Forcible Annexation of Ukrainian Territories by Russia: Putin, Xi, and the Second Kremlin Palace Address

The Russian parliament will approve the annexation of four Ukrainian territories, widely condemned as illegal. On Monday, the lower house unanimously approved it. The upper house is going to pass it on Tuesday.

The annexations serve the interests of the Kremlin. Moscow will defend its own territory from attacks by Ukraine, rather than the other way around, according to Mr. Putin and his top aides.

Despite reports from the ground suggesting that voting was essentially held at will, Putin tried to portray the referendums as reflecting the will of millions of people.

“I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me. Everyone is asked to remember. The people living in Luhansk are now our citizens. During the ceremony Friday, the Russian president said that it would be forever.

The Russian president felt that the annexation would be an attempt to correct a mistake made after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Putin does not want to follow the same path as the Soviets or the Romanovs. He had always wanted to avoid the use of 300,000 additional troops but recently decided to use them.

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 at the St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, the place where he declared in March of last year that Russia would take over the peninsula of Ukranian origin.

Hundreds of Russian members of Parliament and regional governors sat in the audience for Mr. Putin’s speech, as well as many of his cabinet ministers and the four Russian-imposed leaders of the occupied Ukrainian regions.

Back then, on the opening day of the Winter Olympics, Putin and Xi declared the two countries had a friendship with “no limits,” with no “forbidden areas of cooperation.” After months of denying that they were planning to invade Ukraine, Russian troops crossed the border of the country and started their assault on its new democracy.

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.

The United States has been the only country to use nuclear weapons in war, he said. “They created a precedent,” Mr. Putin said in an aside.

“The enemy keeps resorting to its missile terror against the peaceful citizens of Ukraine,” Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Telegram, adding that the Russians had launched air and sea-based cruise missiles, as well as anti-aircraft guided missiles such as the S-300 at energy infrastructure facilities. The 11 Iranian Shahed drones were shot down by the Ukrainian military.

The Kremlin: What has the People Done on Ukraine, and what we’ve done on the ground in Ukraine, or What have We Don’t?

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

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

Russia is considered the primary goal of Mr. Putin and cementing the hold over the two eastern regions could allow him to make a claim at a time when his forces have been criticized for not doing enough by the hawks in Russia.

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.

His spokesman said that Mr. Putin will deliver a speech. He is very likely to downplay his military’s struggles. He will probably ignore worldwide denunciations of discredited referendums held in occupied Ukraine on joining Russia, where some were made to vote at gunpoint.

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

Hill says that Putin wants his negotiations to be with Biden and allies, not Ukrainians, and he wants to sue for peace. And that means recognizing what we have done on the ground in Ukraine.”

There was a concert and rally planned for the evening and banners proclaiming “Russia and the newly integrated territories are together forever” in front of the Kremlin.

The move caps a week that saw the Kremlin choreograph referendums in Russian-occupied territories that purportedly delivered overwhelming majorities in favor of joining Russia.

“The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia’s claims on Ukraine sovereign territory,” Biden said. The true results of this so-called referenda were manufactured in Moscow.

The break up of the Soviet Union left Russian speakers separated from one another, and Putin said that the decision was a historical justice.

Western officials have pointed to the timing as evidence of Kremlin desperation to solidify Russian gains before their lines collapse further. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Moscow of seeking to mobilize Ukrainians in annexed areas for the military campaign as well.

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. The space for political dissent in Russia has fallen due to the control of the legislature by Putin and his allies.

As the Russian government works to increase its military strength, a counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army has taken place in the south and northeast of the country.

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

Kurt Volker, who was US ambassador to NATO and US special representative to Ukraine under former President Donald Trump, believes Putin maybe gearing up for peace. He should be trying to brandish the nuclear weapons, make all kinds of threats to Europe, and then say okay, so we can negotiate a settlement. Let me keep the things I’ve already taken.

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

Russia has been less active in its response to the crossing of these red lines than it might have been, according to Western analysts.

Kortunov says he doesn’t know what goes on in the Kremlin but that he understands the public mood over the huge costs and loss of life in the war. “Many people would start asking questions, why did we get into this mess? Why, you know, we lost so many people.”

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

In response to Putin’s speech, President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that any nuclear weapon use would result in “catastrophic consequences” for Russia, which he had “spelled out” in private communications with Moscow.

The end of the Russian war to the Ukrainians: A case study of Putin’s 2019 trip to Paris, France, and his prospects for a demonstration strike

Both Danish and Swedish seismologists recorded explosive shockwaves from close to the seabed: the first, at around 2 a.m. local time, hitting 2.3 magnitude, then again, at around 7 p.m., registering 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.

Russia denies responsibility and says it has launched its own investigation. John Brennan was the CIA chief when he said that Russia had the ability to lay bombs on those pipes, because they were only 200 feet away from the water.

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

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.

The bottom line is that this is all a result of Putin losing the war to the Ukrainians, so he is trying to adapt to the situation and get every advantage, according to Hill.

There was something happening in 2019. The President traveled to Paris to negotiate a peace deal with Putin. Zelensky gave few concessions despite the doubts of many.

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

According to Alperovitch, the chances of Putin using a nuclear weapon are still low. But it can’t be dismissed. If he uses it, he’s likely to do a demonstration strike in a remote area in hopes of getting the West to come to the negotiating table.

Ukraine’s liberation and defeat in Donetsk: the legacy of a war on the Russian-West relations in the cold Cold War

In addition to Ukraine’s successes in the south, Kyiv’s forces made gains in Luhansk in the east with forces approaching the region from several directions, and over the weekend liberated the strategic city of Lyman, a key operational hub in Donetsk which the Russian army had used to funnel troops and supplies to the west and south.

Two powerful supporters of Putin called for harsher fighting methods to be used because they thought that the Kremlin was being unfair by saying that the illegal area lies in Russian forever.

The losses have caused an unusual amount of criticism from pro- Russian propagandists. One prominent Russian pro-government tabloid, Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Russian forces had to retreat in the strategically important city of Lyman because they lacked manpower and communicated poorly, and commanding officers there made “mistakes.”

The timing wasn’t good. Just as Putin declared that the Donetsk region had been annexed by Russia, Lyman was lost.

The soldiers said on the Sunday broadcast that they were forced to leave because they were fighting with NATO soldiers.

Serhiy Hrabskiy, a retired colonel and commentator on the war for Ukrainian news media, said that Ukraine’s military has not hesitated to hit airfields, fuel tanks and ammunition depots that are legitimate military targets. Targeting sites in Crimea and cross-border artillery duels have become routine as the war has moved closer to Russia and the occupied peninsula.

The broadcast was supposed to convince Russians that the hardship they would have to suffer as a result of the war were not their fault, because the West is bent on destroying Russia at all costs.

The idea that Russia is fighting a broader campaign was repeated in an interview with Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right thinker whose daughter, also a prominent nationalist commentator, was killed by a car bomb in August.

“You could say that the majority of Russian people, although they are weary of the conflict, they still see this as an existential struggle between Russia and the West in which Ukraine is being played for a pawn,” he tells NPR’s Morning Edition.

The European and Russian leaders have called for western countries to be held accountable for the damage done to the oil and gas conduit, after several underwater explosions last month.

He said that the West had accused them of blowing up the gas pipeline. It is necessary that we understand the war on both sides and how far along it is. 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 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.

At home, Putin is also facing growing criticism from Russians on both the left and the right, who are taking considerable risks given the draconian penalties they can face for speaking out against his “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Russia is pouring the new conscripts across the whole of the front line in an attempt to halt recent Ukrainian advances while rebuilding ground forces decimated during eight months of war. After a chaotic start to September, military analysts expected Russian men to go to front line areas in the fall with high casualties. The Russian forces are attacking in the east and defending in the south.

A recent survey found that 32% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents believe that the United States is giving too much support to the Ukrainians. That’s an increase from only 9% in March.

For that reason, Ukraine received massive support from the West, led by the United States. NATO was rejuvenated due to the war in Ukrainian, with many countries that had been neutral applying for membership. It also helped reaffirm the interest of many in eastern European states – former Soviet satellites – of orienting their future toward Europe and the West.

You can read past recaps here. You can find a lot of NPR’s coverage here. NPR’s State of Ukrainepodcast can be heard for updates throughout the day.

Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, told CNN that he believes that Ukraine is making progress in Kherson due to weapons supplied by Washington.

The battlefield dynamics are being changed by a kind of change. They did well in the Kharkiv area, so they moved to take advantage of the opportunities. The fight in the – the Kherson region’s going a bit slower, but they’re making progress.”

The Russian-Israeli-Ukranian War, the Ukranian-Israel War and the War on Air Defense: Insights From a U.K. General Assembly Report

The contests failed to meet international standards of free and fair elections and were panned as a farce. According to reports from the ground, voting was either held at gunpoint or essentially at it’s inception.

The United Nations General Assembly roundly condemned Russia’s move to illegally annex four regions of Ukraine. In the Oct. 13 session, four countries voted alongside Russia, but 143 voted in favor of Ukraine’s resolution, while 35 abstained.

On Friday, EU member states summoned Russian ambassadors in a coordinated manner to condemn the actions of the Russian soldiers and demand that they cease their illegal actions into Ukranian territory.

Analysts inside and outside the government doubt that such arms, which might be thrown in the back of a truck, are helpful to Mr. Putin in advance of his objectives.

Instead, it is in protecting the civilian population from Russia’s drone and missile campaign against critical civilian infrastructure – a campaign designed to end Ukrainian resistance by making the country uninhabitable.

There’s now a race between the Ukrainians’ ability to acquire new air defense hardware, train on it and deploy it – and the Russians’ ability to inflict massive damage on Ukrainian infrastructure (civilian and military) with their deep stocks of missiles, not all of which are precision weapons.

Against Fascism, Violence, and the Death of Mahsa Amini: A Global Perspective on the March of Human Rights

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN and a columnist for The Washington Post. She has her own views in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

On Sunday, almost by accident, two groups of demonstrators came together in London. One was waving Iranian flags while the other waved Ukrainian flags. They cheered each other and said, “All together we will win.”

The moral high ground held by the Ukrainian and Iranian people inspired support for their struggle for democracy and human rights around the world. In this era of social media, their anthems against fascism have gone viral, as has the brutality of their foes.

The bravery shown by David v. Goliath is almost unimaginable to the rest of us, and it is inspiring bravery in places like Afghanistan.

In Iran, the spark was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last month. She died in the custody of morality police who had arrested her for violating the rules that required 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.

The peaceful uprising is not about putting on the hijab but about cutting the shackles of oppression and men have joined them even as the regime kills more and more protesters.

Syria’s enemy, Zelensky, and the Russian embassy in the Middle East: What have we learned in the last seven months?

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.

As the war is entering a new year, Zelensky comes up with a new dilemma. How to balance demands from within and out for a ceasefire, and expectations of a Russian pullout from pre- 2014, in order to find a solution.

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. Evidence of atrocities and torture have been left behind by Russian armies, similar to that of the Khmer Rouge.

