nor did they let it dampen their spirits.

After the all clear, life came back to normal and Hryn was able to meet his neighbors in the elevator who were going to the cinema to see the movie. Parents took their children to school and people went to work, while others continued with holiday plans in defiance.

What does the Ukrainian invasion of Ukraine tell us about democratic society and democracy? The challenge of “fake news” on social media, news blogs, and media outlets

It is considered to besenseless barbarism. When the Foreign Minister of Ukraine saw the new wave of attacks on Ukrainian cities, he said those words were the only thing that came to mind.

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

The invasion has grown into the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, forcing millions of Ukrainians from their homes, decimating the Ukrainian economy and killing thousands of civilians.

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

Since the beginning of the year, the military or leadership has been forbidden from being criticized. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against the war — 45% of them women — according to a leading independent monitoring group.

Penalties that can be lengthy have been meted out to opposition voices for questioning the behavior of the Russian army.

The most renowned human rights group in Russia was forced to stop its activities over alleged violations of the foreign agents law.

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

For now, repressions remain targeted. Some of the new laws are not enforced. But few doubt the measures are intended to crush wider dissent — should the moment arise.

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

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

Access to independent sources of information can still be obtained with technical tools such as Telegram. But state media propaganda now blankets the airwaves favored by older Russians, with angry TV talk shows spreading conspiracies.

The Russian Exodus from the Cold War and the War with the West: Where Will Russia Go? What Will Putin’s Military Campaign Tell Us?

Many people who were perceived to be government opponents left in the war’s early days due to fears of persecution.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled to border states in Asia and Europe to avoid the draft after Putin ordered 300,000 additional troops to be sent in September.

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

The swift intervention of Russia’s central bank, which jacked up interest rates to 20% after the invasion and implemented currency controls to buttress the ruble, was also a stabilizing force. It was necessary for factories to increase production of military goods in order to replace imports from the West.

President Putin thinks that Europe will blink first when it comes to sanctions, because Europeans are angry at high energy costs at home. The move will make the pain more acute in Europe and will prohibit oil exports to countries that abide by the price cap.

The economic crisis has had a significant impact on Putin’s ability to provide stability, a key point for his support among Russian who remember the chaotic years after the fall of the USSR.

When it comes to Russia’s military campaign, there’s no outward change in the government’s tone. Russia’s Defense Ministry gives daily summaries on their successes. There is no doubt that everything is going according to plan.

The length of the war is indicative of Russiaunderestimating Ukrainians’ willingness to resist.

The true number of Russian losses – officially at just under 6,000 men – remains a highly taboo subject at home. Western estimates place those figures much higher.

Vladimir Putin’s 2016 State of the Nation Address and Big Press Conference: Why the Kremlin hasn’t ruled out a victory?

Putin succeeded in making Russia great again with the NATO alliance, even though he had originally set out to do that with Ukraine.

It would have been unthinkable for Soviet times for long time allies in Central Asia to criticize Russia out of concern for their own sovereignty. India and China have purchased discounted Russian oil, but have stopped buying full support for Russia’s campaign.

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

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

The Kremlin does not have a reason for the delayed flights. Many suspect it might be that, after 10 months of war and no sign of victory in sight, the Russian leader has finally run out of good news to share.

Zelensky said that the Russian leader is hiding in behind the troops, missiles and walls of his residences and palaces. He hides behind you and burns your country and future. Zelensky made sure that no one would ever forgive them for terror.

Russian Air Forces in Avdiivka and Bakhmand directions: New Years Ve Ve Strikes Intl

The Office of the President of Ukraine said three people were dead and three were wounded in the DONETSK region. Tymoshenko commented on the Telegram.

A person was injured in the region. Two people were killed and one was wounded in the region. Two people were wounded in the Kherson region, while one died in the Chernihiv region.

There were 26 air strikes on civilian infrastructure. In particular, the occupants used 10 Shahed-136 UAVs, but all of them were shot down. civilian settlements were also hit by the 80 attacks made by the enemy, according to the General Staff.

Russia is trying to improve the tactical situation at the Avdiivka directions and continues to conductoffensive actions at the Bakhmand directions, according to the report.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/31/europe/russia-ukraine-new-years-eve-strikes-intl/index.html

The Crime of Crime during the First Year in Ukraine, General Minister Ivan Zelensky, told the Telegram on New Year’s Eve

The life support system of the capital is functioning normally. Currently, 30% of consumers are without electricity. He told Telegram that he 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.”

“From 2023 I really want to win, and also to have more bright impressions and new emotions. I miss it a lot. I also want to travel. One has to grow, and so I think about personal and professional growth. I have to develop and work for the benefit of the country,” said Alyona Bogulska, a 29-year-old financier.

It is a symbol that we survived the year and that is what it is this year, said a pharmacy employee.

On New Year’s Eve, cities should be covered in joy and hope. Zelenska stated that Ukrainian cities are again covered by missile wave from Russia.

There were many notable moments during the war such as the attack on the maternity hospital, and Mr Zelensky’s videotaped speech about them.

“This year has struck our hearts,” he said, according to a translated transcript posted on his official website. “We’ve cried out all the tears. All the prayers have been yelled. 311 days. We have something to say about what’s going on.

Ukraine’s Defense: from Black Holes to Google, Twitter, and the Internet Throat – A Story of Two Minutes in Kiev for Two Years

All Ukrainians — those working, attending schools or “just learning to walk” — are participating in Ukraine’s defense, Mr. Zelensky said. And although 2022 could be called a year of losses, he said that was not the right way to think of it.

The world has rallied around Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said, from the main squares of foreign cities and their halls of government to the top of Google’s search results.

America has done this before. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous nuclear confrontation so far, the Soviet Union’s position shifted in a matter of days, ultimately accepting an outcome that favored the West. Had “red lines” thinking been in vogue, America might well have accepted an inferior compromise that weakened its security and credibility.

