Putin’s announcement of the Ukrainian peninsula as a part of Russia is a “diplomatic precedent” and a warning to the world from the West

The billionaire CEO of the electric company suggested making the annexed region of Ukraine ‘formally part of Russia’. He added in bullet points: “Water supply to Crimea assured” and “Ukraine remains neutral.”

The move will hurt Putin’s relations with the people of Ukraine as it will make it likely that one of the most significant victories of the war will take place there.

Despite the reports from the ground that voting took place essentially, and in some cases, literally, at armed point, the referendums reflected the will of millions of people.

I want the masters in the West to be aware of me. Everyone is encouraged to remember. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever,” the Russian president said during the annexation ceremony Friday.

The Russian president said that the annexation was an attempt to correct a wrong done by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Putin’s speech echoed his major foreign policy aim: restoring Russia as a major global power charged with protecting the Russian speaking world from the continued threat posed by Western forces.

Russia’s plan to fly its flag over some 100,000 square km of Ukrainian territory, the largest annexation of land in Europe since 1945, is in spite of the widespread international condemnation.

The leader spoke in St. George’s Hall, where in March of last year he made the announcement that the Ukrainian peninsula was part of Russia.

More than 300 members of parliament and regional governors are in the audience for Mr. Putin.

The pressure from the West is starting to produce results. Putin’s announced martial law in Ukrainian territories Russia now only partly controls, attacks on civilian targets deep in Ukraine’s interior, and a new, hardline commander in Ukraine, General Sergei Shurokin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” by colleagues, all suggest a growing frustration bordering on fear that the Russian people may begin noticing what has long been blindingly obvious: Putin is losing.

He detailed a number of military actions from the British Opium War in China in the 19th century to the Allied firebombing of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

He said that the US was the only country that had used nuclear weapons in war. Mr. Putin said that they created a precedent.

During a CNN interview, Zelensky’s chief diplomatic adviser said thatUkraine shot down 56 of the 84 missiles and drones fired by Russia in revenge for an explosion on a strategic bridge leading to the annexation of the peninsula.

Friday’s events include a celebration on Red Square. Dmitri S. Pesov, the Kremlin’s spokesman said that the official confirmation of the decrees will occur next week.

An Insider’s View of the Donbas: A Conversation with Velychko, a Ukranian Refugee, and the Inside CNN Newsletter

A war in defiance of international laws led to staged referendums held in occupied territory. Much of the provinces’ civilian populations has fled fighting since the war began in February, and people who did vote sometimes did so at gunpoint.

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

The war brought many Russians who had never heard of it home, after Mr. Putin ordered the military to be drafted. The draft has led to many men being ineligible because of factors like age or disability.

Shortly after arriving, Urazov, his wife and their three children stayed in Velychko’s one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where Velychko and his wife have hosted as many as 12 refugees at one time.

Velychko is one of three siblings who have left their home in Ukraine years ago and are now assisting those fleeing the war.

After she returned from a reporting trip toUkraine, the Inside CNN newsletter team caught up with her. The abbreviated version of that conversation is below.

What happened to Vadim and Olga in the First Days of World War II: Their goats and their “heroes of Russia”

A couple who lost their son in the war met me. The house was filled with weapons. Their backyard was a series of holes dug by Russian troops, still filled with the mattresses, sheets and cigarettes they stole when they lived there for more than a month.

They had lost everything. The day I met them, their goat, who was pregnant, gave birth to two kids. Olga held them, inhaling their smell, and murmured that it was like milk, honey and eggs. She said, “We have new life.”

Vadim and Olga told me that sometimes as much as a moment affects you, you can’t understand it. I was silenced by their ability to take joy in their goats and to find themselves lucky.

Speaking after an awards ceremony for “Heroes of Russia,” he addressed the group of soldiers receiving the awards. He said of the attacks, “yes, we are doing it. But who started it?”

He told CNN he knew nothing could justify this war because his family hid in bomb shelters. He also knew from his military contacts that there were already many casualties in the first days of the war.

Traveling the world to find stories: The Egyptian tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attack during the Arab Spring. What I wanted to do when I was a journalist

I have a passion for travel in my life. It’s one of the reasons I always dreamed of working at CNN. I wanted to travel to find and tell stories. Maybe that started when my mother had me keep journals on childhood trips. Covid curtailed travel for us all recently, but I have traveled the world for work and that is a great gift.

The streets of Egypt were protected by armed locals during the beginning of the Arab Spring. There was a triumphant celebration as people reclaimed their country at the start after it was unsettled. I’ll remember the possibility of that moment — although still unrealized — forever.

The children always change you as a reporter: Women in a prison in Pakistan were serving life sentences because of their small offenses. Their children were allowed to live with them until they turned 7 — then they were taken away forever. In a refugee camp along the border of Mali, where people were seeking refuge from al Qaeda terrorists, I remember Mariam. Her gaze glared at me from that photo journal I kept.

And as America faces the tragedy of Buffalo and Uvalde, I think of the sad and disgusting parade of mass shootings: standing outside a Las Vegas casino, outside a nightclub in Orlando, outside the school in Newtown, Connecticut, outside a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. As a reporter, I can’t believe that we cover this same story again and again.

I started journalism because I left jobs when they were not the right fit. I thought I might end up in the CIA or as a lawyer. I considered business school.

A media startup within a larger company forced me to fill some roles, including running numbers, creating marketing presentations, and producing video interviews with CEOs and financial experts.

I realized what I really liked was asking questions. It was not a job. From that point on my career became clear. There were many bumps along the way to my dream job at CNN, but the truth is, I’m grateful for my job every day.

What Putin’s War in Kiev Means for the Future of the Middle East, and What Putin Wants to Teach us about NATO and the Cold War

“We do not feel desperate … we are more sure even than before that Ukraine will win and we need it as fast as possible because … only after we win in this war and only after Russia is defeated, we will have our peace back here.”

The worrying thing is that. In Russia’s information space, the talk is not about ending the war, but about how to correct the mistakes that forced a retreat.

According to official data from the EU, Georgia and Kazakhstan, around 220,000 Russians have fled across their borders since the “partial mobilization” was announced. The EU said its numbers – nearly 66,000 – represented a more than 30% increase from the previous week.

CNN is unable to verify the Russian figures, but the 40 kilometers (around 25 miles) traffic tailbacks at the border with Georgia, and the long lines at crossings into Kazakhstan and Finland, speak to the backlash and the strengthening perception that Putin is losing his fabled touch at reading Russia’s mood.

“The current onslaught of criticism and reporting of operational military details by the Kremlin’s propagandists has come to resemble the milblogger discourse over the past week. The Kremlin narrative had focused on general statements of progress while avoiding details of current military operations. Prior to its loss in the war in Kharkiv, the Kremlin never admitted to a failure and only partially activated the reserve.

He used the same playbook annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and now, like then, threatens potential nuclear strikes should Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, try to take the annexed territories back.

The fighting is at a crucial point in Putin’s war. Facing Ukrainian gains on the battlefield — which he frames as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia — Putin this week heightened threats of nuclear force and used his most aggressive, anti-Western rhetoric to date.