The repressive regimes of Moscow and Tehran have been isolated, pariahs, and supported most of the time by autocrats.

CNN reported that Iran will soon send more powerful weapons to Russia for the fight against the rebels in eastern Ukraine.

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

Multiple Putin critics have suffered mysterious deaths. Many of them have fallen. According to Freedom House and other advocacy groups, both Iran and Russia are leading practitioners of all sorts of repressive tactics.

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. The countries would benefit heavily from it, they are heavily influenced by Tehran. Iran has a constitution that calls for spreading its revolution.

For the rest of the world, it’s a time of uncertainty and expectation. Seven months ago, some viewed Putin as something of a genius. That myth has turned to dust. The man who helped suppress uprisings and entered wars now seems to be in trouble.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he expects the situation to stabilize in four war-torn regions of Ukraine after signing legislation to annex them on Wednesday, despite the fact that Russia’s military does not fully control those areas.

Pro-Kremlin pundits delivered rare dispatches on the growing setbacks suffered by Moscow troops on the ground while state television hailed Putin’s inking of the annexation process.

Russian forces appear to be buckling under growing pressure as Ukraine continues to regain territory in the south, where Russian soldiers have been forced to retreat from previously-held settlements as Kyiv progresses with its counteroffensive towards the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.

Prime Minister Petro Kots welcomed the Ukrain-Russia war and demanded a further liberation of the Ukrainian territories in Energoatom

In a bid to celebrate the news, Putin took the opportunity in a televised meeting for Teachers’ Day to congratulate educators from “all 89 regions of Russia,” a number that includes the newly annexed territories.

Our homes, our future and our work are all with Ukraine. We will continue to work in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, in the Ukrainian energy system, in Energoatom. Don’t let yourself beguine about it! The plant’s employees were addressed by Petro Kotin in a video.

The war has gone through several phases, with one side having an advantage, and the other side having to contend with it. 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.

After praising the military for their fast and powerful advances, the Ukrainian President celebrated that “dozens of settlements have already been liberated” this week.

He claimed that many people had been reclaimed in the Kherson region.

Zelensky on Wednesday assembled his top military and security staff to consider plans for “further liberation of Ukrainian territories,” according to the readout of the meeting from the President’s office.

The Russian Federation’s borders with the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions are referred to as the territory on the day of its adoption in the Russian Federation, according to the Kremlin.

“The Russian army is conducting maneuvers,” Kirill Stremousov told Russian state news RIA Novosti. “The regrouping of the front in the current conditions allows us to gather strength and strike.”

The Russian Defense Ministry used the phrase “regrouping” to describe the retreat of the Russian military from Izium in the Kharkiv region in response to the Ukrainian offensive.

A leading Russian war correspondent said on state TV Tuesday that 17 settlements had been lost in the Kherson region, and that they were blamed on “fat” US weapons deliveries and intelligence gathered via satellite.

“The Russian troops do not have enough manpower to stop the enemy attacks,” Kots said in a video. “The recent Russian losses are directly connected to that. It is very difficult on the front line at the moment.

Russia will help evacuate residents from Kherson to other areas, as Ukraine gains on the area. The announcement came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest sign that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

Comment on The Russian Frontline Crisis at the end of September 13th” by Evgeniy Poddubnyy

“They don’t have problems with the intelligence data or high-precision weapons which they are constantly using. We are just waiting for our reserves to become fighting fit and join the battle.”

Meanwhile, state media reporter Evgeniy Poddubnyy, a correspondent for Russia 24, said Tuesday that “we’re going through the hardest time on the frontline” and that “for the time being it will become even harder.”

“This doesn’t mean that we’ve collapsed like a house of cards. These mistakes aren’t huge strategic failures. We are still learning. I know this is hard to hear in our eighth month of the special operation. But we are reporters. We’re waiting for reinforcements.

He said it was like getting thumped on your melon. We’ve suffered losses. It is war. These kinds of things happen in war. [Reinforcements] are coming, along with their equipment. I don’t lie or engage in propaganda. I’m just a regular reporter who is describing what is happening.”

On State TV, he again admitted that the Russian forces had suffered heavy losses on the 13th of September. At the start of the interview, he said that he only tell the truth on Tuesdays and for other days, he makes everything up.

The Russian Arms Trade with Ukraine: A Response to Mr. Lukashenko, a U.S. Senator in St. Petersburg, Ukraine

Mr Zlatev and his local business partner had never dealt with foreign arms. The New York Times has obtained contract documents and other records which show that the deal relied on layers of middleman and transit across seven countries. And it exists in a legal gray area, designed to skirt the arms-export rules of other countries.

They recently wrote a letter to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. They have a plan to sell American, Bulgaria and Bosnian arms to Ukraine.

Indeed, while the US has proffered more than $60 billion in aid since Biden took office, when Congress authorized $40 billion for Ukraine last May, only Republicans voted against the latest aid package.

During his visit to St. Petersburg, Belarusian state media reported that Mr. Lukashenko had “stressed the need to take measures in case of the deployment of nuclear weapons in Poland,” a remark that some analysts interpreted as preparing the ground for the possible deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, something that he has long said would never happen.

STAVKY, Ukraine — Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. Inside there was a sniper rifle, rocket propelled grenades, helmets and belongings. The men were gone.

The commander said they dropped everything from personal care to helmets. They were panicking, but I think it was a special unit. They move because the road was bad and it was raining very hard.

The situation was discussed at the front. He said he had told his U.S. colleague, that they were beating back the attacks.

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. Bergen wrote The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World. The views expressed are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The Russian War in Ukraine and its Implications for the Russo-Japanese Revolution and for the Future of the Cold Cold War

His revisionist account states that the war in Ukraine has historically been part of Russia even though the country gained independence from the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they planned to install a puppet government and get out of the country as soon as it was feasible, as explained in a recent, authoritative book about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, “Afghan Crucible” by historian Elisabeth Leake.

The US was reluctant to increase support for Afghanistan’s resistance due to fear of a larger conflict with the Soviet Union. The US forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later in 1986 after giving them anti-aircraft missiles that ended their air superiority.

The US and other countries have been steadily expanding the range and raising the technical level of the weapons they give to the Ukranian army. “This does not contribute to a speedy settlement of the situation, on the contrary.”

Patriot air defense systems could intercept a large number of Russia’s missiles and attack drones – although Ukraine already claims a high success rate; on Monday, for example, it said 30 out of 35 missiles had been stopped. The technology NATO has is being used to helpUkraine win the war, or at least hold Russia back.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was speeded by the withdrawal of soviet forces from Afghanistan two years earlier.

Looking further back into the history books, he must also know that the Russian loss in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy. Czar Nicholas II was responsible for starting the Russian Revolution in 1917. Subsequently, much of the Romanov family was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.

Two days before Putin invaded eastern Ukraine, Donald Trump publicly said that he was a genius and smart for moving his troops to the region.

He said that the Russian city of Valuyki is under constant fire. All sorts of people from governors, Telegram channels, and our war correspondents teach us about this. But no one else. The reports from the Ministry of Defense are the same. They say they killed Nazis and destroyed 300 rockets. But people know. Our people are not stupid. But they don’t want to tell the whole truth. The loss of credibility is caused by this.

If Russia is allowed to win it will mark a new era of instability, with less freedom, less peace and less prosperity for the world.

Sergei Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, and Sergei Kadyrov, the former colonel-general of the Russian army, spoke of his decision to leave Russia

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

The ministry of defense was not forthcoming about Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russia, complained Kartapolov.

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

“There is no need to somehow cast a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of some, I do not say traitors, but incompetent commanders, who did not bother, and were not accountable, for the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. “Indeed, many say that the Minister of Defense [Sergei Shoigu], who allowed this situation to happen, could, as an officer, shoot himself. The word officer is unfamiliar to many.

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

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

The Russian information space has deviated significantly from the narratives preferred by the Russian ministry ofdefense that things are generally under control, according to an analysis.

“I personally ​have know​n Sergei very well for almost 15 years. I can definitely say that he is a real general and warrior, experienced, headstrong and foresighted commander, who always takes patriotism, honor and respect above all, and that is what Kadyrov said on social media after news of his appointment last Saturday. He said that the united army group was in safe hands.

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

For weeks now, Mr. Biden’s aides have been debating whether there might be an analogous understanding, a way for the wounded Russian leader to find an out. They have no information, even though it is possible that secrecy is the key to avoiding the situation in which Mr. Putin reaches for his nuclear weapons. The White House press secretary said on Friday that she did not see signs of the Russians preparing to use nuclear weapons.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is what caused Mr. Biden’s logic in his comments at the New York fund-raiser. In that famous case — the closest the world came to a full nuclear exchange, 60 years ago this month — President John F. Kennedy struck a secret bargain with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, to remove American missiles from Turkey.

A disaster that could have killed tens of millions of Americans and tens of thousands of Soviet citizens was averted by that deal, which came to light only later.

An explosion on a bridge linking Russia and Crimea is a critical test for the Kremlin to survive in a post-World War II crisis

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.

Overnight nearly 40 Russian rockets hit Nikopol, on the Dnipro River, damaging at least 10 homes, several apartment blocks and other infrastructure, according to the head of the regional military administration, Valentyn Reznichenko. He said a man was killed and another wounded by shelling on Friday evening.

The result in just one small village was destruction, with homes destroyed to the ground, a burned out school, and a terrible smell from the dead chickens.

All fell victim last month to the worst violence to hit the area since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russia-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to halt the mayhem.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold an operational meeting of his Security Council on Monday just two days after a big explosion on a bridge linking Crimea and Russia.

The meeting has not been released, but it is at a critical moment for the Kremlin, which will have to make a series of difficult decisions if it wants to survive in the 21st century.

Some road traffic and train traffic has resumed on the estimated $3.7 billion bridge. On Saturday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said repair works on the bridge would be carried out around the clock, with a damage survey to be completed within a day and divers scheduled to check all the supports of the bridge.

The first passenger services crossed the bridge on Saturday to travel from the peninsula of Crimean to the southern part of Russia.

The deputy Prime Minister of Russia said on Sunday that car traffic on the bridge had resumed in two lanes. “Traffic has already been launched along two lanes on the Crimean bridge,” he wrote in a Telegram post, adding that earlier, one lane was being used for cars traveling in alternate directions, slowing down traffic. Heavy trucks, vans and buses have taken to the ferry since the blast.

After the explosion that ripped through the section of the Kerch bridge linking Russia to Crimea, the Kremlin intensified attacks onUkraine’s civilian infrastructure, stepping up its bombing of apartment buildings, power grid and water systems.

Peskov was asked by RIA whether the attack on the bridge could trigger an activation of Russia’s nuclear doctrine because it was “aimed at destroying critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation.”

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Chief Kyrylyo Budanov: The Status of the Special Operation in an Annexed Crimea

The location of the Ukrainian troops outside the Luhansk village is less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of the key post of Svatove.