Kateryna and her husband are used to having long black outs, hours without any internet connection and fear about the next missile barrage.

But as they begin 2023, they are also preparing for the arrival of twin boys. A woman is eight months pregnant. CNN will only use the first names of her and Oleg, as they fear for their privacy.

When the sirens aren’t wailing, Kateryna said, there is another noise that is new to her neighborhood: the chattering of generators as homes and businesses try to compensate for being without electricity twelve for as much as 12 hours a day.

Kateryna still travels to central Kyiv twice a week to use a co-working space in the city, even though it’s about to get dangerous with the impending arrival of the twins.

How Is Getting Here? Katerynna and Oleg, the Moms and Dads of a Free Ukrainian Family, Living in a Land with Security

These spaces have become quite professional, with furniture, heat, lighting, and reliable internet provided through Starlink terminals, bought from the company owned by Musk.

Kateryna and Oleg have a small generator at home but use it only a few times a year. It uses about a liter of fuel per hour and requires cooling down every four hours if it is going to be powered by diesel. They said they have to decide on which appliance to use.

Kateryna says that sometimes she has to use a flashlight to shop for food in the stores. They have two months worth of food supplies stacked in the house in case things go wrong.

“I have a job here; Oleg has a job here and he cannot work remotely. Our home is where we have many friends. Kateryna said it is a nightmare to move somewhere else.

Kateryna feels they are both involved in the effort to secure Ukraine’s future. She helped Ukrainian organizations raise money for warm clothes and equipment for their army in the early months of her pregnancies.

“The company my husband works for has a fund and they help the Ukrainian fighters who are on the front line with equipment like drones and pick-up trucks. We helped collect money for such equipment,” she said.

I want my children to live in a free country and not be at risk. They have the right to safety and protection just like all other children in the world. She does not want them to live in fear because they should be happy.

She is concerned about her health since she might be in the hospital during another wave of missile attacks. She will pray very hard at that point.

The Kremlin Call for a truce: Why cell phones are too bad to be useful in warfighting in the Russian army?

If the Russian account is accurate, the cell phones that the novice troops were using were in violation of regulations that allowed Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately. Ukraine did not say how the attack was executed. But the implications are broader and deeper, especially for how Russia is conducting its war now.

It is obvious that days after the deadliest attack on Russians, Putin called for a temporary truce. The move was simply a cynical attempt to seek breathing space in the midst of a bad start to the year for Russian forces.

Russian officials said four Ukrainian-launched missiles struck the school where the forces were housed, which is near a large arms depot. Two more rockets were shot down by Russian air defenses.

Petraeus. There will be several new features this year, most significantly the additional capabilities on the Ukrainian side: Western tanks and infantry fighting vehicles; longer-range and larger precision munitions for the US-provided HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket systems) that will enable precise strikes out to 150 kilometers (twice the range of the current precision munition); additional air defense systems of various types; augmented air defenses and additional wheeled armored vehicles, as well as enormous quantities of additional ammunition of all types.

Chris is a senior fellow and co-head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for New American Security in Washington and has told me that the failure to break up large arms depots is largely a function of the fact that their force cannot communicate adequately.

A view shared by other experts. James Lewis, the director of the strategic technologies program at CSIS, told me in an email that bad security communication is standard practice in the Russian army.

The troops killed in Makiivka seem to have been recent conscripts, part of a larger picture of Russian soldiers being shipped to the front lines with little training and deeply sub-standard equipment and weapons.

The most recent arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons who have been freed and immediately sent to the Ukrainian front. The appeal of the use of cell phones would be to prisoners used to years of isolation with little or no contact with the outside world.

Semyon Pegov, the man behind the cyber identity WarGonzo who was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago, said that the Ministry of Defense should be blamed for suggesting that the troops were using cell phones.

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

The Russian attack on Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine: a probe of the US and Russia’s military leadership during the 2016 Ukrainian front of aggression

The question is when the blame will begin shifting from the military to Putin himself, particularly since he has seemed ill-prepared to change the leadership at very the top. The last change was the appointment of Sergei Surovikin as the first person to be placed in overall command of all Russian forces on the Ukraine front — an army general formerly in charge of the brutal Russian bombardment of Aleppo in Syria.

A month later, an officer known to Western officials as the “Butcher of Mariupol” replaced a four-star general in the defense ministry. The location of the arms depot was likely to be on the watch of Mizintsev.

Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, told his forces in a video that their victory would be an “inevitable” one.

Just this week, the Biden administration announced the US was considering dispatching Bradley armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron also announced he would be sending light tanks, though Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was urging the dispatch of heavier battle tanks. The Chancellor of Germany is under increasing pressure to add its powerful Leopard 2 tanks.

Moscow claimed that a large number of Kyiv’s soldiers died in a Russian attack in eastern Ukraine last week.

CNN is on the ground in the area and there isn’t any indication of massive casualties. There is no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk, including in the vicinity of the city morgue, the team reported.

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

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

The account was dismissed by the influential military writer and the leader of the self-proclaimed DPR in eastern Ukraine, who pointed to distrust in the Russian command over Moscow’s response to the attack.

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

A CNN team heard the first strikes on Kramatorsk while they were at the scene. CNN saw the second attack, with two impacts about one minute apart. Two women jumped from their car and ran screaming while other people inside took shelter. Shrapnel bounced off of a CNN vehicle.

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

The Moscow Attack on Kramatorsk in Ukraine and the Water Level of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, as Revealed by the Local Government

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.

The National Security and Defense Council secretary told Sky News the months would be defining in the war.

David Helms, a retired meteorological worker with decades of experience working for the U.S. federal government, said that he believed Russia used the Kakhovka reservoir for months to refill its water supplies in and out of the peninsula. He says that there are 23 of them, and they’re finished.

