Putin threatens more attacks, and Russia strikes the capital of Ukraine

Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainians: Forcible annexation of Russia and the coming resolution of the Crimea crisis as a “people’s problem”

This is what Putin seems to be thinking,rubber-stamping the sham referendums in the Ukrainian regions and declaring them part of Russia.

The move puts Kyiv on the cusp of achieving one of its most significant victories of the war and deals a bitter blow to President Vladimir V. Putin, who just a month ago declared the Kherson region a part of Russia forever.

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

He said that the Ukrainians were surprised. “Ukrainians are applauded. Ukrainians inspire. Is there anything that scares us? No. Is there anyone who can stop us? No. Because we are all together. It is what we are fighting for. One for each of them.

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

Petraeus is a person. This question gets at one of the ironies of the situation. Putin wanted to make Russia great again. However, what he has done is make NATO great again – with two very capable, historically neutral powers (Finland and Sweden) seeking NATO membership; with substantially increased defense spending by NATO members, most notably Germany; with augmentation of NATO forces in the Baltic states and eastern Europe; and with the greatest unity among NATO members since the end of the Cold War.

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

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

The address kicks off a series of connected and choreographed events, including an extraordinary session of the parliament Wednesday when Putin will address a mass rally at Moscow’s largest stadium.

Second, America, with its partners, must make clear that time is working against Russia — not in its favor, as Mr. Putin still believes. The West should demonstrate readiness to mobilize, and quickly, its huge economic superiority to enable Ukraine to defeat Russia and to impose further severe sanctions. The military and economic costs to Russia will drain its far more limited resources and place greater strains on the regime.

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

Russian referendums in the Zaporizhia region of Kiev: The consequences of Putin’s recent “nuclear war”

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said the threat of nuclear war was growing and suggested his country could abandon its “no first use” nuclear weapons doctrine, under which Russia has said it would only use nuclear weapons to defend its homeland. After drones hit deep inside Russia, Putin commented. Russia accused Ukraine of being behind the strikes.

The Ukrainian air force said that the missiles used in Sunday’s attack were launched from Russian occupied areas of the Zaporizhia region. The capital of the region is under the control of the Ukrainian government, but it is still claimed as its own by Russia.

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

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

So Russia may be relatively well positioned to defend its current strongholds in the eastern region of the Donbas and the southern peninsula of Crimea.

Putin’s recent heavy-handed conscription drive for 300,000 troops won’t reverse his battlefield losses any time soon, and is backfiring at home, running him up a dangerous political tab.

It will be hard for Putin to ignore the debate over Biden’s visit after he addresses the Federal Assembly on Tuesday.

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

Putin also did not indicate how the fighting might end and did not specify Russia’s ultimate goals, beyond protecting the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine from the “genocide” being perpetrated by the Ukrainian government.

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

The referendums in Russian-occupied territories that were supposed to deliver a huge majority in favor of joining Russia happened over the last week.

It was precisely a year ago that the Russian leader called for the formal recognition of two pro-Russian separatist republics in eastern Ukraine — pronouncing international diplomatic efforts to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity and find a diplomatic solution to a simmering conflict in the Donbas “futile.”

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

This is not the first time Russia has accused Western nations of turning the conflict into a proxy war by supplying Ukraine with weapons. Iran has admitted to giving military drones to Russia.

Legislative approval of the annexation, which is illegal under international law, is expected to be a formality, although it will take a couple of days. Putin and his allies have a strong grip on the legislature in Russia and there has been a decrease in political dissent in the country.

The Russian government’s annexation has happened as it works to deploy an additional 300,000 troops to bolster its military campaign in the face of a counteroffensive by the Ukrainian army.

Russian officials have said that territories that have been incorporated will be protected under Russia’s nuclear umbrella.

The Kremlin’s Fate Has Come: The Russian War on Nuclear Propaganda in the Light of Recent Operational Results

“I think Putin may be attempting an end game with Russia,” said Hill, who has advised three US Presidents on national security. “He feels a sense of acute urgency that he was losing momentum, and he’s now trying to exit the war in the same way that he entered it. The person in charge and the one framing the whole terms of any kind of negotiation is him. It’s called

More and more of the best and brightest in virtually every field have moved away from Russia. Writers, artists and journalists are joined by some of the most creative technologists, scientists and engineers.

The perception that Putin is losing his touch at reading Russians’ moods is growing after 40 kilometers of traffic tailbacks on the border with Georgia, as well as a long line at the entry to Sweden and Austria from Russia.

“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 avoided discussing current military operations and instead focused on general statements of progress. The Kremlin had never openly recognized a major failure in the war prior to its devastating loss in Kharkiv Oblast, which prompted the partial reserve mobilization.”

He is the same man who used the same tactic of annexing the peninsula from Ukraine in the past and now threatens to use nuclear weapons to take the annexed territory back from the Ukrainians.

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

The first exploded at 2 a.m., then again at 7 pm, 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.

At least 4 leaks in Russia’s first and secondNord Stream pipelines have been found, each at the surface resembling a boiling cauldron, the largest one kilometer across, and together releasing industrial quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Brennan’s analysis is that Russia is the most likely culprit for the sabotage, and that Putin is likely trying to send a message: “It’s a signal to Europe that Russia can reach beyond Ukraine’s borders. Who knows what he’s going to do next.

Nord Stream 2 was never operational, and Nord Stream 1 had been throttled back by Putin as Europe raced to replenish gas reserves ahead of winter, while dialling back demands for Russian supplies and searching for replacement providers.

How long can Putin insulate himself and prevent the blame from being turned on him is a question that needs to be explored after Makiivka. Ukrainian forces have no intentions of changing their tactics in the war with Russia as the war enters a new year.

Ending the war in Ukraine on terms acceptable to its President Volodymyr Zelensky will require the West to convince Russian leader Vladimir Putin he’s losing.

Such expectations naturally ratcheted up Ukrainian war aims. The peace-deal camp in Ukraine was once headed by President Zelensky. Security guarantees, non- nuclear status, and neutrality are things that our state has. He declared that they were ready to go for it one month into the conflict. He wants the reconquering of Russian-occupied territory, including the peninsula. Polls indicate that Ukrainians will settle for nothing less. As battles rage across Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine’s leaders and some of their Western backers are already dreaming of Nuremberg-style trials of Mr. Putin and his inner circle in Moscow.

Putin knows that he is in a corner, but he doesn’t seem to realize how small his space is, and that makes me question if he will make good on his nuclear threats.

Three senior officials based in the Middle East said that Russia redeployed critical military hardware from Syria as a signal that the invasion of Ukraine has eroded Moscow’s influence elsewhere.

Russia’s declaration that it had annexed four regions of Ukraine complicates matters because it includes the area where Lyman is located. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push further into land that Moscow now illegally claims as its own.

Kadyrov blamed the commander of Russia’s Central Military District for the debacle, saying he did not provide enough for his troops and relocated his headquarters away from his subordinates.

Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. Huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian held resort. The Belbek airfield was said to have been the site of a plane rolling off the runway and catching fire.

The attack by a nuclear power plant director-general in the Kupiansk district, Ukraine, claimed by the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine

Mr. Zelensky has given hundreds like the speech this year in order to bring attention to his campaign to fight Russia and bolster support for the people of Ukraine abroad.

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

The Security Service ofUkraine, a police force that is secret, uploaded pictures of the attack on the convoy. At least one truck appeared to have been blown up, with burned corpses in what remained of its truck bed. A vehicle in the convoy was on fire. Bodies lay on the side of the road or still inside vehicles, which appeared pockmarked with bullet holes.

In other developments, in an apparent attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ihor Murashov, on Friday, according to the Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom.

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

In the last two weeks, a wide attack has been on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. This has left millions across the country facing power cuts amid freezing winter temperatures.

The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces claimed Sunday that some 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. That claim could not be independently verified. The Russian statement said the strike took place in the area of Makiivka, without mentioning the school.

Kremlin View of Vladimir Putin’s Campaign for the Cold War: The Last Days of the Crime and the Unease of the Russian Information Space

The bill President Joe Biden signed into law in Washington provides more than $11 billion in military and economic aid for the war in Ukraine.

Whether it is a wedding in the aftermath of a rocket attack or making Molotov cocktails, or keeping a business open against all odds, one thing that Putin has done is galvanized the Ukrainian people.

The article published Sunday in the Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Russian forces were plagued by desertion and poor planning in the last few days of their occupation.

On Russia’s flagship Sunday political show, “News of the Week,” on Channel 1, the fall of Lyman wasn’t even mentioned until after more than an hour of laudatory coverage of Russia’s growth from 85 to 89 regions in an annexation most of the world views as illegal.

The soldiers were forced to retreat from the battle because they were fighting with NATO soldiers as well.

Russian battlefield setbacks, along with the unease in Russian society over mobilizing, were considered to be fundamentally changing the Russian information space by the Institute for the Study of War. The criticism has included robust criticism from men in power including Kadyrov and pro-war milbloggers who often provide a view of battlefield realities for Russian forces.

The broadcast seemed intended to convince Russians who have doubts about the war or feel anger over plans to call up as many as 300,000 civilians that any hardships they bear are to be blamed on a West that is bent on destroying Russia at all costs.

The idea that Russia is fighting a broader campaign was being brought up again in an interview with the father of a prominent nationalist commentator who was killed in a car bomb.

Noisily, but that may be all. The current statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin can be looked at by Kremlin watchers as an improvement to the position of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday the latest tranche “leads to an aggravation of the conflict and does not bode well for Ukraine.”

Mr. Dugin, like Mr. Putin, has accused Western countries of damaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which ruptured after underwater explosions last month in what both European and Russian leaders have called an act of sabotage.

He said that the West had accused them of blowing up the gas line. “We must understand the geopolitical confrontation, the war, our war with the West on the scale and extent on which it is unfolding. In other words, we must join this battle with a mortal enemy who does not hesitate to use any means, including exploding gas pipelines.”

The nonstop messaging campaign may be working, at least for now. Many Russians feel threatened by the West, said Aleksandr Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who is from Russia.

“There is anger; there is fear; there is an idea to hide and flee, but it is not necessarily against Putin,” he said in a phone interview. “Part of the anger, even among those avoiding mobilization, is against the West, or Ukrainians.”

The army has degraded in quality and capability. The composition of Russia’s military force in Ukraine — as much of its prewar active duty personnel has been wounded or killed and its best equipment destroyed or captured — has radically altered over the course of the war. 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 forces in the Kharkiv region abandoned their equipment in panic in September, and recent experience indicates this could happen to these troops.

Military aid has an effect. It’s a completely different scale, but CNN reported last month the US is running low on some weapons systems and munitions it provides to Ukraine. Look for that storyline to become part of the US aid debate after Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next month and promise more scrutiny of US aid for Ukraine.

The United States led the support from the West. NATO gained renewed strength because of the war in Ukrainian, as new applications for membership from countries that had been committed to neutrality came in. It helped reinforce the desire of eastern European states to move toward Europe and the West.

Past recaps are available 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 President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that the country had taken back Lyman, while the Ukrainian military said it had recaptured the nearby villages of Drobysheve and Torske, putting Kyiv in a better position as it seeks to take back the Luhansk region.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that he believes Ukraine is “making progress” in Kherson, thanks in part to weapons supplied by Washington.

“What we’re seeing now is a kind of change in the battlefield dynamics,” Austin said. They have moved to take advantage of the opportunities in the Kharkiv area. The Kherson region is going a bit slower, but they are making progress.

Putin’s latest musings on the Ukrainian war in Ukraine were misperceived by the public and the Russian government, and their impact on the judiciary

The contests have been widely panned as a farce that failed to meet internationally recognized standards of free and fair elections. It was reported from the ground that voting took place at stations that were armed.

Diplomatically, Putin finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage. He was the only head of state to stay away from a session of the G20, which Zelensky dubbed the “G19.” Although Putin once fancied a return to the G7, inclusion now seems a distant dream. Russia banned Canadian-American Jim Carrey from entering the country, making the comparison with North Korea more striking.

EU member states began calling in Russian ambassadors in a coordinated manner on Friday to condemn the actions of the Russian government and demand an immediate halt to what they call the violations of UN Charter and international law.

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

In a Twitter poll, Musk suggested a path to “Ukraine-Russia Peace” that included re-doing elections “under UN supervision” in the regions of the country recently annexed illegally by Russia. The land grab, covering nearly a fifth of Ukraine, followed referendums that have been widely dismissed as “shams” by much of the world.

Musk asked his followers to vote, and the majority of those who responded voted against him. In a follow-up tweet, Musk appeared to blame these results on a “bot attack.”

The war in Ukraine began after Musk sent Starlink internet terminals, which can be operated from any place with power and a clear view of the sky, to the country.

After a long war that has caused untold destruction in the region, his latest musings were not well received by Ukrainian officials.

In the months before the February assault, around 45% of Ukrainians said they didn’t trust Zelensky to lead them into war. It was a rating likely influenced by him not keeping some of his campaign promises, especially failing to launch an effective fight against corruption in the judiciary.

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. His attempt to back out of his proposed $44 billion deal to acquire the company is heating up in his legal battle.

The London Firefights between David and Goliath: A World Affairs Columnist with Editorial Contribution by Frida Ghitis

former CNN producer and correspondent Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist. She is a columnist for The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views she expresses are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

Two groups of demonstrators were at the same time in London. One was waving Ukrainian flags; the other Iranian flags. When they met, they cheered each other, and chanted, “All together we will win.”

Twelve months into the war, the people of Ukraine and Ukrainians are different. Tens of thousands of civilians and fighters are believed to be dead. Millions of people have left their homes.

These battles between David and Goliath are examples of bravery that is almost completely different to the rest of us.

The death of a young girl in Iran caused the start of the 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 scenes of exhilarated defiance, Iranian women have danced around fires in the night, shedding the hijab – the headcover mandated by the regime – and tossing it into the flames.

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.

Syria’s enemy is Russian: How the Khmer Rouge planted a mine to rule in Syria, and how Russian forces in Syria are using it to attack terrorists

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

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

Organizations and individuals are added to a list of “foreign agents” and “non-desirable” organizations every week.

Putin went to Iran for the first time after the start of the war in the former Soviet Union. Is it any wonder Iran has trained Russian forces and is now believed to have provided Russia with advanced drones to kill Ukrainians?

These regimes have in common a willingness to project power abroad and a similar tactic of suppressing dissent.

There have been unexplained deaths of Putin critics. Many have fallen out of windows. And both Iran and Russia have become leading practitioners of transnational repression, killing critics on foreign soil, according to Freedom House and other democracy research and advocacy groups.

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 have an effect on their countries and their lives. After all, Iran’s constitution calls for spreading its Islamist revolution.

The Russian Revolution in Ukraine: The Story of Putin and the Misfortune of the Soviet Union During the First World War, and at the End of the Cold War

The world has been given an endless series of surprises. Russia’s army turned out to be much less competent than anyone expected; Putin was not quite the genius many believed.

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

His revisionist account explains why he supported the war in Ukraine, as he believes that it was part of Russia since it became a nation more than three decades ago.

According to a recent book, “Afghan Crucible,” the Soviets intended to install a puppet government and leave Afghanistan soon after invading the country in 1979.

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. After the CIA gave the Afghans anti-aircraft missiles, the Soviets were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later.

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

Over the next few weeks, US officials worked with European allies to secure additional defensive systems and parts to help Ukraine build what one senior administration official described as a “patchwork” of air defenses, some of which includes using older Soviet-era equipment.

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.

He must have known that the Romanov monarchy was weakened by the Russian loss in the war in 1905. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. Subsequently, much of the Romanov family was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.

The most foolish mistake President Putin has made so far in the conflict is giving the impression that he could lose the war. The early Russian strike on Kyiv did not go well. The Russian behemoth seemed not nearly as formidable as it had been made out to be. The war suddenly appeared as a face-off between a mass of disenchanted Russian incompetents and supercharged, savvy Ukrainian patriots.

The Vuhledar debacle suggests chronic failures in the command and tactics of the Russians as they gear up for a spring offensive. If this were to happen elsewhere on the military front, it could jeopardize the Kremlin’s plan to seize more territory.

If Russia is allowed to win, Putin’s war would mark the beginning of a new era of global instability, with less freedom, less peace and less prosperity for the world.