Ukraine’s long-range strikes have coincided with a depletion of Russian cruise and tactical ballistic missiles. After repeated forays on electrical power plans, substations and other infrastructure targets through the fall and early winter, Russia has enough missiles for two or three more waves of strikes on Ukraine’s electrical grid, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, told the Ukrainian news outlet Liga.net in an interview published Monday.

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

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

A total of eleven crucial infrastructure facilities in eight regions were damaged by the storm, according to Ukraine’s Prime Minister.

There is a significant deficit in the nation’s power system, which has been caused by months of strikes. Many households in the country are without electricity while the authorities try to balance the national power grid.

Sergey Aksyonov, the man appointed by the Russians to be the head of annexed Crimea, said Monday that Russia’s approach to what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine has changed.

If the actions to destroy the infrastructure of the enemy were taken every day, we would have finished the operation in May and the Kyiv regime would have been defeated, he said.

All over Ukraine, the air raid sirens will not stop. Rockets continue to strike. There are dead and wounded. Do not leave your shelters. Stay safe and take care of your families. Let’s hang in there and be strong,” Zelensky added.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell Fontelles doubled down on their support for Kyiv, announcing on his verified account that additional military support from the EU is on its way.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that Putin is causing harm to the innocent civilians in other cities. The Netherlands condemns the acts. Putin does not seem to understand that the will of the Ukrainian people is unbreakable.”

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

CNN News: Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant shut down after a weekend missile attack on the city of Odesa in the aftermath of the Kerch bridge explosion

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.

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

Fears of retaliation by the Russians were always present even after the huge explosion on the Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend.

The Moscow-appointed mayor of the city posted on Telegram that theUkrainians imposed a strike on the center of the city at 7 a.m.

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

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 Monday, a defiant President Volodymyr Zelensky said it appeared many of the 100 or so 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; some provinces are without power, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.

The people of the northeastern city of Kharkiv stocked up with canned food, gas and drinking water as the city saw more bombardments than the eastern city of Kyiv. They were also enjoying themselves at the Typsy Cherry. “The mood was cheerful,” its owner, Vladyslav Pyvovar, told The Times. “People drank, had fun and wondered when the electricity will resume.” (Power came back hours later.)

Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukrainian 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 of the regions of Ukraine were starting to come back to life, with many of the asylum seekers back home, the attacks may cause another blow to business confidence.

The explosion of Putin’s bridge between Beijing and Beijing, and an act of self-desperation and selfish desperation for the future

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. Putin opened the bridge by driving a truck across it. The world’s longest sea crossing bridge was connected to Macau and Hong Kong by year’s end after Beijing reclaimed the Portuguese and British territories. The road bridge opened after two years of delays.

The response to the explosion was hilarious, with jokes going around on social media like a Christmas tree. Many people shared their joy via text message.

Putin was consumed by self-interest and never sat down. He unleashed more death and destruction because he knows how to do that with the force a former KGB operative would use.

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.

How Russian troops and civilians will react to a Ukrainian invasion of February 22-24, and what next steps the US and its allies will take to respond

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, many predicted a short war. Eight months on, each new twist points toward escalation and the notion this conflict still has a long way to go. TheUkrainians are determined to get back control of their country. Now, this is the real eye opener for me,” said retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. He said that the current offensive may allow the Ukrainians to drive out the Russian troops.

It is important that Washington and other allies use telephone diplomacy to urge China and India to resist the urge to use weapons that are even more deadly.

Against a man who probes for weakness and tends to exploit divisions, the most important thing for the West right now is to show unity and resolve. It is important that Western governments realize that sanctions have little if any impact on Putin’s actions. They need to arm and provide training for Ukrainians even if they have to send experts closer to the battlefield to speed up integration of high technology weapons.

Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. The need to protect heating systems is important this winter.

Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board for the West’s continued isolation of 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.

But the targets on Monday also had little military value and, if anything, served to reflect Putin’s need to find new targets because of his inability to inflict defeats on Ukraine on the battlefield.

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

The attacks on civilians, which killed at least 14 people, also drove new attention to what next steps the US and its allies must take to respond, after already sending billions of dollars of arms and kits to Ukraine in an effective proxy war with Moscow.

The Crisis in Ukraine: An Analysis by Joe Biden, John Kirby, Vlasov, Olena Gnes, and Marcia Bolduan

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 said that the US was in constant touch with the government in Kyiv every day and that they looked favorably on Ukraine’s requests. “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’s strategy was actually shifting from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to wreak devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, though he suggested that it was a trend that had already been in the works.

France’s president said the rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the beginning of another pivot in the conflict.

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

Zhovkva said that if modern equipment were in place, we could likely raise the number of downed drones and missiles.

Any prolonged campaign by Putin against civilians would be aimed at breaking Ukrainian morale and possibly unleashing a new flood of refugees into Western Europe that might open divisions among NATO allies that are supporting Ukraine.

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

Olena Gnes, who is documenting the war on her video website, told CNN host Anderson Cooper that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians.

She said that he was still powerful and that he was scaring people in other countries by making them panic and showing what fireworks we could arrange.

Ukraine’s War with Russia: A Critique of Putin’s Prevaintness in the Soviet Union and Implications for the Security of the Russian Military Machine

Russia used Belarusian territory as a staging ground for its unsuccessful attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in the weeks before February’s invasion. Moscow still has a number of troops in Belarus, from which it launches missiles and bombing raids, but their number is expected to increase.

Mr. Lukashenko told senior military and security officials in Minsk that this will be more than a thousand troops.

The state news agency Belta reported that Mr. Lukashenko said work had begun on creating a joint regional group of troops to counter any aggression against the country by NATO and Ukraine.

The Belarusian strongman, who has so far resisted pressure from Moscow to send in his own troops, accused Ukraine, which shares a long border with Belarus, of planning attacks from the south, without citing evidence.

Any further involvement in the war by the government could have a psychological impact on the populace, according to Puri. “Everyone’s mind in Ukraine and in the West has been oriented towards fighting one army,” he said. The war would play into Putin’s narrative, that it is about reunifying the lands of ancient Rus states.

Andrei Sannikov, who served as deputy foreign minister under Mr. Lukashenko during his early period in power but fled into exile after being jailed, said Mr. Lukashenko was “running scared,” caught between pressure from Russia to help its demoralized forces in Ukraine and the knowledge that sending in Belarusian troops would be hugely unpopular, even among his loyalists.

On Monday, state television broadcasted the suffering and flaunted it. There was a picture of smoke and carnage in the center of Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long range forecast for months of freezing temperatures there.

The UK’s spy chief said on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground knew their supplies were running out.

“We can see that desperation at many levels inside Russian society and the Russian military machine”, Fleming said when asked if the Kremlin is desperate.

The violent strikes follow Putin’s announcement of immediate military escalation in September, in which he threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation.

“I think any talk of nuclear weapons is very dangerous and we need to be very careful about how we’re talking about that,” Fleming said when asked about Putin’s nuclear threats.

“I would hope that we would see indicators if they started to go down that path. If they were to consider it, that would be a disaster in the way people have talked about it.

Fleming is going to say in a speech later Tuesday that Russians are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- are 888-609-

“With little effective internal challenge, his decision-making has proved flawed. It’s a high stakes strategy that is leading to strategic errors in judgement. Their gains are being reversed,” Fleming will say in an address at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) annual security lecture in London.

“They know their access to modern technologies and external influences will be drastically restricted. And they are feeling the extent of the dreadful human cost of his war of choice,” he will say.

What will the Russian Air Force Command do if Ukraine were to lose its Air Defenses during the Ukrainian War? The Case of Russian-Air Force Forces

In its efforts to turn the tide of the war, the Russian military has taken a new tactic: trying to overwhelm the Ukrainian air defences with dozens of missiles and drones from multiple directions.

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

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

Moscow had more than half of its pre-war inventory of missiles, but the Pentagon thought that Russia was the least likely to use them during the war.

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.

The Russians have also been adapting the S-300 – normally an air defense missile – as an offensive weapon, with some effect. They are difficult to intercept because of their speed, and they have wreaked devastation in other places. But they aren’t accurate.

Russian President Putin made rare public comments about the Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians have been using limited air defenses over the course of the past nine months, mainly BUK and S-300 systems. The Air Force Command’s spokesman said Tuesday that these systems may be lost in combat.

Last month, the US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, Sasha Baker, said the US had seen “some evidence already” that the Iranian drones “have already experienced numerous failures.”

missiles for their existing systems as well as a transition to western-origin layered air defense system were two of the things included on the Ukrainian wish-list.

According to him, the system will not control all the airspace over Ukranian, but it is intended to control priority targets that need to be protected. It is a mix of short-range low altitude systems, medium-range medium altitude systems, and long-range and high altitude systems.

Western systems are beginning to trickle in. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Tuesday that a “new era of air defense has begun” with the arrival of the first IRIS-T from Germany, and two units of the US National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAM) expected soon.

This is just the beginning. And we need more,” Reznikov said Wednesday before tweeting as he met with Ukraine’s donors at the Brussels meeting:” Item #1 on today’s agenda is strengthening (Ukraine’s) air defense. I feel optimistic.

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

Ukranian Defense Minister Vlasovskyi tells international media that “Poland gave us a boost” for reconstruction after the September 11 bombing

The senior military commander of the Ukranian army, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, praised Poland on Tuesday for training the air defense battalion that had destroyed nine of the Shaheeds.

He said Poland gave the Ukranians “systems” to destroy drones. There were reports last month about the Polish government buying Israeli equipment and transferring it to Ukraine, despite Israel’s policy of not selling advanced defensive technology to Kyiv.

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

The images captured hundreds of cargo trucks backed up and waiting to cross from Crimea into Russia by ferry, some five days after the bombing. A large line of trucks at the airport and a backups at the port are depicted in the images captured by Maxar Technologies.

The long lines for the ferry crossing have been made worse by the security checkpoint set up after the bridge explosion according to a senior Russia analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The trajectory of the Ukrainian war in recent months varies: economic and political implications for the US, Russian, and Ukrainian governments and the prospects for Russia and the EU

Despite the fact that the war has favored Ukraine recently, American and Ukrainian officials say the fighting is likely to last for months more. And a number of variables could become particularly pertinent in shifting the trajectory of the conflict: more difficult fighting conditions in December, the extent to which President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to escalate the fight, whether Europe’s unity can be maintained this winter as energy prices soar and the potentially changing political environment in the United States that could result in a decrease of military support to Ukraine.

Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. Keir Giles, a senior consultant at the Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme, explained that the war is now the third, fourth, or fifth one they have been observing.

Giles said that the prospects for anything that could be described as a win for the Ukrainians is now more probable. The response from Russia is likely to get worse.

The senior Ukrainian military official Oleksii Hromov said last week that their forces have regained some 120 settlements in the last few months. On Wednesday, Ukraine said it had liberated more five settlements in its slow but steady push in Kherson.

Since the end of the summer, the ground war in eastern and southern Ukraine has been defined by a series of decisive counter-attacks that have pushed back Russian forces and crystallized Western optimism that Kyiv can win the war.

The Russians are trying to avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in, according to a 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.”