If the level fell below 13 meters, the cooling system at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant would be at risk, according to the local government. The statement said that Ukrhydroenergo thinks the discharge is being done by the Russians.

“Even though the decreased water level does not pose an immediate threat to nuclear safety and security, it may become a source of concern if it is allowed to continue,” the IAEA’s director General Rafael M. Grossi said in a statement.

The reservoir is essential to supplying water to otherwise arid farmland in the southern part of the country, according to Brian Kuns, a geographer at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences who has studied farming in southern Ukraine. A network of canals leading from the reservoir irrigates roughly 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of farmland that is used to grow sunflowers, grain and vegetables. Kuns says that it’s important locally.

The explosion seems to have destroyed the road, but the dam’s gates are mostly intact.

However immediately after the detonation, it appears that Russian forces deliberately used two gantry cranes on the Russian-controlled side of the dam to open additional sluice gates, allowing water to rush out of the reservoir.

The result has been startling. Radar altimetry data shows the current level of the reservoir at 14 meters, approximately 2 meters below its normal height. Since December, the reservoir’s water level has plummeted to its lowest level in 30 years of satellite observation.

The Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration warned of water shortages in some cities, like Berdyansk, which is currently under Russian occupation, but it made no mention of the other cities.

But Kuns is less certain of Russia’s intent. Most of the affected agricultural areas are in Russia. He says it seems peculiar that they’d be doing scorched-earth on territory that they claim to want to keep.

There is nothing to be done except to watch the water drain away. Kuns isn’t sure what the purpose of it is. “But it’s very worrying.”

Zelenskyy’s Story of the First Open-Source War in Ukraine: CNN, Bergen, and the Washington Post-Newtonian War

Zelenskyy met with leaders in London, Paris, and Brussels, where he called for allies to send fighter jets to his country.

This was the second year in a row that the ambassador to the US attended the State of the Union speech, and the war in the Ukranian peninsula received very little attention.

The British official told CNN that it was unlikely that Russian forces would be better organized or more successful, but they did seem willing to send more troops into the meat grinder.

“They amassed enough manpower to take one or two small cities in Donbas, but that’s it,” a senior Ukrainian diplomat told CNN. The sense of panic they were trying to build in Ukraine was overwhelming.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday in Brussels that the US is not seeing Russia “massing its aircraft” ahead of an aerial operation against Ukraine.

Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. View more opinion on CNN.

Bergen: Is this the first truly open-source war? The war in Ukraine is being fought in part on social media by Zelensky; commercial overhead satellites capture Russian battle groups moving around in real-time, and the social media accounts of Russian mercenaries in the Wagner Group document what they are doing.

Petraeus is the leader of the CIA. I think the Biden Administration has led NATO and the rest of the western world very impressively in responding to the Russian invasion – providing enormous quantities of arms, ammunition, and other material and economic assistance. And also guiding the effort to impose economic, financial and personal sanctions and export controls on Russia. (And I offer this, noting that I am not a member of a political party and was very critical of the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and the way the withdrawal was conducted.)

A person claiming to be Petraeus. It is not Russia. The Battle of Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv were lost to Russia, but the rest of the southern coast of Ukranian was not even taken through Mykolaiv.

So, the situation is essentially a stalemate at present, albeit with Russia making costly attacks in several areas, and with both sides building up forces for offensive operations expected in the late winter (likely the Russians) and spring/summer (the Ukrainians).

War between advanced powers: What will we learn from the end of the Cold War? Is Russia going to be a better place for military and intelligence operations?

But, again, these are just hints of what the future of war between advanced powers would be. The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems would be able to perform better in a conflict due to their greater range, speed and power.

This is the first time we are seeing a war in this context, in which the internet presence includes smart phones, internet and social sites.

In every domain, there would be vastly more capable drones, some of which were remotely piloted, others that were operating according to an software program, and all of them operating in cyberspace and on the ground.

I recall an adage back in the Cold War days that stated, “If it can be seen, it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed.” In truth, we didn’t have the surveillance assets, precision munitions and other capabilities needed to truly “operationalize” that adage in those days. In the future, platforms, bases and headquarters are very likely to be hit and destroyed, unless there are substantial defenses and hardening of those assets.

Imagining all this underscores, of course, that we must take innumerable actions to transform our forces and systems. We must deter future conflict by ensuring that there are no questions about our capabilities or our willingness to employ them – and also by doing everything possible to ensure that competition among great powers does not turn into conflict among them.

Thanks to Putin, the description of NATO as suffering from “brain death” by French President Macron in late 2019 has turned out to be more than a bit premature.

Petraeus: All of the above and more. Poor campaign design, wholly inadequate training, and poor command are just a few of the things that went wrong during their time on the border with Ukraine.

Petraeus is not at all. Russia has enormous military capacity and is also a nuclear superpower, as well as a country with many mineral and agricultural blessings. It also has a population (about 145 million) that is nearly double that of the next largest European countries (Germany and Turkey, each just more than 80 million).

The Indispensable Contribution of Russia to the War Between the Two Free States Founded in 1812-1914 During the Second World War

It is still led by a leader who embraces innumerable grievances and extreme revanchist views that undermine his decision-making.

Bergen: You know the observation sometimes attributed to Stalin: “Quantity has a quality all its own.” Will a big population in Russia make a difference to the war between the two countries?

As many as 300,000 new recruits and 100,000-150,000 more could be sent to the frontlines, with more on the way. And that is not trivial – because quantity does, indeed, matter.

While it’s not clear that the Russian soldiers are the same people as Ukrainians, they are from ethnic and sectarian minorities in the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainians are able to learn how to use new weapons systems and vehicles much more quickly than anyone anticipated, as they want to master new capabilities as quickly as is possible and get back to the fight.

In fact, the Ukrainians have also shown exceptional abilities to “McGyver” solutions for a variety of problems – whether adapting Western missiles for use on MiG-29 fighter aircraft, repairing battle-damaged armored vehicles left on the battlefield by the Russians (remember the Ukrainians’ “tractor army”), or jamming Russian communications.