The time of war for Russia – what has Putin really been up to? In the aftermath of the Northern Stream pipeline sabotage

Swedish seismology recorded two detonations, one at 2 a.m. and the second at 7 p.m., each hitting a magnitude of 2.1.

Within hours, roiling patches of sea were discovered, the Danes and the Germans sent warships to secure the area, and Norway increased security around its oil and gas facilities.

The Nord Stream pipeline sabotage could, according to Hill, be a last roll of the dice by Putin, so that “there’s no kind of turning back on the gas issues. Europe can no longer build up its gas reserves during the winter. Right now, everything is being thrown at this by Putin.

Russian naval vessels were seen by European security officials in the area in the days prior, Western intelligence sources have said. NATO described the damage as a deliberate, reckless and irresponsible act of sabotage.

Europe rushed to replenish gas reserves ahead of winter, while limiting demands for Russian supplies, and was throttled back by Putin, who did not want to lose a customer to the United States.

The approach of winter is one of the factors driving Putin’s thinking. Supplies were too long in the winter and Napoleon and Hitler were not able to take Moscow. Volker says that what historically saved Russia is now pressing down on Putin: “This time, it’s Russia that has to supply lines, trying to sustain its forces in Ukraine. This winter will be very difficult for that. For all these factors, the timelines of Putin and his associates have moved up.

Nobody knows what Putin is thinking. According to Kortunov he does not believe thatPutin will be willing to compromise beyond his own terms for peace. he should be ready to exercise a degree of flexibility. We don’t know what these degrees will be.

Volker expects Putin to pitch France and Germany first “to say, we need to end this war, we’re going to protect our territories at all costs, using any means necessary, and you need to put pressure on the Ukrainians to settle.”

While Putin knows he is in a corner, he doesn’t seem to realize how small his space is, and that is most worrisome – would he really make good on his nuclear threats?

Russia has suffered a series of setbacks nearly eight months after invading Ukraine in a campaign many thought would be short-lived. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have staged a counteroffensive, retaking areas in the south and east, while Moscow’s decision to call up more troops has led to protests and an exodus of tens of thousands of Russians.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Putin lost Lyman just as he was publicly declaring that the Donetsk region – in which Lyman sits – was now annexed by Russia.

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

Emergency situation at an airfield in the city of Sevastopol, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. A plane rolled off the runway in Belbek and the chemicals on it caught fire, according to authorities.

The wide bombardment echoed the early days of Russia’s scattershot initial invasion in February, but also underlined that the conflict in Ukraine, which for months appeared to be descending into a slow and painful grind in the Donbas, has erupted once again as winter nears.

Recent fighting has focused on the north of the peninsula. Zelenskyy decried the latest attack in a Telegram post.

A convoy of cars attempting to flee the Kupiansk district in the Kharkiv region were attacked and killed, according to the governor. He called it “сruelty that can’t be justified.” A pregnant woman and 13 children were among the dead.

The Security Service of Ukraine, the secret police force known by the acronym SBU, posted photographs of the attacked convoy. There were many burned corpses in what remained of the truck bed that appeared to have been blown up. At the front of the convoy, there was another vehicle that was on fire. Bodies lay on the side of the road or still inside vehicles, which appeared pockmarked with bullet holes.

The head of the UN nuclear agency is expected to travel to Kyiv this week to discuss the situation after Putin signed a decree saying Russia was taking over the plant. The Foreign Ministry ofUkraine said it was a criminal act and that the decree by Putin was null and void. The plant’s operator said that it would continue to operate.

Russia did not make an official comment on it. Russia told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the director-general of the plant was temporarily held to answer questions.

There is ongoing repair work on infrastructure facilities. After Moscow sent missiles to target energy facilities, most power plants are back to full strength, said Ukrenergo, a state-run energy operator.

Ukraine has not reported any incoming fire from the east bank Friday but said a missile attack on the city of Mykolaiv, close to the border with Kherson, killed seven people early Friday.

The Presidential Debale in Lyman, Ukraine: The Status of Russian Forces During the August 11th Ukrainian Crimean Reionization Reaction

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.

Two days after President Vladimir V. Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the incorporation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city — Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas — ratcheted up pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home for its handling of the war and its conscription of up to 300,000 men into military service.

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.

They join an army already degraded in quality and capability. Over the course of the war inUkraine, the composition of Russia’ s military force has changed considerably as many of its prewar active duty personnel has been wounded or killed. The Russian military leadership is unlikely to know with confidence how this undisciplined composite force will react when confronted with cold, exhausting combat conditions or rumors of Ukrainian assaults. The recent experience suggests that these forces may abandon their positions and equipment in panic as happened in the Kharkiv region.

The scenes of people greeting Ukrainian troops across the region were in sharp contrast to claims by Russian-appointed officials in Kherson six weeks ago that 87% of voters there supported integration into the Russian Federation, in a referendum widely condemned by the international community as a sham. Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions in September.

NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war is going to last, but several European countries that relied heavily on Russian energy are staring down a crisis which could endanger public support.

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

Ukrainian forces advanced through much of the Kherson region Friday, apparently encountering little or no resistance. Social media video from towns and villages throughout the region’s west bank shows troops being greeted by civilians.

Russian officials, on the other hand, welcomed Musk’s tweets. The deputychairman of the Security Council of Russia predicted that Musk would say that Ukraine is an artificial state when he next announced his next message.

A majority of respondents on Twitter voted “No” in response to Musk’s poll. In a follow-up tweet, Musk appeared to blame these results on a “bot attack.”

When the war broke out in Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink internet terminals which could be operated from any place with power and a clear view of the sky.

But his latest musings were not well-received by Ukrainian officials, after a months-long war that has left a trail of untold devastation in the region.

The Ukrainian news outlet Kyiv Post responded to Musk’s question about his South African birthplace. “Elon, you’re a cool guy and thanks for the Starlink but it’d be so very wonderful if you were to carry out votes on things that you know about. The publication stated that they don’t carry out votes on apartheid and Nelson Mandela.

Musk continued to tweet out defenses for his initial Twitter thread, seeming to suggest that there was little chance of victory for Ukraine, which recently began swiftly reclaiming territory in its northeast, including the strategically important transport hub of Lyman.

Musk’s foreign policy commentary came one day after Tesla announced lower-than-expected delivery and production numbers for the third quarter and days after the car company unveiled an underwhelming humanoid robot. He is fighting to get his $44 billion deal to purchase the company back, as the legal battle over it heated up.

Defying the odds: the rise of a peaceful revolt against tyrannies in Iran, Ukraine, and their neighbor, Amini

Editor’s Note: 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. View more opinion on CNN.

Two groups of demonstrators came together in London on Sunday. Two people were waving a Ukrainian and an Iranian flag. They cheered and chanted, “All together we will win” when they met.

After decades of autocrats gaining ground, democracies looked almost spent. Suddenly, there is a ferocious pushback against two of the most brazen tyrannies. In Iran and Ukraine the people decided to defy the odds for their own sake and for the sake of their dignity.