On the lies of the Russian intelligence service and the invasion of the Ukrainian embassy in Lyman-Suzanne: an analysis by Kartopolov and Rozhin

“First of all, we need to stop lying,” said Andrei Kartopolov, a former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. We brought this up a lot before. It seems that it’s not getting through to the 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 Ukraine, there is Valuyki. The stance of the Ukrainians when it comes to attacking Russian targets across the border is neither-confirm nor-deny.

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

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.

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

Kadyrov implied in a post that he would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, even though he acknowledged that we were at war with the whole NATO bloc.

The Nikopol Bridge, Russia, the day Putin and the Kremlin invaded Ukraine rebuked by a heavy fire

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.

The city of Nikopol was struck by heavy fire overnight, according to the governor. There were no casualties reported.

The bridge was partially destroyed by an explosion in October when a truck crossing it exploded. The Ukrainians have never said who was responsible, but the Kremlin pointed that out. In the days following the bridge explosion, Putin said “further acts of terrorism on the territory of Russia will be harsh … have no doubt about that.” Last week, Putin appeared on the bridge while he was shown repairs, and then he drove a car across it.

What Russian authorities are calling a truck bomb on Saturday hit the huge bridge linking Russia with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed eight years ago from Ukraine. Road and rail traffic on the bridge were temporarily stopped, damaging an important supply route for Kremlin’s forces and dealing a blow to Russian prestige.

He told us that the route of the truck had gone to several locations, including Krasnodar, a region in southern Russia.

The Russian President’s Attack on a River Bridge in Kiev is Motivated by Warhawks and Irrational Russian Military Forces

“The enemy hit a critical infrastructure facility. Shell fragments damaged residential buildings and the place where the medical aid and humanitarian aid distribution point is located,” Yanushevych later said in a Telegram video on Thursday.

After hearing air raid sirens, the couple took shelter in the hallway of their top floor apartment. The explosion shook the building and sent their possessions flying. Lazunko wept as the couple surveyed the damage to their home of nearly five decades.

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.

Abbas Gallyamov, an independent Russian political analyst and a former speechwriter for Putin, said the Russian president, who formed a committee Saturday to investigate the bridge explosion, had not responded forcefully enough to satisfy angry war hawks. He said that the attack has inspired the opposition while the loyalists are demoralized.

“When the authorities say that everything is going according to plan, and we are winning, that they are lying, and it demoralizes them,” he said.

In May of last year, Putin drove a truck across the Kerch Bridge in order to show Moscow’s claim to the peninsula. The bridge, the longest in Europe, is vital to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

The resort is popular for vacationing by Russians. People trying to drive to the bridge and onto the Russian mainland confronted hours-long traffic jams.

Kiev reconnected and its subway system is suspended: the first 20 bodies from a mass burial site in Kyiv have been exhumed

The first 20 bodies from a mass burial site have been exhumed from a devastated Ukrainian city, the national police stated in a statement. 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 and members of the military were buried in different places according to police.

— 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.

Last October, a weeklong barrage of Russian missiles and kamikaze drones destroyed nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations, plunging millions of Ukrainians into darkness ahead of winter and signaling a significant Russian tactical shift to target civilian infrastructure.

According to the Russian-backed city administration, 20 Grad missiles were launched by Ukraine Sunday in the direction of the Kalininsky districts.

For several hours on Monday morning Kyiv’s subway system was suspended, with underground stations serving as bunkers. The alert was lifted at midday, as rescue workers tried to pull people from the rubble caused by the strikes.

Shmygal said as of 11 a.m., a total of 11crucial infrastructure facilities in eight regions had been damaged.

Forty percent of Kyiv residents were without power, mayor Vitali Klitschko said, adding that this was due to security measures taken by power engineers during the air raid alarm and that they were now working to resume services. “The city is supplying heat and water in normal mode,” Klitschko said on the messaging app Telegram.

Putin put his National Security Council together for a televised session to discuss the independence issue, which is now famous for the image of the Russian leader holding court across a hallway to talk to his closest advisors.

The Russian-appointed head of annexed Crimea said on Monday that he had positive news about the Russian approach to its special military operation in Ukraine.

“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.

The Russian invaders continue to loot settlements which they are retreating from, the spokesman for the general staff of the Ukrainian army said. The enemy tried to damage power lines in the Kherson region.

The need is understood by the allies of Ukraine. 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.”

The Dutch Prime Minister said that Putin is ruining the lives of innocent civilians. The Netherland condemns the heinous acts. Putin doesn’t seem to think that the will of the Ukrainian people is irreversible.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the attacks “another unacceptable escalation of the war and, as always, civilians are paying the highest price.”

Ukraine’s air raid tragedy in the wake of the Kiev-Zaporizhhia nuclear power plant explosion on Monday (November 24th, 2016)

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.

In the summer, Michael Bociurkiw moved from Canada to Ukraine as 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.

While jubilation here in Ukraine was understandable, there were fears that the Kremlin could retaliate after the huge explosion over the weekend.

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

The area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet between air raid sirens as of midday, with reports of three missiles and five drones being 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).

Monday’s attacks also came just a few hours after Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings, mostly while people slept. At least 17 people were killed and several dozens injured.

In a video filmed outside his office, President Zelensky said many of the missile strikes across Ukraine were aimed at the country’s energy infrastructure. At least 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and the capital have been damaged, and some provinces are without power.

Residents bundled in coats, hats, scarves and gloves gathered in the underground stations as the sirens wailed. As they sat on the escalators, their faces were lit by their phones.

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

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

For Putin, the symbolism of the only bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea cannot be overstated. That the attack took place a day after his 70th birthday (the timing prompted creative social media denizens to create a split-screen video of Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President”) can be taken as an added blow to an aging autocrat whose ability to withstand shame and humiliation is probably nil.

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

Sitting still was never an option for Putin. He responded in the only way he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction, with the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB operative.

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

The Plan for a Cold War to End in Ukraine is Not a Starting Point for Dialogue between the West and the Kremlin

The plan is not a starting point for talks with Russia, officials told CNN. The ideal post-war order that it represents is one that will hopefully convince Ukrainian allies to maintain their support as long as it takes to get there.

The purpose of urgent telephone diplomacy is to urge China and India to resist using more deadly weapons since they still have some leverage over Putin.

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

It is essential that high tech defense systems are installed around the country. The need to protect heating systems is urgent with the upcoming winter season.

Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure during the two-day Ukraine war: The impact of Putin’s actions on Kiev, Ukraine, and the United States

Turkey and the Gulf states need to be pressured to sign on to impose more travel and trade restrictions on Russia, as this will bring in more tourists from 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.

Putin wanted to find new targets because he couldn’t make inroads against Ukraine on the battlefield, so the targets on Monday had little military value.

The course of the war could be affected by the two headline packages. Russia is facing a constant bombardment of energy infrastructure. It’s making winter unbearable for some, forcing cities to go dark 12 hours a day and sometimes longer, in the hopes that it will dull the enthusiasm of Ukrainians.

After the killings of at least fourteen people in the attacks on civilians, there is new focus on what steps the United States and its allies can take to respond in an effective proxy war with Moscow.

President Joe Biden Monday spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and offered advanced air systems that would help defend against Russian air attacks, but the White House did not specify exactly what might be sent.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, suggested Washington was looking favorably on Ukraine’s requests and was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day. “We do the best we can in subsequent packages to meet those needs,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Kirby was unable to say if Putin was shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to punish civilians and cause devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, since he suggested it was already in the works.

They probably had been scheming about it for a long time. Kirby said that there is not a suggestion that the explosion on the bridge may have accelerated their planning.

Western concerns that the rush-hour attacks inUkraine could be the beginning of another conflict were underscored by French PresidentEmmanuelMacron.

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

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

Mr. Putin could make more of a point against the people of Ukraine. The Ukrainian leadership could be targeted with strikes or special operations by Russia, if missile supplies hold out as the attacks of the past week have shown.

The lesson of this horrible war is that even though Putin doesn’t believe in the right to exist, his actions have made a nation stronger and unified.

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 the man was still a tyrant and that he was still powerful so he wanted people in other countries to fear him.

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

Russian forces have a strong advantage in firepower. On Saturday they launched a barrage of thermobaric missiles at Vuhledar, a reminder that they are more capable of inflicting destruction than taking territory.

AsUkraine scrambles to fortify its defense against missile attacks, the math is simple for Moscow: a percentage of projectiles will get through.

The Russian don’t have the types of precision missiles to sustain that type of high-tempo missile assault into the future, so the barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature.

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

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

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

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

A senior Defense Department official stated that improvements to the Ukrainian air defenses were continuing and that countries could donate Soviet-era capabilities to help move those capabilities.

The amount of Shahed drones being eliminated is more difficult to know because many are being used. Zelensky said that “every 10 minutes I receive a message about the enemy’s use of Iranian Shaheds.” He stated that most of them were being shot down.

In order for Ukraine to prevail, the shopping list may be divided into shells, more air defenses and longer-Range missiles and rockets, and the next, which may include Tanks,Patriot batteries, and Ground fired Small Diameter Bombs.

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

Western systems are beginning to trickle in. The first IRIS-T from Germany and two units of the US National Missile System are expected soon, according to the Ukrainian defense minister, who said that a new era of air defense has begun.

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

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

Implications of the Ukrainian Land War on the Russo-Russian War and the Ukraine’s Emergency Electricity and Water Supply

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.

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

The war is going toward a new phase, not for the first time. Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme, said this is the third, fourth, or fifth war they have been observing.

The stakes of the war have been raised as winter approaches. “There’s no doubt Russia would like to keep it up,” Giles said. The Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a clear message to the Kremlin. “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it,” Giles said.

According to the Ukrainian military, more than 30 settlements were attacked with some of the shelling coming from Russian territory.

The counter-offensives have helped shift the war’s momentum and disproved the notion that the country lacked the ability to seize ground.

The Russians want to avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in, according to the senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

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

If the war in Donbas were to end with a major blow, it would send out a powerful signal, and as a result of rising energy prices, Europe will feel the impact.

Within Ukraine, the economy continues to stumble from the impact of war and persistent missile and drone attacks on critical power infrastructure – including at least 76 strikes on Friday. As winter bites, millions of Ukrainians are enduring long periods without heat, electricity and water. If it means defeating Russia, many say they’re prepared to endure hardship for another two to five years, proof that Ukrainians have displayed resilience since the start of the war.

More than half of the country’s energy capacity has been lost due to the Russian strikes, according to Ukrenergo.

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

In its latest update on the conflict Monday, the I SW concluded that the strikes in Russia waste some of Russia’s diminishing precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to military targets.

How much manpower and weaponry each side has left is very important to determine how the momentum will shift in the coming weeks. Ukraine said it intercepted 18 cruise missiles on Tuesday and dozens more on Monday, but it is urging its Western allies for more equipment to repel any future attacks.

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

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It will give Russia a new way into the region that has been reclaimed by the Ukrainians if Putin focuses on regaining that territory.

Zelensky was a leader that was very inspiring, and steelier. NATO was more united and Europeans more willing to support the country than anyone anticipated.

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.

In the absence of that, we will likely see more of what we have seen in the past – Russian commanders throwing recently mobilized, inadequately trained, and poorly equipped soldiers into tough fights. It’s supported by large amounts of rocket and infantry fires to achieve grinding, expensive and small gains with occasional small breakthrough.

Kiev attack on the separatists: Russian military actions against Ukrainian civilians, and the issue of deportation and detention in Kherson

KYIV, Ukraine — Pro-Kremlin officials on Sunday blamed Ukraine for a rocket attack that struck the mayor’s office in Donetsk, a city controlled by the separatists, while Ukrainian officials said Russian rocket strikes hit a town across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, among other targets.

The fight for Bakhmut has gotten even harder in recent days. The fighting in the city is the most difficult, according to the Ukrainian President.

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

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.

The Russian Defense Ministry said two men opened fire on a group of Russian troops preparing to deploy to Ukraine, killing 11 and wounding 15 before killing themselves.

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

The Institute for the Study of War believes that the deportations of Ukrainians is likely to be a form of ethnic cleansing.

It was based on statements made this week by the Russian authorities who said that thousands of children from a southern region occupied by Moscow were placed in rest homes and children’s camps. The original remarks by Russia’s deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, were reported by RIA Novosti on Friday.

A Yale University team has discovered that the Russian government is operating at least forty child care centers for thousands of Ukrainian children, a potential war crime.

The military claimed that Russians are “conducting measures against civilians in Kherson.” Filtration measures include detention and deportation to Russian territory.

The question is when the blame will begin shifting from the military to Putin himself, particularly since he has seemed ill-prepared to change the leadership at very the top. The last change was the appointment of a new head of Russian forces in Ukraine, an army general who had once been in charge of the bombardment of the city of Aleppo in Syria.

U.S. and Iranian actions in the wake of the recent plane tragedy: The epoch of peace in the developing world and the cooperation of convenience between Iran and the EU

There is a wanted list over his alleged involvement in the downing of the Malaysian plane, which killed almost 300 people. He remains the most high-profile suspect in a related murder trial in a Dutch court, with a verdict expected Nov. 17.

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

Zelenskyy’s chief-of-staff once again advocated for more air defense systems to be provided by the west. “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.

Foreign ministers from the European Union are in Luxembourg. Before the meeting, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell told reporters that the bloc would look into possible evidence of Iran’s involvement in Ukraine.

The partnership of convenience between the two dictatorships is what the Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

Both countries are deep in crisis, struggling economically and politically. Iran is attempting to quell street protests that pose the most serious challenge in years to the government, while Russia is trying to manage rising dissension over a faltering war effort and an unpopular draft.

The Russian War on the Baluchi Bridge: Why does Putin think that Ukraine is going to stay there, or why does Putin want to stay in Ukraine?

NATO will hold nuclear deterrence exercises starting Monday. NATO has warned Russia not to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine, but says the drills are routine every year.

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.

“Even if President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy reached some conclusion that maybe we should, to stop the punishment, we should negotiate. I don’t think he can do that anymore because of the conviction of the Ukrainian people.”

Petraeus spoke at an annual conference in Sea Island, Ga., run by The Cipher Brief, which brings together members of the national security community — current and former — to stand back and look at the big picture on global security.

A top Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to President Zelenskyy, told the conference the conflict needs to end with a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield.

According to Paul Kolbe, a former CIA officer who runs the Intelligence Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School, the leader of the Russian Federation is not interested in finding a way out of the conflict. He says it’s the opposite. When he runs into an obstacle, Putin’s “muscle memory” begins to escalate,” said Kolbe. “There’s a lot of tricks he can still pull out to try to undermine morale in Ukraine and in the West.”

This annexation is huge. The person who runs the think tank is named Dmitri Alperovitch and he says Putin is betting on staying in Ukraine.

“That is essentially a metaphorical burning of bridges,” said Alperovitch. “What this means is that this war is likely to continue for many, many months, potentially many years, as long as he’s in power and as long as he has the resources to continue fighting.”

Part of the difficulty of making wartime assessments is that the war has gone through different phases, with one side and then the other having an advantage. The Ukrainians defeated the Russians in the battle for Kyiv, only to see Russia grind forward during the brutal fighting in the Donbas over the summer.

The Russian Invasion of the Crimea de Sitter City – What will we learn from Kolbe’s NPR Assessment of the 2014 Georgia War?

At the Georgia conference a ballroom filled with experienced national security types, no one suggested the war was about to end. “Most wars end with some sort of negotiated solution, whether that comes out of stalemate or defeat, but I don’t see any prospects of talks in the near term,” said Paul Kolbe, the former CIA official.

This war began with a Russian invasion in 2014, he noted, and is now as intense as it’s ever been. Greg Myre is an NPR National Security Correspondent. Follow him on his verified account.

A loud boom of Grad rockets is heard from the critical Eastern Ukrainian town as Ukrainian soldiers try to take back positions from Russian forces.

Our guide is Ukrainian military medic, who goes by her nom-de-guerre “Katrusya.” In tinted sunglasses and fatigues, she slings our convoy into the centre of the city at breakneck speed.

She took us to see a building that had just been shelled. As another shell went off nearby, our car came to a complete halt. We were under cover as the bombardment came down for around 20 minutes.

