Canada is buying a U.S. surface–to-air missile system for Ukraine nearly a year after Russia’s invasion of the country began.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau informed U.S. President Joe Biden of the purchase on the sidelines of the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City on Tuesday.
Trudeau’s office said the move would involve buying an American-made National Advanced Surface–to-Air Missile System.
It is cold and dark. Sirens break the silence from time to time. Although the Christmas tree in the city square is standing, there is a tank trap on top of it. This is what the locals draw strength from.
This is not the first time I have crossed the Hungarian–Ukrainian border since the outbreak of the war—in the past, my team and I have provided legal assistance to more than 1,200 Hungarian compatriots from Transcarpathia.
Now, however, duty calls to areas outside Transcarpathia.
#Ukraine:Footage of the latest consignment of Turkish 🇹🇷 BMC KİRPİ MRAPs to Ukrainian forces has appeared- but these are particularly interesting, as they're equipped with Romanian 🇷🇴 Pro Optica ANUBIS RCWS, equipped with either a 12.7 or 7.62mm machine gun, plus thermal optics. pic.twitter.com/Hxz624dhEs
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 6, 2023
The UK is considering sending tanks to Ukraine to help Kyiv launch a major counter-offensive in the spring.
The British army could send about a dozen Challenger 2s, becoming the first western country to donate tanks to Ukraine.
The Challenger 2 first entered service in 1994. It has a 1,200 horsepower engine and is equipped with a 120mm gun. Only one has ever been destroyed in combat — it was hit by friendly fire during operations in Basra in 2003.
Did Ukraine Change your Mind about Russian Tanks?
One large crater but no sign of casualties after Moscow claimed revenge attack against barracks in Donbas
A picture has cast doubt over Russia’s claim that its forces killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers in a missile strike on the eastern Donbas city of Kramatorsk.
There were no signs of any casualties after Moscow claimed to have carried out a “retaliation operation” against a Ukrainian military barracks in the area.
#Ukraine: A torn apart Russian Pantsir-S1 air defence system was discovered in #Kherson Oblast, with 57E6 missiles strewn around the site.
The system was destroyed when the area was still occupied by the Russian Army, but the wreckage appeared only recently. pic.twitter.com/FTqFkt7Wb5
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 8, 2023
Russia blamed its own soldiers after Zelensky’s devastating new year strike. It exposes the widening weapons gap between the two sides
At about midnight on New Year’s Eve a barrage of American-built Himars missiles smashed into a building packed with Russian conscripts in Makiivka, just outside Donetsk in occupied east Ukraine.
The Professional Technical School was not a well-chosen sanctuary: it stood out even on commercial satellite imagery as the most prominent building for miles around. Despite that, Russian commanders had filled it with recruits and apparently stored ammunition in the basement. They never stood a chance.
The Russian base in Makiivka is but dust. HIMARS have delivered absolute carnage. An expected response for the Russian Shahed terror attacks on New Years Eve and the newest reminder that no matter where Russians position themselves, they are not safe. #Ukraine #Donetsk #Makiivka pic.twitter.com/Pfguo4phIK
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) January 1, 2023
A photo of a Russian soldier using a bow and arrow in Ukraine has brought ridicule online.
The images, which first began circulating on Telegram in November, were shared on Twitter Tuesday by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.
“A photo of a Russian soldier from Bashkiriya at war in Ukraine is shared by Russian Telegram channels. He is armed with bow and arrows. He also has a rifle just in case. Is there a cavalry riding somewhere?” Gerashchenko tweeted.
Social media is awash with claims, repeated on news websites, that Russian President Vladimir Putin surrounded himself with actors for his New Year’s address and at previous events. But what’s the evidence?
We used facial recognition software to check some of these allegations.
The Russian president has a track record of posing at events where some of the attendees are not what they seem.
A BBC Russian investigation in 2020 found that some events presented as impromptu conversations with everyday people were actually filled with friendly local officials.
… And when the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines exploded in September, the West ignored Russia’s claims of innocence and, in concert, convicted Russia of sabotage. “No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage,” said a senior European environmental official. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm immediately said that it “seems” Russia is to blame.
But the Washington Post recently reported that, after months of investigation, there is nothing to suggest that Russia was responsible. The Post article interviewed “23 diplomatic and intelligence officials in nine countries” who said that “[t]here is no evidence at this point that Russia was behind the sabotage.” It reports that “even those with inside knowledge of the forensic details don’t conclusively tie Russia to the attack.”