This bravery is almost unimaginable to the average person, and is inspiring the same courage as seen in places like Afghanistan.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Iran touched off a fire. Known as “Zhina,” she died in the custody of morality police who detained her for breaking the relentlessly, violently enforced rules requiring women to dress modestly.

In defiance, Iranian women have stripped their headscarf and flung it into the fire, dancing around fires in the night.

Their peaceful uprising is not really about the hijab; it’s about cutting the shackles of oppression, which is why men have joined them in large numbers, even as the regime kills more and more protesters.

The Russian Revolution, Russia’s Revolution and the Fate of the Russo-Iran Regime after the Crimes of Mahsa Amini

As Iran had done, Russian president Vladimir Putin entered the civil war in Syria in order to save Assad.

The attacks came as Russia’s war in Ukraine nears the eight-month mark. Kyiv also reported holding the line in continued fierce fighting around Bakhmut, where Russian forces have claimed some gains amid a seven-week Ukrainian counteroffensive that has led Russian troops to retreat in some other areas.

The regimes of Moscow and Tehran are no longer supported by autocrats and are now isolated as pariahs among most of the world.

Is it any wonder that Putin’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the start of his Ukraine war was to Iran? Is it a wonder that Iran has trained Russian forces, and is now believed to have provided Russia with advanced drones to kill Ukrainians?

These are two regimes that, while very different in their ideologies, have much in common in their tactics of repression and their willingness to project power abroad.

Iran’s prisons are filled with regime critics and courageous journalists – including Niloofar Hamedi, first to report what happened to Mahsa Amini. In Russia as well, journalism is a deadly profession. So is being critical of Putin. Putin’s people manufactured charges to keep Navalny in a penal colony indefinitely, after trying to kill him.

For people in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, there’s more than passing interest in the admittedly low probability that the Iranian regime could fall. It would be transformative for their countries and their lives, heavily influenced by Tehran. Iran’s constitution calls for spreading its revolution.

Russian Expulsion from Crimea, the Crimean Peninsula of Tyahinka, and Ukraine’s “Real” Re-Growth Confinement

Diplomatically, Putin finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage. The G20 was supposed to be a session, but he stayed away from it. It seems a distant dream of Putin to be included in the G7 after his expulsion from the G8 after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. Russia’s sudden ban on 100 Canadians, including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country only made the comparison with North Korea more striking.

The strikes came just hours after Ukraine’s president announced that the country’s military had retaken three more villages in one of the regions illegally annexed by Russia.

The Governor wrote that a little girl was taken to the hospital after being rescued from the multi-story buildings.

Rogov also said that Ukrainians “have concentrated significant number of militants in Zaporizhzhia direction” and that the risk of storming the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “remains high”.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is going to talk to Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will discuss how to set up a secure protection zone around the facility that was damaged in the fighting and has staff kidnapped by Russian troops.

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

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

The Ukrainian military on Friday recaptured another part of Kherson region, the village of Tyahinka near the strategic town of Nova Kakhovka, despite Russian forces destroying bridges to the village.

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

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

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

Putin’s End of the War: The Case of the Russia-Afghan War and the US-Prussian Interaction with the Soviet Union

“We want the war to come to an end, the pharmacy and shops and hospitals to start working as they used to,” he said. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged.

In his nightly address Zelenskyy told the Moscow leadership that it has already lost the war it launched in February.

Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” His views are not those expressed in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

With even his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilization, an increasingly isolated Putin has once again taken to making rambling speeches offering his distorted view of history.

(Indeed, his revisionist account defines his rationale for the war in Ukraine, which he asserts has historically always been part of Russia – even though Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.)

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in order to install a puppet government, and to get out of the country as quickly as possible, according to a book written by a historian.

During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US was initially reluctant to escalate its support for the Afghan resistance, fearing a wider conflict with the Soviet Union. It took until 1986 for the CIA to arm the Afghans with highly effective anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, which ended the Soviets’ total air superiority, eventually forcing them to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later.

Top US officials have publicly stated that they plan to give the Ukrainians as much support as they need to give them an upper hand at the negotiating table with Russia, should it come to that. The Ukrainians have made it clear that they would use the cluster munitions in their arsenal because western military equipment is not infinite.

But the US put those fears to rest relatively quickly, and American-supplied anti-tank Javelin missiles and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), GPS-guided missiles, have helped the Ukrainians to push back against the Russians.

The Great Patriotic War and Vladimir Putin’s Legacy in the Cold Cold Dark Side of the Universe — Some Aspects of Putinism and Stalinism

Putin is also surely aware that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was hastened by the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan two years earlier.

The Russian loss in the war in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy. Czar Nicholas II was the leader of the First World War and caused the Russian Revolution in 1917. Subsequently, much of the Romanov family was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.

Two days before Russia invaded, Donald Trump publicly praised Putin, saying that he was a genius for moving his troops to eastern Ukraine.

The Great Patriotic War is an obsession for many people in Russia, as one of the main features of Putinism. In Russia, those in the Red Army were praised for their brutal tactics, including the use of punishment battalions to punish desertion, cowardice, and wavering against German positions as cannon fodder.

If Putin is allowed to win his war, the world will be left with less freedom, less peace and fewer prosperity.

“What have we learned from Sergei’s commanders in the Russian intelligence service?” a comment on Kartapolov and Kadyrov

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

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

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

“There is no need to somehow cast a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of some, I do not say traitors, but incompetent commanders, who did not bother, and were not accountable, for the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. Many say that the minister could have killed himself if he had allowed this to happen. Officer is a word that is unfamiliar to many.

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

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

For almost 15 years I have known Sergei. I can definitely say he is a real general and warrior, experienced, headstrong and foresighted commander who always takes patriotism, honor and respect above all,” Kadyrov posted on social media, following news of Surovikin’s appointment last Saturday. The united army group is in good hands, he said.

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

The Explosion of a Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine, During the First Day of the Ukranian Invasion

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

Ukrainian officials said that the rockets at Nikopol caused damage to power lines, a number of businesses and residential buildings. Russia and Ukraine have been at each other’s throats for months over who shot at and around the nuclear plant. It is run by pre-occupied Ukranian staff.

A senior official said crews restored power and cellular connection in the city of Enerhodar which is near a nuclear power plant that is currently under Russian control.

Rogov wrote in a telegram post Sunday that water supply will be restored in the near future.

The city is lacking electricity and heat, and is also in dire need of food, water and medicine. In a city that had 300,000 residents before the war, the Ukrainian government and military are trying to restore a sense of safety.

The Russian Defense Ministry described the shootings as a terrorist attack, according to the state media outlet RIA Novosti. There were two men, one from a former Soviet nation and the other from a foreign land, shooting at soldiers at a firing range.

Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the blast on the enormous 19-kilometer (about 12-mile) bridge, which was built after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, an annexation regarded by the West as illegal. The crossing was inaugurated by Putin in the fall of 2018, with the Ukrainian reaction to the explosion joyful and triumphant.