The fate of the Bakhmut neighborhood: How Russian forces have fought against them in the past and what they’ve done for the United States

A handful of residents are still on on the streets of Bakhmut. The streets are pockmarked with craters, and there are no windows in the buildings.

Those who remain seem to live in a parallel universe. They’re out on their bikes, running errands and elderly women drag their shopping trolleys behind them, though which shops are open seems a mystery.

The situation near Bakhmut is very difficult, the Ukrainian troops are putting up decent resistance and the rumor of the fleeing Ukrainians is a legend. Ukrainians are guys with the same iron balls as we are,” he wrote.

Katrusya says that the intense fighting has cost the lives of numerous soldiers and civilians here. I cannot give you the number, but there are lots of dead and injured people on both sides.

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.

The scenes in Bakhmut though are different to those across the rest of the country, where Ukraine has largely been able to repel and even gain territory in recent weeks as Russian forces retreated at the end of September.

In this area Russian forces have made small, steady gains thanks to a company that is thought to be a Kremlin approved private military company.

Katrusya says she’s come up against Wagner fighters, and despite their international notoriety, they seem more like a hodgepodge of soldiers for hire, she says.

“They are a rabble. There a few very well-trained professional fighters, but the majority of them have found themselves accidentally fighting in this war looking for money or for the ability to get out of jail,” she said.

In September, video surfaced appearing to show Prigozhin recruiting prisoners from Russian jails for Wagner, offering a promise of clemency in exchange for six months’ combat service in Ukraine.

“I also think no one is asking for a blank check,” Clinton added. The Ukrainians seem to be a good investment for the United States. They’re not asking us to be there to help battle their war. They’re fighting it themselves. They’re asking us and our allies for the means to not only defend themselves but to actually win.”

Vladimir Putin, the Mayor of Moscow, and the U.S. military in Ukraine: the case for a comprehensive victory for the Ukrainian people

The mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. No measures are being introduced to limit the life rhythm of the city, according to Mr. Sobyanin.

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.

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

The Russian invasion commander acknowledged on Tuesday that their position in Kherson was difficult and may have suggested a tactical retreat. He is ready to make some difficult decisions about military deployment but did not say much about what those might be.

The trouble is that Ukraine has only one surefire way of accomplishing this feat in the near term: direct NATO involvement in the war. The full deployment of NATO and U.S. troops in the desert storm style could possibly bring about a comprehensive victory for the Ukrainians. The more Russia loses, the more it will resort to nuclear weapons, which is one of the grimmer possibilities of the war.

PUTIN PROIVES War: How European Powers Can Prolonge War in the Winter Andelman-Napoleman War

Petraeus has spent decades studying warfare and practicing its application. He was the commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as director of the CIA. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton with a dissertation on the Vietnam War and the lessons the American military took from it. Petraeus is also the co-author, with British historian Andrew Roberts, of the forthcoming book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine.”

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

Whether or not you can keep going depends on a number of factors, 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.

A plan to control energy prices was agreed by EU powers in the middle of the night in the early hours of Friday.

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

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

Europe’s largest economy, Germany, is skeptical of price caps. It is necessary to work out details with Germany, who are concerned that a cap would encourage higher consumption.

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

Many issues between Germany and France are already at odds. 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

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks out against the sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Euro-Russian Referendum on Ukraine

The new government in Italy is in charge. Giorgia Meloni was sworn in Saturday as Italy’s first woman prime minister and has attempted to brush aside the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her far-right coalition partners has deep admiration for Putin.

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

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

Both Hungary and Poland, two of the most right-wing countries in the world, are against liberal EU policies and they have differing opinions on the future of Ukraine. Poland was angered by the pro-Putin sentiment of Hungary’s populist leader.

Kevin McCarthy, poised to become Speaker of the House if Republicans take control after next month’s elections, said in an interview that he believes people will sit in a recession and write a blank check. They will not do it.

On Monday, the influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus called on Vice President Biden to open talks with Russia on ending the conflict in order to ensure that the country’s missiles and drones are not targeted in the interior.

Mia Jacob issued a clarification of her remarks in support of Ukraine hours later. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to his counterpart in Ukranian.

The Russian War of Aggression: Implications for the Middle East, NATO, and the Security Conundrum in the 21st Century

In a bid to bring Russia to heel for its aggression, Western countries have used their sway over the global financial system, unveiling more than 11,300 sanctions since the invasion and freezing some $300 billion of the country’s foreign reserves. At the same time, more than 1,000 companies, ranging from BP

            (BP) to McDonald’s

            (MCD) and Starbucks

            (SBUX), have exited or curtailed operations in the country, citing opposition to the war and new logistical challenges.

The lack of necessary semi-conductors has caused Russian production of hypersonic missiles to cease. Plants making anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and aircraft are being cannibalized for spare parts. The Soviet era ended in the 1980’s.

A day before the report, the US announced that it had seized the property of a top Russian procurement agent and his agencies that were responsible for procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end- users.

The Justice Department has charged companies and individuals for trying to bring high-tech equipment into Russia that is in violation of sanctions.

Iran’s rivals and foes in the Middle East, NATO members and nations that are interested in reestablishing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which aimed to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic bomb, all have been drawn to the strengthened relationship between Moscow and Tehran.

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.

Much of what happens today far from the battlefields still has 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. The Saudis deny the accusation.

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

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

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

Higher prices can affect family budgets and other aspects of life. When they come with such powerful momentum, they pack a political punch. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.

The War is Coming: The Effects of a Cold Cold War on the U.S. Armed Forces in Ukraine, and Their Implications for the United States

And it’s not all on the fringes. McCarthy, who is expected to become the speaker of the House next week, said the GOP could reduce aid to Ukraine. Progressive Democrats released and withdrew a letter calling for negotiations. Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said that they are all bringing smiles 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 some of the videos has not been verified and it is not certain if they are on the front line.

Russian forces are staging up to 80 assaults per day, General Zaluzhnyi said in the statement, which described a telephone conversation with an American general, Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander in Europe.

“If somebody attacks you, you fight back,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who now advises President Volodomyr Zelensky, said in an interview earlier this month, after the first Ukrainian long-range strike on Russian military targets hit Engels and another airfield in central Russia.

The increase in troops in the east of the country has not resulted in Russia gaining new ground, as claimed by the Institute for the Study of War.

“Russian forces’ rate of advance in the Bakhmut area has likely slowed in recent days, although it is too early to assess whether the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut has culminated,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its recent update.

It was unclear whether all Russian troops had left Kherson and the wider region; Khlan said the city was “almost under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” but warned that some Russian troops may have remained behind in civilian clothing.

Many Republicans, including some 2024 hopefuls, have argued aid to Ukraine should be scaled back or cut off as the war stretches on. With Republicans in control of the House, passing additional funding packages for Ukraine is expected to be a tougher lift this year.

U.S.-Russia Embedding of Ukraine into the Dnipro River (Kherson) after the Russian Defense Minister’s Remarks

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet the Swedish Prime Minister on Tuesday. Before Sweden can join NATO, certain conditions must be met.

Ukraine is expected to be on the agenda when the UN General Assembly discusses an Iaa report on Wednesday.

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

Sullivan told the town hall audience that the US is about to announce a $2 billion package of weapons for Ukraine in the coming days, as the war is about to be one year old.

Ukrainian forces swept into the key city of Kherson on Friday as Russian troops retreated to the east, delivering a major victory to Kyiv and marking one of the biggest setbacks for President Vladimir Putin since his invasion began.

After Russia said that the withdrawal of their troops from the Dnipro River was complete, the videos were shared by Ukrainian government officials on social media.

The dramatic scenes in Kherson came less than 48 hours after Russia’s defense minister announced that Russian troops in the city would withdraw. After ordering civilians to flee the region last month in order to engage in a methodical effort to loot, Russian forces blew up bridges this week and laid mines to slow the Ukrainian advance as they abandoned defensive positions west.

The soldiers fled, but the Kremlin still considered Kherson to be a part of Russia.

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

On the night of Friday night, Ukrainian troops and civilians in Kherson city walked across the Dnieper River with the help of their drones

The commander of a Ukrainian drones unit said he had not seen a single Russian troops or equipment in his zone near Kherson city.

“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, who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons, used a series of text messages to warn of the state of the city before the Ukrainian soldiers swooped in.

A building in the center was burned at night, but it was impossible to call the fire department. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”

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

It was reported that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro and that they were shelling the Ukrainians 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.

Russian military units moved towards the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson direction. The ministry used a Russian spelling for the river on its official Telegram channel.

Earlier Friday, the Ukrainian military’s southern operational command said Russian forces had been “urgently loading into boats that seem suitable for crossing and trying to escape” across the river.

Ukrainian troops in the Dnipro village: Tyahinka, Bilozerka, and what the Russians are doing in the Kherson region

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.

CNN has obtained a number of photos that show that the Ukrainian troops were able to make their way into the village despite the fact that the main highway bridge and pedestrian bridge were destroyed by the Russians. Dozens of bridges across the Kherson region have been damaged or destroyed.

Russia still however retains control of about 60% of the Kherson region, south and east of the Dnipro, including the coastline along the Sea of Azov. So long as Moscow’s troops control and fortify the Dnipro’s east bank, Ukrainian forces will struggle to damage or disrupt the canal that carries fresh water to Crimea.

There was a video on social media on Friday showing Ukrainian forces being greeted by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka. The village is just west of the hydroelectric dam and bridges that stretch across the Dnieper river.

Residents of the town of Bilozerka, on the western outskirts of Kherson city, raised a Ukrainian flag and ripped down Russian propaganda billboards on Friday, according to videos on social media geolocated by CNN.

An official in southernUkraine warned Friday to be wary of quickly returning to recently liberated territory due to the threat of mines as officials warned that retreating Russian troops could turn the region’s capital into a “city of death” on the way out.

Vitaliy Kim, head of the Mykolaiv region military administration said there were a lot of mines in the liberated territories. Go there for a reason. There are casualties.”

What have we learned from the recent Ukrainian attacks on the Ukrainian border between Kiev and Donetsk? The case of Nova Kakhovka

“This is a subject of the Russian Federation,” Dmitry Peskov said during a regular briefing with journalists. It has been fixed and defined. There can be no changes here.”

Kherson and Julian Hayda were part of the reporting done by Hannah Palamarenko. Mark and Pam edited it. Chad Campbell is the producer of a version of the story.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive that targeted Russian Ammunition depots and command posts made a withdrawal necessary to protect the lives of civilians and troops.

President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Friday as “a historic day” for Ukraine. Zelensky said that we are returning to the south of the country.

Success in Kherson may also allow exhausted Ukrainian units some respite, as well as allow redirected focus on Donbas, where fierce fighting continues in both Luhansk and Donetsk.

Ukranian authorities also have a massive task of reconstruction ahead in Kherson, where Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure and left a huge number of mines behind.

New damage has also appeared on a critical dam that spans the Dnipro in the Kherson region city of Nova Kakhovka, on the east bank of the river. Both sides accuse the other of trying to destroy the dam in order to cause flooding on the east bank and deprive the nuclear plant of water to cool its reactor.

The Dnipro has become the new front line in southern Ukraine, and officials there warned of continued danger from fighting in regions that have already endured months of Russian occupation.

The southern district of the city was struck by fire from the Russian Army, which was threatening to retaliate against the city with a bombardment on the eastern bank.

Mortar shells struck near the bridge, sending up puffs of smoke. Near the river, there were loud, metallic booms coming from incoming rounds. It wasn’t possible to assess what had been hit.

Safety and Security of Donetsk: The Violent Crimes of Mr. Zelensky, a Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser

The Ukrainian government is setting up evacuation routes to the cities of Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, said Iryna Vereshchuk, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister. “We will not have time to restore power supplies enough to heat homes where children, the sick and people with reduced mobility live,” she said. It won’t be a mass evacuation. Those who are sick, elderly or left without care of a family will be covered.

The mines are dangerous. An 11-year-old was among four people who died when a family drove over a mine outside the city. Another mine injured six railway workers who were trying to restore service after lines were damaged. Ukrainian officials said at least four more children were hurt by mines across the region.

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

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

Donetsk region: In its daily report, the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said that Russians forces had used air strikes to support troops on the ground near Bakhmut, with nearly a dozen settlements in the area coming under artillery fire.

One resident said that people in Kherson City are violent and exchange goods for homemade vodka. “Then they get drunk and even more aggressive. We are so scared here.” She asked that her surname be withheld for security.

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

Ukraine: What have we learnt from the recent U.S. president and foreign diplomat on the European and Eurasian affairs in the past decade?

The war in Russia and the consequences on the global economy is expected to be a main topic of discussion during the G-20 summit. On the sidelines Monday, President Biden discussed Ukraine among other issues with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Biden is going to meet the Prime Minister of Britain.

The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas- Greenfield spoke to a group of people about the importance of renewing the grain deal. That followed a Ukraine trip the week before by the top U.S. diplomat on European and Eurasian affairs, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried.

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 protested about the prisoner swap and other Americans still being held by Russia.

There are a number of key trends that have shaped the war in Ukraine. Russia has underachieved. Ukraine has overachieved. The support of the westerners for Ukrainians has remained strong.

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

Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war.

More and more Russians are rebelling at what they have been told to do and refuse to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

A hotline and Telegram channel were launched by the Ukrainian military intelligence project called ‘I want to live’, which is designed to assist Russian soldiers who are interested in defecting.

The Russian War on the Baluchistan: Bringing Back the Wrong Side of Putin’s Legacy in Warped Europe, Revisited

I spoke to a leading Russian journalist last week who said he was ready to accept the reality, even if it was not for the fact that 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. The President of the European Commission told the G20 that it was an unsustainable dependency and that they wanted reliable and forward-looking connections.

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

“So what, Russians use cluster munitions against us,” a Ukrainian official told CNN. The US worries about damage to property. We are going to use them against Russian troops, not against the Russian population.”

Senior Biden administration officials have been fielding this request for months and have not rejected it outright, CNN has learned, a detail that has not been previously reported.

Human Rights Watch: The United States as a Modified M30A1 Alternative Warhead is not a Last Resort to Cluster Bombs

A long-term risk is associated with cluster bombs because they can be scatter across large areas that can fail to explode on impact. They make people extremely bloody because of the many submunitions that explode at once across a large area, according to Mark Hiznay, an arms expert for Human Rights Watch.

The Biden administration has not taken the option off the table as a last resort, if stockpiles begin to run dangerously low. The proposal has not yet been considered in much detail because of the congressional restrictions on the transfer of cluster projectiles, according to sources.

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

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

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

The M 30A1 alternate warhead was replaced by the US with the dual-purpose improved conventional munitions. 180,000 small steel fragments are not unexploded on the ground because of the M30A1. The Ukrainian military believes that the US’s DPICMs could help them on the battlefield more than the M30A1.

Putin had no comment on “Heroes of Russia” awards ceremony and recent attacks in the Kursk region of Ukraine, which is home to an airfield targeted in a drone attack

After the “Heroes of Russia” awards ceremony, he addressed a group of soldiers with a glass of champagne.

At the awards ceremony, Putin questioned who was not supplying water to the city of Donetsk. Not supplying water to a city of million is an act of genocide.”

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

Water in Borodianka: When Russian invaded Donetsk was shelled by the Russians, says Yerko

He ended his apparent off-the-cuff comments by claiming there is no mention of the water situation. No one has said anything about it. At all! There is complete silence. He said that was the case.

Local Russian authorities in Donetsk — which Putin claimed to annex in defiance of international law — have reported frequent shelling of the city this week.

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

Power cuts have lasted up to 24 hours, he says. In this agricultural region, farming equipment and warehouses were destroyed. He estimates business activity is one-third of what it was.

About 200 Ukrainians were killed when the Russians occupied Borodianka shortly after the invasion began on Feb. 24 until the end of March, Yerko says. The town’s prewar population of 14,000 dwindled to a little more than 1,000. Despite the lack of resources it’s up to about 9000.

“The people coming are mostly from the houses on the main street. Olha Kobzar is a volunteer in charge of temporary housing and says that the ones that were burned down are the ones that were destroyed.