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

“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”

Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. Ukrainian Prime Minister has said that there is a lot of work to be done to repair damaged equipment and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

The Ukranian response to the onset of the crisis in Syria: Implications for NATO, Moscow and the future of the war in Ukraine

It was also decided by the ISW, which stated in its daily update on the conflict that the strikes wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets.

According to a military expert with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the success rates ofUkrainian intercepts of Russian cruise missiles have risen in the wake of the beginning of the invasion.

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 would give Russia a new road into the region, which has been regained by the Ukranian army, should Putin want to take it.

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

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

Colonel General Sergey Surovikin, then-commander of the Russian forces in Syria, speaks at a briefing in the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, on June 9, 2017.

Notably, he previously played an instrumental role in Russia’s operations in Syria – during which Russian combat aircraft caused widespread devastation in rebel-held areas – as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

Surovikin is “more familiar with cruise missiles, maybe he used his connections and experience to organize this chain of devastating attacks,” Irisov said​, referencing the reports that cruise missiles have been among the weapons deployed by Russia in this latest surge of attacks.

Russian President Putin met with the Russian service personnel who took part in the operations in Syria at the Kremlin.

He claims that he personally signed the resignation papers of Irisov. The impact that the general will have on the war in Ukraine is not yet known.

The invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24th, 2022, led to the order to prosecute everyone if they did not execute a propaganda plan, Irisov said.

He lives near the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, which the Russians pulverized in the first days of the war. After the Russians invaded Ukraine, Viatrovych sent his family to westernUkraine for their safety.

A man who worked at the Latakia air base says he worked in aviation safety and air traffic control. He ​says he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

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

Irisov says he understands Surovikin had strong connections with Kremlin-approved private military company the Wagner group​, which has operated in Syria.

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

And a book by the think tank the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation says that during the unsuccessful coup attempt against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, leading to Surovikin spending at least six months in prison.

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

The Heroes of Russia: Why mobilize troops aren’t needed in the Russian invasion, says General Surivityk

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

The European Union placed sanctions against the head of the Aerospace Force in February for his support of actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.

Clark thinks the general’s promotion is designed to inject new blood into the Russian command system and put on this tough nationalist face.

He got praise from various Russian military Bloggers and Yevgeny, who is the financier of theWagner Group, according to Clark.

Dvornikov was also seen at the time as the commander “that was going to turn things around in Ukraine and get the job done,” he added. Russian command and control is tangled and low in the mood of its forces at this point in the war.

“Similarly, he before then was a commander of one of the groupings of Russian forces and had sort of a master reputation in Syria much like Surovikin for brutality, earning this sort of name of the ‘butcher of Aleppo,’” Clark said.

The commander of the Russian invasion on Tuesday acknowledged the difficulties his troops were facing and suggested that a tactical retreat might be necessary. General SURIVITYK said that he was prepared to make difficult decisions regarding military deployment, but didn’t give any further details.

That’s not to say mobilized forces will be of no use. They could be used in support roles like drivers, so that the burden of the rest of the army wouldn’t be as heavy. They could put in more units along the line of contact, cordon areas, and man checkpoint in the rear. They aren’t likely to become a capable fighting force. Already there are signs of discipline problems among mobilized soldiers in Russian garrisons.

Russian-Ukraine Security Relations after a State-Field Violation and a World-Sheet-Square War

The Russian Defense Ministry described the shootings as a terrorist attack according to the state media outlets. The two attackers were from a former Soviet nation, and they fired at the soldiers at a firing range.

A Tehran-based Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said that this partnership of convenience was between two dictatorships.

Both countries are in a state of crisis. Iran is attempting to suppress street protests that pose the most serious challenge to the government, while Russia is trying to maintain a sense of unity around war and draft issues.

NATO will hold nuclear deterrence exercises starting Monday. Although NATO has warned Russia not to use nuclear weapons on Ukrainians, they say the “Steadfast Noon” drills are a routine activity.

Russian and Ukrainian citizens were among the eight people taken into custody by Russian agents for their suspected involvement in a bridge explosion.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in October that two men shot at Russian troops preparing to deploy to Ukraine, killing eleven people and wounding fifteen before killing themselves.

Russian troops began arriving in Belarus Oct. 15, which Minsk said were the first convoys of almost 9,000 service members expected as part of a “regional grouping” of forces allegedly to protect Belarus from threats at the border from Ukraine and the West.

Zelensky said after the summit that the prisoner swap was a first step towards ending the conflict that had claimed the lives of over 15000 people in eastern Ukraine.

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.

What Will the Georgia War Be? – Analyzing Putin’s annexation of the Georgian War to Win the Nobel Peace Prize?

The chief of staff to the president told the conference the conflict must end with a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield.

The Intelligence Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School has an author who says the Russian leader does not want a way out of the conflict. In fact, he says, just the opposite. “Putin’s strength is his memory of running into an obstacle,” said Kolbe. There’s a lot of tricks he can pull out to try to undermine the West’s sense of security.

This annexation is a big deal. A think tank runs by Dmitri Alperovitch claims that Putin is betting on the presidency staying in Ukraine.

Alperovitch said that it was essentially a burning of bridges. “This means that the war will likely go on for many months, if not years, as long as he is in power and has the resources to continue fighting.”

Meanwhile, the fast approaching winter will likely slow the pace of the war, but is not expected to halt the fighting. The weather favors the Ukrainians on the battlefield according to David Petraeus. “The Ukrainians can knock on the door and be taken in and get warmed up and get a bowl of soup from their fellow citizens. The Ukrainians are trying to kill them, whereas the Russian occupiers are welcomed as liberators.

At the Georgia conference, in a ballroom filled with experienced national security types, no one suggested the war was near an 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.

The war began in Russia and is now as intense as it’s ever been. Greg Myre is a reporter for NPR. Follow him @gregmyre1.

Vladimir Sobyanin, the Russian Prime Minister, and the U.S. Help to End the War on Crime and Societal Crime: The Case of Ukraine

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

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

Analysts agree that many Russians will get a message in the martial law imposed in Ukraine, the first time since World War II that Russia has declared martial law.

The people are worried about the closing of the borders and the siloviki will do what they want.

Russia has redeployed critical military hardware from Syria, three senior officials based in the Middle East say, in a sign thatMoscow has lost influence in other parts of the world.

The young woman sat on the park bench by the tram stop in Kontraktova Square talking with her two friends about the war. Makarova explains how much of their safety depends on U.S. support.

He says the top issues trending on his social media channels are the upcoming U.S. elections and billionaire Elon Musk’s controversial comments about negotiating an end to the war.

Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader warned this week that his party members won’t write a blank check if they control the lower chamber next year.

He said in an interview that people would be sitting in a recession, and that they wouldn’t write a blank check to Ukraine.

Dozens of House Republicans voted against a Ukraine aid bill in May. The majority of House Republicans voted against a government funding package that included billions of dollars for Ukraine.

Ukrainian politicians, activists and soldiers traveled to Washington in order to lobby for more aid because of the upcoming mid-terms.

The member of parliament is from the Servant of the People party. Since the beginning of the war, she’s traveled to Washington twice to meet with administration and congressional leaders, as well as both Democratic and Republican leaders.

Kniazhytskyi is worried that a vocal group of Republicans, many aligned with former President Donald Trump, as well as conservative TV personality, who have been speaking out against the billions of dollars going to Ukraine, will have influence over other people.

Over roughly the same time, the percentage of Americans who said they were extremely or very concerned about Ukraine’s defeat fell from 55% in May to 38% in September.

Yes. A largeAID package is in the works, but not all military, it is part of a consistent drumbeat from the Biden administration. The message was simple, as long as Washington provides as much aid as they can, and as long as they don’t put boots on the ground, aid will not stop.

Burkovskiy laments how Ukraine got sucked into Trump’s first impeachment, after Zelenskyy came close to submitting to Trump’s demand to announce an investigation into the family of then-candidate Joe Biden.

Many Ukrainians don’t understand U.S. politics, so this is one factor contributing to fears about the U.S. midterms, says the director of international studies.

“When there is someone, let’s say a member of House, and he or she speaks about ‘why are we spending money and Ukraine is corrupt, is not winning,’ and people in Ukraine hear this — it means, like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a new American position that’s going to prevail,’” he says.

The balance of power in Washington means that a few Republicans can’t change the direction of U.S. support for the war, he believes. And he emphasizes that Ukraine has much bigger problems than U.S. politics.

American officials say there is not a chance that a collapse in Russian forces would allow Ukraine to take another large swath of territory. But individual Russian units could break in the face of sustained Ukrainian pressure, allowing Kyiv’s army to continue retaking towns in the Donbas and potentially seize the city of Kherson, a major prize in the war.

Do Russian troops need to leave Ukraine? Remarks on the President Biden, Senator Vance, and the Biden remark on Ukraine

Dean Obeidallah is a former attorney and the host of a daily program on his radio station. Follow him on social media. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has a lot of opinion on it.

That’s not a popular opinion in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy wants all Russian troops out of the country. Zelenskyy recently told Time magazine, “We are dealing with a powerful state that is pathologically unwilling to let Ukraine go.”

The GOP Senate candidate in Ohio later flip-flopped, saying that he wanted “the Ukrainians to be successful.” But as The Washington Post detailed on Sunday, Vance’s original remark is causing Ukrainian Americans who are lifelong Republicans to support his Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, in that too-close-to-call Senate race.

President Joe Biden rightly criticized McCarthy and other Republicans who want to reduce or end aid to Ukraine, remarking last week, “These guys don’t get it. It is larger than Ukraine and that is Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It is real, serious, consequential outcomes.

“He knows better, but the fact that he’s willing to go down the path of suggesting that America will no longer stand for freedom, I think, tells you he’s willing to sacrifice everything for his own political gain.”

Do we really need a Pentagon? Victims of the Kremlin attack on Vladmir Putin: CNN’s David Andelman

Republicans hope that if they win the House in upcoming elections that McCarthy will allow them to take control of the body and give them more power.

Conservative Fox News stars like Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson have been laying the groundwork with Republicans for a potential end to US assistance for Ukraine.

Carlson — who declared on his show in 2019 when there was a potential conflict between the neighboring countries that he was “root(ing) for Russia” — did his best in the months before Putin’s attack to paint Ukraine in a negative light. For example, Carlson falsely claimed Ukraine was “not a democracy” and called Ukrainian leader Zelensky a “puppet of the Biden administration.”

And just last week, Ingraham derided former Vice President Mike Pence for referring to the United States as the “arsenal of democracy” and suggested our massive military is too depleted to help other countries such as Ukraine. Jim Banks, a GOP congressman from Indiana, said that we can’t “put America first by giving blank checks to those around the world to solve their problems.”

As Biden suggested, McCarthy and some of his fellow Republicans may or may not get it. But there’s one person who fully gets it: Vladmir Putin. Few people will have greater cause for celebration if the GOP wins back control of the House.

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

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

EU leaders meet in Brussels to discuss energy and gas prices after the Russian-Russian-Brazil winter 2014 European Union summit on euclidean physics

This ability to continue depends on many variables, including the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, to the popular will across a broad range of nations with conflicting priorities.