However, having sat around the Situation Room table in the West Wing of the White House, I know that it is far easier to second-guess from the outside than it is to make tough calls in office. But there are some additional capabilities (advanced drones, even longer-range precision munitions, fighter aircraft, and additional air defense and counter-drone capabilities) that I would like to see us provide sooner rather than later.

Eventually, for example, Ukraine is going to have to transition from eastern bloc aircraft (e.g., MiG-29s) to western ones (e.g., F-16s). They don’t have any more MiGs to give to them, and they have more pilots than aircraft.

We might as well start the transition process, since it will take a long while to train pilots and maintenance personnel. All that said, again, I think the Administration has done a very impressive job and proven to be the indispensable nation in this particular situation – with important ramifications for other situations around the world.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

What Do We Learn If We Engage the (Quasi-Private) Wagner Group and the Chinese Invasion of the Black Sea?

The force that Putin sends into the meat grinder of the toughest battles is known as the quasi-privateWagner Group. Any thoughts on using mercenaries, many of whom are convicts, as a tactic?

Petraeus: What Russia has done with what are, in essence, mercenaries, as you note, is somewhat innovative – but also essentially inhumane, as it entails throwing soldiers (many of them former convicts) into battle as cannon fodder, and with little, if any, concern for their survival.

These are not the tactics or practices that, at the end of the day, foster development of well-trained, disciplined, capable, and cohesive units that have trust in their leaders and soldiers on their left and right.

What lessons would the Chinese learn if they invaded Taiwan, but not over a land border but over a body of water? Does the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea navy, reshape how the Chinese might think about this question?

And especially if the target of such an operation has a population willing to fight fiercely for its survival and be supported by major powers – not just militarily but with substantial economic, financial, and personal sanctions and export controls.

And it is critical that the leaders of the US and other western nations – and of China and India, as well – convey clearly and repeatedly to Putin that the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons for Russia would, indeed, be “catastrophic,” to quote US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

Petraeus is the Man. How does the war in Ukraine end? A survey of Ukrainian forces via social media in February 2022 in Zaporizhhia

Petraeus is the man. I think so. This is the first war in which smartphones and social media have been so widely available and also so widely employed. The result is unprecedented transparency and an extraordinary amount of information available – all through so-called “open sources.”

Beyond that, I believe we will see Ukrainian forces that are much more capable than the Russians at achieving the kind of combined arms effects that I described earlier and that thus enable much more effective offensive operations and can unhinge some of the Russian defenses. We may not see all this, however, until the spring or even summer, given the amount of time required for Ukrainian forces to receive and train on the new western tanks and other systems.

Bergen: In 2003, at the beginning of the Iraq War, you famously asked a rhetorical question: “Tell me how this ends?” For the war in Ukraine: How does this end?

The bottom line, though, is that Putin has still shown no willingness to negotiate an end to the war, US and western officials say – or even that he would be willing to accept anything less than a full overthrow of Kyiv.

Also when Ukraine reaches the limits of its ability to withstand missile and drone strikes, getting a Marshall-like plan (developed by the US and G7) to help rebuild the country, and gaining an ironclad security guarantee (either NATO membership or, if that is not possible, a US-led coalition guarantee).

It’s the evening of February 23, 2022. In Kyiv, the boss 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. A journalist has to change his travel plans in Moscow.

The First Year of World War I. February 23, 2022: A Year in War-UKraine Ukraine Wrap Opinions ctpr

In the space of a year, the war has 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.

February 23, 2022. I went to bed thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our life was beginning to get better. My husband’s business was not being run by someone else. Our daughter started school at this location and befriended many people there. We were lucky to have arranged support services and found a special needs nursery for our son. I had time to work. I was happy.

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

From Czech Republic to Ukraine: An International War of Husbands and Mothers During the First Year of World War II. A Romanian Embassy in the Czech Republic

We are trying to live in the here and now. 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 is attending an adaptation group and has a learning support assistant. My daughter is studying in a foreign school while she is in the Czech Republic.

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. It was published and tens of thousands of Russians appended their signatures.

On the third day we, my husband and I, left Russia. I thought it was a moral obligation. I could not stay in the territory of the state that has become fascist.

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

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

The Holocaust of February 23: How Russia became a great empire, a humanitarian crisis for the young people of the world. I. Born and raised in Ukraine

I know that the Russian people are inculturated to capitalism. We failed to spot just how deadly the very idea of Russia as a “great empire” was – now we have to come a long way, healing our nation from that disease.

Since the Russian invasion started, I have been haunted by the darkness in my father’s eyes when he retells the stories of relatives who never came back. There were millions of people who died in Stalin’s famine of 1932-33.

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

This whole year has been full of tears and worries. I read the news about people close to me killed by Russians – a teammate, the director of a sports school, or a friend’s parents.

At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow. He is the author of several books on the political and social history of Russia, including “Five Five-Year Liberal Reforms.” Russian modernization and Egor Gaidar was the progenitor of it.

We have experienced several eras since February of 2022. When Putin suddenly got more than 80% approval from the population after a long period of stagnant ratings, it was euphoric.

And in the fall, public demobilization was replaced by mobilization – Putin demanded that citizens share responsibility for the war with him with their bodies. The majority of the population preferred adaptation after this provoked unprecedented anxiety.

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.

I and my family can’t adapt to the catastrophe that happened for me. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living 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 loved taking care of it. I enjoyed the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. The night was the last time I mattered to anyone.

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

The life that I knew was falling apart soon after. It no longer mattered what cup I used to drink my morning tea, or how I dressed, or whether or not I took a shower. The battle made life no longer matter.

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 remember being upset with my boyfriend, but now I can’t relate. My life didn’t change on February 24, it was stolen from me on that day.