Ukraine’s war-ukraine-town-borodian kabanksy-power-cuts — An interview with Taras Shevchenko

The lights went out and she stood in a dark hallway during the interview. She says she’ll wait a while to see if the power comes back. She will turn on the generator if it starts to get cold. It’s like this every day, she adds.

In the center of town is a bust of Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. He championed Ukraine’s independence from Russia in the 19th century. He wrote that it was bad to be in chains.

A British artist well-known for his street spray-paintings who is also known for his work on social media painted a number of badly scarred walls last month.

A boy tosses a man to the floor. They are both in martial arts gear. The man is widely assumed to be Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a judo enthusiast.

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

Russian bombing of Odesa: the state of the country’s air defense infrastructure and its response to Russia’s invasion of Kyiv

“People are happy we’re getting this attention. The paintings are on buildings that have been destroyed. “We’re planning to remove the paintings and put them somewhere else.”

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

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

The air defense system worked over Simferopol according to Sergey Aksenov. The services are working.

The Odesa region of Ukraine has been the subject of reports that 1.5 million people have been without power.

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

Zelensky said that the true attitude of Russia toward Odesa was that they were trying to bring disaster to the city.

The new support package from Norway was used to restore the energy system in Ukraine, Zelensky said.

“The enemy wanted to massively disperse the attention of air defense,” a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yurii Ihnat, said. Ukraine’s top military chief, Valeriy Zaluzhny, later said that 60 of the missiles were downed by the country’s air defense forces.

In the past two months, Ukraine’s power grid has come under relentless bombardment by Russian bombs, taking down as much as half of the country’s electric infrastructure and at times leaving the majority of the country without power. In Kyiv, more than 200 miles west of the ongoing fighting in the region known as Donbas, Ukrainians are reduced to hunting for generators, storing food outside to prevent it from spoiling, charging their phones and computers during the few hours a day of reliable power, and keeping backup food and water supplies in apartment building elevators in case someone is trapped inside during a blackout. Along with parts of the country’s rail system, water supplies have also been disrupted at times. And winter, with only a fraction of the country’s heating systems operational, still looms ahead.

He said that the power system is far from normal and encouraged people to use less power.

It must be understood. If there’s no heavy missile strikes, it doesn’t mean there are no problems. “Almost every day, in different regions, there is shelling, there are missile attacks, drone attacks. Every day, energy facilities are hit.

The Year of December 11, 1994: Russia’s largest oil-rich invasion in Europe and a warning on the consequences for the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine

Many are watching to see if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will follow through on his threat to ban the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine after stepping up raids on churches accused of links with Moscow.

The president of the European Commission and the prime Minister of Norway were invited to dinner by the French president.

On Tuesday in France, the country will host a conference to support Ukrainians during the winter with a video address by the president of that country.

The measures against Russian oil revenue took effect. They include a price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports and a Russian oil price cap.

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

The year was historic and deadly and was not just another year where you tried patience and nerves. Russian President Putin launched Europe’s largest land war since World War II. In Uvalde, Texas, and in many other mass shootings in the United States, there was once more the common horrors that Americans have come to expect. And, inevitably, luminaries who brought light to our lives were extinguished.

USAID Distribution of Excavators and Generators in Donetsk, the Ukrainian Capital in the midst of 2014 Ukrainian War-Insurgency

Ukrainian forces have unleashed the biggest attack on the occupied Donetsk region since 2014, according to a Russia-installed official, in the wake of heavy fighting in the east of the country.

He said that the key in the city intersection center had come under fire.

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

A member of the rapid response team was one of the victims. They were killed by pieces of enemy shells when they were on the street.

The Kherson city was left completely disconnected from power supplies after the strikes, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration.

The United States donated generators and machines to help strengthen the power infrastructure of the Ukrainian capital.

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

The Kremlin does not want a war with Russia… but does it need a counterexample? Russian officials say the Patriot system is “provocative”

The Kremlin turned down Ukrainian President Zelensky’s peace plan, which included asking Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine during the Christmas season.

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

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

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

Until then, US officials had argued that the Patriot system was too complex and scarce to give to Ukraine. Those arguments were thrown out by Russia’s campaign on civilian infrastructure.

Asked Thursday about Russian warnings that the Patriot system would be “provocative,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Pat said the comments would not have an effect on US aid to Ukraine.

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

He said that the US does not want conflict with Russia. Our main focus is on helping Ukraine with its security needs.

Russia’s defense ministry shared a video of the installation of a Yars intercontinental missile into the Kaluga region for the commander of the Kozelsky missile formation.

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

The First Day of Russian Invasion: Ambassador Valeriy Chaly and the US Secretary of State Anatoly Zelensky Revealed Ukraine’s Unprofessional Military Practice

Patriot missile batteries need a lot of personnel to operate, unlike smaller air defense systems. The training for missile batteries usually takes months, and the United States will now have to do it under the constant attacks from Russia.

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

Valeriy Chaly, who was Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, believes that the region would be better off if the war is over. This is what Ukraine’s government wants, though joining the alliance is highly unlikely in the near term.

Adding insult to injury, Britain’sMinistry of Defense said that the Russian military has a history of unsafe ammunition storage and that this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate.

The official said that you load the equipment and cross your fingers that it will fire or explode.

Russia has continued to stockpile large quantities of weaponry very close to the troops they will provide and also in close proximity to enemy weaponry. Military practice dictates that large depots be broken up and scattered, and are located far behind enemy lines, even if they are within Russian territory that the western powers have declared off-limits to Ukrainian strikes.

At that time, Ukrainians were seeking to take advantage of the chaos in Russia following the collapse of the Russian monarchy a year earlier. Putin and the Communists, who succeeded the Russian monarchy, defeated the independence of Ukraine.

The suburb of Bucha was bombarded by the Russians during the first days of the war. When the Russians invaded Ukraine before dawn on Feb. 24, Viatrovych says he immediately sent his wife and 6-year-old son to western Ukraine for their safety.

He went to the parliament in order to declare martial law. He had to join the security forces defending the capital after he received a rifle.

Ukraine first declared independence from Russia in 1918, doing so in an elegant, whitewashed building in the center of Kyiv that still stands and now serves as the offices for the Kyiv House of Teachers.

A reminder of that history came just two months ago, on Oct. 10. A Russian missile slammed into the street outside of the House of Teachers.

The windows in the hall where independence was declared in 1918 were blown out by the blast. The windows are being boarded. There are shards of glass on the floor.

“There are, of course, parallels to a century ago,” said Steshuk Oleh, the director of the House of Teachers. The building was damaged during the fighting. And now it’s damaged again. Don’t worry. We will rebuild everything.”

“If you look at all the hardships that Ukraine experienced in the 20th century, and they’re vast, this is the moment where all the wrongs of the last hundred plus years need to be redressed,” he said.

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

A generation has an opportunity to put an end to this. He said Ukrainians are more prepared to fight than they were in 1918.

Because “if he’s losing a war, especially a war of his own making, he doesn’t survive,” he said. The outcome may signal the end of Putin’s era and the end of the empire. It’s 21st century. It is time for empires to go.

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

The Air Attacks on the Zaporizhzhia Air Base in Ukraine: “It’s going to be tough” for Russia and for Russia

Many military analysts warn the war is unlikely to produce a clear resolution on the battlefield. They say it’s likely to require negotiations and compromises.

“Being a buffer zone or gray zone is not good from a geopolitical point of view,” he said. “If you are a gray zone between two security blocs, two military blocs, everybody wants to make a step. This has happened to Ukraine.

Oleksandr Starukh, chief of the regional military administration, said that the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia had been hit with more than a dozen missile strikes.

The Kremlin said that the Engels air base was hit by a drone attack in December, which slightly damaged two planes. The attack has not been claimed by Kyiv.

During the air assaults on Friday in Ukranian, an aircraft capable of carrying a Kinzal missile was spotted in the sky over Belarus. The statement doesn’t specify if a Kinzal was used in the attacks.

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

He refused to give details on the next package for Ukraine but said that additional air defense capabilities should be expected.

Zelensky in the lysée Palace: The road to wartime has changed Ukrainians’ lives – from Putin’s invasion to Russia’s

I witnessed Zelensky pull up to the lysée Palace in a small car, while Putin drove off in an armored limo. (The host, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).

Zelensky is the instantly recognizable wartime president in trademark olive green, as well as being an effective tactician, as he is known for stirring the imaginations of people worldwide, as he is known for naming and shaming allies who are dragging their feet in supporting his military.

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

The founder of a Kyiv-based think, Yevhen Hlibovytsky, said that after the invasion, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

The leader of the US when Russia launched its invasion, quipped: ” I need bullets not a ride.”

Who can forget the infamous phone call after which Trump was impeached, when Zelensky implored the US President for help to deter an aggressive Russia? Trump’s response, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” trying to push Ukraine into launching an investigation against Biden, the candidate Trump claimed was weak, even though he feared him as his most effective opponent.

Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. He looked in disbelief as he stood on stage among the fluttering confetti, having defeated Petro Poroshenko.

The war appears to have turned his ratings around. Just days after the invasion, Zelensky’s ratings approval surged to 90%, and remain high to this day. Even Americans early in the war rated Zelensky highly for his handling of international affairs – ahead of US President Joe Biden.

A lot of people from his past were in the theater group Kvartal 95. During the war, a press conference held on the platform of a metro station in April featured perfect lighting and camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.

As for his skills as comforter in chief, I remember well the solace his nightly televised addresses brought in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv.

A Conversation with Zelensky in the 21st Century: The Power of a Woman and a Man in a White House

A fashion historian and author says Zelensky is projecting confidence and competence in a modern way, by wearing T-shirts and hoodies.

She said he was probably more comfortable than Putin on camera both as an actor and a digital native. Zelensky is doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility, so I believe both of them want to come across as personable.

Zelenska has shown that she is an effective ambassador for international fora with her smarts and style. Most recently, she met with King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. (Curiously, TIME magazine did not include Zelenska on the cover montage and gave only a passing reference in the supporting text).

Zelensky’s international influence could be waning despite the strong tailwinds. Zelensky tried to get the G7 to set a price cap on Russian oil at $30, but they did not.

Zelensky said in his nightly address that when the world is truly united, it is the world that determines how events develop.

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

The Cold War with Ukraine: Rishi Sunak, the Russian Defense Minister and the U.K. Military Force in the Commons Liaison Committee

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will hold virtual talks sometime this month, according to Russian news reports.

And Ukrainians and Russians are heading into their first Christmas or Hanukkah festivities since the Kremlin launched its full-on invasion of Ukraine in late February.

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

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

Just as with Biden’s decision to provide a Patriot missile defense system, it has often taken a dramatic escalation or shift in battlefield conditions for the US to do more.

The second are used by Ukrainian jets. The Russians and Ukrainians have a lot of dumb weapons that are fired towards a target. Ukraine has been provided with more and more Western standard precision artillery and missiles, like Howitzers and HIMARS respectively.

With the exception of its nuclear forces, Moscow appears to be running out of new cards to play as it struggles to equip and rally its conventional forces. Since China and India have joined the West in opposition to nuclear force, that option is less likely.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Biden wants Putin to hear billions in headline figures in order to distract him from the real issue of military aid and Russian resolve.

The remnants of the Trumpist elements of the party have doubts about how much aid the US should really give to eastern Europe.

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

Vladimir Zelensky and the United States: What the Ukraine wants to learn from Putin and the West: A Russian Perspective on the Ukrainian War in Ukraine

Zelensky’s historic address helped both Democrats and Republicans understand what is at stake in this fight against Putin and Russian aggression and now with their ally, Iran, as well.

The speech brought the struggle of Ukrainian people to our own revolution, to our own Feelings that we want to be warm in our homes to celebrate Christmas and to make us think about all the families in Ukraine that will be huddled in the cold.

Clinton met Putin while he was the secretary of state and said the leader was impossible to predict due to the war in Russia’s favor.

“I think around now, what [Putin] is considering is how to throw more bodies, and that’s what they will be – bodies of Russian conscripts – into the fight in Ukraine,” Clinton said.

Moscow said the war in Ukraine was set for a long confrontation with Russia following the visit of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

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

They will achieve nothing even if the west gives military support to the Ukrainian government, said Maria Zakharova.

“Russia is preparing for maximum escalation. It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training. In the next two or three weeks, we will not exclude any scenarios from being offensive from different directions.

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

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

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned from Washington, D.C. — having secured billions of dollars in U.S. aid and multiple standing ovations in Congress — the Kremlin was quick to criticize the trip.

The Kremlin has also been selling that line to the Russian public, who is largely buying it, says Sergey Radchenko, a Russian history professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

ZelenskyY andUkraine have made clear that they want a “just peace”, and the U.S. has been assisting them against Russian aggression, according to Sloat.

Following Danilov’s comments, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said Wednesday that there a signs Russia is preparing for a renewed offensive in southern Ukraine.

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

He said that “it’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them” — something the Kremlin has repeatedly stated in recent months as its 10-month old invasion kept losing momentum.

The General Staff said there were also air strikes along other parts of the front lines in the Donetsk region, southwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. In the last month, that area has seen a lot of fighting as Russian forces try to break down Ukrainian defenses.

The Russian military has acknowledged that the pace of the Russian advance has slowed around Bakhmut, according to the think tank.

Crime against civilians in the Berislav district of Ukraine: Russia’s cyberattacks on the Internet, as witnessed by a human-like intelligence analyst

A total of 16 people have been killed, according to the official, including three emergency workers killed in the process of demining the Berislav district of the region. 64 others have been wounded, and that’s according to the man.

The missiles that were fired from the airfields hit in the attacks could potentially be destroyed by strikes on the ground.

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

Mr. Budanov said the Kinzhal, the most advanced missile in Russia’s arsenal, is in short supply and is impossible to shoot down.

The central nervous system of the human being is like that of the human body, if you mess with it, you can make it malfunctioning, says the director of the Defense Priorities think tank who recently returned from a trip to the Ukrainian capital. “It’s an enormous economic cost, and it’s not only an annoyance. It’s an effort to show the government isn’t able to protect the civilian population adequately.

Menon notes, however, that every one of his comments could just as easily apply to Russia’s earlier waves of cyberattacks on the country’s internet—such as the NotPetya malware released by Russia’s GRU hackers, which five years earlier destroyed the digital networks of hundreds of government agencies, banks, airports, hospitals, and even its radioactivity monitoring facility in Chernobyl. The goal is the same despite the different nature of the technicalities. “Demoralizing and punishing civilians.”

Shmyhal said on Telegram that Moscow intended to “intimidate, leave us in the dark and cause as much damage as possible.”

The attack on Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on the first day of the November 11 attacks by Putin and the Kremlin government in the parliamentary chambers

Hryn said: “After the sirens sounded, life went back to normal, I met my neighbours in the elevator with their child who wanted to catch the new Avatar movie on time.” Parents took their children to school, people went to work and others continued holiday plans in defiance.

A CNN team had just arrived at the scene and heard the first incoming strike on Kramatorsk. The second attack was broadcast by CNN about a minute apart. Two women jumped from their car and ran yelling while other civilians took shelter wherever they could. Shrapnel bounced off the blastproof glass of one CNN vehicle.

At least three people, including a 14-year-old, were injured and two people pulled from a damaged home on Thursday, Klitschko said earlier. The city military administration says that homes, an industrial facility, and a playground were damaged in attacks on Kyiv.

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

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

War-against-ukraine has left Russia isolated and struggling with more turbulent-ahedrosphere: how many lives have been affected by the conflict?

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

The most respected human rights group in Russia, the Laureate Memorial, was forced to stop their activities after they were accused of violating the foreign agents law.

Russia’s restrictive anti-gay laws were vastly expanded by the state, as they argue that the war in Ukranian reflects a broader attack on “traditional values.”

For now, the repressed are still targeted. New laws are not always enforced. The measures are intended to crush dissent if the moment arises.

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

internet users are subject to restrictions. American social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook were banned in March. More than 100,000 websites have been blocked by the Kremlin’s internet regulator since the beginning of the conflict.

Russians looking for their own independent sources of information still have access to technical workarounds. Older Russians prefer state media propaganda over angry TV talk shows.

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

Putin’s Cold War with Ukraine: How Putin and the West Meteorized the First Ukrainian Siege of the World War II. What Russia Has Learned about the Second World War?