In the early hours of Friday, European Union powers were able to agree on a plan to control energy prices that have surged in the wake of embargoes on Russian imports and Russia cutting natural gas supplies.

An emergency cap on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility, the benchmark for European gas trading, and permission for EU gas companies to create aGas Cartel are included in these.

After leaving the summit, France’s president conceded that there was only a clear mandate for the European Commission to start working on a gas cap mechanism.

Still, divisions remain, with Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, skeptical of any price caps. Energy ministers have to work with Germany to come up with details of caps that would not encourage higher consumption.

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

Many issues are at odds between Germany and France. The conference call was planned in order to reach some sort of compromise.

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

Italy’s new prime minister is rejoinder for the U.S. and Russia: Russian counteroffensives on Ukraine

And now a new government has taken power in Italy. Italy had its first female prime minister on Saturday, and she tried to remove the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her coalition partners has expressed admiration for Putin.

Berlusconi said in the audio tape that he had returned Putin’s gesture with bottles of Lambrusco wine.

Matteo Salvini, who was named on Saturday as deputy prime minister, said in the campaign that he would not want the sanctions on Russia to hurt those who impose them more than those who are hit.

At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Poland has taken deep offense at the pro-Putin sentiments of Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban.

On Monday the influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to start talks with Russia on ending the conflict, while Russia’s troops are still occupying vast swaths of the country and its missiles are hitting into the interior.

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. The Secretary of State made a call to the Ukrainian counterpart to discuss renewing America’s support.

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

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

Russian production of hypersonic missiles has all but ceased “due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors,” said the report. Aircraft are being cannibalized for spare parts, plants producing anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and “Russia has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks” for replenishment. Thirty years ago, the Soviet era ended.

The US announced the seizure of property from a top Russian procurement agent and his agencies a day before the report.

According to the Justice Department, there are charges made against individuals and companies that attempt to smuggle high-tech equipment into Russia.

How Did Ukrainians Think Before Feb. 24, 2022? What Have They Learned About the Crimea and the Russia-Iran War?

How did people imagine Ukraine before Feb. 24, 2022? If pressed, some might have conjured mail-order brides and shaven-head gangsters roaming one big post-Soviet Chernobyl. But most probably didn’t think even that; instead, they didn’t imagine Ukraine at all. The country became famous because of Western political scandals and Russian war making. Few foreigners went to it, and one Western journalist recently told me that they concluded that the Ukraine was just like Russia but without all the bad.

Moscow said last weekend that it would stop participating in the deal after its Black Sea fleet was attacked. But Russia reversed its decision after it secured written assurance from Ukraine that the shipping corridors would not be used for military purposes.

Analysts said that Moscow was trying to use its participation in the agreement as leverage. The waters and ports of the grain ships will not be used for military operations against the Russian Federation after receiving written guarantees, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

“The Russian Federation believes that the guarantees received at the moment seem sufficient and is resuming the implementation of the agreement,” the ministry said in a statement.

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.”

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

Moscow has also said that it wants to facilitate its own exports of grain and fertilizer and address the concerns of its trading partners who fear that, by dealing with Russia, they could violate Western sanctions. It was not immediately clear whether that Russian demand had been addressed.

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

The direction of human history is at stake, because a victory by Russia would reopen the door to war, something that has largely been rejected by most nations since the Second World War.

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. (An accusation the Saudis deny).

Russian and Ukrainian Attacks on the Ukraine’s Defenses During the First Two Years of World War II. The Inflationary Situation in Ukraine

Israel may need its defensive systems for its own defense, so it is reluctant to let go of them. Hezbollah in the north has a huge arsenal of missiles, while Hamas in the south has its own rockets.

The war inUkraine is affecting everyone, everywhere. The conflict has also sent fuel prices higher, contributing to a global explosion of inflation.

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. They can pack a political punch when they come with powerful momentum. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.

Videos filmed by Ukrainian drones showing Russian forces being hit by shelling in poorly prepared positions have supported the assertions, as have reports of soldiers telling their families about high casualty rates. The videos have not been verified, and their location could not be determined.

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.

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

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

With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, the residents of the area have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.

There are questions among private analysts and US and Ukrainian officials about the extent to which Russian government hackings have burned their way throughUkrainian critical infrastructure in previous attacks. Hackers often lose access to their original way into a computer network once they are discovered.

The Ukrainian citizens are currently living in the dark because of the water shortages and the fact that there is no power. Imagine a day with little or no power, water supply, or mobile communication.

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

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

Four officials from one of Ukraine’s main cyber and communications agencies — the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) — were killed October 10 in missile attacks, the agency said in a press release. Four officials didn’t have cyber responsibilities, but their loss weighed heavily on the agency’s cybersecurity officials.

Ukrainian government agencies have been the target of hacking tools used by Russian spies and military agencies.

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

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

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

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

Ukrainian Defense Minister Vladimir Zhora: Observations of the Fourth Ukrainian Retread of the Dnipro River and Russia’s First Siege

Zhora, the Ukrainian official who is a deputychairman at SSSCIP, called for the Western governments to tighten their sanctions on Russia because it had access to software tools that could feed its hacking arsenal.

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

Sepp said that their main goal is to exclude Russia from the international stage and that they have not communicated with Russia on cybersecurity issues in months.

The current agreement expires on Nov. 19. The international community is hoping it will be extended, and that Ukraine and Russia will continue to work together, despite the war, to supply food to the world.

And Ukraine will be watching America’s midterm election results this week, especially after some Republicans warned that the party could limit funding for Ukraine if it wins control of the House of Representatives, as forecast.

Also Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Sweden must meet certain conditions before it becomes a NATO member, according to the president.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report is expected to be discussed at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

The new deal will likely include the supply of guidance kits, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which Ukraine can use to bolt on to their unguided missiles or bombs. The rate at which Kyiv’s soldiers burn through weapons will be increased by this. A lot of the $1.8 billion is expected to fund munitions replacements and stocks.

BLAHODATNE, Ukraine — Ukraine’s troops entered the key city of Kherson on Friday, its military said, as jubilant residents waved Ukrainian flags after a major Russian retreat.

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

The loss of Kherson would be Russia’s third major setback of the war, following retreats from Kyiv, the capital, last spring, and from the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September. Kherson was the only provincial capital Russia had captured since invading in February, and it was a major link in Russia’s effort to control the southern coastline along the Black Sea.

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

As he spoke, the soldiers in the region continued to move through towns and villages, as they had done during the nine months of occupation.

The aftermath of massive Russian occupation in Kherson, Ukraine, recounted with CNN on the weekend of March 3. The atmosphere was euphoric

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

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

The building that burned was in the center and it was not possible 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 said that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and shelling the advancing Ukrainians across the river.

bridges were blown up, roads were filled with craters and anti-tank mines, and the team of CNN journalists had to travel through smaller towns and settlements for much of the journey.

After Russian forces occupied the outskirts of the city on March 3, there was no military presence until a few hours later, when a dozen Ukrainian soldiers wavedCNN’s crew in.

The residents of the city have no water, no internet, and little power. But as a CNN crew entered the city center on Saturday, the mood was euphoric.

Once the scene of large protests against Russian plans to transform the region into a breakaway pro-Russian republic, the streets of Kherson are now filled with jubilant residents wrapped in Ukrainian flags, or with painted faces, singing and shouting.

The military presence is still limited, but huge cheers erupt from crowds on the street every time a truck full of soldiers drives past, with Ukrainian soldiers being offered soup, bread, flowers, hugs and kisses by elated passersby.

An old man and a woman hugged a soldier with their hands in the air, as CNN stopped to regroup.

The person we spoke to said that the experiences they had living under Russian occupation scared them, and a teenager said he was taken and beaten by Russian soldiers. Residents told us they are emotionally exhausted, and overwhelmed by what this new-found freedom means.

With the occupiers gone, everyone wants to understand what they have gone through, how happy they feel, and how thankful they are to the countries who helped them.

The Russians could shell them here, and everyone we have spoken to is aware of that. It is also unclear whether all Russian troops have left Kherson and the wider region. Behind this euphoria, there’s still that uncertainty.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian and Russian forces traded fire on Monday from across the broad expanse of the Dnipro River that now divides them after Russia’s retreat from the southern city of Kherson, reshaping the battlefield with a victory that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, declared marked “the beginning of the end of the war.”

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.

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

A bunch of smoke came up when mortar shells hit near the bridge. Near the riverfront, incoming rounds rang out with thunderous, metallic booms. It wasn’t possible to see what had been hit.

Russian troops continue to attack across the river from Kherson City: An amusing story of Ivan Zelensky’s visit to Kherson

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 will not be a mass evacuation. It will cover those who are sick, the elderly and those left without care of their relatives.”

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

The deaths underscored the fact that the threats are still there even as Mr. Zelensky made a surprise visit to Kherson.

Mr. Zelensky said in a short speech in the city’s main square on Monday that they were on their way to all of the country.

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

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

Ivan wrote in a text message that Russian’s roam around and 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- He lives in Skadovsk, which is south of Kherson city, and asked that his surname not be used out of concern for his safety. “We try to connect with the owners and to arrange for someone local to stay in their place. It is not abandoned and Russians don’t take it.

Biden-Xi Meeting in Bali, Indonesia: The U.S. Pavilion at the G20 Summit on Climate Change, Human Rights and Human Rights

It took two years after Joe Biden was elected US President before the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries could finally speak in person, but when Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping finally met in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the timing could not have been any better for the United States, for democracy and for the world.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke about world hunger, and pushed for the renewal of the grain deal, while in Ukranian. 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.

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

The war in Ukraine was a serious issue at the U.N. climate conference. Ukraine used the COP27 summit to talk about how the war has caused “ecocide,” while experts pointed out the war is driving a new push for fossil fuels.

It was a good time for the West to have the Biden-Xi summit. China remains a major violator of human rights, a threat to Taiwan and a key rival of the United States. It is important to avoid a Cold War or an accidental conflict.

Judging by the statements from the White House and the Chinese government, that’s precisely what happened. The two sides discussed sources of disagreement, including Taiwan’s autonomy, the war in Ukraine and China’s human rights record. Climate change, global health and economic stability were some areas of potential cooperation that they broached.

The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party: President Biden, the Ukrainians, and the Challenges of the Middle-term US-Russian Interaction

The results of the elections sent a very strong message that the US will remain engaged, according to Biden. There was a larger message. The health of America’s democracy is the most important signal from the mid-terms. The elections in the US went well and peacefully, but they also dealt a big blow to many of the antidemocratic elements in the country.

This was the ideal moment for this meeting to take place due to the fact that the United States and the democratic process are in need of a meeting.

As Biden and Xi were meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional, triumphant return to the devastated, now liberated city of Kherson, the one provincial capital that Russian invaders had conquered.

As the adventure of Putin turned into disaster, Biden and his allies rallied to support the Ukrainians in their fight against Russia.

Tellingly, Putin chose not to attend the G20 summit in Bali, avoiding confrontations with world leaders as he increasingly becomes a pariah on the global stage.