And besides the obvious battles, there was another one to fight – trying to claim my life back. The life Russia stole from me and millions of Ukrainians.

I was no longer concerned with my personal ambitions. Only the common goal was crucial – to raise our flag and show that we are fighting even under these circumstances.

I couldn’t enjoy my victories on the track. They were only possible because so many defenders had laid down their lives. There were messages from soldiers on the frontline. They were so happy to follow our achievements, and it was my primary motivation to continue my career.

A Critical Moment for U.S. Foreign Policy: The Crimes of President Putin, Senator Mike Kirillov and the Defender of the National Self-Determination Principle

It’s a year later, and Kyiv and Ukraine are still standing. Democracy stands,” he declared, adding, “The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

Biden promised continuing support from the US, which is what most Americans want though backing has weakened somewhat. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN that bipartisan support for Ukraine is “still very strong.”

The moral and ethical obligation of the world’s democracies to help a nation whose freedom is threatened by an authoritarian power is the reason for the immediate response from the West. The national self-determination principle has been a guiding principle of American foreign policy. It has been honored imperfectly by the various U.S. administrations. But it remains valuable in finding a way forward. In sending an armored column toward Kyiv and seeking to overthrow its government, Mr. Putin clearly violated that principle, and threatens to return Europe to the instability of previous eras, when nations frequently invaded each other and altered the continent’s borders by force.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, told NPR that this is a critical moment. The battlefield is difficult and bloody, which will be important factors in President Zelenskyy and President Putin’s decision on whether or not to go.

This leads me to ask “who do we document all these crimes?” The head of the Center for Civil Liberties told us. Human rights lawyers document human pain in order to have all Russians brought to justice, because I’m not a historian.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu: Learning lessons from the Ukraine war and observing China’s war with the United States and the Soviet Union

Speaking to NPR’s Leila Fadel, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said his country is learning lessons from the war in Ukraine and keeping a wary eye on China.

“They have expansionist motivation. They want to grow their influence. They want to continue to expand their power. And if they are not stopped, then they will continue to march on,” Wu told us.

They tried to flee in the first days of the war, but the family car was shelled, Natalia believes, by Russian forces. She has a 6-year-old nephew. Vova was hospitalized for months after he was injured in the attack.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1157820509/ukraine-russia-war-anniversary

The First Year of the Russian Invasion: Joe Biden’s Visit to the Ukrainian Capital and his Outburst of February 11, 2016

The audio for this story was produced by Danny Hajek; edited by Barrie Hardymon and Natalie Winston. Additional production help was provided by Carol Klinger,Denise Couture, andNina Kravinsky. Reporting and translation assistance were provided by the two women.

As the world prepares to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden made a historic, unannounced visit to the capital of the embattled country.

The risky trip to an active war zone on Monday was a shot in the arm to a population that has enduring Russian attacks on civilian apartment blocks, hospitals, schools and the power stations that provide heat and electricity.

At a time like this, there is something unbelievable that the President of the U.S. will be in the Ukrainian capital, according to a service member.

In the early days of the invasion, Ukraine said it discovered Russian forces had brought their dress uniforms so they could stage a victory parade.

Biden is 80 and walks with a stiff gait. But he has no shortage of courage (air raid sirens sounded over Kyiv while Biden was there) or, crucially, competence.

It’s a process that US officials say has been driven by the Ukrainian military’s evolving capabilities, by its needs on the battlefield and by Russia’s evolving tactics. Biden has a goal of keeping unity in the allied coalition, and that is one of the hallmarks of diplomatic considerations.

Zelensky said Biden’s visit will have repercussions on the battlefield, as it will bring us closer to victory.

Some GOP members criticized Biden for going toUkraine. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the trip “incredibly insulting,” a sign of an “America Last” policy. It was shocking that Biden would help defend the borders of Ukranian while not doing the same in America, says Rep. ScottPerry, who is involved in a legal dispute with the Justice Department over his cell phone.

Violence against civilian healthcare facilities in Ukraine during the 2022 March assault by Russian forces on the Bashtanka hospital: From NGOs to international humanitarian law

The Bashtanka Hospital director Alla Barsehian said that several patients had surgery and a number of women were in the labor ward.

All patients were safely evacuated, but health care workers turned up to work the next morning. They were shoulder to shoulder with their friends and family, and had to clean up the debris by hand. One and a half days later – with plastic wrap for windows and no doors – the facility reopened.

“We are the lifeblood of this district,” Barsehian said. Patients approached her when she returned to the destroyed buildings the day after the attack, asking when the next appointment was available, because she realized they had no choice but to carry on. “We didn’t have time [to deliberate], we had to quickly restore everything and continue doing our jobs because people needed us.”

The explosion in Bashtanka came just over a month after a similar attack destroyed Mariupol maternal hospital in March 2022. The hospital was claimed to be a legitimate military target by Russian officials.

“While violence against health care in conflict zones is a global phenomenon, Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s health system in 2022 stands out for its scale and indiscriminate violence against civilian infrastructure,” said Christina Wille, report co-author and director of Insecurity Insight, a Swiss non-profit organization monitoring threats of violence across the globe.

The analysis is a joint undertaking of five different non-governmental organizations (NGOs): eyeWitness to Atrocities (eyeWitness), Insecurity Insight, the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and the Ukrainian Healthcare Center (UHC). CNN has reviewed their analysis but cannot independently confirm the details of each attack.

Nearly 200 medical workers were killed, injured or kidnapped during the war as a result of being protected under international human rights laws.

It’s not unusual for small to medium communities to feel the effects of attacks on their health care facilities and workers. They are served by only one hospital or clinic like Bashtanka, Kovtoniuk said, and they will have consequences in the future.