Buildings and homes were badly damaged by a missile attack in a Krasnodar neighborhood, Bulgaria, during the December 11 shooting of a Russian manhunt

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

Stunned residents watched from behind police tape as emergency crews tried to reach the upper floors of a building that took a direct hit. A chasm at least 12 meters (40-feet) wide smoldered where apartments had once stood. In an adjacent apartment building, the missile barrage blew windows and doors out of their frames in a radius of hundreds of feet. At least 20 private homes and 50 apartment buildings were damaged, city council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said.

After hearing air raid sirens, a woman and her husband took shelter in the hallway of their apartment. The explosion shook the building and sent their possessions flying. As the couple looked at the damage, Lazunko cried as he realized how long it had taken for the home to be damaged.

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

The Ukrainian Bridge Explosion Revisited: “What have we learned about the Russian President?” – An Independent Political Analyst

The Russian president, who formed a committee on Saturday to investigate the bridge explosion, had not responded forcefully enough to satisfy angry war hawks, according to an independent Russian political analyst. The attack and response, he said, has “inspired the opposition, while the loyalists are demoralized.”

He said that when the authorities say that everything is going according to plan, that they’re lying, and it demoralizes them.

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.

Crimea is a popular vacation resort for Russians. People trying to get to the Russian mainland on Sunday experienced hours-long traffic jams.

— The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, meanwhile, said that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s biggest, had been reconnected to the grid after losing its last external power source early Saturday following shelling.

However, there remains a “significant deficit” in the nation’s power system caused by months of strikes, triggering limits on consumption, the operator said. Ukrainian authorities are engaged in the delicate work of trying to balance the national power grid, leaving many households without electricity.

China and India also call for de-escalation: After the strikes, China expressed hope that the situation in Ukraine will “de-escalated soon.” India has said it is “deeply concerned” by the escalation of the conflict and said that “escalation of hostilities is in no one’s interest,” urging an “immediate cessation of hostilities” and return to the “path of dialogue. The attack has been condemned by other European leaders.

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

Russian officials said on Sunday that Ukrainian missiles had struck several apartment buildings, and that some hit near the Kalinin Hospital and the Opera and Ballet Theater.

As soon as we make a move to respond to attacks on Russia, we should do something in response for the whole universe, said the Russian President.

Kiev bombing: Ukraine’s response to Kremlin attacks and the attack of the Crimea bridge on Monday, May 11. Ukraine is destroying the enemy’s lives

For several hours on Monday morning Kyiv’s subway system was suspended, with underground stations serving as bunkers. Rescue workers were trying to pull people out of the rubble when the air raid alert was lifted.

The Prime Minister of Ukraine said Monday that as of 11 a.m., a total of 11crucial infrastructure facilities had been damaged.

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

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

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

“It’s a tough morning when you’re dealing with terrorists,” said Zelenskyy in the video, which recalled the selfie he took the night Russia invaded in February. “They’re choosing targets to harm as many people as possible.”

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

“Again, Putin is massively terrorizing innocent civilians in Kyiv and other cities,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. “[The Netherlands] condemns these heinous acts. The will of the Ukrainian people is hard to comprehend by Putin.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the attacks an unacceptable escalate of the war and said that civilians are paying the highest price.

The Nearest Strike to the City of Kyiv and the Dnipro Damps Public Train Station: CNN Observer Detects Strike on Ukrainian Civil Infrastructure

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

Several people are dead across the country, including at least five in the capital which has not been hit since June. It is the closest strike to the center of the city since the war began and it is not too far from the Ukrainian President’s office.

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

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

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

All our transportation is only for civilian purposes and it’s difficult for me to think of logic to their work.

Viktor Shevchenko’s glassy balcony “wasn’t it?” – a warning warning against Russia’s incompetence in conducting the missile campaign

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

He said that the explosion blew open all of his cabinets and almost knocked him down. “Only five minutes before, and I would have been on the balcony, full of glass.”

Missile strikes are believed to be an effective means of intimidation. They are not. They are war crimes, which is what they are. Civilians are dying and getting injured. Ukraine, with the support of the civilized world, must bring the missile terrorists to justice. And will do it. https://t.co/xXYn3okZOw

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

Jubilation from the Kerch-String Bridge: The Case of Zaporizhia and the Metropolis of Kharkiv

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is often a contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

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

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

A few hours later, Zaporizhia, a city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings, mostly while people slept. A number of people were killed and injured.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which has seen more bombardments than Kyiv, residents built up their supplies of canned food, gas and drinking water. Yet they also entertained themselves at the Typsy Cherry, a local bar. “The mood was cheerful,” its owner, Vladyslav Pyvovar, told The Times. People had fun and wondered when the electricity was going to come back. The power came back hours later.

Businesses have be asked to shift work online as a result of the decision of officials to demand that millions of people in urban areas spend most of the day in bomb shelters.

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

For Putin, the symbolism of the only bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea cannot be overstated. It is thought that the attack on the autocrat on his birthday can be taken as a blow to the aging dictator’s ability to deal with humiliation and shame.

The explosion lit up social media channels like Christmas trees, with humorous meme making their way through the channels. Many shared their sense of jubilation via text messages.

The message was obvious for everyone to see. Putin doesn’t want to be humiliated. He will not admit defeat. He is prepared to wreak havoc on the population in response to his battlefield reversals.

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.

In late August of this year, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Division at the Defense Ministry in Ukraine, told Roman Kravets that by the end of the year we had to enter the peninsula of peninsular Ukranian.

The strikes on central Kyiv are significant and close to the government quarter. Western governments should see it as a red line being crossed on this 229th day of the war.

It is vital for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to persuade China and India to resist the urge to use more deadly weapons.

The most important thing for the West at the moment is to unite and resolve against a man who probes for weakness and likes to exploit divisions. Western governments also need to realize that rhetoric and sanctions have little if no impact on Putin’s actions. Even if sending military experts to the battlefield is necessary to speed up integration of high technology weapons, they still need to arm Ukrainians and provide urgent training.

Russian troops have repeatedly targeted the power grid and energy infrastructure of Ukraine in recent months, using drones and missiles. The attacks have spanned the country on the cusp of winter, leaving Ukrainians vulnerable and in the dark just as the coldest time of the year is beginning.

Turkey and the Gulf states which receive a lot of Russian tourists need to be made aware of the trade and travel restrictions being imposed by the West.

The attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in the rush-hour crisis on Monday (Monday, April 8): Russia needs to find new targets in the fight against Russia

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

The targets that were put in place on Monday had little military value and served to show that Putin needs to find new targets in order to be able to win battles on the battlefield.

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

New attention to what the US and its allies need to do after sending billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine in a proxy war with Moscow was brought about by the attacks on civilians.

The White House did not say what type of air systems would be sent, but it said that Biden offered advanced air systems that would help defend against Russian air attacks.

The National Security Council coordinates strategic communications and John Kirby said the US was in contact with the Ukrainian government almost every day. He told Kate that they do the best they can in subsequent packages.

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

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

The rush-hour attacks inUkraine could be the beginning of a new pivot in the conflict.

He was telling us where he was going to go when the weather starts to get cold. Vindman said on CNN that he would be trying to force the Ukrainian population to compromise by going after the infrastructure.

