“Ukraine – Russia”

Savelia Curniski has guided thousands of Canadian tourists through Ukraine, including many from Saskatchewan who are of Ukrainian descent.

Curniski’s grandparents came to Canada from Ukraine in 1904, and she is among the more than 12 percent of Saskatchewanians of Ukrainian descent.

She had great enthusiasm for connecting with her roots, and for helping others do so as well, when she started giving tours in the 1990s. But in 2004, an encounter at a truck stop in Ukraine changed her life and took her tours in a very different direction.

Three days before Christmas, Iryna Hazhev is sitting in a restaurant on the outskirts of Lviv, in Western Ukraine. The 24-year-old, a captain in a mortar battery of the 24th Mechanized Brigade, is on a break from deployment. She wears her military uniform but is giving herself the liberty of some civilian flourishes, including gold loop earrings and blue nail polish. She seems relaxed – or as relaxed as can be for a soldier about to be sent to Bakhmut, in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine, the site of some of the war’s fiercest fighting.

#Ukraine: Another Russian cruise missile (Kh-101/Kh-55) was shot down by Ukrainian 9K38 Igla MANPADS operators today. Two 9M39 missiles are fired, with one striking the target. pic.twitter.com/5MS92CFiTx

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 29, 2022

A new opinion poll has revealed, among other things, that a substantial majority of German citizens think that Ukrainians should immediately begin negotiations with Russia to finally bring an end to the war, which has just entered its eleventh month, and which has claimed the lives of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands.

The survey, carried out by UK market research and data analytics firm YouGov on behalf of Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), has shown that 55% of German are in favor of Ukraine beginning peace talks with Russia now, with just 27% saying it is not the appropriate time for peace talks, the radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk reports.

Although the wish for peace talks prevails among voters of every political party represented in the Bundestag, Germany’s lawmaking body, the connection with a voter’s preferred party is certainly worth noting. 

Two days ago was a good day, Nazarii Kishak boasts as his pickup truck slides through muddy ravines towards military lines on the outskirts of Vuhledar, a bitterly contested hilltop town in eastern Ukraine. His men, part of the 48th Separate Rifle battalion, within the 72nd Motorised Brigade, managed to kill 11 Russians.

“A day without dead Russians isn’t a complete day,” says the 30-year-old commander. “We killed around 400 Russian troops over four days last month and destroyed half of their vehicles. We were in immediate contact with the enemy using anti-tank guided missiles, machine-guns, grenade launchers and drone strikes.”

The Ukrainian president gave ammunition to his detractors.

After remaining in-country to lead his war-torn nation through the most destructive conflict of the 21st century, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made his first foreign visit to the United States to make his case in a joint address to Congress.

Zelensky articulated Ukraine’s role in the “restoration of international legal order” and protecting “global security and democracy.” Immediately following his visit, the House passed over $45 billion in aid. However, Zelensky’s trip to Washington failed to move the critics that could potentially jeopardize future aid to his country. Thus, while mostly a short-term success, Zelensky’s charm offensive fell on deaf ears for the people he needed to persuade most.

Ukraine is aiming to hold a peace summit by the end of February – preferably at the United Nations with its secretary general, António Guterres, as a possible mediator – according to its foreign minister.

But Dmytro Kuleba said that Russia could only be invited if the country faced a war crimes tribunal first.

Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to the US last week, and he revealed that the US government had made a special plan to get the Patriot air defence system, which can shoot down enemy missiles, ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.

#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade destroyed a Russian BMP with a Stugna-P ATGM in the East. pic.twitter.com/68SlZ5z6mf

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 24, 2022

Just weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his country’s unprovoked full invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has proven a master of messaging, bluntly told the Kremlin it would have to “learn the words ‘reparations’ and ‘contributions.'”

More than nine months after the start of the invasion and with no hint that Putin is ready to end his country’s aggression, talk is slowly turning not only to rebuilding Ukraine once the conflict does end, but to how and who will finance what Zelenskiy has declared will be “the largest economic project in Europe of our time,” likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Will this be any different than the Billions invested in Afghanistan? Forever wars mean the spigot is wide open.

A shared sense of national history is proving to be a crucial weapon, spurring on Ukraine resistance and Russian soldiers

The Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko recalls a quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “Wars are not won by generals, but by schoolteachers and parish priests.” It’s a country’s taught collective memory, its shared sense of its own history, that are the decisive instruments for mobilisation, and are as important on the battlefield as weaponry.

Few conflicts have been so shaped by the chief actors’ sense of their own national story as the Ukrainian war that began in February. It is the competing grand narratives of the past, not just in Russia and Ukraine, but in Germany, France, Poland, the Baltics, the UK, the US, and even the global south, that make this war so hard to resolve.

Indeed, sometimes this war feels less like the end of history and more like the revenge of history.

Three military personnel have been killed during a drone attack on an air force base in Russia, Moscow has claimed.

Russian news agencies, citing the defence ministry, reported that those who died were hit by the falling wreckage of a Ukrainian drone shot down in the Saratov region this morning.

#Ukraine: A T-90M joins the turret-tossing competition – a Russian T-90M tank was destroyed by RKG-3 HEAT grenades adapted to be dropped from Ukrainian drones. pic.twitter.com/PW3x3ItNjR

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 26, 2022

Russian military lore is full of references to the cold months ahead in that part of Europe as “General Winter”. So, it is no surprise that President Vladimir Putin, disappointed in the performance of his generals, is looking at “General Winter” to help him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as it had helped Kutuzov against Napoleon.

Putin’s reading of history, however, is slanted in favor of his illusions. In the Napoleonic war, “General Winter” was on the side of the defender, not the aggressor. With “General Winter” unlikely to work for Putin, he may have to look at another grand old man, this time a diplomat, to help him out of the hole he has dug for Russia.

President Vladimir Putin blasted the West for trying to “tear apart” Russia and said his offensive in Ukraine aimed to “unite the Russian people”.

Meanwhile in Kyiv, a day after deadly shelling in southern Ukraine, residents held Christmas services on Sunday, defying Russian spiritual leaders who celebrate it on January 7.

Putin has used the concept of “historical Russia” to argue that Ukrainians and Russians are one people — undermining Kyiv’s sovereignty and justifying his 10-month offensive in Ukraine.

He said Russia’s “geopolitical opponents (were) aiming to tear apart Russia, the historical Russia,” Putin said in excerpts from an interview to be aired later on Sunday.

A partisan cell in Kherson spied on, undermined and even hunted down Russian soldiers. Now that Vladimir V. Putin’s forces are gone, people feel free to talk — and to brag a little.

On a foggy morning a few months ago, Valentyn Dmytrovych Yermolenko, an aging Ukrainian fisherman with a bad back and horrible knees, puttered down a narrow channel off the Dnipro River, his inflatable dinghy cutting through the mist.

His city, Kherson, had been taken over by the Russian Army, and on the floor of his boat, concealed under a fishing net in a black plastic tub, Mr. Yermolenko had hidden three disassembled automatic rifles.

As he took a bend in the river, he recalled, a Russian patrol boat materialized in front of him. A commander standing on the deck in crisp camouflage barked: “Grandpa! Where are you going?”

Comcast-owned Sky News has stealth edited an uncritical article about “Chechen jihadis” fighting the Russians in Ukraine, heavily deemphasising their “jihadi” status.

In a bizarre article based on on-the-ground interviews with Chechens fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the embattled Donbas city of Bakhmut, the British broadcaster highlighted a variety of weapons including suicide vests devised by the Muslim fighters, and their “hope they can one day take their holy war back to their homeland of Chechnya.”