According to Wille, a method of warfare which is incompatible with respect for international humanitarian law needs to be addressed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/europe/report-hospital-ukraine-attacks-russia-invasion-intl-dg/index.html

Insights into United Nations War Crimes: a UN tribunal with legal jurisdiction over Ukraine and the United Nations human rights report on December 2022

Nearly one in three Ukrainians lack access to medical services — and that number is greater in the eastern and southern parts of the country — according to a December 2022 survey by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration.

Experts warn that civilians are left with hardly any access to medical care in areas that have seen active combat. Nearly 80% of Mariupol’s health care facilities are destroyed, leaving the city’s remaining population of 100,000, many of them vulnerable or elderly, practically on their own, according to previous research by the Ukrainian Healthcare Center (UHC) think tank, one of the report partners. According to Mariupol’s City Council, in June of last year at least 320,000 Mariupol citizens fled, been forcibly relocated or died.

For locations that were impossible to reach due to combat or occupation, a group of Ukrainian and international investigators gathered social media reports and checked them against satellite imagery to verify that the events actually took place, Kovtoniuk said.

The Geneva Conventions qualify indiscriminate bombing in populated areas, failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and intentionally directing attacks against distinctively marked medical units, transport, and personnel as war crimes. The United Nations considers a crime against civilians to be a crime against humanity.

The evidence gathered by the investigators from the UHC, MIHR, PHR, Insecurity Insight and eyeWitness is prompting the international legal community to investigate.

The damning report was said to be by Richard Goldstone, the former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. “I anticipate that it will assist in bringing some of the criminals responsible for these atrocities to justice,” he said in an emailed statement.

Evidence from the Tuesday report is likely to be presented at a non-binding tribunal this week in The Hague, Stephen Rapp told CNN. Rapp, a former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, is one of three judges hearing evidence on aggression in Ukraine. Rapp says the tribunal will decide whether there is sufficient evidence to confirm an indictment and issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We hope that our proceedings will inspire the UN General Assembly to authorize the Secretary General to enter into an agreement with Ukraine to establish a tribunal with legal jurisdiction over aggression in Ukraine,” Rapp told CNN.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/europe/report-hospital-ukraine-attacks-russia-invasion-intl-dg/index.html

Russia’s oil and gas crisis was not a collapse in 2022, but a crisis in the 21st century, according to Aleksashenko

Barsehian said that the hospital was rebuilt in Bashtanka by the end of summer 2022, thanks to the donations and volunteers from across the country. The health workers have been determined after the attacks and are not scared away.

The Russian economy and system of government are stronger than the West believed, according to Putin.

The Russian government relied on the oil and gas sector for 45% of its budget. As it seeks to maximize defense spending, lower revenues inevitably mean trade-offs. Expenditure on housing and health care, as well as a category that includes public infrastructure, were reduced in the spending plans finalized in December.

“The era of windfall profits from the oil and gas market for Russia is over,” Janis Kluge, an expert on Russia’s economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN.

The ruble has plummeted to its lowest level against the US dollar in a year. The dollar’s weakness has made inflation go up. And most businesses say they can’t conceive of growing right now given high levels of economic uncertainty, according to a recent survey by a Russian think tank.

The push toward self-sufficiency in Russia was one of the reasons for it being plucked. Through a policy known as “Fortress Russia,” the government boosted domestic food production and policymakers forced banks to build up their reserves. That created a degree of resilience, according to Ash.

Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of crude, was able to send barrels that would have gone to Europe to countries like China and India. As of November, the European Union had imported an average of 3.3 million barrels of Russian crude and oil products per day.

“It’s a question of natural resources,” Sergey Aleksashenko, Russia’s former deputy minister of finance, said at an event last month hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. That meant the economy experienced a decline, but “not a collapse,” he added.

The price of Urals crude fell to an average of $48.94 in January, after Europe instituted an embargo and a Group of Seven price cap. The global benchmark stood at $82. That suggests that customers like India and China, seeing a smaller pool of interested buyers, are negotiating greater discounts. Russia has a budget based on a barrel price of more than $70.

New embargoes and price caps will make it hard to find new buyers for processed oil products. China and India have their own network of refineries and prefer to buy crude, noted Ben McWilliams, an energy consultant at Bruegel.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/business/russia-economy-ukraine-anniversary/index.html

Russian Economy: Challenges for the Next Two Years and a Significance to the 2023 Economic Development Goals in the Military and Automotive Sectors

If energy is obtained, it will be spent on the military, according to the director of the Russia Institute.

Across sectors, firms are struggling to plan for the future. A survey of over 1,000 businesses in Russia found that a lot of them do not see growth and are planning to keep production the same in the next two years. The group said this would cause the Russian economy to stay stagnant for a while.

“Whether the economy shrinks or expands in 2023 will be determined by developments in the war,” Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. Shortages of workers tied to military conscription and emigration pose a key risk, she noted.

The sectors that depend on imports have been most vulnerable. Avtovaz, a domestic car manufacturer that makes the Ladas, has a shortage of key components and materials.

Russia’s auto industry was weakened when companies such as Volkswagen halted production and began selling their local assets last year. Chinese firms have stepped up their presence in other parts of the world. The Association of European Businesses reported that new car sales fell in January.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/business/russia-economy-ukraine-anniversary/index.html

The Pentagon’s response to Ukraine during the 2016 Ukrainian Visit to Kyiv: How the U.S. Military Helps the Pentagon and the United States

In normal times, the population would protest against that. “But of course, these are not normal times.”

That directive, described to CNN by three administration officials, jump-started an effort at the Pentagon to identify and deliver a Patriot missile battery that the US could spare. New intelligence that Iran might be preparing to sell ballistic missiles to Russia also made the issue even more urgent and, two months later, the Pentagon announced a Patriot battery would be on its way to Kyiv.

Not only would the US follow through on sweeping sanctions, Biden also detailed his intent to provide more security assistance than any provided on a consistent basis to Ukraine since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Biden made the pledge clear, according to a senior administration official.

