Six months in, Russia needs soldiers.
Tallies of Russian military casualties since the invasion of Ukraine was launched in February vary. U.S. officials put Russia’s dead and wounded at between 70,000 and 80,000, a figure echoed by British and other Western intelligence estimates.
For months now, Russian commanders and recruiters have been conducting a quiet but sweeping campaign to find more men to replenish the ranks.
Social media has been gripped by Dugin derangement syndrome
Dugin derangement syndrome. What else might we call the reaction to the assassination of Darya Dugina, daughter of nationalist Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, coming from some quarters? The war in Ukraine has created a class of highly influential social media “experts,” whose analysis we might normally simply ignore if their collective reach did not number in the millions. But their latest idea is too odd to overlook. They have accused Alexander Dugin, her father, of having her killed in a ritual, esoteric sacrifice.
An online story from one of our broadcasters contained an incredible sentence. For — the sentence made sense. Hence, it was incredible.
Here it is: “One economist suggested Europe should drop its focus on climate change and instead prioritize keeping their countries warm and their lights on in the coming months.”
LONDON (Reuters) – No more ironing, limited oven use and showering at work – Europeans are trying to keep their energy use down but the bills keep climbing.
As wholesale gas and electricity prices surge, millions of people in Europe are now spending a record amount of their income on energy, data show.
In the east England town of Grimsby, Philip Keetley didn’t turn on his cooling fan at home as Britain sweltered under a record heat-wave this summer.
A look at his bank account showed he couldn’t afford to.
LONDON (AP) — Jennifer Jones keeps feeding money into her energy meter, but it never seems to be enough. And when she can’t pay, she feels the impact immediately.
The power in her London home has gone off suddenly three times recently, once when her partner was cooking an egg.
… To blame for the increase is the soaring price of wholesale natural gas triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is driving up consumer prices and roiling economies across Europe that rely on the fuel for heating homes and generating electricity.
How long until people decide that the war being waged is against them and Ukraine is just a smokescreen?
I support Ukraine but the cynical manipulation by the Green-scammers like Trudeau who use the crisis to advance their harmful agenda is appalling and needs to end.
Spy chiefs are warning of violent protests that could shake the foundations of the nation’s democratic system
At first glance it was just another bad day in a rotten week for Olaf Scholz. A week ago the German chancellor travelled to Neuruppin, a small town 40 miles northwest of Berlin, to deliver a routine speech to a sympathetic audience of 300 people or so.
Instead he found himself drowned out by a din of boos and taunts from 300 protesters gathered outside the cordon around the square: “liar”, “piss off”, “traitor to the people”. So far, so normal in today’s Germany.
A political revolt is brewing in Germany
The coalition government is out of touch with what voters want
… The coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals looks out of touch with a voter base that has recently shifted in a dramatically pro-nuclear direction. Several polls have shown that at least 60% of Germans want to postpone the phase-out of nuclear, including a surprising 61% majority among supporters of the Greens.
A well-experienced researcher believes the recent assassination of the daughter of a prominent Vladimir Putin ally could lead to a power struggle within Russia.
Alexander Dugin’s daughter Darya, 29, was killed when the car she was travelling in near a Moscow village exploded on Saturday night, law enforcement officials said.
Investigators had earlier believed her 60-year-old father was the intended target before later backing down to suggest the woman was likely marked.
#Ukraine: A Russian BMD-2 was hit by Ukrainian fire somewhere in the East- and apparently became rocket powered. pic.twitter.com/6du88U0niO
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 22, 2022
Britain starts to turn out the lights: Restaurants, pubs, butchers, cafes and shops are among small businesses forced to close as soaring energy bills begin to bite
Small firms are pleading for the Government to step in over sky-high energy bills, which have soared by as much as 400 per cent in some cases, leaving many fearing they could be put out of business by the end of the year.
More than half of small companies — 54 per cent — fear their running costs could force them to close, according to a report by SME Insights and insurer Simply Business.
Businesses are not protected by energy watchdog Ofgem’s price cap and they face paying 20 per cent VAT on their energy bills, whereas most ordinary households pay five per cent.
Canada will return remaining gas turbines covered under sanction exemption, Joly says
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada still plans to return five turbines used in a Russian natural gas pipeline — despite the fact that the company operating the pipeline refused to accept one turbine that has been returned to Germany already.
In July, the government granted an exemption to ship six turbines undergoing maintenance in Montreal back to Germany to be subsequently handed over to the Russian state-owned firm Gazprom, which operates the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that provides Germany and other European countries with natural gas.
It could well represent one of the biggest missed opportunities in Canadian history: An embattled Europe is clamouring for natural gas, and one of the world’s biggest producers of the stuff can’t sell it to them.
The economic hit is overwhelming: At current prices, even just one Canadian port exporting liquid natural gas could be adding nine figures to the Canadian GDP each day. Politically, Canada could be helping to deal a body blow to Russian hegemony over Western European energy. Instead, on both fronts, Ottawa appears content to watch from the sidelines.
At least 15 people have been killed and 50 wounded in a Russian rocket strike on a Ukrainian railway station, as the country marked six months since Moscow’s invasion on a sombre independence day overshadowed by warnings of further “brutal” attacks.
Addressing the UN late on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the rockets struck a train in a station in the town of Chaplyne, about 145km (90 miles) west of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
#Ukraine: A Russian BMD-2 was hit by Ukrainian fire somewhere in the East- and apparently became rocket powered. pic.twitter.com/6du88U0niO
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 22, 2022
As Moscow’s war on Ukraine reaches the six-month mark, a top leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Canada has echoed the Kremlin’s talking points on the conflict, insisting in a recent interview the unprovoked invasion was justified and decrying as “ridiculous” Canada’s sanctions on the church’s war-boosting patriarch.
It is a name plucked from obscurity and plastered on front pages around the world: Natalia Vovk, the woman Russia says blew up the daughter of ‘Putin’s Rasputin’.
The FSB claims she is a veteran of Mariupol’s Azov battalion turned spy, who spent weeks tracking Darya Dugina before planting 800g of explosives under the driver’s seat of her car on August 20 and rigging it to blow as she left a festival near Moscow.
But Kyiv has denied any link to the slaying, the Azov Battalion says it has no record of Vovk having served with them, and evidence that has emerged from social media accounts paints a picture that is at odds with Moscow’s account.
A new Department of Defense inspector general report released last week estimated that the Afghan government possessed $7.12 billion worth of equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars when it fell roughly a year ago, “much of which has since been seized by the Taliban.”
“This included military aircraft, ground vehicles, weapons, and other military equipment,” the release noted. “The condition of these items was unknown, and the long-term operability of the vehicles was likely to deteriorate without U.S. contractor maintenance.”
Russian resistance fighters were behind the car bombing that killed the daughter of an ultra-nationalist philosopher who had backed the invasion of Ukraine, a former Russian opposition MP has said.
Ilya Ponomarev, who fled to Ukraine after opposing the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, said a group of Russian partisan fighters known as the National Republican Army (NRA) had claimed responsibility for the bombing.
