“Ukraine – Russia”

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin is battling both pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s disease, according to a new report citing leaked Kremlin emails.

A Russian intelligence source appeared to confirm in messages viewed by The Sun what has long been rumored about the 70-year-old strongman.

“I can confirm he has been diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s disease, but it’s already progressing,” the security services insider reportedly claimed.

Energy boss says ‘virtually all’ non-nuclear power stations hit by Russian attacks

Ukraine faces a winter humanitarian crisis unless it can prevent a collapse in its electricity supply caused by the relentless campaign of Russian bombing, the chief executive of the country’s national grid has said.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive of Ukrenergo, said “virtually all” large non-nuclear power stations in the country had been hit, as well as more than 30% of the network’s routing substations.

Describing the position as critical, the energy boss said Ukraine had asked western countries for badly needed spare parts last week – and repeated calls for more missile defence systems to help prevent damaging attacks.

Maybe a dozen soldiers walking behind…

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian BMP infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed after it ran over a row of Russian anti-tank mines in Orlianka, #Kharkiv Oblast. pic.twitter.com/OpogBFGIRa

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

After 250 days, his forces are caught in a paradox

As the first 250 days of Russia’s war in Ukraine have proved again, the logic of strategy is paradoxical. It has never been linear, as in the Roman Si vis pacem para bellum: if you want peace prepare for war. Because the logic of strategy is paradoxical, it is very easy to be wrong in matters of peace and war, and very hard to be right.

#Ukraine: A Russian BTR was also hit from above, as seen through Stugna-P optics. We added Slo-Mo so it can be seen more clearly. https://t.co/YPYwrCgQIa pic.twitter.com/IHpXcgJoGF

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

SHEVCHENKOVE, Ukraine—When Russian armored columns drove into this rural community of 20,000 people on the first day of the invasion, Mayor Valeriy Prykhodko tried to count the tanks, artillery pieces and fighting vehicles that rolled past his windows.

After the first few hundred, he gave up. “It was too big for counting,” Mr. Prykhodko said. “The horror.”

Located some 35 miles from the Russian border, Shevchenkove fell without a fight the afternoon of Feb. 24. In the six months of Russian rule that followed, many locals came to believe that Moscow, with its awe-inspiring military might, would stay here forever.

The least surprising aspect of a new report claiming that President Biden lost his cool during a phone call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelensky, is how quickly Russian media seized on it. More perplexing is the little-known dynamic between the two leaders, and what the minor meltdown portends for Ukraine as the war there drags on.

NBC first reported that it was during a call in June that Mr. Biden “lost his temper.” Citing sources familiar with the call, the network reported that Mr. Biden had “barely finished telling Zelensky he’d just greenlighted another $1 billion in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine when Zelensky started listing all the additional help he needed and wasn’t getting.”

Critics of the massive US weapons pipeline to Ukraine have long pointed out there’s no accountability or appropriate tracking once those arms enter the country, presenting ripe opportunities for criminals, terrorists, or lucrative black market arms sellers to take advantage.

So it was perhaps only a matter of time before headlines like this began showing up in international publications – “NBI: Arms sent to Ukraine in criminal hands.” The NBI is Finland’s federal National Bureau of Investigation, and the report is from Finland’s national public broadcasting company Yle, and provides confirmation that arms intended for Ukrainian forces are going outside the country.

No war avoids crime.