The US has denied many requests from the Ukrainians, but that has not stopped them from pressing for newer and more sophisticated weapons. During Biden’s dramatic, surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday, Zelensky pressed Biden on both, hoping a personal appeal would finally sway him.

In addition to lower-level military contacts, National security adviser Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley all speak directly with their counterparts multiple times a week.

The Pentagon conducts a detailed analysis of the Ukrainian requests to assess the impact they will have on the battlefield, how quickly the Ukrainians can integrate the new weapons and the impact of transferring the weapons on US military readiness.

The process has gotten more organized, with US equipment landing in Ukraine in the days after Biden approves a security package.

One senior State Department official said they had “never seen this bureaucracy work as fast as it’s working,” but added, “We all need to do more, faster.”

An administration official said that the president was enraged by the situation and pushed his team to find ways to help the Pentagon fight the problem.

Biden was also concerned that Russia’s targeted campaign on civilian infrastructure would leave Ukraine’s air defenses spread too thin, forcing Kyiv to make an impossible choice: deploy its limited air defense assets to protect its frontline troops, or its cities.

At the White House, where Sullivan hosts a daily meeting of key National Security Council officials to coordinate the government-wide effort to support Ukraine, that launched an effort to get US allies to also get Ukraine more air defense capabilities.

“We really went around the world and found for them, not only additional systems that other countries had and persuade them to transfer them, but parts,” the official said, allowing Ukraine to get non-operational S-300 systems back online.

The increase in US security assistance has been matched or complemented by allies at a number of relevant points.

The senior administration official said that they have adapted to make sure the Ukrainians had what they needed to be successful. They have adapted.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the West in its support for Ukraine as the war enters its second year is sheer logistics, and maintaining the pace of weapons and ammunition supplies to Ukraine as stockpiles dwindle.

A senior European official told reporters last week that the commission hopes to have a proposal ready in March for how to raise the production of ammunition across the bloc. The official noted that it is a complex problem, because ammunition production is expensive and will require that the defense industry upgrade its facilities.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said earlier this month that Europe and NATO’s production capacity needs to be ramped up if the West is going to meet Ukraine’s needs.

US officials claim that the Ukrainian military has always wanted to fight an infantry war in which they would fire a large amount of heavy weaponry at the enemy.

US officials have urged Ukraine to shift to a maneuver warfare style of fighting used by the US and other modern militaries – that is, fighting that uses rapid, unanticipated movements and a combination of different combat arms rather than relying too heavily on artillery.

The first group of 635 Ukrainians training on this style of fighting wrapped up their course at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany last week, according to Pentagon press secretary Brig. Pat Ryder was the commander of the army. The second group of more than 700 soldiers has already begun the five-week training course.

The plan calls for the restoration of the state borders with Russia and the release of all Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The allies are starting to realize the war is going to be longer according to the defense secretary. You have to have an end goal to manage this strategy as it is going to be extremely costly.

The US is aware of this position stated a senior State Department official. An end goal “has to be something that any democratically elected leader in Ukraine can sell to his or her public,” the official said. “But I think he’s committed to get there.”

One year ago, I heard brides who separated hours after saying their vows to make their groom come back to them. A tax preparer in Boston who quit her job to return to Ukraine with suitcases full of medical supplies. The wife of a border guard made a three-hour round trip from Lviv to the Polish border almost daily to drop off fleeing women and children.

What sad that humans who survived deadly waves of Covid ended up killing one other and getting back to business as usual. It’s senseless to spend tens of billions of dollars on missiles, tanks and other aid, when more needs to be done to help communities adapt to rising oceans and drying rivers. It’s lunacy that farmers in a breadbasket of the world have gone hungry hiding in bomb shelters. It’s madness that Vladimir Putin declared Ukrainians to be part of his own people — right before he sent his army into the country, where Russian soldiers have been accused of raping and murdering civilians.

Governments allow war to go on. They talk of victory because that gives soldiers hope and the will to fight on. But in the end, war is death in a muddy foxhole. There is a fight over a frozen field that has no strategic value. It’s a generational grudge that begets new generational grudges. It took over a billion dollars to build the 700-mile line across the Baltic Sea. It’s some of the largest steel plants in Europe unable to produce or ship a single metal sheet. The seaside city has been emptied out by bombings and siege.

“Cynical weaponization of winter in Ukraine,” says HRW operative Tanya Lokshina, a worker in Kiev’s thermal power plant

The parents woke up at sunrise to a noise in the bedroom that sounded like a motorcycle, but they weren’t aware it was a buzz of an engine.

From their perch on the 23rd floor of an apartment block in central Kyiv, they could see a drone swooping across the pink dawn sky, like a kite. They saw a black cloud over the city after hearing an explosion. She felt like she was paralyzed at the spot.

The weapon, which was later identified to be an Iranian Shahed-136, or “suicide” drone, was followed by several more. The thermal power plant which provides electricity and heat for the capital is close to where the couple watched in horror as the menacing triangular bombs darted past.

“After not being able to win the war for months on end, the Kremlin devised this particularly cynical tactic,” said Tanya Lokshina, HRW’s associate director for Europe and Central Asia, who has researched Russia’s armed conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. “I don’t think that this cynical weaponization of winter was something that we encountered earlier. It was rather about absolute lack of care for civilians, and indiscriminate strikes, but not specifically using the cold weather season as a war tactic. That is new.”

During the winter months in Ukraine the average temperature is 23 and 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and it plunges to -5 degrees Fahrenheit (-21.6 C). The winter has been mild, but life has been hard for people in towns and villages in the east, which have not had electricity for months.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/europe/putin-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-attack/index.html

Ukrenergo, Ukraine, as a testbed for the 2023 Ukrainian-Europe Power Connectivity Agreement: a human-based response to the crisis

Doctors have done heart surgeries under headlamps, families have cooked meals on a camping stove in their apartments, and students have done homework as a result of the power being out. A photograph that went viral shows parents taking their children to tents equipped with generators to get a hot coffee, charge their phones and connect life-saving medical equipment.

