“Ukraine – Russia”

The last time I saw Mariana Zhaglo, war was still a rumour. It was January 24, a full month before the Russian invasion, and she stood in her kitchen in Kyiv with the Zbroyer Z-15 hunting carbine she had bought to defend her city against possible Russian attack.

Few of her neighbours believed the Russians would really invade, and Mariana’s preparations — the pickles and tins of fish and ham she had stashed as emergency rations, together with boxes of ammunition — seemed zealously pre-emptive.

#Ukraine: A Russian Ural 4320 truck was ambushed by Ukrainian forces in #Donetsk Oblast, and was destroyed. pic.twitter.com/RW5zOwjepQ

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 2, 2022

… If Ukrainian troops, armed with an array of Western weapons, continue their counteroffensive, they will pose a threat to the Russian homeland in the form of its newly acquired territories. Putin will respond by doing what he has repeatedly warned he would do: employ nuclear weapons. Whether such a use is against a target in Ukraine or just a demonstration shot, the effects would be the same. Such a move would undoubtedly undermine Western support for Kyiv, given that the United States and NATO are virtually certain not to respond in kind. It could also lead to the collapse of the NATO alliance. In essence, Putin might win by losing.

President Putin is set to demonstrate his willingness to use weapons of mass destruction with a nuclear test on Ukraine’s borders, defence sources have warned.

The Kremlin has been signalling its readiness for a significant escalation as Russia loses ground on the battlefield. Fears that Putin’s earlier hints that he might resort to such tactics were heightened today by claims that a train operated by the secretive nuclear division was destined for Ukraine.

Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.

On Monday the Russian military acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka.

#Ukraine: Another Russian T-80BV tank was captured in #Kharkiv Oblast, seen here being towed by a Ukrainian BREM-1 recovery vehicle over a pontoon bridge. pic.twitter.com/dMbRRWPspM

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 3, 2022

Aman lies groaning on the path with a red stump where his leg was. Ukrainian recruits run through smoke to kneel behind sandbags and fire at the enemy on a sun-baked hillside.

It looks like a scene from the war in eastern Ukraine, but this is southern England and the casualty an amputee actor, engaged by the British Army to help train Ukrainian civilians in rudimentary soldiering skills to defend their homeland from Russia.

The faces of these raw recruits betray their anxiety as bursts of live machinegun fire crackle overhead — the idea is to “inoculate” them, to familiarise them with the sound so they won’t panic in combat.

#Ukraine: The National Guard of Ukraine took out a Russian BMP-3 IFV with an ATGM strike in the vicinity of Pavlivka, #Donetsk Oblast.pic.twitter.com/LMGYJQZQJF

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 2, 2022

The old world broke this week. It was blown up cynically by someone who thought this would advance their agenda the most.

The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.

Well, for most people anyway.

When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go.

Serious Rabbit Hole reading. But I admit that blowing up the pipelines leaves us more questions than answers. Do you trust the Biden government? The EU? The WEF? Russia?

A blood-stained mattress lay in the dank basement of a bombed-out hotel where Russian troops were based until Ukraine’s soldiers forced them out last month. Abandoned army rations and sleeping bags indicated a rapid departure.

Not long ago, Sviati Hory [Holy Mountains] National Park was a popular tourist spot. The war has transformed this once tranquil area in the north of Donetsk region, centred on a 17th monastery, into an apocalyptic landscape littered with the grim detritus of Russia’s failing invasion.

Sensors are everywhere on the battlefield in #Ukraine: including those of the Bayraktar TB-2 UCAV, seen using the Wescam MX-15D sensor turret to observe what appears to be this recent shootdown. https://t.co/wZCgXgAoJo pic.twitter.com/5NRlcNq0by

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 2, 2022

IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end.

Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was.

“No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.”

The Calgary branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is calling on the federal government to take a harsher stance against Russia as the situation abroad continues to worsen.

The organization wants to see Ottawa declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, expel Russian diplomats from Canada and suspend the issuance of Canadian travel visas to Russian Federation citizens.

Vladimir Putin’s disastrous military adventure in Ukraine has raised the prospect that his 22-year rule could be nearing its end. But will he go, or will he have to be pushed?

Seven months into the Russian president’s war of aggression, his troops have suffered massive losses of men and equipment and are in headlong retreat in eastern Ukraine. Putin’s order last week to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men has descended into chaos, drawing rebukes even from his own propagandists and political allies.

The 69-year-old autocrat rose to power in 2000, succeeding an ailing Boris Yeltsin after championing Russia’s second war in Chechnya. The chances of his leaving anytime soon are still remote, but it’s clear that the escalating fallout from his military gamble is already loosening his viselike grip on power.

DARIALI, Georgia — They are bus drivers, programmers, photographers, bankers. They have driven for hours, bribed their way through many police checkpoints — spending a month’s wages in some cases — and then waited at the border, most of them for days, in a traffic jam that stretched for miles.

Many grabbed their passports, abandoned their cars and crossed the frontier on foot, fearing that Russia would slam shut one of the last, precious routes to leave the country. The Kremlin dispatched teams to border crossings to weed out draft-eligible men and hand them conscription notices, and rumors spread on social media that it would seal the border.

Most of those who left had no idea when they would return home, if ever.