“Ukraine – Russia”

A picture shows Russian troops held in a Putin ‘punishment camp’ for brave mobilised heroes who refuse to fight in his illegal war.

The enlistees were dumped in a cellar in Donetsk region where they are ‘starved’ and ‘threatened with mass execution by firing squad’.

Independent Russian media outlet The Insider highlighted the plight of 21 refuseniks illegally held in the Donetsk People’s Republic, which Putin has annexed.

Bad timing …

#Ukraine: A concealed Russian T-72B3 tank was hit by Ukrainian indirect fire in #Kherson Oblast. pic.twitter.com/vNh8k1kz3o

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 8, 2022

On a quiet industrial estate in Kharkiv, the mangled and charred remains of more than 1,000 Russian rockets and artillery shells are being collected.

Each chunk of metal evidences the scale of Moscow’s daily long-range attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city and the surrounding region.

When The Telegraph visited the “graveyard” for Russian missiles, Dmytro Chubenko held one particular remnant of a strike on a civilian target aloft.

Ukrainian forces are closing in on Kherson, while Russian forces are building up defences inside it.

Both sides see the city, in the south of the country, as important to control. However, military experts say a battle for it could prove very costly.

Before the war, Kherson had a population of about 380,000.

It is on the banks of the Dnipro river, near the Black Sea coast.

It is also close to the Crimean peninsula – a part of Ukraine which Russia annexed in 2014 and which contains a number of its military bases.

#Ukraine: Artillery fire from the Ukrainian 63rd Mechanized Brigade hit a Russian fuel dump consisting of multiple parked tankers; you can see the result. pic.twitter.com/DNgAg1DmMS

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 4, 2022

Russia installs ‘dragon’s teeth’ barriers to slow advance of Ukrainian forces

Russia is stepping up its efforts to build substantial obstacle barriers to slow the advance of Ukrainian forces in key locations it is defending, including around the devastated city of Mariupol, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

Its intelligence assessment on Tuesday said the Russian military was using two plants in occupied Mariupol to produce large numbers of “dragon’s teeth” – pyramidal concrete blocks designed to slow advancing military vehicles.

Looks like 3 crew got out.

#Ukraine: The destruction of an apparent T-80BV tank of the Russian Army filmed by a drone operated by the 22nd Separate Motorized Infantry Battalion, presumably in the East. It is claimed that a TM-62M AT mine was used. pic.twitter.com/x0y2kKgNLN

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 8, 2022

The soldiers were sent to the frontline in Luhansk and their officers ran away, according to an unverified Verstka news agency report

An entire battalion of Russian mobilised men was wiped out within days of being sent to the frontline in Ukraine, survivors have told Russian opposition media.

The soldiers had been ordered to the frontline in Luhansk, Donbas, and then told to dig trenches, the Verstka news agency said in an unverified report.

“We had three shovels per battalion and there were no provisions at all. We dug in as best we could and in the morning the shelling started from artillery and helicopters. We were simply shot,” Agafonov, the alleged unit survivor, said.

“When it all started the officers simply ran away.”

#Ukraine: A Russian T-80BV tank was destroyed by a Ukrainian FGM-148 Javelin ATGM strike in the East. pic.twitter.com/s7NtD3uaSH

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 6, 2022

The encouragement is aimed not at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, but ensuring it maintains a moral high ground in the eyes of its international backers

The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power, according to people familiar with the discussions.

… While U.S. officials share their Ukrainian counterparts’ assessment that Putin, for now, isn’t serious about negotiations, they acknowledge that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ban on talks with him has generated concern in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America, where the war’s disruptive effects on the availability and cost of food and fuel are felt most sharply.

“Ukraine fatigue is a real thing for some of our partners,” said one U.S. official who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations between Washington and Kyiv.

The Liberals are using Ukraine as a cover to implement their Green-Scam. Even docile Canadians have limits and the LPC scam is testing them daily.

Incredible drone footage has revealed the moment a brave Ukrainian paratrooper dashed out from his hiding place to obliterate a passing Russian tank with a guided missile from mere feet away.

The armoured vehicle, one of Russia’s modern T-80 main battle tanks, was driving along a dirt track lined by wooded areas – perfect concealment for Ukrainian soldiers lying in wait.

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian paratrooper of the 95th Air Assault Brigade ambushed a Russian T-80BV tank at close range in the East. It was destroyed. pic.twitter.com/p9CzuhdYHa

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 4, 2022

The war in Ukraine has sent the numbers of refugees seeking shelter in Europe soaring, pushing those from other conflicts to the end of the line.

In Brussels, asylum seekers are forced to shelter in cardboard boxes on the street. Across southern Germany, small-town mayors are opening gyms and auditoriums to house ever more refugees. And in the Netherlands, where a 3-month-old baby died this year, the government is being sued for inhumane camp conditions.

With Russia waging war on its doorstep, Europe has taken in 4.4 million Ukrainians this year, in addition to more than 365,000 first-time asylum applicants, many fleeing threats in Syria and Afghanistan.

That is more even than in 2015, which stood out as the landmark period of migration in contemporary European history, when 1.2 million refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East arrived, the bulk of them in Germany. The country’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, encouraged their welcome with her now-famous line: “We can do it.”

By the beginning of 2020 the only men in Putin’s inner circle were his oldest, most trusted and – tragically for Russia and Ukraine – most hawkish and paranoid allies. The invasion of 2022 was, in the minds of the Soviet-era fantasists who planned and pushed it, first and foremost a pre-emptive strike to save Russia from a looming strategic threat from the West.

Ukraine was merely the battlefield where the two former superpowers’ interests came into direct confrontation – the location for what Putin’s closest circle imagined was a millennial battle between the two sides. “Ukraine does not exist,” Viktor Zolotov, Putin’s former bodyguard who now heads the powerful Russian National Guard, told Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the Echo Moskvy radio station. “It is the border of America and Russia.”

In just nine hours, the Prytula Foundation raised $5.5m from private donors to buy 50 FV103 Spartans used by the British Army

By Christmas, 50 hardly used FV103 Spartan armoured personnel carriers (APCs), until recently the property of the British army, and currently in warehouses in secret locations across the UK, will arrive on the frontline in Ukraine’s war with Russia in time for the toughest winter conditions.

The transfer, the largest of such APCs to Ukraine, is not due to British munificence nor to procurement by the Ukrainian ministry of defence.

It is instead just the latest example of the extraordinary scale and indeed speed of the crowdfunding campaigns that have been powering the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war.

#Ukraine: Four Russian BMP infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed in rapid succession by Ukrainian Stugna-P anti-tank guided missiles in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/5A9iVgxpOl

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 30, 2022

Senior Russian military leaders discussed last month how and when they might use nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine, two US officials have told CBS News.

Vladimir Putin was not involved in the talks, they told the BBC’s US partner.

The White House said it had grown “increasingly concerned” about the potential use of nuclear weapons over the last few months.

But it stressed the US saw no sign of Russia preparing for such use.

#Ukraine: In the South, the Ukrainian 59th Motorized Brigade destroyed a Russian BMD-4M airborne IFV with a precision artillery strike. pic.twitter.com/rfmvKtqQ8H

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 1, 2022