“Ukraine – Russia”

Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Brahim Saadoun embody the spirit of solidarity and internationalism.

Yesterday, two Brits and a Moroccan were sentenced to death by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine. The three, who had been fighting with the Ukrainian armed forces, were found guilty, in the words of the court, of ‘mercenary activities and committing actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the DPR’.

The official condemnation from Ukraine’s Western supporters came quickly. The British government pointed out that they were prisoners of war and that, under the Geneva Conventions, they ‘were entitled to combatant immunity… from prosecutions’. UK foreign secretary Liz Truss called it ‘a sham judgement with absolutely no legitimacy’.

Speaking of Internationalism…

Lost photos from Spanish civil war reveal daily life behind anti-fascist lines

Photographs by two Jewish female photographers who worked behind anti-fascist lines during the Spanish civil war have gone on display in Madrid after 80 years. For decades the negatives and prints, many of which have never been published, were believed to be lost or destroyed. They are now on show in the capital for the first time.

I get a kick out of this pic. The photographers were affiliated with anarchist organizations and these are captioned “Anarchist Vehicles.”

Would they mind if I drove off with one?

I don’t hold anything against the left of 1930’s. Too little was then widely known about the anti-human horror of communism. The anti-Franco volunteers may have been naïve true believers  but there is no denying they were on the right side of history for once. The horror of WW I and the ravages of capitalism’s virtual collapse made signing up for the cause pretty easy for many I suspect.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth month, Ukrainian officials are increasingly worried the West could soon suffer “war fatigue.”

They fear Russia could take advantage of that to pressure Ukraine into compromise, something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has resisted, saying Ukraine would pursue its own terms for peace.

“The fatigue is growing, people want some kind of outcome [that is beneficial] for themselves, and we want [another] outcome for ourselves,” he said.

Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands

Vladimir Putin has compared himself to the 18th-century Russian tsar Peter the Great, drawing a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands.

“Peter the Great waged the great northern war for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned [what was Russia’s],” the Russian president said on Thursday after a visiting an exhibition dedicated to the tsar.

Putin: West unlikely to reject Russian energy for years

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the West will not be able to cut itself off from Russian oil and gas for several years.

He added that nobody knows what might happen in that time, so Russian companies would not be “concreting over their oil-wells”.

It comes as a US official admitted that Russian profits on energy may be higher now than they were before the war.

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian 2S7 Pion 203mm self-propelled howitzer was hit by Russian cluster munitions near Bakhmut, #Donetsk Oblast – at the rear side propellant can be seen burning severely, so the SPH is at least damaged and likely requires repair. pic.twitter.com/OYXQyzWQ44

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) June 9, 2022

Cases of desertion are growing every week in the Ukrainian army, according to a leaked intelligence report, as up to 200 of its outgunned soldiers are being killed every day in the eastern Donbas region.

Kyiv’s troops are outnumbered 20 to one in artillery and 40 to one in ammunition by the Kremlin’s forces in the area, the leaked Ukrainian intelligence report reveals.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to the Ukrainian president, on Thursday said the battle over the war-town country’s industrial heartlands was so intense that Kyiv is suffering up to 200 military casualties per day. The previous upper limit was given as 100 soldiers.

President Duda excoriated Germany’s Scholz and France’s Macron for warning against “humiliating” Putin over the invasin of Ukraine. He accused them of legitimizing Russian atrocities.

Polish President Andrzej Duda slammed the leaders of both Germany and France for their phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, comparing it to maintaining a direct line with Adolf Hitler during World War II.

In an interview published in Thursday’s edition of German best-selling newspaper Bild, Duda questioned what Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron thought was to be gained by the calls as Russia continues to bombard civilian targets in Ukraine.

James Challice, a 42-year-old Canadian Forces veteran, travelled to Ukraine in late March and has been training young recruits to defend their country.

In a video interview with Today’s Northumberland community news site in April, the Cobourg, Ont., man said he is confident Ukrainians will take back their country because “the morale is phenomenal.”

In recent days though, Challice has been fighting at the front and in an exchange with contacts in Canada laid out a far less optimistic synopsis.

A bad stench emanates from this conflict.

It is evident the elites will protect profits over lives as with Freeland floating a deal to benefit her Oligarch friends and the continued free flow of gas, oil and money between so called enemies.

A cynical coalition of nations is very pleased to have tax payer funded aid used to support Russian oil and gas profits so as not to unsettle their home markets.

We are paying the price with runaway inflation and potential food shortages while the Trudeau Liberals virtue signal and use the Ukraine crisis to advance their ruinous green-scam.

Ukrainians are dying while we support their enemy.  

PS. If Zelensky makes a Zoom appearance on one more awards show I am washing my hands of this whole thing. My bet is he’s booked for the finals of the Rupaul Drag show.

Two British men and a Moroccan man held by Russian forces in Ukraine have been sentenced to death.

Shaun Pinner, 48, and Aiden Aslin, 28 – along with Moroccan national Saaudun Brahim – were all captured while fighting in Ukraine.

The so-called supreme court of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) issued death their sentences on Thursday, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency said.

In a corner of the leafy town of Irpin, the brutality of the Russian occupation was clear from the start. The body of a young woman in a red coat would remain in the street for four weeks – lying where she had been trampled not once, but over and over again, under the wheels of Russian armoured vehicles.

Irpin is on the doorstep of Kyiv, and in early March Russian troops intent on conquering the capital took hold of the town.

Its blown-up bridge and river crossing became known internationally as a risky escape route from next-door Bucha, the scene of many of Russia’s alleged war crimes.

Russian proxy fighters in east Ukraine have said they are opening a trial against two Britons, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were captured fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol.

The two men, who are serving in the Ukrainian military, and Ibrahim Saadun, a captive from Morocco, were shown sitting in a courtroom cage reserved for defendants in a video released on pro-Russian social media channels on Tuesday.

Prosecutors from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a proxy government in east Ukraine controlled by Russia, have said that the men face the death penalty for “terrorism” and for fighting as “mercenaries” against the Russian invasion.

A notorious Russian mercenary known as “The Executioner” and suspected of slaughtering prisoners of war and civilians in Ukraine has been killed, according to reports.

Russian-language Telegram channels and media outlets reported that Vladimir Andonov, 44, a purported member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s feared private army the Wagner Group, was shot dead by an apparent Ukraine sniper in Kharkiv last week.

Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s east has brought it some battlefield success as its military has advanced slowly in fierce fighting in Donbas.

But those gains have come at a high price for the Russian invasion force, with evidence that high-level casualties are growing and that some units may be approaching exhaustion as the war moves past its 100-day mark.

As the conflict drags on, some fighters have gone public with appeals to Vladimir Putin for an investigation into battlefield conditions and whether their deployments to the front are even legal.

KYIV, Ukraine — As the Russian army made its move on Kyiv in late February, the Ukrainian defences enlisted a drone pilot to pinpoint a column of military vehicles approaching the capital from the west.

The civilian who took on the task sent his drone up in a field near his house and found the Russian convoy. Ukrainian artillery destroyed it and the drone operator was quietly saluted as a hero.