If Russia didn’t do it, one of us did. The most disturbingly unasked question of 2022 is: Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?
h/t GT
Ukraine is swatting away as many Iranian-made drones as Russia can throw at its infrastructure sites, knocking down as many as 80 air vehicles over Kyiv during Russia’s surprise New Year’s Eve blitz alone, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week.
So how did they do it? According to Ukrainian officials and advisers to Kyiv who spoke to POLITICO, much of it is thanks to the German-made Gepard system, a vehicle that can send dual streams of 35mm rounds ripping into the sky to hit the drones. Berlin has sent 30 Gepard vehicles to Ukraine over the past year, with seven more on the way this year.
With frustration building about command incompetence, the demand for hapless commanders to be replaced is unlikely to ease up.
There’s one thing Western and Russian military strategists agree on — crowding a large number of mainly new conscripts inside a building within range of Ukrainian missiles so that they could see in the new year was a fatal error.
“They should never have been there,” said Britain’s retired Air Vice-Marshal Sean Bell.
Reportedly, around 600 Russian troops were at the college in Makiivka when it was struck by four American-supplied HIMARS rockets on New Year’s Day. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the war began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll nearer 400.
PARIS — Major Western powers have finally decided to send armored vehicles to Ukraine, a move Kyiv’s leadership had long asked for and which it hopes will provide a major boost as it battles Vladimir Putin’s troops.
It started on Wednesday when Emmanuel Macron announced he was sending “light tanks” — AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicles — to Ukraine. Macron decided to “amplify help” in response to “needs expressed by Ukraine,” the French presidency said.
The French decision was “the first time a Western-designed tank will be delivered to Ukraine. Symbolically, it’s important,” said François Heisbourg, senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Russia’s failures in Ukraine are creating fissures within the country’s power bases, starting with the FSB.
Is the Putin regime entering its terminal stage amid Russia’s repeated setbacks in Ukraine? As the war continues with no end in sight, there has been much speculation about Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s refusal to attend the G20 summit in Bali and his recent decision to dispatch Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, to Beijing. Analysts have focused on Putin’s failed military offensive in Ukraine, his fear of Covid-19, and possible health issues related to cancer. Russian historians, however, recognize a more likely scenario behind these developments.
Seven months after they were first promised by Ottawa, fleets of Canadian-made armoured vehicles have been spotted reaching the Ukrainian frontlines.
At the close of a NATO summit in June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the surprise announcement that 39 armoured vehicles originally intended for the Canadian Armed Forces would instead be diverted to Ukraine.
Anti-Tank missiles, drones, artillery shells etc must be causing a lot of deployment re-thinking.
The surge in energy prices linked to the war in Ukraine is beginning to have a serious impact in France, with victims whose downfall is hitting public opinion hard, both practically and symbolically. French bakers are closing down, one after the other, because they cannot pay their soaring electricity bills. An estimated 33,000 artisan bakers are now threatened with closures.
For several weeks, headlines in the regional press have reported on the closure of bakeries throughout the country—in dramatic circumstances and with deep human tragedies as a result. Many craftsmen made their last batch of bread for New Year’s Day before closing their doors for good. Some were businesses that had been established in small towns for several decades, prosperous and well-established family businesses that could no longer cope with the rising costs of production.
How France’s prized nuclear sector stalled in Europe’s hour of need
France should be in a strong position as Europe reels from the energy crisis, drawing on the renowned nuclear industry that supplies the lion’s share of its power. But France’s nuclear sector has been going through a tricky time, as a significant proportion of its reactors have had to close for maintenance. Analysts blame a mixture of bad luck and the consequences of a political deal from a decade ago.
Early in their invasion of Ukraine, some Russian fighters closing in on the capital, Kyiv, made calls with cellphones and uploaded videos to TikTok, betraying their location to Ukrainian eavesdroppers.
The Ukrainians used the cellphone signals to launch missiles at their location — to devastating effect, according to Ukraine’s head of military intelligence.
Now, almost a year later and despite a ban on personal cellphones, Russian soldiers in the war zone are still using them to call wives, girlfriends, parents and each other, and still exposing themselves to Ukrainian attacks. After a strike that killed dozens — possibly hundreds — of Russian soldiers this week, one of the deadliest since the invasion began, the Russian military itself acknowledged the problem, using it to explain the heavy losses.
The work of a very similar submunition (which is believed to be a German SMArt 155) can be seen here.https://t.co/Bp0ObwbM4R
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 4, 2023