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

The economies of some countries that have absorbed Russian emigration are predicted to grow, even as Russians remain a sensitive issue for former Soviet republics.

After the invasion, the central bank of Russia increased interest rates to 20% and implemented currency controls to prop up the ruble. So was the need for factories to increase production of military goods and replace items that had been imported from the West.

President Putin thinks Europe will blink first and back away from its support of Ukraine because Europeans are angry about energy costs at home. He banned oil exports to countries that don’t abide by price caps, a move that will make the pain more acute in Europe.

The government’s tone isn’t changed when it comes to Russia’s military campaign. Russia’s Defense Ministry provides regular briefings on the successes on the ground. Putin assures everyone that everything is going according to plan.

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

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

The Russian War Between 2022 and 2020: How the Kremlin and the Indian Central Asia Attacks On The World Wide Web have Known and Been Done

The February 24, 2022 invasion touched off a refugee crisis, as many Ukrainians flee the conflict in their homeland, and Russian men try to avoid military service. After decades of official neutrality, it has spurred the process of expanding NATO, with Sweden and Finn vying for membership.

Longtime allies in Central Asia have criticized Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty, an affront that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. Both India and China have purchased discounted Russian oil, but have not provided full-throated support for the Russian military campaign.

Putin’s speech in effect made good on an overdue commitment: the Kremlin repeatedly delayed and then ultimately canceled last year’s address amid a trickle of bad news from the battlefield in Ukraine.

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

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

CNN has been on television for over 40 years, and it has been on digital platforms for more than 25 years. According to Comscore, an average of 161 million people came to CNN Digital every month in 2022, from around the globe.

The tragic school shooting in Uvalde was one of the stories among the top 10 that were read, watched or listened to.

The Samaritans of the World: The 2023 Top 100 Story List of the U.S. and the Aftermath of the Cold War

Early in the conflict, I wrote an analysis explaining the limits of what the US and its allies would and would not do in Ukraine. The limits have been contentious from the beginning and are only getting worse as Russia accuses the West of going too far.

The overturn of abortion law and the impact it has on women and US politics were the top stories.

There were new worries in China in the last weeks of the year, as well as interest and fear, which waned as the Covid-19pandemic waned. History has taught us that pandemic developments know no borders.

It was entertainment news that brought millions to CNN. Our top entertainment story was the tragic death of Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the amiable DJ for “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” The good Samaritans made a difference in the lives of strangers.

According to our internal data, every piece of our Top 100 Story list has gotten more than 3 million visits.

We are grateful for your being with us through it all. We promise we will be here for you in 2023, for every breaking news story and for every piece of joy, delight and triumph.

Zelensky’s “Saturday Night” Speech in Kiev: “Welcome to the Capital and Restore the Life and Death of the Ukrainians”

On Saturday night Zelensky switched from English to Russian in his nightly address to make a message to the Kremlin and Russian citizens as Moscow fired a series of strikes on several regions of Ukraine.

The deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine said that three people died and three more were wounded. Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram.

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

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

The life support system of the capital is functioning normally. About 30% of consumers don’t have electricity. Due to emergency shutdowns,” he said on Telegram.

The red metro line in the city was checked for remnants of missile debris after restrictions were put on it.

Alyona Zelensky: From the Battle of the Ukraine to the First Day of Reconciliation in the First Year of the United Nations

“From 2023 I really want to win, and also to have more bright impressions and new emotions. I miss it very much. I would like to travel and open borders. And I also think about personal and professional growth, because one should not stand still. Alyona said she needed to work for the benefit of the country.

This year, it is a symbol that we survived the year, says a 43-year-old pharmacy employee.

Life values have changed. I enjoy every opportunity to see and talk to my family and friends. Like many other Ukrainians I believe that our victory will lead to our return to our homeland. We need the world to help us.

President Zelensky spoke to a rousing New Year’s Eve address, recalling that fear over the Russians was the beginning of the year, but he was hopeful for victory.

Standing in darkness with a Ukrainian flag rippling gently in the breeze behind him, Mr. Zelensky recounted in a videotaped speech many notable moments from the war — including the attack on a maternity hospital, the intense fighting at the Azovstal steel plant, the destruction of a Russian bridge to Crimea, the retaking of Kherson, the sinking of a Russian flagship — as the video cut to footage that underscored his words.

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

Red Lines Have a Chance: The Russian Defense Ministry had to Come Under the Microscope in Makiivka During the Cold War

By March, my initial shock and fear of the war turned into a desire to act through sports. Athletes could fight against Russian propaganda in a constructive way. We just had to tell the truth about the war and Ukrainians – how strong, kind and brave we are. How we support one another to defend our country.

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

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

Russian officials said that four Ukrainian-launched HIMARS rockets hit the vocational school where its forces were housed, apparently adjacent to a large arms depot. The Russian air defenses shot down two rockets in the same day.

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

Russian senator Grigory Karasin said that those responsible for the killing of Russian servicemen in Makiivka must be found, Russian state news agency TASS reported Monday.

Video of the attack on Makiivka: Military personnel disappearing in the basement, declared in secrecy and under surveillance by the High Security Forces of Ukraine

Video from the attack was posted on Telegram and an official Ukrainian military channel. The pile of smoking rubble shows a lack of any portion of the building.

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

A former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration said on Telegram that the high command was still unaware of the weapon’s capabilities.

“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bezsonov said. “There are enough abandoned facilities in Donbas with sturdy buildings and basements where personnel can be quartered.”

The building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores according to a Russian prop gandist who writes on Telegram.

Most of the military equipment, which stood on top of the building without a sign of camouflage, was destroyed. There are many people that are still missing, and no final number of casualties.

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

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/europe/ukraine-makiivka-strike-intl/index.html

Russian Defense Mission to the Eastern Ukrainian City Bakhmut: A Brief New Year’s Speech from U.S. Secretary of State Yaroslav Yanushevich

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

In recent months, a counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces has dealt a blow to Russia and the strike using the U.S. weapon delivered a new blow.

The Ukrainian military didn’t confirm the strike, but seemed to acknowledge the same attack as Russian authorities reported.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”

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

Ukrainian authorities reported that at least four people were killed and dozens were injured in a New Year’s Eve assault. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private military company has attempted to explain his group’s failure to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has for months been the scene of intense fighting.

During a New Year’s visit with fighters on the front line, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that there was “a fortress in every house” in Bakhmut, and that “only clowns that sit around and try to predict these things.”

They say that the combined forces broke the defense of Artyomovsk. In 2016 the name was changed again to Bakhmut.

The Makiivka Crisis: Breaking through the defense is like breaking through the next house, but you can never forget. How Russian soldiers were forced to move into the Grey Zone

He said breaking through the defense is like breaking the defense of the next house.

“Therefore the question is: “Who is going to take Artyomovsk? Which combined forces? He said that it would be the combined forces of the two groups. Who else? Other than Wagner PMC, who else is there?”

Biden and Scholz said they would provide the necessary financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine for as long as needed.

The Bradley fighting vehicle is used to transport personnel into battle and can hold around 10 troops. The White House said the US and Germany would provide training to Ukrainian forces on the respective vehicles being provided to Kyiv.

Zelensky wanted those systems because they will allow his military to target Russian missiles flying at a higher altitude than they have been able to before.

The main cause of the Makiivka strike was the widespread use of cell phones by Russian soldiers in violation of a ban, which allowedUkraine to track and determine the locations of the soldiers.

It is telling that days after the deadliest known attack on Russian servicemen, President Vladimir Putin called for a temporary ceasefire, citing the Orthodox Christmas holiday. The move was rejected by both the US and the Ukraine as a cynical attempt to find some breathing space for Russian forces who have been in terrible shape this year.

Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow and co-head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for New American Security told me that Russia’s failure to relocate large arms depots is due to the reality that their forces cannot communicate adequately.

It’s a view shared by other experts. In an e-mail exchange James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me that bad security communications is standard practice in the Russian Army.

He’s not the only Russian war blogger casting doubt. The blame for the Makiivka incident was put on the soldiers themselves, according to a post on the Telegram channel known as the Grey Zone. “In this case, it is to 99% a lie and an attempt to throw off the blame.”

The inmates from Russian prisons that were freed and were taken to the Ukrainian side were the most recent arrivals to the war. One can only imagine how appealing the use of cell phones would be to prisoners accustomed to years of isolation with little or no contact with the outside world.

Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the alias WarGonzo and was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago, attacked the Ministry of Defense for its “blatant attempt to smear blame” in suggesting it was the troops’ own use of cell phones that led to the precision of the attack.

He questioned how the Ministry of Defense was so sure about the location of soldiers in the school building that they did not use an outside source to determine where they were.

The defense ministry underwent a change when one of its four-star generals was replaced by the butcher of Mariupol. The location of the arms depot, adjacent to the Makiivka recruits, would likely have been on Mizintsev’s watch.

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

Ukraine’s air force response to a Russian attack on Kyiv is still unresolved and it is rapidly picking up steam

A number of Kyiv’s soldiers were killed in a Russian attack last week, butUkrainian officials on Sunday dismissed the claim.

There is no indication of any huge casualties by a CNN team on the ground. The team reported that there was no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk.

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

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

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

The U.S. is also training about 100 Ukrainians on the Patriot anti-missile system in Oklahoma. The training has picked up steam. The Western countries have gone from training the Ukrainians on specific systems to training larger units on how to carry out coordinated attacks.

Russian-Ukraine War, Russian-Iran Relations and the U.S.-Russia Joint Forces Plan for Europe’s Next Warfare

The World Economic Outlook will be released on Tuesday morning in Singapore. The IMF has stressed that the Russia-Ukraine war is a big factor causing economic slowdown and recession in some countries.

A group of European Commission leaders is going to visit Ukranian on Thursday and will hold a summit with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the following day.

The U.S. and Germany each announced they would send tanks to Ukraine, after months of resistance to the Ukrainian government’s repeated requests. Germany claimed that other countries like Poland could give Ukraine their German-made Leopard 2 tanks.

The Russian takeover of Soledar was acknowledged by Ukraine’s military, which retreated from the eastern town. Russian forces continued their offensive around Bakhmut and other parts of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

At a time when tensions are high between the US and Russia, the U.S. ambassador arrived in Moscow. On Monday, Tracy was reportedly heckled by protesters as she entered the Russian Foreign Ministry to present her credentials.

Estonia and Latvia told Russia’s ambassadors to leave after the Kremlin said it expelled the Estonian ambassador and downgrading relations with the Baltic NATO member state over what it called “Russophobia.”

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

The Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said that these will be defining months in the war.

Ukrainians are on the edge of a very active phase of hostilities in February andMarch, according to a representative of the Defense Intelligence.

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

“We are not deserving of mercy”: a warning for the perpetrators of a fresh missile attack on Kramatorsk

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

Paramedics arrived at the scene to treat a wounded civilian. Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko also confirmed that there had been a strike on the city, and urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.

Rescue workers searched through the rubble to locate survivors after an attack damaged 8 apartment buildings. Authorities also evacuated people to a local school for shelter.

“A country bordering absolute evil. It takes a country to overcome it in order to reduce the chance of tragedies happening again. We will definitely find and punish all the perpetrators. They are not deserving of mercy.

The assault on the Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, the birthplace of the Donbass people’s republic, is still ongoing

The area of Seredyna-Buda is located near the Russian border and has been repeatedly hit with mortars by the occupiers. There were no injuries reported.

An unofficial Telegram account of troops in Ukraine’s 46th Brigade, which has been in the Bakhmut area for several weeks, said the Russians had reached a highway northwest of the city and that fighting was continuing there.

Russian tanks are in a chaotic state, exploding or running into mines, while men are running, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.

First, it burned through massive amounts of ammunition at an unsustainable rate, according to many analysts. Second, Russia lost half its tanks in the past year, according to a recent U.S. Defense Department estimate.

The 155th Marine brigade is part of the assault on the village of Vuhledar, according to the Russian Defense ministry. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that themarine infantry is working as it should. Right now. Fighting heroically.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-declared, Russian-backed Donbass People’s Republic (DPR), acknowledged Friday that the area was hot and that the enemy continued to transfer reserves in large quantities.

Vuhledar was built for the nearby coal mine (the name translates as “gift of coal”) and sits above surrounding plains. The Ukrainian 72nd is the defenders of its high-rise buildings. Mechanized – a significant advantage, as well as hardened underground cover.

The town has become a lynchpin in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces are trying to take it for three months. Victory for Moscow here would make it harder for the Ukrainians to shut down a nearby railroad that links Donetsk with Russian-occupied Crimea and allow the Russians to begin a northern “hook” as part of their anticipated spring offensive.

Critics of Russia’s military high command say the handling of the latest offensive is worse still, with one military blogger describing it as a “shameful debacle.”

But attacks launched in the last week of January were fatally flawed, he said. They advanced all the time in sight of the Ukrainian observers posted atop of the high buildings in Vuhledar, and now face an empty terrain on the eastern side of the town.

Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, added on Telegram that “a lot of good T-72B3/T-80BVM tanks and the best paratroopers and marines were liquidated.”

In his Telegram post, he states that only morons will attack head-on in the same place, which is extremely inconvenient for the attackers.

Russia’s military bloggers have tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their Telegram channels. They were negative about previous episodes in the campaign.

Moscow Calling asserted that older T-72 tanks deployed in Vuhledar lack upgrades that would improve the driver’s breadth of vision. That may help explain several instances in which Russian tanks seemed to get entangled or reverse blindly.

“How are blind, deaf tanks, armored personnel carriers, with equally blind, deaf infantry supposed to fight without columns? If there is no communication and situational awareness, how can we coordinate actions? he wrote.

The Eastern Group of Forces and the Ukrainian War in Ukraine: Comment on Rustam Muradov’s “Squares and Siege,” by Oksana Markarova

Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, the commander of the Eastern Grouping of forces, has been called for dismissal by several Russian commentators. The 155th men protested that their tactics had caused them disastrous losses.

Some people associated with the team killed a lot of personnel and equipment. In November, they didn’t bear any responsibility. They began to storm Ugledar after which they were like the same thing. [Vuhledar]. Impunity always breeds permissiveness.”

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

Russian forces, including professional units and a militia, are in the area, along with a private military company which is also close to the Russian defense ministry.

The commander of the Ukrainian forces said that effective fire damage is the key to success on the battlefield.

Zelenskyy met leaders in London, Paris, andBrussels during his surprise Europe tour, where he made a call for allies to send fighters to Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine didn’t receive as much attention in the State of the Union speech as it did last year, but Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova still attended.

The First Open-Source War in Ukraine: How Russian Forces Are Organizing, and How Effectively Do They Look? An Analysis by a Senior British Official

“It’s unlikely Russian forces will be particularly better organized and so unlikely they’ll be particularly more successful, though they do seem willing to send more troops into the meat grinder,” a senior British official told CNN.

Despite sounding the alarm about new Russian attacks, there is skepticism on the Ukrainian side about the capabilities of Russia’s forces.

“They amassed enough manpower to take one or two small cities in Donbas, but that’s it,” a senior Ukrainian diplomat told CNN. It was overwhelming, compared to what they were trying to build in Ukranian.

Lloyd Austin said in Brussels on Tuesday that the US does not see Russia massing its planes before an aerial operation.

Bergen: Is this the first truly open-source war? Zelensky, commercial overhead satellites and the social media accounts of Russian mercenaries all documented the war in Ukraine on social media.

Not completely, Petraeus said. In an interview with The Atlantic published shortly before the Russian invasion, I explained the considerable difficulties I expected Russia would encounter and noted that an invasion force of some 190,000 was much less than what likely would be required, especially if the Ukrainians proved to be as determined as I thought they would be (and they have been even more so).

Both sides are widely expected to launch offensives. In fact, a Russian one appears to be underway in the east, and Russian forces have already suffered one resounding defeat around the town of Vuhledar.

Petraeus. There will be a number of new features this year, which include Western tanks and infantry fighting vehicles on the Ukrainian side and larger precision missiles from the US.

Perhaps most notably, of course, we see a war taking place, for the first time, in a context that includes the widespread presence of smart phones, internet connectivity, and social media and other internet sites.

Drones can be seen, but you can’t hurt them: What Putin has to say about NATO and the “Petraeus crisis”

There would be more drones operating in a variety of places, including in the air, in the sea, in outer space, and in cyberspace.