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

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.

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

U.S. Air Defense in the Early Stages of World War II. The Story of Olena Gnes: The Fate of the Ukrainian Air Defense

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.”

She said that he is still a bloody tyrant even though he is no longer in office, and that he should show his own people what fireworks we can arrange.

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

The Russian military seems to have come up with a novel way to try to turn the tide of its war: bombarding Ukrainian air defense with multiple missiles and drones from multiple directions.

The math is simple for Moscow: a percentage of projectiles are bound to get through the missile defense of Ukraine.

The Russian government doesn’t have the stocks of precision weapons to sustain the kind of high-tempo missile attack into the future, so the missiles are going to be occasionally used for shows of extreme outrage.

The Pentagon believed that Moscow had more than 50% of its pre-war inventory of air-launched missiles but that it was running the lowest on cruise missiles.

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

The Russians have also been adapting the S-300 – normally an air defense missile – as an offensive weapon, with some effect. These have wrought devastation in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv, among other places, and their speed makes them difficult to intercept. But they are hardly accurate.

He told Richard that this was the first time since the beginning of the war that Russia has targeted energy infrastructure.

The Defense Department is continuing to improve the Ukrainian air defense, which includes finding Soviet-era capabilities to make sure countries were ready and to help move those capabilities.

Yermak said the drones were Shahed models, known for crashing into the targets with explosive payloads. According to Ukraine’s estimate, Russia ordered 2,400 drones from Iran, which overwhelmed the Ukrainian air defense systems. The Air Force ofUkraine claims to have shot down 11 drones.

Ukraine’s wish-list – circulated at Wednesday’s meeting – included missiles for their existing systems and a “transition to Western-origin layered air defense system” as well as “early warning capabilities.”

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

The systems from the west are beginning to trickle in. The first IRIS-T from Germany and two units of the US National Advanced Surface-to- Air Missile System are expected soon.

This is just the beginning. The first item of the agenda for today is improved air defense of Ukraine, which was stated in a Wednesday post by Reznikov. I am feeling optimistic.

These are not off-the-shelf items. The IRIS-T had to be manufactured for Ukraine. Western governments have a limited supply of such systems. And Ukraine is a very large country under missile attack from three directions.

What has happened in Ukraine during the bombing of the Kerch peninsula by air defense fighters? A critical look at a different war on the way to Europe, says Keir Giles

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

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

President Zelensky of Ukraine told the international community how much money his country needs to repair and keep its economy afloat. 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 images show hundreds of cargo trucks waiting to cross from the peninsula into Russia by ferry five days after the bombing. Maxar Technologies captured images on Wednesday of a large backup at the port in Kerch, and a line of trucks miles away at an airport that is being used as a staging area.

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.

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.

Both sides – Russia and Ukraine with its western backers – are doing their best to turn the screws ahead of a winter which could ultimately decide who will win the most titanic clashes of forces in Europe since the Second World War. It’s worth a deep look at what’s in play right now.

As winter approaches, the stakes of the war have been raised once more. “There’s no doubt Russia would like to keep it up,” Giles said. But the Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a direct message to the Kremlin, too. Giles said that they were able to do things that were out of the ordinary.

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 Russian War with Ukraine: Predictions for Kiev and the Middle East in the coming weeks and weeks – a crucial window for Russia

There is a Ukrainian flag in Kherson city. From now on, the Ukrainian flag will appear on all buildings in Kherson. This is what we have dreamed of from the first days of occupation,” said Serhiy Khlan, a member of Ukraine’s Kherson regional council.

“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.

The Russians have been through a lot since February, so if they can get Christmas with the frontline looking exactly like it is, that would be a huge success.

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

There are a lot of reasons whyUkrainians are given an incentive to get things done quickly. Ukraine and its Western backers will always be tested by the winter energy crisis in Europe, and the damage done to the country’s power grid.

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

Russia has a limited supply of precision weapons which may make them unable to disrupt the Ukrainian counter-offensives.

The amount of manpower and weaponry that each side has left in reserve will be very important to the direction of the momentum in coming weeks. Even though it said that it had successfully destroyed 18 cruise missiles on Tuesday, it was still asking its Western allies to provide more equipment to defend against future attacks.

Some help for Putin may be on the way, however. An announcement by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that Belarus and Russia will “deploy a joint regional group of troops” raised fears of deepened military cooperation between the close allies and that Belarusian troops could formally join Russia in its invasion. There is an allegation ofUkrainian threats to its security in recent days and they could be a starting point for some level of involvement.

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

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

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

Sergey Surovikin, a Russian General in charge of the Russian Forces in Syria, meets Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin

The Russian general who was in charge of the Russian forces in Syria spoke in Moscow on June 9.

He played a crucial role in Russia’s military operations in Syria, during which Russian combat aircraft caused widespread devastation in rebel-held areas.

He said that, no matter what the plans were, he always executed them exactly as the government wanted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Russian Armed Forces service personnel who took part in operations in Syria, including Sergey Surovikin, at the Kremlin on December 28, 2017.

Surovikin personally signed Irisov’s resignation papers from the air force, he says. After seeing him put in charge of the operations in Putin’s war in Ukraine, we don’t know what effect the general will have.

The situation changed on February 24, 2022, when the defense ministry demanded that everyone execute the propaganda scheme, and the FSB security service ordered everyone to do so.

While serving at Latakia air base in Syria in 2019 and 2020, the 31-year-old says he worked on aviation safety and air traffic control, coordinating flights with Damascus’ civilian airlines. He ​says he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

“He made a lot of people very angry – they hated him,” Irisov said, describing how the “direct” and “straight” general was disliked at headquarters because of the way he tried to implement his infantry experience into the air force.

TheWagner group, which has been in Syria, has strong connections with the Russian government according to Irisov.

In 2004, according to Russian media accounts and at least two think tanks, he berated a subordinate so severely that the subordinate took his own life.

According to a book by the Washington DC- based Jamestown Foundation, soldiers under Surovikin’s command were involved in the killing of three protesting protesters during the attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991.

In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch named him as “someone who may bear ​command responsibility” for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war​” during the 2019-2020 Idlib offensive in Syria. The attacks killed 1,600 people and forced the displacement of around one million people, according to HRW.

Putin’s promotion as a “tough nationalist face”: consequences for Russian forces in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Speaking after an awards ceremony for “Heroes of Russia” at the Kremlin, he addressed a group of soldiers receiving the awards, clutching a glass of champagne.

In February this year, the European Union sanctions the head of theAerospace Forces for his activities in support of actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.

But Clark, from the ISW, suggests the general’s promotion is “more of a framing thing to inject new blood into the Russian command system” and “put on this tough nationalist face.”

His appointment “got widespread praise from various Russian military bloggers as well as Yevgeny (Prigozhin), who’s the financier of the Wagner Group,” Clark said.

Dvornikov was seen at that time as the commander and he was going to turn things around in Ukranian. “But an individual commander is not going to be able to change how tangled Russian command and control is at this point in the war, or the low morale of Russian forces.”

