“Ukraine – Russia”

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.

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

Russian forces are having to fight for weeks to capture “a single home” in Bakhmut, the head of the mercenary Wagner Group has said, as he appeared to cast the blame for slow progress on a lack of supplies from the Kremlin.

Bakhmut is one of the largest towns still held by Kyiv in the industrial Donetsk region and has been the focus of the Russian onslaught since August.

British intelligence has said that Russia’s forces are unlikely to make a breakthrough despite throwing thousands of men at the town in one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

War is hell on earth — and if you doubt it, visit Ukraine or watch Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Netflix’s gut-wrenching new adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic antiwar novel of 1929.

Even a small war is hellish for those caught up in it, of course. But a world war is the worst thing we humans have ever done to one another. In a memorable essay published last month, Henry Kissinger reflected on “How to Avoid Another World War.” In 1914, “The nations of Europe, insufficiently familiar with how technology had enhanced their respective military forces, proceeded to inflict unprecedented devastation on one another.” Then, after two years of industrialized slaughter, “the principal combatants in the West (Britain, France and Germany) began to explore prospects for ending the carnage.” Even with US intermediation, the effort failed.

h/t DM

Mystery fires that have broken out across Russia in recent months have been blamed on Ukrainian saboteurs and even Western intelligence operatives. But a new documentary by British filmmaker Jake Hanrahan suggests a “large-scale, active resistance inside Russia” is now being waged by Russia’s own citizens.

“There’s this thing like, ‘Well, it must be the CIA,'” Hanrahan told RFE/RL when asked about the spate of attacks on war-related infrastructure inside Russia. “How about, ‘No’? How about some Russians are genuinely so sick of Putin that they’re going to do something about it.”

Ukraine’s president says Russia is planning a protracted campaign of drone attacks in a bid to demoralise Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky said he had received intelligence reports suggesting that Moscow would launch the attacks using Iranian-made Shahed drones.

It comes after Ukraine carried out a strike that it said killed hundreds of Russian troops in the Donbas region.

In a rare admission of battlefield losses, Russia said the attack killed 63 of its troops.

#Ukraine: Another Russian Orlan-10 drone fell to the ground near the positions of the Ukrainian 231st TDF Battalion, presumably in the East, and was recovered. pic.twitter.com/M53XHA8vd5

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 31, 2022

Western countries must be prepared to provide long-term support to Ukraine as Russia shows no signs of relenting, Nato’s secretary general has said.

Jens Stoltenberg told the BBC that military support would ensure the survival of Ukraine as a sovereign country and force Russia to sit down and negotiate an end to the war.

Russia’s leader accuses the West of using Ukraine to destroy his country.

Russian missiles and drones have hit Ukraine on New Year’s Eve and Day.

#Ukraine: Extremely rare footage of a Msta-S 152mm SPH in use with the Ukrainian army – captured from Russian forces and now is being used against them.

Ukraine originally possessed 40 of these howitzers – to date almost none of them are operational due to a lack of spare parts. pic.twitter.com/pW5FzEFV3r

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 1, 2023

A Ukrainian Himars attack on a town in Russia-held eastern Ukraine flattened completely destroyed a vast building holding several hundred Russian mobilised men inside.

Early estimates from Kyiv and from pro-Russian sources suggest the New Year’s Eve attack on the barracks in Makiivka could be Russia’s single biggest loss of life since the start of the invasion last February.

The Ukrainian military on Monday mocked Russia over the attack on a former school building in Makiivka, a suburb of Donetsk, attributing it to “smoking in inappropriate places” and claiming that it killed “about 400” people.

🚀🔥☠️ What's left of the Technical University #19 in Makiivka. It's completely leveled. ~600 invaders resided there. Just a couple of HIMARS missiles landed. Problem is, they've stored ammo in the basement… 🙀 pic.twitter.com/B0WaKnFY7a

— Smart Ukrainian Cat 🌪️ 🙀 (@SmartUACat) January 1, 2023

Far from restoring Russia’s greatness, the president’s war has reduced it to a third-rate power

Deep in the recesses of the Kremlin, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been poring over maps of Ukraine.

We cannot, of course, know what drives this reclusive, ever more paranoid despot. His spectral presence haunts the nightmares of millions, but his own personality is a void — humanity’s black hole.

I am a Ukrainian soldier, but my service, despite what many might imagine, does not consist of sitting in a trench or sleeping in a dugout. I am not under mass artillery strikes. In ten months of war I have not once opened fire at the enemy.

My job is guarding the northern border. For more than two months, my squad and I have been working with crews manning anti-aircraft installations defending against rocket attacks and Iranian kamikaze drones.

Suspicions that places of worship are being used to hide Kremlin collaborators have returned with a vengeance

At the foot of a steep wooded hill on the banks of the Siversky Donets river, a white stone statue of the Virgin Mary guards an artillery-scorched wasteland.

The bridge is broken, the homes and shops on the opposite bank reduced to matchwood and rubble.

The white walls of the monastery to her left bear deep shrapnel wounds. She herself is untouched except for her hands, which were blown off by an early salvo of Russian artillery in March.

It was, the monks here decided, a sign.