I recall an adage back in the Cold War days that stated, “If it can be seen, it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed.” We did not have all of the capabilities needed to truly operate that adage in those days. In the future, however, just about everything – certainly every platform, base and headquarters – will be seen and thus be susceptible to being hit and destroyed (unless there are substantial defenses and hardening of those assets).

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NPR that conflict between great powers has been avoided. The system works for all its flaws. But now, it’s being challenged.”

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

All of the above, plus more, is what Petraeus said. The list is lengthy, including poor campaign design; inadequate training; bad command, control and communications; and a culture that condones war crimes and abuse.

Petraeus is not at all. Russia has enormous military capability and is still a nuclear power as well as a country with lots of energy, mineral and agricultural resources. The population of it is more than double that of the next largest European countries, so it’s no wonder.

The War Between Russia and Ukraine : An Indisputable Country for the Armed Forces in the Early Stages of World War II

The leader is a dictator who embraces many grievances and extreme revanchist views that severely undermine his decision-making.

Stalin had stated that “Quantity has a quality all its own.” Will the population differences between Russia and Ukraine make a difference to the war over the long term?

Up to 100,000-150,000 new recruits and mobilized Reservees are on the way and 300,000 of them are being sent to the frontline. And that is not trivial – because quantity does, indeed, matter.

Thus, Ukrainians know what they are fighting for, while it is not clear that the same is true of many of the Russian soldiers, a disproportionate number of whom are from ethnic and sectarian minorities in the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainians have demonstrated enormous skill in adapting various technologies and commercial applications to enable intelligence gathering, targeting and other military tasks and they have proven to be very important.

To be sure, there have been times when I have felt that we should have decided to provide various capabilities (e.g., HIMARS, longer-range precision munitions, tanks, etc.) We have a long ways to go, sooner than that.

Eventually, Ukraine will have to switch from eastern bloc aircraft to western ones. There just aren’t any more MiGs to provide to them, and they reportedly have more pilots than aircraft at this point.

So, we might as well begin the process of transition, noting that it will take a number of months, regardless, to train pilots and maintenance personnel. All that said, again, I think the Administration has done a very impressive job and proven to be the indispensable nation in this particular situation – with important ramifications for other situations around the world.

Petraeus: How Ukraine War Ends the Bergen-Ctpr War? (Implications for the United States and the Chinese)

The force Putin sends into the toughest battles is the Wagner Group, which is quasi-private. I’m wondering if there are any thoughts on using mercenaries as a tactic.

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

Bergen: What are the lessons of Ukraine for the Chinese if they were to stage an invasion of Taiwan, which would not be over a neighboring land border but over a 100-mile body of water? The Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea navy, was sunk in January, altering how the Chinese would think about this question.

The target of such an operation will be supported by major powers, and its population will fight hard for its life, and so will be subjected to substantial economic, financial and personal sanctions and export controls.

Petraeus is the one. Yes, I believe it is. This is the first war in which smartphones and social media have been so widely available and also so widely employed. The result is unprecedented transparency and a huge amount of information.

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

Putin, Moldova: The end of the war and the fate of its home front in the new millennium and the future of the Russian-occupied country

You famously asked at the beginning of the Iraq War how the war would end. For the war in Ukraine: How does this end?

Petraeus. I think the end of the war will be negotiated when Putin acknowledges that the war on the battlefield is unsustainable and that the home front is much worse off than Afghanistan.

When Ukraine’s ability to fight missiles and drones is limited, getting a Marshall-like plan from the US and G7, and gaining an ironclad security guarantee from a US-led NATO are all possible.

An analyst, consultant, and journalist focusing on Eastern and Central European affairs is what it is called by the author. Follow him on Twitter @Crstn_Gherasim. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

Western aid and security guarantees have never been given before in the country because of the European-leaning objectives and desire to tear itself away from Russian influence.

The trips she makes from the Romanian capital of Bucharest, where Ana has been living for the past decade, to Moldova, have only gotten more frequent since power blackouts and energy shortages hit the small country of 2.6 million people.

In September, Maia Sandu said border police came across missile debris near the village of Larga. It was not the first such incident – Moldovan police also found missile debris in December – and it left many to wonder what will happen if the next time luck runs out and a stray rocket hits closer to home.

The Russian military had an outpost on the east bank of the Dniester River in the last years of the Cold War. It declared it was a Soviet republic in 1990 and was against the attempt by Moldova to be an independent state.

If Russia starts a Spring offensive that centers on southernUkraine, it could attempt to link up with Transnistria and create a land bridge that would stretch across the southern part of the country.

He said that the instruments Russia was using before the war had been intensified. “What we see is a reactivation of Russian political proxies in Moldova.”

The UN Secretary General talked aboutMoldova being the country with the most refugees as a proportion of its own population during his visit to Chisinau earlier this spring. He mentioned that the country finds itself on the “front line of preservation, peace and stability in the world.” But what does that mean, exactly?

Secondly, since Ukrainian refugees have been largely allowed to move freely in Europe, those who did choose to stay in Moldova are usually those having a harder time integrating anywhere else. A lot of similarities are found between Moldova and Ukraine. The rest of Europe would have to integrate the refugees if Moldova did not take in enough of them.

Moldova’s woes have to do with internal factors as well. The country’s corruption and oligarchic system are decades-long issues that the current pro-EU government has struggled to curb. Moldova’s judicial shortcomings have been also highlighted in a recent Council of Europe report, with its judiciary system coming again under scrutiny following a disputed contest for the top job of chief prosecutor.

There are also losing people in Moldova. According to World Bank statistics, Moldova has lost more than 12% of its population since 1991, as it has been hit hard by the demographic decline seen throughout many parts of post-communist Europe.

All pales in comparison with Moldova’s current energy problem. The country’s dependency on both Russia and Ukraine for energy puts it in probably the most difficult spot it has ever been in since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu, plain spoken and charismatic, is leading a charm offensive; Sandu has met with Western leaders and gave an inspiring commencement speech at Harvard, helping to bring attention to Moldova’s plight. She knows there is nothing worse than being ignored on the world stage and that is what happens toMoldova.

NATO strategy and the anniversary of the Russian invasion: US and Western leadership are gearing up for a show of unity and strength in the Cold War

Ahead of next week’s anniversary of the Russian invasion, US and Western leaders are gearing up for a show of unity and strength designed to establish once and for all that NATO is in the conflict for the long haul and until Moscow’s defeat.

The Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff said on Tuesday that Russia had lost, and that they had lost strategically. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Wednesday that “Putin must realize that he cannot win” as he explained the rationale for rushing arms and ammunition to Ukrainian forces. The US Ambassador to NATO told CNN that they were applying pressure on Moscow to affect Putin.

Vice President Kamala Harris heads to the Security Conference in Germany this week, and the Western rhetorical and diplomatic offensive will be intensified further. President Joe Biden will meanwhile visit Poland and a frontline NATO and ex-Warsaw pact state next week, bolstering his legacy of offering the most effective leadership of the Western alliance since the end of the Cold War.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/politics/ukraine-strategy-putin-west/index.html

An Insider’s View of Putin and the Republican Party: Putin Decelerates War on Ukraine, and the US tries to keep things Away

Some members of the new Republican majority are jittery in the US House. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz last week demanded an end to aid to Ukraine and for the US to demand all combatants “reach a peace agreement immediately.” A bipartisan majority for saving Ukraine still exists in the House and the Senate. It is not certain if Biden can guarantee huge aid packages for Ukraine in the future. And US aid might be in serious doubt if ex-President Donald Trump or another Republican wins the 2024 election.

The outside world knows Putin is not contemplating defeat or an exit from the war because of the complete lack of any diplomatic framework for ceasefire talks.

There were no signs that Putin’s determination is waning, according to a leading expert at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

The prospect of China leaning on Putin for an end to the war was remote even before the lurch in US-China relations caused by the flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the US this month.

“You’re going to end up with an albatross around your neck,” Sherman said at an event at the Brookings Institution, though admitted the US was concerned about tightening ties between China and Russia at a time when it is locked in simultaneous showdowns with each power.

It is the evening of February 23, 2022. In Kyiv, the boss of a news site relaxes with a bath and candles. A woman in Zaporizhzhia plans to celebrate her husband’s birthday in the morning. In Moscow, a journalist happens to postpone his travel plans to Kyiv.

The next morning my phone was buzzing from all the messages and missed calls. A red headline in all caps on the Kyiv Independent website read: “PUTIN DECLARES WAR ON UKRAINE.”

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

The February 23, 2022, Ukrainian War of Independence. I. The Implications for the Society and for the People of Ukraine, and the History of Ukraine

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

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

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

We woke up to the news that the invaders were here. 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures co-signed a letter I wrote condemning the war. The signatures of tens of thousands of Russians were added to it after it was published.

On the third day we, my husband and I, left Russia. I felt it was a moral obligation. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

We moved to Berlin. There were thousands of Ukrainians arriving every day at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, which my husband worked at as a volunteer. A new book was being written by me. This is how it begins:

The news is good for the people of the city, who have had to rush to the basement to take shelter each morning because they haven’t heard whether they’ll be able to cook breakfast or log onto the internet. After a few explosions, authorities launched a public information campaign about the dangers of using generator indoors, but some people have continued to install them on balconies, and the family has gone to stay with friends on cold nights. Liza now draws pictures of missiles before she goes to sleep, her parents worry about how the stress has affected her.

This has been a war of history repeating itself, from forced deportations of 2.5 million Ukrainians, including 38,000 children, to the theft of Ukrainian grain to the destruction ofUkrainian museums, libraries, churches.

Since the Russian invasion began, I have been haunted by the dark thoughts in my father’s eyes as he retells the chilling stories of relatives who ended up in the Soviet gulag. Stories of millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s manmade famine of 1932-33.

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

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

Ivanenko lives near the Antonov airfield in Hostomel, on the outskirts of the capital, where Russian paratroopers landed on February 24, and she spent the first weeks of the war living under occupation. She said the power outages are nothing compared to that experience. It is a problem if there’s no power. But not to me. I have seen worse. I compare it to what I have been through. I wonder, can I survive this? Yes, I can.’ It will be alright.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has a senior fellow named Andrei Kolesnikov. He is the author of several books on the political and social history of Russia, including “Five Five-Year Liberal Reforms.” Origins of Russian Modernization and Egor Gaidar’s Legacy.”

Since February of 1992, we have experienced several eras. The first was euphoric, when Putin suddenly, after a significant time of stagnant ratings, received more than 80% approval from the population.

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

It is impossible to adapt to a catastrophe like that which happened for me and my family. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

On the evening of February 23 I washed my dog, cleaned the house, took a bath and lit candles. I live in a district of Kyiv with a one-bedroom apartment. I loved taking care of it. I liked the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. That night was the last time my life mattered.

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

The life I knew started falling apart soon after, starting with the small things. It no longer mattered what cup I used to drink my morning tea, or how I dressed, or whether or not I took a shower. Life no longer matters, only the battle did.

It was already hard to remember the good times of before the war, just weeks into the full-scale invasion. I remember being upset about my partner, but I couldn’t relate. My life didn’t change on February 24, it was stolen from me on that day.

I no longer thought about my personal ambitions. To raise our flag was crucial in order for us to show that we are fighting in these circumstances.

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

Joint Chiefs of Staff: a critical moment in the Ukraine-Russia war-anniversary-announcement-process

Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told NPR that he thinks this is a critical moment. “The battlefield, as difficult as it is and as bloody as it is … is something that’s going to play a very major factor in both President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and President [Vladimir] Putin’s calculations as to whether or not to go to the negotiating table … and under what conditions.”

“This leads to the question of who is going to document all these crimes?” The head of the Center for Civil Liberties told us. “Because I’m not a historian, I’m a human rights lawyer, and we document human pain in order sooner or later to have all these Russians … brought to justice.”

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

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

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

The First Night of the First Ukrainian War: Victims of the Crimes of a Shocked, Unarmed General Relativity

They tried to flee in the first days of the war, but the family car was shelled, Natalia believes, by Russian forces. The wife and nephew of her husband were killed. Vova survived the attack but was hospitalized for months with seven bullets in his body.

The audio for this story was produced by Danny Hajek; edited by Barrie Hardymon and Natalie Winston. Additional editing and production help came from Carol Klinger, Denise Couture and annina Kravinsky. Hanna Palamarenko and Tanya Ustova provided reporting and translation help.

The following night, Ukrainian special forces, supported by accurate artillery, penetrated the base, killed dozens of Russian paratroopers and disabled the runway. The Russian concept of operations, practiced on table tops, fell apart in the first phase.

On the first day of the invasion, a large Russian helicopter force seized an airfield outside of the capital, threatening to turn it into a bridge for the invading force to surge further reinforcements.

Zelensky said that he did not need a ride, and rejected an offer from the US to leave, in what was seen as a clear sign of his determination.

Air defense systems have blunted Russian missile and drone barrages and discouraged its air force from conducting missions directly over Ukrainian airspace.

“This has become a grinding war of attrition and therefore it’s also a battle of logistics,” Stoltenberg said. “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition and depleting allies’ stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine’s expenditure is well above our rate of production.

One lesson the Russians have learned is to place logistics hubs beyond the reach of strikes, so the timing of GLSDB deliveries and of longer-range systems promised by the UK to Ukraine is all-important – to defeat mass with precision.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies expects the first GLSDBs to arrive this fall, missing Russian and Ukrainian offensives that will determine the war’s future trajectory.

Ukrainian officials are upset by the fact that the never category now includes F-16 fighters and US ATACMS missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometers.

Some Western officials expect the Russian air force – largely missing in action so far – to become a more important component of the Russian battle plan. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke about Russia having a lot of capability left and has a large number of aircraft in its inventory.

“It’s likely more aspirational than realistic,” said a senior US military official last week, with Russian forces moving before they are ready, due to political pressure from the Kremlin.

The only way for the Russians to be effective in this conflict is to waste their time and energy on things that are already there. We’ve seen this in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna and above all Mariupol.

A successful counter-attack by Ukrainian forces, especially with a thrust southwards through Zaporizhzhia towards Melitopol, would raise the stakes for the Kremlin still higher.

But Ukraine will need time to assimilate tanks, fighting vehicles and other hardware to break through Russian lines, which are deeper and denser than they were a few months ago.

The conflict is likely to settle into a violent pattern after a burst of fury this spring, with little ground changing hands amid ferocious attrition and high casualties.

Putin versus Kremlin: Russia’s Crimes against Humanity at the Special Military Operation in Kiev after the November 11, 2016 Ukrainian Provocation

Biden made mincemeat of Putin’s strategy to make it look as if the war was a result of a Ukrainian provocation, revealing the plan before it unfolded. The NATO alliance had been so much derided by Donald Trump that he rallied it.

“Biden in [Kyiv]. Russian journalist Sergey Mardan wrote in a reply to his Telegram channel that it was a sad day for Russia. There are stories of miracle hypersonics that may be left for children. Just like spells about the holy war we are waging with the entire West.”

Russian army veteran and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Igor Girkin meanwhile suggested that Biden could have visited the frontlines in eastern Ukraine and escaped unharmed.

Nothing will happen to him if the grandpa is brought to Bakhmut because he is not good for anything but provocations.

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

Medvedev is known for his provocative statements in an attempt to shore up his nationalist credentials as deputy head of the Security Council.

Participants of what Russia refers to as its “special military operation” will be in attendance but foreign guests or representatives will not be invited, the Kremlin’s spokesperson told reporters Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy opened the conference via video link, speaking to attendees including Chancellor of Germany and President of France. The vice president told the gathering of Russia’s crimes against humanity.

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

The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine during the First Battle of the Crimea Devastating 2022 Ukrainian Civil War II: The Role of Zelensky

The trip on Monday to an active war zone is not just a symbol of American support, it is also a shot in the arm to a population that has been the victims of Russia’s devastating attacks on apartments, hospitals, schools and power stations.

The president of the US is coming to the Ukrainian capital at a time when the government in there is weak, said a Ukrainian service member.

Who would have dreamed that the Ukrainian people would fight back against the United States even after they offered to evacuate Zelensky in 2022, and that the West would support them? The Mariinsky Palace would be the official residence of the Ukrainian President if Biden walked in the streets of Ukranian capital and arrived there.