Clark said that he had a reputation of being a butcher of Damascus and had been previously a commander of one of the groupings of Russian forces.

There is no good Kremlin option if Putin decides that he isn’t up to the job or if something goes wrong with the performance of the leader. There aren’t many other senior Russian officers and it’s just going to lead to a further degradation of the Russian war effort.”

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

The strikes in Belgorod region next to Ukranian, and the destruction of the municipal administration building in Donbas, a city firmly controlled by Russia and its proxies, are a clear indicator that the chaos unleashed by Putin is spreading far beyond the front lines.

Russian-backed rebels in the occupied regions have accused Ukrainians of striking infrastructure and residential targets with U.S.-supplied rockets.

On the front line, “the key hotspots in Donbas are (neighboring towns) The Ukrainian President said in a video address Sunday that the fighting was ongoing in Soledar and Bakhmut.

Russian Defense Minister Amal Zelenskyy: “Massive, Forced Deportations of Ukrainians” in the Geneva Embedding of Military Soldiers in France

Western intelligence officials have also stated that Russia included convicts with long sentences for serious crimes in return for pay and amnesty.

Zelenskyy’s office said Moscow was shelling towns and villages along the front line in the east Sunday, and that “active hostilities” continued in the southern Kherson 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.

— France, seeking to puncture perceptions that it has lagged in supporting Ukraine, confirmed it’s pledging air-defense missiles and stepped-up military training to Ukraine. Up to 1,900 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France over the course of several weeks of combat training, specialized training and other needs according to an interview with the French defense minister published in Le Parisien.

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

It referenced statements made this week by Russian authorities that claimed that “several thousand” children from a southern region occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The original remarks by Marat Khusnullin were reported by RIA Novosti.

Russian authorities have previously admitted to placing children from Russian-held areas of Ukraine who were orphans for adoption with Russian families.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied that it had allowed any personnel, equipment or materiel to be lost in attacks against Russian troop concentrations that were withdrawing.

Russian Drone Attacks on Ukraine’s Main Rail Station: the Kremlin’s Most High-profile Task Force Revisited

There is an international wanted list for Girkin over his alleged involvement in the downing of the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight. The most high-profile suspect in a related murder trial is expected to get a verdict in November.

Moscow’s battlefield failures have been lashed out at by the social media post of Girkin. The Ukrainian defense intelligence agency would offer a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

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

Zelenskyy’s chief-of-staff, Andriy Yermak, again called on the west to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems. “We have no time for slow actions,” he said online.

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

The foreign ministers of the EU are in Luxembourg. “We’ll look into concrete evidence of Iran’s involvement in Ukraine,” JosepBorrell, theEU’s top diplomat, told reporters before the meeting.

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

The Kamikaze drones are hard to detect and can be fired at a distance. They can be easily launched and are designed to hit behind enemy lines and be destroyed in the attack.

Moscow’s Sobyanin: Nuclear Deterrence and the Martial Law imposed by the Russian Embassy to Crimea after World War II

Nuclear deterrence exercises will be held by NATO. NATO says the “Steadfast Noon” exercises are routine and that it warned Russia not to use nuclear weapons.

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.

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

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

But many Russians are sure to see a warning message in the martial law imposed in Ukraine, the first time that Moscow has declared martial law since World War II, analysts say.

People are worried that the borders will be closed and that the siloviki, the men close to Mr. Putin, will do what they want.

This support in terms of arms, materiel and now training for Ukrainian forces have been the underpinnings of their remarkable battlefield successes against a weakening, undersupplied and ill-prepared Russian military.

Defending the Cold War: David A. Andelman’s Theoretical Opinion on Energy Pricing, Foreign Investment, and Geopolitics

The author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars that Might Still Happen” is David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN and twice winner of the Deadline Club Award. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.

The blindingly obvious is that he is losing badly on the battlefield and failing to achieve even the scaled back objectives of his invasion.

This ability to keep going depends on a host of variables – ranging from the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, to the popular will across a broad range of nations with often conflicting priorities.

The European Union agreed a plan in the early hours of Friday to control energy prices which have gone up despite Russian embargoes and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies.

The Dutch Title Transfer Facility is a benchmark European gas trading hub and there is an emergency cap on that.

After walking away from the EU summit, the French President conceded that there was only a clear mandate for the European Commission to start working on a gas cap mechanism.

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

Putin has a wonderful dream about these divisions. Europe has been identified as a central part of achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint.

Germany and France are already at loggerheads on many of these issues. Though in an effort to reach some accommodation, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have scheduled a conference call for Wednesday.

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

Trump’s War with Ukraine: Prolonging the War in Italy, Russia’s White House, and the U.S. Support of the United States

And now a new government has taken power in Italy. The first woman to serve as Italy’s prime minister tried to put behind her party’s post-fascist image. One of her far-right partners is very fond of Putin.

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

The other leader of the ruling Italian coalition said during the campaign that they would not want the sanctions on Russia to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit.

At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Poland is angry at the pro-Putin views of Hungary’s Orban.

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

The influential 30- member Congressional progressive caucus urged Biden to open talks with Russia to end the conflict because its troops are still occupying vast swaths of the country and missiles and drones are hitting deep into the interior.

Mia Jacob sent reporters a statement clarifying her remarks in support of Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Dmytro Kuleba about renewing America’s support.

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

Russian Warfare, Soviet-era Defense, and High-Tech Efforts in the Early Post-Newtonian Era

Russia is desperate to get parts it needs for the production of high-tech weaponry that is being halted by western sanctions and embargos.

Russian production of hypersonic missiles has all but ceased “due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors,” said the report. Russia has to make up for lost spare parts by reverting to Soviet-era defense stocks. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.

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

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

Before and After Images of Ukraine: The Case of a Cold Middle Eastern, a Nuclear War, and the Birth of the First Republic of the Universe

These before and after images of Ukraine have more in common than we might think. They are both caricatures based not on knowledge of the country or the people who inhabit it but on mythology. In the case of Ukraine, this mythology is shaped by Russia. Many people still don’t know what Ukraine is, even though they think it’s the same as Russia. After centuries of imperialist repression and decades of Soviet subjugation, Ukraine has a profound story to tell about the meaning of freedom.

The strengthening relationship between Moscow and Tehran has drawn the attention of Iran’s rivals and foes in the Middle East, of NATO members and of nations that are still – at least in theory – interested in restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which aimed to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic bomb.

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.

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

Israel is hesitant to let go of its defensive systems because it could use them for its own defense. Hezbollah in the north holds a massive arsenal of missiles, and Hamas in the south has its own rockets.

After Russia launched its assault on Ukrainian ports and patrols of Black Sea, food prices went up in the country. The head of the World Food Program was warning in May that the world was headed toward starving people.

The war in Ukraine is affecting all of us. Fuel prices have gone up because of the conflict, which has contributed to global inflation.

