“Ukraine – Russia”

Biden doesn’t just want to weaken Russia

All of Europe is suffering as a result of the energy crisis, but for the continent’s largest economy, this is more than just an economic crisis — it’s an existential one. Once hailed as Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany is now being labelled its “weakest link”.

A recession next year is now considered almost certain; industrial production is down 9% on last year; inflation has soared to double digits for the first time since the Second World War. Given Germany’s deep-seated inflation-phobia, all this is problematic enough. But even more traumatic for the country is the fact that Germany is now running a negative trade balance — the first time this has happened in more than 30 years. This is a very tough pill to swallow for a country where export-led growth is more than just an economic model — it’s part of its national identity.

Elon Musk personally rejected a Ukrainian request to extend his satellite internet service to Crimea, the SpaceX CEO fearing that an effort to retake the peninsula from Russian forces could lead to a nuclear war, according to a report published Tuesday.

Following Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, Musk — and the US government — provided Kyiv with thousands of Starlink systems, enabling Ukrainian forces to communicate in what were previously dead zones. The low energy requirements of the service’s satellite receivers have enabled it to be connected to reconnaissance drones, Yahoo News reported, providing valuable, real-time intelligence on Russian movements and the ability to target them.

But recently there have been problems. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the service was suffering “catastrophic” outages on the frontlines, prompting speculation that it had been shut off in areas controlled by Russia — perhaps to prevent the Kremlin from itself exploiting the network.

A photo of Elon #Musk, which was posted as a sign of gratitude for his support of #Ukraine, is being removed in #Odesa. pic.twitter.com/ZjljZjhEWh

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 12, 2022

Russian president said to have told tech billionaire nuclear strike was on the table if Ukraine refused to cede annexed territories

Elon Musk spoke directly with Vladimir Putin before tweeting a “peace plan” which would involve Ukraine permanently ceding illegally annexed territory to Russia, according to reports.

During the conversation, the Russian president is said to have told the tech billionaire that a nuclear strike was on the table if Ukraine refused to recognise Moscow’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as Putin demanded.

The alleged conversation was reported in an email sent to Eurasia Group subscribers on Tuesday by Ian Bremmer, the group’s founder. Mr Bremmer wrote that the Tesla CEO told him two weeks ago that Putin would accomplish his goals “no matter what.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a preemptive strike against Russia in a Thursday speech. “But what is important, I once again appeal to the international community, as I did before February 24 – we need pre-emptive strikes, so that they’ll know what will happen to them if they use nukes, and not the other way around,” he said. “Don’t wait for Russia’s nuclear strikes, and then say, ‘Oh, since you did this, take that from us!’ Reconsider the way you apply pressure. This is what NATO should do – reconsider the order in which it applies pressure [on Russia].”

In Bakhmut the AFU is actively repulsing PMC Wagner attacks. The enemy struggles to take terrain while sustaining huge losses. Already between 1200-2000 PMC Wagner soldiers died in the last 2-3 weeks during the Zaitseve offensive. pic.twitter.com/aPzswUxC04

— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 11, 2022

Interviews in Kraków offer a collective portrait of their experience.

Three weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I arrived in Poland intending to volunteer, maybe by ladling soup for refugees or by unpacking boxes of humanitarian aid. Instead, I began a series of interviews with refugees in Kraków, Poland’s second-largest city, located just a few hours from the Ukrainian border.

By the time I arrived, Poland felt, if not quite like a country at war, certainly a nation poised to support a war. The trains and train stations overflowed with evacuees, mostly women and children. Volunteers in dayglow vests manned help points in train stations, bus depots, airports, and shopping malls. Blue and yellow flags were everywhere. Even local shopkeepers were stepping up. One convenience store I visited had posted a sign on a shopping cart: “Please take an item from your bag to help feed our Ukrainian visitors.”

Zelensky must make concessions, or prepare for the worst.

For the sake of the world, no less, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky needs to heed the events of Oct. 1962.

That’s when the Soviet Union and the United States came too close to nuclear war.

The United States considered it intolerable when it found Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. Remove them, or prepare for retaliation.

Both sides were bloated with nuclear weapons. It was a time of advancing communism and when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev blustered, “We will bury you.”

Our commander-in-chief is weak and fearful.

Livening up a Thursday fundraiser, President Joe Biden said, “Think about it. We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. We’ve got a guy I know fairly well; his name is Vladimir Putin…. It’s part of Russian doctrine that they will not — they will not — if the motherland is threatened, they’ll use whatever force they need, including nuclear weapons.” He added, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

An apparently co-ordinated denial-of-service attack organized by pro-Russia hackers rendered the websites of some major U.S. airports unreachable early Monday, though officials said flights were not affected.

The attacks — in which participants flood targets with junk data — were orchestrated by a shadowy group that calls itself Killnet. On the eve of the attacks the group published a target list on its Telegram channel.

Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, have agreed to form a joint group of troops on the Ukrainian border, amid fears of a new ground invasion of Kyiv.

Alexander Lukashenko told a security meeting he and the Russian president last weekend agreed to bring their troops together “due to tensions on the western border” of Belarus.

The strongman president’s comments came just a few hours after Ukrainian cities suffered a devastating barrage of strikes, with the capital Kyiv bombed for the first time since the spring as Russia sought to retaliate after an apparent attack on the bridge linking Russia with Crimea.

Moment exploding rocket.
russia is a terrorist!
Ukraine need more weapon for winning!#RussiaIsANaziState #RussiaTerroristState #ArmUkraineNow pic.twitter.com/SkS4dyfsUj

— Назар Віталійович (@Nazar_Gumenuk) October 10, 2022

Sweden has said it will not allow Moscow to participate in its ongoing investigation into the causes of multiple leaks in underwater pipelines transporting Russian natural gas to Europe.

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on October 10 that while Russia would not be allowed to join the investigation, Stockholm would invite a joint EU probe and Moscow was free to carry out its own inspections of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

“In Sweden, preliminary investigations are confidential, and this is of course also true in this case,” Andersson told reporters.

#Ukraine: Better quality video of these HIMARS/M270 strikes has now been released by Ukrainian SSO, showing the additional destruction of at least three 9P140 launch vehicles of the BM-27 Uragan 220mm MRLS, as well as three 2S19 Msta-S 152mm SPG. https://t.co/dLt5zo2qkA pic.twitter.com/dEiNrIszM5

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 10, 2022

The Russian strongman is in a pickle

The Russian army has been the source of an endless list of shortcomings and embarrassments over the last eight months. There are simply too many of them to count, from the failure to move through Kyiv’s suburbs in March to the sinking of the flagship Moskva in April to the loss in September of more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory in just days.

The past few hours have seen wave after wave of explosions, not just here in Kyiv, but all across this vast country, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the east and Odesa in the south.

For those of us who were here when Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February, there’s an element of déjà vu. We’ve been told to spend as much time as we can in the basement, as further attacks, using missiles and drones, are expected.

But this is also different. The explosions here in Kyiv are much closer to the centre. Not distant thumps from the suburbs, but loud reverberations close to streets and locations we’ve come to know well in the past eight months.

Russian footage of missile launches towards Ukraine this morning. Probably in the Black Sea. pic.twitter.com/bNpy83a9Y4

— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 10, 2022

Vladimir Putin on Sunday called the attack on the Crimea bridge a “terrorist act” carried out by the Ukrainian secret service, paving the way for an escalation in the Kremlin’s response.

Putin made his first comments about Saturday’s explosion in an unscheduled 33-second video address late on Sunday night.

“There is no doubt. This is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure,” the Russian president said in the broadcast, published on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel. “This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services.”