In the early days of the invasion, Ukrainians found Russian forces brought their dress uniforms with them, seemingly expecting a victory parade.

Biden is 80 and walks with a stiff gait. Biden sounded air raid sirens while in Kyiv, but he has no shortage of courage.

Zelensky said that Biden’s visit brings us closer to victory and it will have repercussions on the battlefield.

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

Biden was criticized by some GOP members for going to Ukraine. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the trip “incredibly insulting,” a sign of an “America Last” policy. And Rep. Scott Perry — at the center of a legal dispute with the Justice Department over his cell phone in the special counsel’s January 6 probe — described as “breathtaking” that Biden would help Ukraine defend its borders and not do the same for America.

The 70th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall: Putin’s visit to Russia, his country’s military legacy, and his failure to remove Ukraine from power

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Putin called for a moment of silence and acknowledged the significant losses that Russia had suffered. The leader promised a range of social support packages for families of fallen soldiers.

In the address, Putin made no mention of his country’s significant setbacks on the battlefield and its early failure to remove the elected government ofUkraine from power.

Putin also said that he was suspending Russia’s participation in a critical arms control treaty, New START, with the U.S., though he stressed that Russia is not withdrawing from the treaty.

New Start became a law in 2010 and was passed in 2011. The number of nuclear warheads Russia and the U.S. can deploy is capped. The two countries have the vast majority of all deployable warheads.

Regular inspections under the agreement, to make sure neither side is cheating, were put on hold in March 2020 during the pandemic. Russia postponed talks to restart their inspections due to the soured relations between Moscow and Washington.

Should the U.S. carry out new tests, Putin instructed his atomic energy agency to test more nuclear weapons.

The Secretary of State said that Russia’s decision wasdeeply unfortunate and irresponsible. The U.S. has previously accused Russia of violating the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the two countries.

The Russian leader again equated Ukraine’s “neo Nazi” government with Nazi Germany, and said Russia was defending itself just as the Soviet Union defended its territory during World War II.

“The Russian economy and system of government have turned out to be much stronger than the West believed,” Putin said in a speech to Russia’s parliament Tuesday.

Those measures are already straining Russia’s finances as it struggles to find replacement customers. The government’s budget deficit was over twenty-five billion dollars in January. Expenditure jumped 59% year-over-year, while revenue plunged 35%. Alexander Novak said that Russia would reduce oil production by about 5% starting in March.

Janis Kluge, an expert on Russia’s economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN that the era of windfall profits is over.

Meanwhile, the ruble has slumped to its weakest level against the US dollar since last April. High inflation is caused by the weakness of the currency. And most businesses say they can’t conceive of growing right now given high levels of economic uncertainty, according to a recent survey by a Russian think tank.

One reason for Russia’s unexpected pluck was its push toward self-sufficiency following Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The government implemented a policy called “Fortress Russia” which boosted domestic food production by forcing banks to build up their reserves. Ash spoke about the degree of resilience that was created by that.

Russia, the world’s second-biggest crude exporter, was able to send barrels to Europe that could have been sent to countries like China and India. The EU imported an average of 3.3 million barrels of Russian crude and oil products per day as of November, while buying 2.3 million barrels per day, according to the IEA.

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

The price of a barrel of Urals crude, Russia’s main blend, fell to an average of $49.50 in January after Europe’s oil embargo — as well as a Group of Seven price cap — took effect. By comparison, the global benchmark stood around $82. That suggests that customers like India and China, seeing a smaller pool of interested buyers, are negotiating greater discounts. Russia’s budget in the coming years is based on a price of more than $70 per barrel.

Finding new buyers for processed oil products, which are also subject to new embargoes and price caps, won’t be easy either. Ben is an energy consultant and he said that India and China prefer to buy crude from each other.

Russian businesses are grappling with the economic crisis: How Russian companies are surviving the next few years? An economic economist’s report from the Stolypin Institute of Economic Growth

It is the director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London who says that any energy resources obtained will be spent on military needs.

Across sectors, firms are struggling to plan for the future. A survey of more than 1,000 Russian businesses by the Stolypin Institute of Economic Growth in November found that almost half plan to maintain production over the next one to two years and aren’t thinking about growth. The group said this contributed to a high risk of “long-term stagnation of the Russian economy.”

In her note to clients on Tuesday, Orlova said that the war will decide whether the economy shrinks or expands in a few years. Shortages of workers tied to military conscription and emigration pose a key risk, she noted.

The sectors that rely on imports are particularly vulnerable. Domestic car makers such as Avtovaz, which manufactures the iconic Ladas, have struggled with shortages of key components and materials.

Last year, Nissan, Volkswagen, Ford and the rest of the automotive industry in Russia halted production and began to sell their local assets. Chinese firms have stepped up their presence, part of a broader trend. Even so, sales of new cars dropped 63% year-over-year in January, according to the Association of European Businesses.

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

The U.S. Response to the Crimes of March 11, 2012: The Story of Joe Biden, the Pentagon, and the Security Forces

“If the population protested against that, we would have said that,” she said. “But of course, these are not normal times.”

Back in Washington, the attacks were a game-changer. President Joe Biden was so outraged by the threat to civilians that he directed the Pentagon to find a way to get Ukraine America’s most advanced missile defense system, the Patriot – a move his administration had previously dismissed.

It’s a process that US officials say has been driven by the Ukrainian military’s evolving capabilities, by its needs on the battlefield and by Russia’s evolving tactics. Diplomatic considerations, including Biden’s overarching goal of maintaining unity in the allied coalition, has also been a hallmark.

The US would follow through on sweeping sanctions, but Biden also showed his intent to give more security assistance to Ukraine than had been provided in the past because of Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. The senior administration official said that Biden made the pledge clear.

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

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

An official with the State Department said that they have never seen the bureaucracy work as fast as it is.

A senior administration official said that the president was enraged by the situation and pushed his team, particularly the Pentagon, to find ways to help defend against the problem.

Biden was worried that the targeted campaign on civilian infrastructure in Russia would leave the air defenses inUkraine too thin, meaning that it would have to use its limited air defense assets to protect its troops.

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

The official said they went around the world and found additional systems that other countries had, which allowed them to get S-300 systems back online.

The U.S and European aid has been better than anticipated. Just last month, Western countries pledged the biggest military assistance package yet, including, for the first time, tanks.

“At every stage of conflict, we have adapted to make sure the Ukrainians had what they needed to be successful – and they have,” a senior administration official said. “We have adapted, they have adapted.”

“The main issue is not actually the will to support the Ukrainians on the Western side. It’s the capacity to do so,” he said. The rate at which the Ukrainians are selling weapons exceeds the production capacity of the West.

“A lot of the ammunition stocks have been depleted in Europe,” Estonian Ministry of Defense Permanent Secretary Kusti Salm told CNN, and Europe’s current industrial capacities are limited in terms of how fast the ammo can be manufactured.

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

The US has urged the Ukrainian government to use a type of fighting, known as a maneuver warfare style that uses rapid, unexpected movements and a combination of different combat arms.

The plan calls for the restoration of Ukraine’s state borders with Russia, the withdrawal of Russian troops, and a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.

The allies are starting to realize that this is going to be a long war, according to the defense secretary. “It’s going to be an extremely costly war and in order to manage this strategy, you need to have an end goal.”

This position is understood by the US according to the senior State Department official. The end goal has to be something that the elected leader can sell to the public, the official said. I think he is going to get there.

A 21st century war in Europe — led by a nuclear power — is pushing the world toward realignment. It has made NATO, the European Union and the U.N. nervous, causing countries to take sides in ways that led to diplomatic shifts. Turkey, despite being a NATO member, has increased trade with Russia since the start of the war, and is opposed to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance.

From Russian to Ukrainian: The story of a newlywed family to a seaside city and the fate of the Ukrainian-Polish border

Will Chase, Alex Leff, Pam Webster and others contributed to the report. The work builds on previous work by other authors, including Alina Selyukh.

I’ll never forget the stories I heard on the Ukrainian-Polish border one year ago: Newlyweds who separated hours after saying their vows so the groom could return to the front. A tax preparer in Boston who quit her job to return to Ukraine with suitcases full of medical supplies. The wife of a border guard often traveled from Lviv to the Polish border in three hours, dropping off women and children who had fled their homes.

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

Governments interfere in the war. They talk of victory because it gives the soldiers hope and motivates them to keep fighting. But in the end, war is death in a muddy foxhole. A frozen field has no strategic value in this fight. It’s a generation grudge that can cause new generation grudges. It takes over one billion dollars to build a 750-mile pipeline across the Baltic Sea. It is one of the largest steel plants in Europe that is unable to make a single metal sheet. It’s a charming seaside city emptied out by bombings and siege.

Security forces attack on civilian civilians in Ukraine: the cynical weaponization of winter by the Kremlin and the human rights watch

A loud noise that sounded like a motorcycle or lawnmower woke up the couple, who were fast asleep, their four-year-old daughter in her bedroom down the hall.

“I will never forget this sound,” said Yana, 31, who recalls leaping out of bed and rushing to the window to look outside. There was it above us, above our heads.

The weapon, later identified by authorities as an Iranian Shahed-136, known as a “kamikaze” or “suicide” drone for the way it explodes on impact, was soon followed by several more. The couple watched in horror as the menacing triangular munitions darted past, careening and dive-bombing towards a thermal power plant just over a mile from their home, which provides electricity and heat for the capital.

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

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

During the winter months of the year in Ukranian, the temperature is generally between 23 and 36 degrees Fahrenheit and will usually plunge to -5 degrees. Life has been brutal for people in the east, many of whom haven’t had electricity in months, because of the mild winter.

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

Energy Export from Ukraine to Europe During the Last Three Years: What has the Russian Army Learned and How Does It Became a Nation in Disagreement?

Doctors have conducted heart surgeries, families have cooked meals on a camping stove in their apartments, students have done homework by flashlight during darkness, and so on. Meanwhile, parents have taken their children to “points of invincibility,” tents equipped with generators, to get a hot cup of tea, charge phones and, according to one photograph that went viral, connect life-saving medical equipment.

“Nobody expected or could have thought that Russia would resort to such barbarism … to turn winter against us and bring us back to some sort of stone age. Serhii said that it could have worked. “But we were able to survive.”

Russia requested that the test be pushed back to February 24. According to Mariiaturian, a Spokesperson for Ukrenergo, very few people know about this. We thought that it was possibly when they would invade because Ukraine would be weak.

It made our system stronger. It made us more resilient to Russia’s attacks,” Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center (EIRC), a research and consulting company in Kyiv, and former adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, told CNN. He said that the emergency synchronization allowed Ukraine to begin trading power with the EU in June and bring in needed revenue while also providing affordable electricity to Europe during a time when prices were high.

It has been difficult to determine the magnitude of the destruction at individual sites, because the Ministry of Energy has restricted the dissemination of information about damages.

How to recover the deficit is a big question mark. If Zaporizhzhia came back online, it would be able to balance the overall need, but there is no sign of that happening anytime soon. Kyiv is also looking into the possibility of importing electricity from the EU, but the costs would be much higher — an expense that the country’s consumers can’t bear.

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

When she took up her position at the UN, she wanted to make sure that she was prepared for winter.

“When I arrived in August, the winterization plans were the first thing I jumped into because my fear was, we’d get to the middle of winter and it would be minus 20, and I would get reports of people freezing to death and this was what kept me up at night,” Brown told CNN in late January after visiting the city of Vovchansk, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where she said it was minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

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

In their apartment in Kyiv, the Lysenkos said they’ve started to adjust to this new normal. A small gas cooker was bought by Serhii and his wife,Yana. They’ve learned the power schedule by heart, so they can plan around when they’ll have electricity and heat. They also had the building’s engineers reconnect the elevator, so that it would work even if power was out in their apartment.

We’ve been waiting to reach our dream for a long time and I have thought about moving, but only for a moment. This apartment, our home,” Lysenko said.

She lives in the suburb of Hostomel which is close to the town of Irpin where she runs an accounting company. She works from a library, which has been converted into an “Invincibility” point, and which provides electricity and internet through a generator.

I couldn’t afford a generator for the office, so we had to go with this. She said that her employees often only have four hours of power before they need to work elsewhere, so she hopes that it will get better.

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

Russian forces launched their attack on Ukraine as film producer Eduard Yevtushenko was getting home from the hospital after being in rehabilitation for a stroke.

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

How Ukraine’s energy attacks affected the lives of a Russian citizen and his wife: A case study in Poltava, Kyiv

For the first days of the war, he and his wife slept in their small bathroom — her in the tub and him sitting on a stool beside her. They use their room as a personal insurance point because it’s the safest place in their house and has everything they need to stay safe.

Yevtishenko said that Russia’s attacks have made people more determined because they made them feel like they were missing something. But it’s not as easy to be self-sufficient in the city, adding that he’s thankful his parents live in a dacha in the Poltava region, where they have everything they need — a wood fire, well and garden.

The couple have stayed in their high-rise apartment in Kyiv’s left bank throughout the war, unable to flee. The stress of relentless strikes, air raid sirens and outages have set his progress back, Yevtushenko said, adding that if not for the stroke he would have joined the armed forces.

“It’s difficult every time, because you never know when and where it’s gonna hit,” Yevtushenko said of the attacks. He and his wife open the windows when the air raid alarm goes off so they don’t get stuck inside. We feel anxious. And one might think we should have gotten used to it. But we still feel nervous.”

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

The most recent head of HRW’s Moscow bureau, Lokshina has been working in exile from Tbilisi, Georgia, since Russia’s Ministry of Justice revoked the organization’s registration in April, along with other foreign rights groups. In November, at the height of Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure, she was carrying out research in the Kharkiv region. People in towns and villages that have been de-occupied have been without electricity for months. She said that they were most devastated because they were unable to get in touch with friends and relatives to find out how they were.

When she returned to Kyiv, Lokshina was struck by how life carried on. She tried to get her nails done in the capital but couldn’t because every salon she tried was booked until 11pm. “Despite the continuing attacks, despite the blackouts, which happen time and time again, despite the unpredictability of it. And the risk factors. She said people made a point of trying to live a normal life.

You do not need much to be happy. A calm sky above our heads and some comforts in the form of a warm house. That’s it,” Yana said. “Our values have changed a lot. We have changed.

The 2002 Ukrainian Town Hall: Arming Russia, Putin’s intentions, and China’s plan to end the war in Ukraine: Questions from the US and Ukraine

Both Sullivan and Samantha Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, took questions at the town hall from Americans and Ukrainians Thursday, on topics ranging from how the US will keep arming Ukraine to an assessment of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions and the role China may play in the conflict.

But Sullivan argued that one year into the conflict, Ukraine has already stopped Russia from accomplishing its main objective of taking over the capital of Kyiv.

Sullivan said there did not seem to be movements in Russia’s nuclear forces that would lead people to believe something has changed.

The $2 billion package includes new funding for contracts, as well as mine-clearing equipment and secure communications equipment.

Sullivan was asked if the US could increase production of weaponry for Ukrainians, which included 155- millimeter artillery shells and a number of missiles.

Sullivan said they were working on increasing production of all of these types of ammunition and that the goal was set by President Biden. This is not something that we can do without the help of the resources that we have.

He said the Biden administration eventually transferred weapons it had initially resisted sending, though theUkrainians have often asked for more than the US is willing to give.

“F-16s are not a question for the short-term fight. Sullivan said President Biden and President Zelensky had a discussion about the long-term defense of Ukraine.

Sullivan was asked to give his first reaction to Beijing’s plan to call for an end to hostilities in Ukraine and to be a mediator between Moscow and Kyiv on Thursday evening.

The same week Beijing released its 12-point plan, US officials have warned that China could be preparing to provide lethal military aid to Russia. Sullivan said Thursday night that such a move has not been ruled out yet.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Belarus’ leader Alexander Lukashenko met in Beijing and declared their nations’ friendship “unbreakable.” Russia’s close ally Lukashenko supported China’s proposal to end the war in Ukraine.

Takeaway lessons from Ukraine: a warning to Ukrainians to be careful in your country and to stay safe in the U.S., according to Sullivan and Power

Some Republican critics of Biden were unhappy with the billions of dollars the US is spending in Ukraine, but Sullivan and Power were not interested in that.