Higher prices also affect the lives of individuals. They pack a strong political punch when they have such strong momentum. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/opinions/ukraine-russia-iran-weapons-geopolitical-ghitis/index.html

On Russian Cyberattacks in Ukraine, and How It Affects Ukrainian Security Systems, Politics, and the Economy: Comments on a Phone Conversation with Putin

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

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

Russian forces are staging as many as 80 assaults per day, General Zaluzhnyi said in a phone conversation with the supreme allied commander in Europe.

The Ukrainian armed forces had been held back several days, and that they were hit by fire on the right bank of the Dnieper.

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

The institute said in a statement that Russian forces would likely have had more success in offensive operations if they had waited until enough people arrived to build a large force.

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

Russian cyberattacks have hit various Ukrainian industries and some of them are linked to Russia’s military objectives. But the kind of high-impact hack that takes out power or transportation networks have largely been missing.

The senior US official said that Putin was trying to create a public response to the attack on the bridge in order to make the public feel better about it.

The officials told CNN that Ukraine deserves credit for its improved cyber defenses. In April, Kyiv claimed to thwart a hacking attempt on power substations by the same group of Russian military hackers that caused blackouts in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016.

Four officials from the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection were killed in missile attacks on October 10th, the agency stated in a press release. During another grim month of war, the loss of four officials who did not have responsibility for the Cybersecurity has weighed on the team at the agency.

Hackers linked with Russian spy and military agencies have for years targeted Ukrainian government agencies and critical infrastructure with an array of hacking tools.

“I don’t think Russia would measure the success in cyberspace by a single attack,” the Western official said, rather “by their cumulative effect” of trying to wear the Ukrainians down.

The NotPetya piece of software was developed by Russia and it wiped out computer systems at companies across Ukraine as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. The incident cost the global economy billions of dollars by disrupting shipping giant Maersk and other multinational firms.

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.

It was as effective as the end product, said Olney, who has had a team responding to cyber incidents for years. “And that takes time and it takes opportunities that sometimes you can’t just conjure.”

Ukraine and the security challenges of the cyber world: a warning from Estonia, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom on September 17 – 20th

Zhora is an official at the SSSCIP who is pushing for sanctions against Russia for having access to software tools that could be used to hack into computers.

Tanel Sepp, Estonia’s ambassador-at-large for cyber affairs, told CNN that it’s possible the Russians could turn to a “new wave” of stepped up cyberattacks as their battlefield struggles continue.

“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.

Some Republicans warned that the party could limit funding for Ukrainians if it won control of the House of Representatives as predicted, so Ukraine will be keeping a close watch on the election results this week.

Also Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Sweden needs to meet certain conditions in order to join NATO.

Ukraine is expected to be on the General Assembly’s agenda on Wednesday, as it is scheduled to discuss an International Atomic Energy Agency report.

The energy grid attacks amount to genocide according to a top Ukrainian official. Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin made the comments while speaking to the BBC last month.

The Kremlin of Kherson, Russia, after the Russia-Ukraine border war: a frustrated retiree described as “not a part of Russia”

On Nov. 2, Russia rejoined a deal to export grains and other agricultural products from Ukraine. Moscow suspended its participation in the deal after accusing Ukraine of attacking its ships on the Black Sea.

There will be $400 million more in security aid from the Pentagon to Ukraine.

The military said it would proceed cautiously through Kherson region, and warned that Russian troops weremining roads and destroying critical infrastructure as they retreated.

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

The Kremlin said that it still considered Kherson to be a part of Russia even though its soldiers fled.

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

The commander of the Ukrainian military’s drones said he had not seen any Russian troops or equipment in his area.

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

Serhiy, a retiree living in the city who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons, sent a series of text messages that said that conditions in the city had deteriorated overnight.

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

Moscow time of the Dnieper River evacuation: The Russian army retreated to Tyahinka, the regional capital of Kherson

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

The report states that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro and were shellingUkrainians across the river.

On Friday evening, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a night-time video of celebrations in Kherson city, where a crowd was waving flags and chanting “ZSU,” the Ukrainian acronym for the armed forces.

The move of Russian military units to the left bank of the Dnieper River took place in the Kherson direction. [Moscow time] this morning,” the ministry said on its official Telegram channel, using the Russian spelling for the river.

Russian forces were loading boats that seemed appropriate for crossing the river, according to the southern operational command of the Ukrainian military.

Images and video on social media Friday also showed that the Antonivskyi Bridge, the main conduit over the Dnipro in the Kherson region, had been destroyed.

Alexander Kots, a reporter for the Russian pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda embedded with Russian forces, posted a video on his Telegram channel standing on the crossing, showing the entire center section of the bridge destroyed. “Behind me are the two collapsed spans of (the) bridge,” Kots said. They were probably blown up during the withdrawal of the Russian forces from the right bank to the left.

Despite the upbeat mood in the city, Russian troops are only a short distance away, having retreated from Kherson on the west bank of the Dnipro River to the east side. The two armies remain within artillery range of each other.

A video circulating on social media on Friday, geolocated and authenticated by CNN, showed Ukrainian forces being greeted by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka. The village is just 14 miles west of the Dnieper dam and the bridges crossing the river at Nova Kakhovka.

One video shows a Ukrainian flag flying over a World War II memorial, while another shows residents tearing down propaganda billboards with a young girl holding a Russian flag.

The regional capital of Kherson was warned that Russian troops could turn the city into a death trap on the way out, and residents were advised to be careful returning to recently liberated territory due to the threat of mines.

“There are a lot of mines in the liberated territories and settlements,” Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv region military administration, said on Telegram. “Don’t go there for no reason. There are casualties.”

Dmitry Peskov, the Ukrainian President, whose victory day on Friday was a landmark for the reconstruction of the Kherson region

“This is a subject of the Russian Federation,” Dmitry Peskov said during a regular briefing with journalists. It has been legalized and defined. There can’t be changes here.

The Ukrainian President said Friday was a landmark day for his country after Russia withdrew from the west bank of the Kherson region.

This time he appeared openly in front of the city’s main government building, in a military-style jacket and clothing, surrounded by heavily armed security. It was one of the largest victories of the war that he spoke and waved to residents.

He said stabilization measures would follow due to the threat of mines. The occupier left a lot of mines and explosives at vital facilities. He said they will be clearing them.

“Our defenders are followed by police, sappers, rescuers, power engineers … Medicine, communications, social services are returning. … He said that life is returning.

CNN travels through anti-tank fields and bridges to the liberated territories of Mykolaiv, the northern hemisphere

The officials warned residents to hold off on coming back to their homes in the newly retaken areas of Kherson, saying it was too dangerous.

In neighboring Mykolaiv region: The head of the regional military administration of Mykolaiv visited the small city of Snihurivka Friday to discuss “the restoration of life in the liberated territories of the region.”

“Despite the fact that the relevant services have begun to move mines in the liberated territories, I warn residents to be careful,” Kim said.

The CNN team was forced to drive through fields with anti-tank mines and bridges over canals as they traveled through smaller towns.

There was aCNN crew that was waved in by soldiers at a Ukrainian checkpoint located 5 miles from the city center on the outskirts of the city.

The residents of the city have no power, no internet and no water. The mood was festive as a CNN crew entered the city center.