Biden isn’t the only leader with a strong hand. A new term for China’s leader means he can rule for as long as he wants. He does not have to worry about elections, a critical press, or an opposition party. He is essentially the absolute ruler of a mighty country for many years to come.

And yet, there is a mountain of problems to contend with. The economy has slowed down so much that China is reluctant to reveal economic data. The Covid-19 vaccine, which used to be a tool of global diplomacy, is a disappointment. And partly because of that, China is imposing draconian lockdowns as the rest of the world gradually returns to normalcy after the pandemic.

Also crucial in the epochal competition between the two systems is showing that democracy works, defeating efforts of autocratic countries such as China and Russia to discredit it and proving that unprovoked wars of aggression, aimed at suppressing democracy and conquering territory, will not succeed.

The fate of the Ukrainian missile in the next-generation FACS project: what is your chance to become a soldier in the fight against Ukraine?

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

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

Russian soldiers have rebelled against what they were told to do, and refused to fight. Russian troops may be willing to shoot retreating soldiers, says the Defense Ministry of the UK.

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

One of the leading Russian journalists who fled in March told me last week that while he hoped that wasn’t the case, he’s willing to accept the fact that he may never be able to return to his homeland.

The west is trying to distance itself from Russian oil and gas in order to prevent the country from having enough resources to fight this war. “We have understood and learnt our lesson that it was an unhealthy and unsustainable dependency, and we want reliable and forward-looking connections,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday.

The burden that the conflict has had on the Western countries is proving unable to drive further wedge into the Western alliance. On Monday, word began to come in that the long-stalled French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System was beginning to move forward.

Nine months in, Russian hopes of a swift seizure have been well and truly dashed, its army largely on the defensive across more than 600 miles of battle lines strung along the eastern and southern reaches of Ukraine.

It’s clear that there isn’t much value in any truce whether it’s linked to negotiations or not. A truce gives Russia, its back increasingly to the wall militarily, vitally needed breathing room.

“The only thing a premature truce does is it allows both parties to re-arm,” Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the CNA think tank and a leading expert on the Russian military, told me in an interview.

Russia is starting to rearm, experts say. Kofman commented that ‘Ammunition availability’ was one of the determinative aspects of the war. You can’t make them in a month if you burn through 9 million rounds. So the issue is what is the ammunition production rate and what can be mobilized?” he added.

According to available information, the manufacture of weapons has shifted to Russia from two to three per day, and some factories have moved to three per day. This suggests that “they have the component parts or otherwise they wouldn’t be going to double and triple shifts,” he said.

When is a truce the first step in a war between the Russians and the US? The question of negotiating for the Ukrainians

When there is an opportunity to negotiate, seize it. Seize the moment,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff said recently.

Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko told the council on foreign relations how Ukrainians understand negotiations. When a killer comes to your house, he rapes your daughter, then takes the second floor, and then opens the door to the other floor, and says,’Okay come here.’ Let’s have a negotiation.’ What would be your reaction?”

Mick Ryan, a fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that it would relieve pressure on the Russians’ forces and give them time to regroup. “They have been at it hard for nine months. Their forces are exhausted.”

That’s “basically any big command post or ammo dump they pulled back beyond the 80-kilometer range,” he explained. Ukraine has given assurances to Washington that it would not target rocket systems supplied by the US inside Russian territory.

A reduction of military aid to Kyiv could be a result of a hypothetical deal. And it would present a possible face-saving exit route for Putin, whose reputation would be severely diminished at home if he returned from a costly war without meaningful territorial gains.

He added that they will get tired of the war at some point. The Russian mindset may become that of “we may not have everything we wanted”. We will have a big piece of the Donbas, which will be annexed into Russia, and hold onto the peninsula. I think that is their bet right now.

At the same time, a truce would also allow the West to rebuild rapidly depleting arsenals that have been drained by materiel sent to Ukraine, even upgrade what’s been supplied.

But were the war to resume months or years from now, there’s a real question as to whether the US and its allies would be prepared to return to a conflict that many are beginning to wish was already over.

Russians do not want to fight with their civilians: a biden administration response to Ukraine’s “special military operation” in April

“Russians use all these cluster munitions, they don’t care,” the official said. “We are going to fight Russian troops, but Russians fight with our civilians with clusters.”

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

Cluster munitions are imprecise by design, and scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. Mark Hiznay of Human Rights Watch previously told CNN that they created bloody fragmentation to anyone they hit because of the dozens of submunitions that exploded at once across a large area.

The Biden administration has not taken the option off the table as a last resort, if stockpiles begin to run dangerously low. The proposal is not getting a lot of attention due to restrictions on the US ability to transfer cluster munitions, 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 Ukrainian official says that if there is a concentration of Russian forces, then the DPICMs are more effective.

Russian President Putin admitted his “special military operation” in Ukraine was taking longer than expected but said it had succeeded in seizing new territory and that his country’s nuclear weapons were slowing the expansion of the conflict.

Speaking in a televised meeting with members of his Human Rights Council,Putin said that the land gains were a major result for Russia, noting that the Sea of Azov has become Russia’s internal sea. In one of his frequent historic references to a Russian leader he admires, he added that “Peter the Great fought to get access” to that body of water.

Putin’s War on the Balkans: Where do We Stand? Where Do We Go From Here? Where Are Our Nuclear Forces?

“If it doesn’t use it first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it, either, because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” he said.

Putin said that the comments he made about his nuclear weapons were not a factor in causing an increase of conflict, but a factor of deterrence.

We didn’t go mad. “We are fully aware of what nuclear weapons are,” Putin said. He added, “We have them and they are more advanced and state-of- the-art than what any other nuclear power has.”

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

In the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, the governor posted photos of new concrete anti-tank barriers — known as “dragon’s teeth” — in open fields. On Tuesday, the governor had said a fire broke out at an airport in the region after a drone strike. Belgorod officials organized self-defense units as workers expanded anti-tank barriers. Belgorod has seen a number of fires and explosions from cross-border attacks, and the governor of the area reported Wednesday that Russia’s air defenses have shot down incoming rockets.

The Russian air bases were attacked by drones and are more than 500 kilometers from the Ukraine border. Moscow blamed Ukraine, which didn’t claim responsibility.

Moscow launched missiles, tanks and mortars at the infrastructure in response to the attack on the power grid. Ukrenergo said the temperatures in eastern Ukrainian areas had fallen as far as minus 17 degrees Celsius.

Putin stated at the awards ceremony who is not providing water to Donetsk. It is unethical to not give water to a city of million.

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

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

There have been reports of frequent shelling of the city this week by the local Russian authorities.

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

Putin drove a car across the structure that he himself officially opened in the same week he appeared on the Kerch Bridge for repairs.

In his Kremlin appearance Thursday, he continued to say: “Who is not supplying water to Donetsk? The city of million was not supplied with water.

The Russian president tersely compared the difference in reactions to attacks on Russia and attacks on Ukraine, saying, “as soon as we make a move, do something in response – noise, clamor, crackle for the whole universe.”

He concluded the speech by adding that “it won’t interfere with our combat missions,” before raising a toast to the listening soldiers and sipping from his champagne glass.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Volodymyr Zelensky: “The Ukrenergo crisis is here,” a State-Dependent Deputy Attorney General in Kiev

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

The official said the attacks on the country’s energy grid amount to genocide. The Ukrainian prosecutor general made a comment while talking to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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

In his nightly address on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine had shot down 10 of the 15 drones that Russian forces used. It was not immediately possible to verify his tally.

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

The power system is very far from normal, he said, and he urged people to use less power.

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

Putin’s Dec. 11 Russian invasion of Bakhmut, Ukraine, has halted diplomatic relations between Russia and the U.S.

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

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, are in Paris for a dinner on Monday.

There is going to be a conference in France with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ofUkraine giving a video address.

The new measures aimed at Russian oil revenue took effect. A price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports are included.

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

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

December is the month of fairy tales, when we only have to peer into the dark to be reassured of a happy ending.

We used to say our life was like a fairy tale with a happy ending. And now it’s over,” says Ievheniia, a displaced Ukrainian woman in Poland who this December is nursing her two-month-old son – and raw grief for the child’s father.

On the story of the Ukrainian fairy tale of death and marriage in a time of war: from a Ukrainian woman to a foreign citizen in Warsaw

The day after Russia attacked, tens of thousands of Ukrainian men and women lined up to join the army. Denys signed up immediately, but convinced Ievheniia to evacuate his relatives first.

In this dark Ukrainian fairy tale, pivotal moments – from marriage ceremony to funeral – take place via video link. This is what love looks like in a time of war, shifted to the digital space and disrupted mid-plot.

In the streets of Warsaw, her temporary home, the festive season is well underway. “Christmas is coming. People don’t want to be reminded that someone somewhere is suffering,” Ievheniia said. “And yet, they must be aware that this fight is unfolding right next to them.”

After driving westwards across the country under Russian bombardment, Ievheniia finally arrived at an enlistment office. She was told to sign a contract the following Monday after an interview on a Friday.

She decided to take a pregnant test on the weekend, just in case. “With war and evacuation, the ground was slipping under one’s feet,” she said with a laugh. “On top of that, it turned out that I was pregnant.”

The pregnancy test provided that plot twist: the woman who planned to defend her homeland instead joined the flow of refugees looking for safety in Poland.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html

A recurring fairy tale about a man and his wife in Ukraine: Ievheniia and Denys in Warsaw, Ukraine

Separated by war, Ievheniia and Denys sought to validate their partnership in the eyes of the state. The everyday ingenuity of the country at war was at work; now, Ukrainian servicemen are allowed to marry via a video call. We were married by a man in a uniform, instead of boring civil servants. I had nothing to complain about,” Ievheniia said.

Over the following months, Denys was able to maintain the magic with flower deliveries and professional photo shoots for Ievheniia.

When one morning she did not pick up the phone, Denys raised the alarm all over Warsaw and a rescue squad found Ievheniia unconscious in her rented flat. A delay could have resulted in death. A Caesarean section followed. Because the baby was born two months early, the father was able to meet his new son.

Under martial law, Ukrainian men of fighting age, let alone servicemen, are not currently allowed to leave the country. Yet as is appropriate for a fairy tale, Denys got permission, crossed the border, and spent five days with his family.

It is a time filled with ordinary things, and that is what it was. Then he left. It was his birthday on November 17 and we sent him greetings,” Ievheniia remembered. “The next day he was killed.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html

The story of Ieveniia, the fairy tale that ends in tragedy: How Ukrainian forces have fought in the Donetsk region since 2014

Italo Calvino, the celebrated Italian journalist and editor of folktales, said that a rare fairy tale ends badly. It means that the time to be consoled has not yet arrived. It is time to act.

And we must not be deluded by the narrative logic of a fairy tale. The wily kid will not defeat the monster with the aid of magic. Like ten months ago, Ukrainians need military aid sufficient to bring a decisive victory over Russia, not just prolong the fight with enormous sacrifices. Ukrainian victory depends on our collective effort.