I would give those senators permission to do these things at home. Are you suggesting that American is not capable of being a powerful force of good in the world? Sullivan said.

“I think there’s a pessimism in this argument that these senators are making. President Biden has an optimistic view that we can do it, and that we should, and we are doing it.

There is strong bipartisanship in Washington when it comes to the issues of Ukraine and other countries, as Power pointed out when asked about the similarity between the people of the two countries.

Lera, a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl, asked Power whether she could rely on American to feel safe in her country. Despite the war, Power said the US was committed to making Ukrainians feel safe.

Power said that they had your backs and that they were trying to help you feel safe even though one man had tried to take that away.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/politics/takeaways-cnn-ukraine-war-town-hall/index.html

Magic day: Alexander Kamyshin’s first train ride to Mariupol, Ukraine, during the first few days of the second Ukrainian war

Power acknowledged how long it will take for the country to rebuild when the war is over. She mentioned that there have been at least some estimates of damage to date.

She said that major projects are still going on and that the Biden administration is focused on making sure money dedicated to reconstruction is spent well.

Power said that most of the items will only occur when there is a negotiated peace.

She said that they needed to make sure that the resources were well spent. When you have massive investments that go well beyond what is being provided right now, it’s important that you have safeguards in place so that all investors and donors know that this is money that’s going

On November 11th, two days after Russian troops retreated, Alexander Kamyshin, CEO of the Ukrainian Railways, traveled to the city along with a small team of railway workers. The army arrived to secure the city, and that’s when they reached the central train station. The first train arrived in liberated Kherson six days later.

Kamyshin says that it was a magic day. People were waving their hands while seeing the train. Trust me, it was unforgettable. That’s one of the days to remember forever.”

Kamyshin and Ukraine’s rail workers have had to make countless small, but enormously consequential decisions that weren’t part of the pre-invasion script. They stopped ticketing because anyone who needed to travel could do so immediately. They slowed the trains down so they didn’t cause as much harm in the event of a disaster. They changed the rules on pets so that evacuees could bring them as they fled—Ukraine Railways estimates 120,000 animals have traveled over the past 12 months.

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

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

Ukraine’s First Year of the War: The Legacy of Sergei Zelensky, the Second Vice-President of the Joint High Commission, and the Deputy Secretary of State

Zelensky responded to a question from Christiane Amanpour at a press conference in the capital city. I am certain there will be victory.”

While in Russia the former president and deputy chair of the Security Council of Russia said on Friday that Russia wanted to push the borders of threats to the country even if they are in Poland.

Zelensky used the first anniversary of the war to rally troops and renew calls for international assistance for his country. Before holding a news conference he visited wounded service members and gave awards to soldiers.

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

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

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the international community not to allow Putin’s crimes to become our new normal.

And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he intends to present the idea of imposing new sanctions against Russia during a virtual meeting with G7 leaders and Zelensky.

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

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

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

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

On the day that Catherine the Great attacked KHERSON: Oleksander Atamas, who fought for Ukraine, told CNN on Friday

Olexander Atamas, who was an IT worker before the war and now serves with the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said it was hard to describe his feelings on Friday.

He told CNN that he didn’t feel afraid, but he did not feel confident in his abilities. I was stressed and scared a year ago. There isn’t any fear at the moment.

KHERSON, Ukraine — Tetiana Horobstova, a retired physics teacher born in Russia, did not believe Russians would attack this city founded by Catherine the Great.

Horobstova recalls waking to a beautiful morning and watching the sunrise from her balcony despite warnings from the west. It turned the sky pink and illuminated green fields bursting with the winter harvest.

Ukrainian War Kherson Spies and the Liberation of Kherson’s Birthplace (2014), a Dream Come True for “The Kremlin and the Russian Army”

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

She asked, ‘What are you doing?’ Maybe the Russians will come back?’ ” Pohomii recalled. “But soon she realized that we would make sure that Kherson is Ukraine forever. She left for Russia in order to find a better life. And many others like her left, too.”

Serhiy says he heard about Kherson’s liberation while fighting in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine. His brigade had helped free parts of that region in September. But he says his commanders told him they couldn’t help with the liberation of their hometown.

Many people wanted to help the Ukrainian military. Oksana Pohomii, a city council member and accountant, had warned President Zelenskyy years before that the Kremlin could not be trusted, and he did not take the Russian threat seriously.

“I have been having nightmares that Russians were going to invade Kherson since 2014,” she says, referring to the year Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and the eastern Ukrainian industrial heartland known as Donbas. My nightmare came true.

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

Ukraine’s War-Kherson-Spies: When a Boy with an Amputated Leg Breached to a Song by a Viking

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

“I remember this boy with an amputated leg in the central market,” she says. “He played the guitar and sang the Ukrainian national anthem. It was very brave. We were singing quietly, like bunnies.

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

Some of her peers, a prominent doctor, and a childhood friend are among the suspects.

“I told them everything about the Russian troops, where they live, where they put their vehicles and so on,” Chupikova says.

She says she tried to change her clothes as often as possible, sometimes pretending to go to the grocery store or waiting for the bus. “I’m not saying I’m Agent 007. I just did whatever made sense to me.”

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

The Ukrainian War: How Iryna and Valeriii Chupikova fought for a freedom, and she took her laptop away

Chupikova says she does not look like a threat and that made her hard to track. She has a cut like a soccer mom, with bright blue eyes and a haircut like a soccer mom.

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

She recruited her husband, Valerii Chupikov, to work with her. They used a number of methods to find the coordinates of Russian convoys, including using a signal from the Ukrainian military.

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

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

“There were 11 guys, armed to the teeth, with their faces covered, wearing military fatigues and waving machine guns and pistols,” Horobstova recalls. “Six went upstairs to our apartment and right to her room. She didn’t deny anything. She said, ‘Yes, I’m a Ukrainian patriot, and I hate you.’ They took her away.

The armed men confiscated Iryna’s phones, laptop and memory stick, and Horobstova’s laptop, too, which she says was only filled with lessons for her physics classes.

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

‘This is the flag of our country,’ a Ukrainian partisan tells Diakov, a spy for Ukraine’s security services

“And I kept saying ‘a breeding ground of what?’ ” she says. “I said, ‘This is the flag of our country, where I live and where my daughter lives. You also have a flag of your own. He kept yelling.

Diakov, a shy, bearded apartment manager, had spent months spying on Russian-installed politicians for Ukraine’s security services. He suspects the Russians may have found a way to listen to partisans’ conversations. He says that the Russians got information about cells from torturing captured partisans.

The torture began almost immediately. His hands shook when he recalled a few torture sessions that were especially brutal. They beat him with clubs and pipes after killing him with an electrical device. They inquired about a man in his cell.

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

Oleksandr’s body was barely able to move after two weeks of imprisonment and torture. His Russian captors kicked his left leg so badly that it broke and got infected. He had a request for a doctor.

“I thought they were taking me not to the doctor, but to the forest” to be executed, he says. He heard in prison that it was possible to die that way.

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

Oksana Pohomii: A city councilwoman who was forced to vote for a country that is not a sham

Oksana Pohomii is a city councilwoman who is on lookout for suspected collaborators but she saw a list of people who helped organize the referendum. She says that she was forced to vote, as well as her classmates.

Pohomii laughs when she recalls the referendum results, which showed nearly everyone who voted wanted to join Russia. She says the Russians were aware that it was a sham and that it made Putin look desperate.

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

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

He said he saw that the guys were entering the city after listening to Ukrainian music. We were waiting for this all the time. I kept imagining when the Ukrainian soldiers were going to come back, and all of our work would mean something.

Ukrainian troops had control of Kherson the next morning. Residents poured into the streets and cheered. The man, who can’t walk, cheered from his bed.

Serhiy, the soldier from the local brigade, is back in Kherson. He is the one who runs missions to the left bank of the Dnipro and he’s in touch with people who are traitors.

“I guess they were nervous and afraid that we would seek vengeance on traitors and collaborators,” he says. I didn’t feel good not to be there. But I understand why I wasn’t.”

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

“Kerson Undefeated Bread”: a picnic table for war-kherson spies near the Antonivka Bridge

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

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

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

When Do People Leave Their Homes? Tetiana and Iryna Horobstova, the Spies in Bakhmut, Russia, are Leaving their Families

She says that they never try to force anyone to stay. I know many people who don’t leave their homes. There are people who can handle shelling at first. After people were killed by the shelling, something broke inside them. They stopped drinking and eating. I said “It’s time to leave.” “

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

Many partisans are still missing, presumed to be somewhere in Russian custody. Tetiana Horobstova’s daughter Iryna is among them. Horobstova doesn’t know where her daughter is imprisoned, and she doesn’t know where she’s being held.

“I worry that she is cold, because when they took her away, she was only wearing a summer top,” Horobstova says. “She has no change of underwear, no hygiene pads, nothing.”

Key Trends on the Russia-UKraine War Second Year: Where Are We Going? Where Have We Be Today? What Have We Don’t Know?

Neither of these armies today look like they did at the beginning of the war. Both have taken heavy losses. Both have lost a lot of their best people and best equipment,” said Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the Center for Naval Analyses.

But analyst Dmitri Alperovitch says a key reason the Russians failed is that they didn’t send enough troops to capture and hold large parts of Ukraine.

If they hadn’t had enough troops, but they had plenty of equipment, they wouldn’t have been able to execute a successful campaign.

However, because Russia retreated from a good deal of Ukrainian territory last fall, “the Russian military substantially reduced the amount of territory they have to defend,” he said. That means they have more force density as a military. They have the best lines. They have reserves of their own.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult for the Ukrainians to make quick progress,” he said. “Unless the Russian line just collapses, I think it’s going to be difficult to see the type of lightning offensives that we saw last year.”

“Neither side, frankly, has demonstrated a great proficiency at combined arms. Neither side has air superiority, which is really important if you’re going to take these fortified positions,” Alperovitch said.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1159274649/key-trends-russia-ukraine-war-second-year

Moldova’s crisis with the Soviet Union: a challenge to the Kremlin regime, and the U.S. response to the crisis

“I do think at some point, Western support will start fraying, especially as the political winds change in the U.S.,” Ioffe said, pointing to a group of Republicans in the U.S. House who are questioning U.S. aid.

“You are seeing these reassertions of an isolationist kind of ‘America First’ sentiment of, ‘Why are we in this fight? Why do we send a blank check to Ukraine? We shouldn’t be doing this,'” she added.

The President of the Republic of Chisinau, Maia Sandu, has accused Russia of using civilians as saboteurs to stir up unrest, just like the President of the Ukranian Republic, Volodymyr Zelensky.

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

Earlier this month, Zelensky warned that Ukrainian intelligence intercepted a Russian plan to destabilize an already volatile political situation in Moldova.

Sandu claimed that people dressed as the opposition were going to try to force a change of power in Chisinau. CNN can’t independently verify those claims.

“It’s clear that these threats from Russia and the appetite to escalate the war towards us is very high,” Iulian Groza, Moldova’s former deputy foreign minister and now the director of the Chisinau-based Institute for European Policies and Reforms, told CNN.

“I do see lots of fingerprints of Russian forces, Russian services in Moldova,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told CBS last Sunday. “This is a very weak country, and we all need to help them.”

The conflict with the forces from Moldova ended in a stalemate in 1992. Transnistria was not recognized internationally, even by Russia, but Moldovan forces left it a de facto breakaway state. That deadlock has left the territory and its estimated 500,000 inhabitants trapped in limbo, with Chisinau holding virtually no control over it to this day.

The Crimes of Crimea and Ukraine: The Case for a End of the Cold War? An Analysis by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria

Editor’s Note: Fareed Zakaria hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS, airing Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN. The views that he expresses are of his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

Russia’s performance in the war has been poor, but it is doing better, especially at holding territory. The Russia has been able to stable its economy, which the International Monetary Fund expects will do better than the UK and Germany this year. Russia is trading freely with such economic behemoths as China, and India, as well as neighbors like Turkey and Iran. It can have access to all the capital and goods it lost in the Western boycott due to the fact that it’s outside the advanced technology sector. Russia can swim freely in the huge world economy that does not include the West. The long-term costs of the war and the effects on the population are slow compared to other wars. This kind of isolation and pain rarely changes a dictatorship’s policies – look at North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Is there a way to end it all? On paper, yes. It’s possible to imagine a cease-fire that returns all lands captured since February 2022 to Ukraine. Those taken earlier, like Crimea in 2014, would be subject to international arbitration, including local referendums that would be conducted by international groups, not the Russian government. In addition, Ukraine would get security guarantees from NATO, though they would not apply to those disputed territories. A tradeoff between NATO and EU membership for part of the Donbas could be sold to Ukrainians because they would achieve their goal of becoming part of the West. It could be acceptable to Russia because it could claim to have protected some Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine.

More than 13 million people are displaced, about 8 million of them abroad. The war is taking place on Ukrainian soil, with its cities being bombarded to rubble, its factories razed, its people turned destitute. If this war goes on for many years, it will be interesting to know if we are sparing Ukraine in order to save it.

Also Tuesday, U.S. lawmakers will attend hearings about the Ukraine war in both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House subcommittee on defense appropriations.

What do Ukrainians still want to know about the end of the Russian-Kushushush war? A year in the life of displaced Ukrainians

Some Russians defied the Kremlin’s rule by protesting against the war in several cities, with one independent Russian outlet reporting more than 50 people were detained at different demonstrations where they picketed, laid flowers and wrote messages.

China called for a cease-fire and peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, in a position paper released on the anniversary of the invasion. Putin and China’s top diplomat met in Moscow and pledged to strengthen ties.

We took some time last week to look at what’s happened in our live diary. As part of that coverage we asked you: After a year of unpredictability, what do you still want to know?

Who knows? At least another year is what the majority of people think. Both armies have suffered huge losses, but no knockout blow has been seen in them.

Ukrainians have usually found work quicker than other refugees. That’s because most displaced Ukrainians have at least finished secondary education, and many have college and graduate degrees.

When Will Ukraine War End: When Will the U.S. Suggest That Russia Doesn’t Wanna Fail to Reclaim Their Popularity?

“We want peace around the world,” 70-year-old Kyiv resident Nina Albul recently told my colleague Hanna Palamarenko, “but we also want the world to know that it’s okay for enslaved people to fight back.”

But the Russian goal of “denazification” as a stated offensive goal has not faded into the background. The script was changed from being the aggressor to the victim by the Kremlin.

Even though both Soviet republics ostensibly managed their own foreign policies, Russia was represented at the United Nations as the USSR, and all issues directed at Russia went through the USSR. Conversely, Soviet Ukraine had its own U.N. ambassador while also being represented by — and therefore rubber stamping — decisions made by the Soviet Union’s delegation.

In Russia, “Independence Day” is a celebration of the fall of the Soviet Union, while inUkraine it’s a celebration of the emergence of a new state with roots in the Russian Empire.

India and China are the biggest Importers of Russian oil, and it would be very difficult to sanction over a third of the world’s population.

There is a chance that the US could sanction countries that have economic ties with Russia. The Helms–Burton Act extends U.S. sanctions on Cuba toward any foreign company that does business with it. Several countries accused the U.S. of violating their sovereignty after President Bill Clinton signed that law.

There wasn’t much political will for third countries to sanction Cuba at the time. It’s possible today’s situation with Russia might make such a policy more politically palatable if the U.S. attempted it again, though I can’t find any serious proposal in the government to do just that.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/27/1159645125/when-will-ukraine-russia-war-end

The future of air war: from U.S. and Russian enlargement to India’s epoch of reunification

The G7 could have a price cap that’s lower than in the past, but this would eliminate profits from Western oil suppliers, who have traditionally been higher in production costs than Russia.

I wrote about this recently, noting that we’re seeing air battles daily, but pilots are rarely involved. It will be the future of air warfare.

Unlikely. It is for either side’s benefit. NATO doesn’t want a full-scale war in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows that he would lose a conflict with the Americans.

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

The top U.S. and Russian government diplomats met for the first time since the invasion began, in a brief walk and talk alongside meetings of the Group of 20 nations’ foreign ministers in India.

After her party won the election on Sunday, Kallas is set to stay in her post as Prime Minister.