Russia would resort to barbarism to turn winter against us and bring us back to the Stone Age. It could have been a success, Serhii said. “But we were able to survive.”

As Russian forces began to gather on the border, Ukrenergo prepared for a long- planned experiment in which the power supply to the country would be disconnected from the Russian and Belarusian grids. As one of the last steps in a 2017 agreement with Europe aimed at Ukraine joining the European power grid in 2023, Ukraine had to prove that it could operate autonomously from its neighbors — in “isolation mode” — for three days.

The test was originally due to take place in mid-February, but Russia requested they push it to February 24. “Very, very few people know about this,” Mariia Tsaturian, a spokesperson for Ukrenergo, told CNN. We kept thinking that this may be when they would invade, because of the way Ukraine is perceived at the moment.

The scale of destruction at individual sites has been difficult to assess, in part because Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy has restricted the dissemination of information detailing damages.

In an investigation of attacks in October alone, the UK-based Centre for Information Resilience identified more than 30 attacks on energy facilities, verifying the locations with satellite imagery and reports on social media. CNN reviewed the data but was unable to verify individual cases. Most of those were substations located in western and central Ukraine.

A country of this size, with an energy sector being weaponized in the way that Russia is doing to Ukraine is a challenge no one on the planet has experienced. ”But they’ve proved that they can keep the system running despite all these atrocities and shellings. And this is for me the source of hope that it will continue until the end of this winter.”

When Denise Brown, the UN’s resident coordinator in Ukraine, took up her position overseeing the international humanitarian response in the country last summer, she had one priority: preparing for winter.

The plans for winterization were the first thing I did when I arrived in August because of my fear of people dying from the cold and I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.

One of the UN convoys recently traveled to Siversk, a flattened town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Soledar, which was captured by Russian forces in January. Only about 1,000 residents remain, without any electricity or running water. Those who have stayed behind are usually the most vulnerable — older people, people with disabilities and chronic conditions, who either can’t leave their homes or don’t want to.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/europe/putin-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-attack/index.html

Yulia Ivanenko: From an office to the invincibility point of my home when I can’t afford a generator

She said she started to get the hang of living during scheduled power outages in December. She was teaching at the university from home while she took Liza back to kindergarten.

Yulia Ivanenko commutes every day from her apartment in the Kyiv suburb of Hostomel to the nearby town of Irpin, where she runs an accounting company. But instead of going to her office, she works from a local library, which has been converted into an “invincibility point,” providing electricity and wifi powered by a generator.

Unfortunately, I can’t afford a generator for the office, so this is our way out for now. She explained that her employees usually only have four hours of electricity when they leave the office and need to go and work elsewhere.

Her 67-year-old father, who also lives in Hostomel, uses a car battery as a temporary power source for his small home. Where did he get that battery? He stole it from the ruscists [Russian soldiers], from their car,” she said. He is fearless.

The 55-year-old film producer was in the hospital when Russian forces launched their attack on the city of Kyiv, just after he got home.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/europe/putin-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-attack/index.html

Investigating Russian Energy Infrastructure Attacks on the Kharkiv Region: CNN Interview with Yukawa Yevtushenko and Mikhail Lokshina

For the first few days of war, he and his wife slept in their bathroom, with him sitting next to her in the tub. Now they use the room, the safest in their home, as a personal “invincibility point,” stocked with water jugs, candles and flashlights, food for their dog and power banks to charge their phones and laptops.

During the war, the couple have lived in their high-rise apartment in Kyiv’s left bank. Yevtushenko said that he would have joined the armed forces if he hadn’t suffered a stroke.

In most high-rise apartment buildings in Kyiv, residents leave vital supplies — some food, water and diapers — in elevators in case of cuts. Most people CNN spoke with though couldn’t remember the last time they had used the lift, worried about being trapped inside.

Lokshina, the current head of HRW’s Moscow bureau, was exiled from Georgia after Russia revoked the organization’s registration. In November, at the height of Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure, she was carrying out research in the Kharkiv region. In towns and villages she visited that were recently de-occupied, people had been living with no electricity for months. They were most devastated by a lack of connectivity, she said, unable to get in touch with friends and relatives, to find out how they were and what was happening in the outside world.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/europe/putin-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-attack/index.html

The first day of the Vlasov war in Ukraine, when Russia invaded Kherson, Ukraine railways carried out evacuations and humanitarian aid

”You don’t need much for happiness. A warm house with lights and water comforts us, as we see a peaceful sky above our heads. That’s it,” Yana said. Our values have changed a lot. In fact, we have changed.”

Two days after Russian troops retreated from Kherson on November 11, Ukraine Railways CEO Alexander Kamyshin arrived in the city accompanied by Ukrainian special forces and a small team of railway workers. They got to work even before the regular army arrived to secure the city. Six days later, the first train from Kyiv rolled into liberated Kherson.

Kamyshin says it was a magic day. We saw the faces of people who were crying on the train. It was unforgettable. That’s one of the days to remember forever.”

During the first three weeks of the war last year, as Russian troops pushed into central and southern Ukraine, the railway’s main focus was on evacuations and on moving humanitarian aid into towns and cities being bombed and shelled. After leaving the station, passenger trains went to the Polish border carrying refugees and then came back filled with supplies.

All that work has taken place under near constant attack. “[The Russians shell] tracks, stations, bridges, power stations, cranes, they shell everything,” Kamyshin says. The people who died and the people who were injured were two hundred and fifty. There are only railwaymen and women. That is the price we paid for the war.

In Mariupol, a port city on the Black Sea close to the Russian border that was bombarded relentlessly until resistance finally collapsed in May 2022, rail workers managed to get trains in and out several times before the tracks were destroyed. The stranded crews were able to evacuate by road, but two trains are still stuck there.