“As a teenager, I was reading a lot of fantasy books and wondering how I would act in a fight against absolute evil. I would like to be able to continue with my daily life. Ievheniia told me. “Today, all of us have a chance to find out.”

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 center came under fire, after 40 rockets from the BM-21 had been fired at civilians.

The Kherson military administration said the city has been hit 86 times with various kinds of weaponry in the past 24 hours.

“One of (the victims) was a volunteer, a member of the rapid response team of the international organization. He said they were fatally wounded by fragments of enemy shells during the shelling.

U.S. air defense of the Kherson city under a three-step proposal by the Ukrainian government to withdraw troops from the Ukrainian war zone

The Kherson city’s power supply was cut off after the strikes, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration.

“The enemy hit a critical infrastructure facility. The place where the medical aid and humanitarian aid distribution point was located was damaged by shell fragments, according to a Telegram video on Thursday.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the city “received machinery and generators from the U.S. Government to operate boiler houses and heat supply stations.”

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

The war has been going on for nearly a year, and President Zelensky’s peace solution asked Russia to withdraw troops from Ukranian by Christmas.

“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.

Russia’s US embassy warned of unpredictable consequences after news that the US was close to sending the system to Ukraine.

Zakharova said that many experts 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.

One of the most capable Long-range Air Defense Systems on the market, the US Army’sPatriot is what has been asked for multiple times by the Ukrainian government.

Asked Thursday about Russian warnings that the Patriot system would be “provocative,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said those comments would not influence 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.

In what may be a no less subtle message than calling the Patriot deployments provocative, Russia’s defense ministry shared video of the installation of a “Yars” intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo launcher in the Kaluga region for what Alexei Sokolov, commander of the Kozelsky missile formation, called “combat duty as planned.”

The commander of the Russian militia in the region appeared on state TV this week to suggest Russia couldn’t defeat NATO in a conventional war.

A US Marine Battery in the midst of Russian Airborne Attacks: Israeli Prime Minister David Zelensky’s Displeasure with Ukraine

The larger the battery, the larger the crew, and it requires more personnel to operate it. The US normally trains for Patriot missile batteries in multiple months, but they will now have to contend with Russian aerial attacks on a daily basis.

Zelensky told The Economist in an interview published Thursday that he did not agree with the idea of Ukraine trying to get land back from Russia, which has controlled parts of the country since February of last year.

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

Old ammo. A US military official told CNN that the Russian forces have to resort to 40-year-old weapons because their supplies of new firearms are running out.

The official was speaking to reporters and said that they cross their fingers that the bullets will fire or explode.

CNN’s Will Ripley ongoing fight to free itself-from-russia: The 1917 Oct. 10 referendum on Ukraine’s independence

In the trenches. CNN’s Will Ripley filed a video report from trenches and fortifications being built along Ukraine’s border with Belarus, where there is growing concern about Russia once again assembling troops. Ripley talks to a sewing machine repairman turned tank driver.

The empire of Russia started to expand. Many Russians believe that their empire can not exist without Ukraine. “They keep coming back because of that.” said Volodymyr Viatrovych, a member of Ukraine’s parliament.

The parliament in Ukraine declared martial law after he drove there for the emergency session. By 2 p.m. that day, he received a rifle so he could join the security forces defending the capital.

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

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 missile hit the street outside of the House of Teachers.

The blast blew out the windows, as well as parts of the glass ceiling in the hall where independence was declared in 1918. The windows are boarded up. Shards of glass still cover the floor.

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

This is the moment that all the wrongs of the last hundred plus years need to be fixed, in light of the hardship that Ukrainians experienced in the 20th century.

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.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/16/1142176312/ukraine-ongoing-fight-to-free-itself-from-russia

The War of the 20th Century and the Crime against Crime Against Crime in the First Order of the Second World War, Revisited

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

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

The war is not likely to produce a clear resolution on the battlefield according to military analysts. They say it’s likely to require negotiations and compromises.

He said being a buffer zone is not good from a political point of view. “If you are a gray zone between two security blocs, two military blocs, everybody wants to make a step. This has happened with a country.

“I believe our generation has an opportunity to put an end to this. He said that the Ukrainians were ready to fight than in 1918.

Despite denying that there was a need for more recruits, Moscow began a campaign to encourage Russians to join the armed forces.

Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin: A Story of Fighting for the Soviet Union and for the Defense of the Motherland and the Security of the Russian Army

A video posted on December 14 shows a young man buying himself a car after fighting for his country and instead of partying with his friends, he decided to fight instead.

In another video, posted on December 15, the former girlfriend of a soldier is newly impressed with his courage and begs him to get back together with her. A man left the factory job because he couldn’t get enough for a military contract, and went to the front.

A video shows a group of 30-something Russian men loading a car as they are asked where they will go by an elderly woman. One of the men replies: “To Georgia. Forever.” When a woman spills groceries, the men just get in a car and drive away, while younger Russian men swoop in and pick them up. One of the elderly women said the boys had left and the men stayed.

Men are given an escape from a daily reality of drinking and being poor in many of the videos. Meanwhile, reports and complaints of shortages of provisions and equipment in the Russian military continue to emerge.

During a meeting with mothers of the mobilized in November, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that it was better to be killed fighting for the motherland than to drink oneself to death on vodka.

Putin attempted to assure the public at a news conference after the summit that there wasn’t plans for additional deployment.

Putin said the issue of military equipment shortages on the front lines was being solved and he was working with the Russian defense ministry.

There was a ton of miscalculation from all sides. Putin also didn’t expect the West to unite behind Ukraine the way it did, nor does he appear to have expected Europe to reorient away from Russian fossil fuels so quickly.

The country’s propaganda machine is something that has gone well for the Kremlin. It encouraged many Russians to believe that the war was not going badly, and that it was the West that was making Russia fight. The Russian economy was not ruined the way the West thought it was, and a lot of the world hasn’t turned its back on Russia.

It was a very intense reporting effort. I was trying to learn more about Putin, his decision to go to war, and some of the nuances surrounding him. It is really hard, because it’s something that so few people know for sure. It was a long time, and there were a lot of conversations.

In Paris at the time, I witnessed how Zelensky pulled up to the Élysée Palace in a modest Renault, while Putin motored in with an ostentatious armored limousine. (The host, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).

It is difficult to calculate how much the carefully managed stagecraft of the president’s inner circle has contributed to Zelensky’s popular image both inside and outside Ukraine – but it certainly can’t hurt.

The leader of the US when Russia launched its full scale invasion joked, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Zelensky was a force in the political scene earlier in his career, standing up to Donald Trump, who tried to bully a new politician in the scandal of quid pro quo.

The campaign celebration in the Kyiv nightclub where Zelensky thanked his fans for his victory is a long way away, amidst the fog of war. He looked in disbelief as he stood on stage with the confetti in his hand.

In the days leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelensky was in a steep, downward trajectory in popularity ratings from the all-time high in the first days of his administration.

His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. Even though the war was raging, a press conference at a metro station was held in April of this year and it used all the right equipment to emphasize a wartime setting.

I remember well the comforting sound of his nightly television addresses when the air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv rang out.

Fashion historian Jessica Zelensky reflects “I Know She Counts” on social media and the UK in the presence of a European military force

Zelensky wearing hoodies and t-shirts in Silicon Valley is projected with confidence by a younger, global audience that recognizes it as such, according to a fashion historian.

She said he is more comfortable than Putin on camera both as an actor and a digital native. Zelensky is doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility, but I think both of them would like to come across as personable.

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

Zelensky said in a recent video address that when the world is truly united it is the world not the aggressor who determines how events develop.

The European Union is expected to announce a cap on natural gas prices in order to tackle an energy crisis attributed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Commons Liaison Committee is where the British Prime Minister will make his first appearance in this capacity on Tuesday. Sunak met with members of the European military force in Latvia on Monday.

The Russian War on Nuclear Propagation: a Disastrous Example for the West and for the U.S. and its Emitting Powers

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

The invasion of Ukraine by the Kremlin has made Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations for Russians and Ukrainians rare.

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 is out of Russian-controlled territory as part of a prisoner exchange. During his captivity in eastern Ukranian, Suedi said he was tortured and imprisoned for months in a basement.

EU lawmakers supported funding for Ukraine, as well as new sanctions against Russia. A package of aid was put together by many countries and global institutions to help the country with winter relief funds.

It is time for the West to tell Russia that if they continue down this path they will see a hostile West trying to overthrow Putin. Russia could hardly claim this, too, was an escalation, when it has long told the world and itself that it is already at war with the West.

And yet, Russia’s UN Security Council veto and the fear it has instilled through nuclear propaganda have given it a free pass to behave as it wishes, without fear of interference from a global community looking on in either ambivalence or helpless paralysis.

Russia’s most effective tool of deterrence remains nuclear threats. Loose talk from Russia about using nuclear weapons has died down a little recently, but a decade or more of driving home the message of inevitable nuclear response if Russia is cornered or humiliated has already had its effect.

That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. Nuclear weapons allow you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your friends and neighbors, because other nations won’t intervene.

If that’s not the message the US and the West want other aggressor states around the world to receive, then supply of Patriot should be followed by far more direct and assertive means of dissuading Moscow.

There are two main deliverables, the first one being the Patriot missile systems. They are described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO gives preciously, and they require the personnel who operate them to be properly trained.

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

Whatever the eventual truth of the matter – and military aid is opaque at the best of times – Biden wants Putin to hear nothing but headline figures in the billions, to sap Russian resolve, push European partners to help more, and make Ukraine’s resources seem limitless.

This is trickier. Congress’s likely new Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, has warned the Biden administration cannot expect a “blank cheque” from the new GOP-led House of Representatives.

Vladimir Zelensky and the War in Ukraine: What the West can do about it? CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Reports on Wednesday

The remnants of the Trumpist America First party have doubts about how much aid the US should be sending 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.

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

Zelensky spoke from the US Capitol and expressed gratitude for American aid in fighting Russian aggression since the war began.

According to Clinton, the bodies of Russian conscripts will be used in the fight in Ukrainian.

Clinton, who previously met Russian President Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state, said the leader was “probably impossible to actually predict,” as the war turns in Ukraine’s favor and his popularity fades at home.

The war in Ukraine is approaching 10 months and Moscow said that it was ready for a long confrontation with Russia.

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

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that no matter how much military support the West provides to the Ukrainian government, “they will achieve nothing.”

“As the leadership of our country has stated, the tasks set within the framework of the special military operation will be fulfilled, taking into account the situation on the ground and the actual realities,” Zakharova added, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Peskov added that “there were no real calls for peace.” But during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday, Zelensky did stress that “we need peace,” reiterating the 10-point plan devised by Ukraine.

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.

Dismissing accusations of a proxy war, Sloat says Zelenskyy and Ukraine have made clear that they want a “just peace,” and all the U.S. has been doing is help the country defend itself against Russian aggression.

Moscow had warned last week that it would see the reported delivery of Patriot missiles to Ukraine as “another provocative move by the U.S.” Does Sloat worry this could provoke a Russian escalation?