When the streets of Kherson were filled with protesters against the Russian plan to turn the region into a pro-Russia republic, they were covered in Ukrainian flags or painted with faces.

When a truck full of soldiers passes by, huge cheers come from the crowd on the street, with Ukrainian soldiers getting soup, bread, flowers, hugs and kisses from ecstatic passersby.

As CNN’s crew stopped to regroup, we observed an old man and an old woman hugging a young soldier, with hands on the soldier’s shoulder, exchanging excited “thank yous.”

After living under Russian occupation, every person we’ve spoken to has had experiences that have terrified them: earlier today, a teenager told CNN he had been taken and beaten by Russian soldiers who believed he was a spy. Residents told us they are emotionally exhausted, and overwhelmed by what this new-found freedom means.

With the occupiers gone, everyone wants you to understand what they’ve been through, how euphoric they feel right now, and how much they’re grateful to the countries who have helped them.

Everyone we have spoken to is aware that there are tougher days to come: that the Russians across the river could shell them here. It is also unclear whether all Russian troops have left Kherson and the wider region. There’s still uncertainty behind this euphoria.

Zelenskyy, his team, and hundreds of Kherson residents stood to attention as the Ukrainian flag fluttered in the breeze.

Zelenskyy said in his address on Sunday night that Ukrainian investigators had documented over 400 suspected war crimes by the Russian forces during their occupation of Kherson.

Kherson Residents describe Bettings and Thefts at the Hands of Russian Soldiers in a Ukrainian War-News Bulletin

Because the Russians took Kherson without a fight at the beginning of the war, most of the city’s buildings remain intact, unlike other urban areas that have been reduced to ruins.

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

In the afternoon, fears were raised that the Russian Army might retaliate for the loss of the city by bombarding 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.

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 are dangerous. Four people, including an 11-year-old, were killed when a family driving in the village of Novoraysk, outside the city, ran over a mine, Mr. Yanushevich said. There are six railway workers who were injured while trying to restore service. There were at least four more children who were injured by mines, the Ukrainian officials said.

The threats are still there despite Mr. Zelensky visiting Kherson and the deaths underscored that.

“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.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/14/world/russia-ukraine-war-news/kherson-residents-describe-beatings-and-thefts-at-the-hands-of-russian-soldiers

The Russians do not roam around, nor do they take a selfie with a mobile device. The case of Beryslav, south of Kherson city

The southern command of the Ukrainian military said that Russian forces kept firing from across the river on towns and villages newly captured by Ukrainian forces. The town of Beryslav is just north of a critical dam and was hit by two Russian missiles. It wasn’t known if there were any casualties.

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

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

An Observation of the U.S.-Russia Relations with the G-20 Summit in Indonesia: The Case for a Cold War in Ukraine

The G-20 summit continues in Indonesia, where the Russia-Ukraine war and its global economic fallout loom large. President Biden talked to other people on the sidelines, among them: China’s leader. Biden is due to meet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited Kyiv, Nov. 8, to talk about world hunger and press for renewal of the grain deal, due to expire Nov. 19. Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, went to Ukraine the week before.

Following Brittney Griner’s release from Russian prison, fans, friends and family are celebrating the basketball player’s return to the U.S. Some Republican politicians have been complaining about the prisoner swap and other Americans still being held by Russia.

The war in Ukraine was discussed at the U.N. climate conference. The war has caused ecocide, and the experts noted that the war is driving a new push for fossil fuels.

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

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

That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s 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.

Russian Exile in Berlin: The Future of Air Forces in the EU and the Cascading Effects of Power Cuts in Mykolaiv

A leading Russian journalist who fled his home in March told me last week that he is prepared to accept the reality of being a Russian exile in Berlin, even though he may never be able to return to his homeland.

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.

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

Ukrenergo, the energy company inUkraine, said that it had disconnected the nuclear power plants from the national grid as a precautionary measure in response to the Russian strikes.

The nuclear reactors have been turned on again but are still not connected to the national grid, according to the company.

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 the pipes could freeze as temperatures fall, making the problem worse.

The Ukrainian military’s desperate refusal to leave Russia in the dark and cold, and what they are doing about it – a warning from the Biden administration

President Maia Sandu wrote about Russia on Facebook, saying that they couldn’t rely on a regime that left them in the dark and cold.

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

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

The Biden administration and members of Congress have been urged by Ukrainian officials to give the Ukrainian military a weapon that is banned by more than 100 countries but can be used to devastating effect inside the country.

Senior Biden administration officials have been giving this request for months, and have refused it at first, but have since relented, according to CNN.

The design of cluster bombs makes them difficult to blow up and can pose a risk to anyone who comes in contact with them. They also create “nasty, bloody fragmentation” to anyone hit by them because of the dozens of submunitions that detonate at once across a large area, Mark Hiznay, a weapons expert and the associate arms director for Human Rights Watch, previously told CNN.

The Biden administration has not abandoned the option of using it as a last resort, if there is a shortage of stockpiles. The proposal has not received a lot of thought due to the statutory restrictions Congress puts on the US ability to transfer cluster munitions.

Those restrictions apply to munitions with a greater than one percent unexploded ordnance rate, which raises the prospect that they will pose a risk to civilians. The Ukrainians have been told by the administration that it is unlikely that President joe Biden will do that in the near term.

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

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

“They [DPICMs] are more effective when you have a concentration of Russian forces,” the Ukrainian official told CNN, noting that Ukraine has been asking for the weapons “for many months.”

He went on to list a series of events he blames on the Ukrainians: “Who hit the Crimean bridge? Who blew up the power lines?

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

He claimed that people don’t mention the fact that water has been cut off in the city. No one said anything about it. At all! Complete silence.”

Local Russian authorities have reported shelling of the city this week, after Putin claimed to annex the city.

President Putin made comments about the Russian attacks onUkraine’s energy infrastructure at a reception in the Kremlin, holding a glass of champagne.

In his appearance in the Kremlin Thursday, he continued to say that someone is not giving water to the city of Donetsk. It is genocide if the water is not supplied to the city of million.

Ukrenergo’s failure of energy restoration is a manifestation of bullying towards the Odesa residents in Ukraine, as reported by the Belitopol newspaper

He gave a toast to his soldiers and sipped from his champagne glass, after he said it wouldn’t interfere with his combat missions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine’s power system isn’t going to die out, nor does Russia have a chance to restore it, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

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

Mr. Zelensky said in his address on Saturday that the Ukrainian army had shot down at least 10 of the Russian drones. It was not possible to confirm his total.

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

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

“It must be understood: Even if there are no heavy missile strikes, this does not mean that there are no problems,” he continued. “Almost every day, in different regions, there is shelling, there are missile attacks, drone attacks. Energy facilities are hit almost every day.”

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

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

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.

New Measures to Prevent Russian Invasion of Bakhmut in the Donbas Region, as Seen by Prime Minister Biden on Dec. 5

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

Russian forces turned the city of Bakhmut into burned ruins, Zelenskyy said. Fighting has been fierce there as Russia attempts to advance in the city in the eastern Donbas region.

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