“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. Russia should stop sending missiles to Ukranian territory if they don’t want them shot down.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday used the word “war” to refer to the conflict in Ukraine, the first known time he has publicly deviated from his carefully crafted description of Moscow’s invasion as a “special military operation” 10 months after it began.

“Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin told reporters in Moscow, after attending a State Council meeting on youth policy. We have tried for this and will continue to do so.

A municipal lawmaker from St. Petersburg who fled Russia due to his antiwar stance asked authorities in Russia to prosecute Putin for spreading fake information about the army.

There was no decree to end the special military operation, according to Yuferev. “Several thousand people have already been condemned for such words about the war.”

A US official said that Putin’s remark was probably a slip of the tongue, not intentional. However, officials will be watching closely to see what figures inside the Kremlin say about it in the coming days.

Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday declared the Kremlin would make a substantial investment in many areas of the military. The initiatives include increasing the size of the armed forces, accelerating weapons programs and deploying a new generation of hypersonic missiles to prepare Russia for what Putin called “inevitable clashes” with its adversaries.

If the Russian airfields are hit during the strikes, the missiles on the ground could be destroyed before they can be deployed.

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

The Indian Embassy in Bali: Preparing for a G20 Summit on High-Energy Security and Development in the Context of Diplomacy

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

Zelensky wrote that he was counting on India’s participation in the implementation of the peace formula. I thanked for the UN’s support.

The call comes as New Delhi tries to boost trade ties with Moscow after it became one of the largest purchasers of Russian oil and as the Kremlin wages an unprovoked war against its neighbor.

The Indian government said Modi had called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and to go back to diplomacy after his call.

Zelensky presented a 10-point peace formula to world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November. India assumed the G20 presidency this month, and will hold it until next year.

“The Prime Minister explained the main priorities of India’s G20 Presidency, including giving a voice to the concerns of developing nations on issues like food and energy security,” New Delhi’s statement said.

Modi told Putin that now is not the time for a war and reminded him of the importance of democracy, diplomacy and dialogue.

Modi is thought to be a key player in the G20’s decision to issue a joint declaration condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine.

India, a nation of 1.3 billion people, said it was increasing purchases of Russian energy to protect its interests in a country where incomes are not high.

Russia sent India hundreds of products last month, including parts for cars, aircraft and trains, according to a report.

The Ukraine-Russia Negotiations Put Putin Unlikely intl: What Has Happened in the First Three Days of the Cold War?

As has often been the case throughout the conflict, the vaguely conciliatory tone from Putin was quickly contradicted by a heavy-handed message from one of his key officials.

Sergey Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, said Monday that Ukraine must fulfill Russia’s demands for the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukrainian-controlled territories, repeating Moscow’s well-worn and false accusation of Nazism against Ukraine, which it has used in an attempt to justify its invasion.

Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to President Zelensky, told CNN Tuesday that Putin’s comments were likely an effort to buy time in the conflict.

So it makes little sense for Ukraine or the West to even entertain the possibility of a deal that carves up its land or rewards Putin for his invasion.

Zelensky and his officials have said that they will keep sounding out the possibility of negotiations, without any hope of achieving a truce.

Kuleba said that war ends in a diplomatic way. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

The Foreign Minister said the UN would be the most natural broker for those talks. “The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country,” he said. This is about getting everyone on board.

The steps includes a path to nuclear safety, food security, a special tribunal for alleged Russian war crimes, and a final peace treaty with Moscow. He also urged G20 leaders to use all their power to “make Russia abandon nuclear threats” and implement a price cap on energy imported from Moscow.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/europe/ukraine-russia-negotiations-putin-unlikely-intl/index.html

U.S. Senator Zelensky is in Moscow for the first time, but is not ready to leave Russia: How she feels after the First Russian War

A decisive swing on the battlefield in the New Year could force a change in the calculus, but both sides are dug into what will many observers believe could become a long and grinding conflict.

And Zelensky’s visit to the US – his first overseas trip in ten months – shows his intention to keep his allies focused on the conflict and united in their support.

“It was horrible to live under Putin and it was very far from the idea of democracy, but you still had some established institutions which you would almost take for granted that they would exist no matter what, and all of a sudden, everything collapsed,” he said, pointing to the near complete eradication of any remaining independent media, civil society and human rights groups.

She said that when the war broke out, she grew more worried about attending demonstrations and stopped when it became too dangerous. She doesn’t see a scenario under which the regime in Russia could be overthrown any time soon, she said, pointing out that all of the opposition leaders “are in jail or have been killed.”

CNN uses a pseudonym for the woman because she is at risk of personal safety, and they are not publishing her name. Speaking to foreign journalists about her involvement in the demonstrations – and even the use of the word “war” as opposed to the Kremlin-approved term “special military operation” – puts her at risk of arrest and potentially a lengthy prison sentence.

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

The law was used by a Moscow court earlier this month, when it sentenced Kremlin critic Ilya Aydin to over eight years in prison for speaking out about the killings of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the mass killings, while reiterating baseless claims that the images of civilians bodies were fake.

The free press has been wiped out since the start of the war. Western publications and social media sites have been blocked online, forcing Russians seeking alternatives to the official propaganda to go underground using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow people to browse the internet freely by encrypting their internet traffic. In Russia the top 8 VPNs apps were downloaded 80 million times, despite the government’s attempts to crack down on their use.

The US Border Patrol recorded 36,271 encounters with Russian citizens between October 2021 and September 2022. The number of people who were expelled or apprehended by the border force was much higher than in the past two years.

OK Russians, a non-profit helping Russian citizens fleeing persecution, said its surveys suggest those who are leaving are on average younger and more educated than the general Russian public.

I would say that about 70% of the Moscow liberal intelligentsia are still around, and I only speak about the people I know. It’s journalists, it’s people from universities, sometimes schools, artists, people who have clubs and The foundations were closed down in Moscow, Soldatov said.

If the educated middle-class portion of the population is lost, it will affect the economic prospects of the country, as well as the potential political reconstitution, says a Russia expert at the German Marshall Fund. She pointed to the exodus of liberal, educated Iranians following the country’s 1979 revolution as an example of what can happen when large numbers from such demographics leave the country.

Maria said she is determined to stay in Russia even though most of her friends and son have left. Maria is unwilling to leave her elderly mother, who would not want to travel outside of the country. “If I knew for sure that the borders would not be closed and I could come at any time if my mother needed my help, it would probably be easier for me to leave. She told CNN that she is scared by the fact that something else can happen at any moment.

She still believes her work is important, but said she is struggling to see any hope for the future. Like Olga, she described her own life as a perpetual cycle of panic, horror, shame and self-doubt.

“You’re constantly torn apart: Are you to blame? Is it possible you did not do enough? Can you do something else or not, and how should you act now?” She said so. “There are no prospects. I didn’t have a full understanding of what was going to happen next, but I understood what was going to happen. Now nobody understands anything. People don’t even understand what will happen to them tomorrow.”

He said that he had begun to question his own identity. He said that the things they held dear like the Second World War and the claim by Putin that Russia is denyingUkraine, became completely compromised.

“It’s part of the Russian national identity that the Russian army helped to win the war (against Hitler’s Germany) and now it feels absolutely wrong because this message was used by Putin. You start questioning the history,” he said, adding that the favorable reaction by some parts of the Russian society to the invasion prompted him to research pre-war rhetoric in Germany.

He said that he felt wrong speaking about Russians as “us” because he did not agree with Russia’s actions. But saying “Russians” didn’t seem right either. I do not want to be the one to hide what is going on, because I have some responsibility as a Russian.

A historian by training, Maria has spent many years participating in anti-government protests and describing herself as a liberal who is opposed to Putin. “I always knew that our country should not be led by a person from the KGB. It is too deeply rooted with horrors, deaths and all that,” she said.

Berzina said that the expectation of some in the West – that “once people start feeling as though their leaders are doing wrong, that there is an immediate wave of protests on the streets and call for government change that actually has an effect” – does not reflect the reality of life in Russia.

Most opposition and opinion leaders are currently either in prison or abroad. There is no leader or power base, but people have a lot of potential for political action, that’s why civilians won’t fight back against the security forces.

She said it was difficult for people from democratic countries to understand the realities of life in an autocracy. It is a terrifying feeling to be in the company of a machine of death and madness.

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

Ukrainians will be celebrating New Year and the Christmas holidays in January, causing Russia to plunge the country into darkness after launching an attack on the power grid.

The sound of an air raid followed by a loud explosion woke up Hryn and her son, who took refuge in the basement. They weren’t surprised and did not let it affect their spirits.

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

The Russian Revolution: “Are We Finally Coming to an End” Against Counter-Religious Propagation in the Aftermath of the Second World War?

Three people, including a 14-year-old, were hurt and two people were pulled from a damaged home on Thursday. In attacks on Kyiv, homes, an industrial facility, and a playground were damaged.

At least two people were killed in attacks on Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. Critical infrastructure was the intended target of the rockets that hit the city, said Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.

Putin insisted that his forces were launching a “special military operation” and that it would end in a few 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.

Russia’s oldest and most respected human rights group was forced to stop activities due to its alleged violations of the foreign agents law.

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

For now, repressions remain targeted. Some of the new laws are still unenforced. But few doubt the measures are intended to crush wider dissent — should the moment arise.

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

Internet users are subject to Restrictions as well. American social media giant were banned in March. Since the start of the conflict, the internet regulator in the Kremlin has blocked over 100,000 websites.

War against Ukraine has Left Russia Isolated and Stuck with More Torturb Ahelvy: Why Putin’s Intervention of the Russian Military Campaign Makes Europe Great Again

Many perceived government opponents fled in the early days of the war over fears of persecution.

Some countries that have absorbed the Russian exodus are confident that their economies will grow even as Russians remain a sensitive issue for former Soviet republics.

The ruble regained value as a result of Russian price controls. New names, Russian ownership, and re-starting were all what Mcdonald’s and a number of other brands did. By year’s end, the government reported the economy had declined by 2.5%, far less than most economists predicted.

Ultimately, President Putin is betting that when it comes to sanctions, Europe will blink first — pulling back on its support to Ukraine as Europeans grow angry over soaring energy costs at home. He decided to impose a five- month ban on oil exports from countries that do not abide by the price cap.

When it comes to Russia’s military campaign, there’s no outward change in the government’s tone. Russia’s Defense Ministry gives daily briefings about its successes on the ground. Putin assures everyone that everything is going in the right direction.

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

The number of Russians who lost is officially only under 6,000 men, which is still a taboo subject at home. Western estimates place those figures much higher.

Russia’s invasion has backfired in its primary aim, which is to enlarge the NATO alliance towards Russia’s borders.

Longtime friends in Central Asia criticized Russia’s actions because they were concerned with their own sovereignty, which would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. China and India have bought discounted Russian oil, but have not supported Russia’s military campaign.

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

The 2016 Russian State of the Nation Address is Closer than expected, and the big press conference is delayed until 2023 by the Kremlin

The state of the nation address was scheduled to take place in April and won’t happen until next year. The annual “direct line”, in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians, was canceled completely.

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.