“Ukraine – Russia”

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.

Underground efforts appearing to spread, say analysts, after reports of explosions and attacks on Russian border guards

Ukrainian partisans in occupied areas of the country are increasing attacks and sabotage efforts on Russian forces and their local collaborators, with organised underground efforts appearing to spread.

Six Russian border guarders were reportedly killed last week when their position came under fire near the Zernovo border checkpoint in Ukraine’s north. Two days later an explosion struck close to the office of Yevgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol.

The increase in partisan warfare, particularly in the country’s south around Kherson, follows warnings at the outset of Russia’s war against Ukraine that any area under occupation was likely to see the emergence of guerrilla warfare.

Proposed powers to sell, redistribute Russian assets may violate international law, says legal expert

If the House of Commons passes the budget implementation bill as expected this month, the Canadian government could have new powers to seize and sell sanctioned Russian assets to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine, setting up a potential violation of international law.

Chapter 2 of the United Nations Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, adopted by the International Law Commission in 2001 and submitted to the General Assembly, lays out rules for countermeasures member states may take to hold another member — Russia in this instance — accountable for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Isn’t that swell?

Can a dating app fight Russian propaganda?

If you are impatient with the calibre of potential partners in your city, Tinder has a feature for you. For £18 a month, you can “passport” to another place; that is, you can set your location to anywhere in the world. Tel Aviv, Jeddah, Moscow, Kyiv. Tinder’s blandness, combined with the fact that matchmaking is a universally smiled-upon process, has allowed it to operate as a politically-neutral entity — even in sexually repressive or war-torn regimes.

In late March, roughly a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unnamed Nato official told NBC News that the conflict was turning into a meat grinder for both sides. ‘If we’re not in a stalemate, we are rapidly approaching one,’ the Nato official said at the time. ‘The reality is that neither side has a superiority over the other.’

Sure enough, a month and a half later, the Pentagon’s top intelligence official testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘stalemate’ is exactly what is occurring. ‘The Russians aren’t winning, and the Ukrainians aren’t winning, and we’re at a bit of a stalemate here,’ Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said on May 10.

Standing in front of a statue of a gruff-looking Soviet general, Peter Obukhov explained his plan to purge Russian names from the city of Odesa. “The things written here are unacceptable. You can see the word ‘Kremlin’. And there’s Lenin’s face as well,” he said, pointing to an inscription beneath the monument to Rodion Malinovsky.

Obukhov is a deputy in Odesa’s city parliament. He said he did not want to pull down Malinovsky’s statue, a fate that has befallen Lenin sculptures all across Ukraine. The Soviet defence minister was born in Odesa and liberated the city from the Nazis during the second world war. “I would rewrite the sign and get rid of the communist symbols. We need the truth,” Obukhov said.

Russia launched airstrikes on Kyiv for the first time in five weeks on Sunday, claiming it had destroyed western-supplied tanks – while the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warned more targets would be struck if weapons deliveries continued.

Several explosions were heard around the eastern Kyiv suburbs of Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi early on Sunday morning, wounding one person. The strikes represented a change of tack on the part of the invading forces.

Russia’s ministry of defence said the strikes had destroyed T-72 tanks that had been provided to Ukraine by European countries that were being stored in the buildings of a car repair business, although the claim could not immediately be verified.

#Ukraine: Clearer footage just released by the Ukrainian 128th Mountain Assault Brigade shows what was shot down was a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter- they claim that a MANPADS was used.

Given the low altitude & very rapid explosion, we can state that both the crew were killed. https://t.co/exCn9nvNZ5 pic.twitter.com/EkBKBvd3aY

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) June 5, 2022

I hope the Ukraine kicks butt, I hope they win. I support supplying military aid and helping their refugees but I wonder if they are are being sacrificed for ulterior motives. It is unseemly that Freeland throws herself at Russian oligarchs while our allies continue to buy Russian oil and gas. Now we have Macron warning we mustn’t “humiliate” Putin. The French are such sophisticated surrenderists we yobs from the hinterlands should heed his counsel.

You’re either at war or you’re not. Ukraine seems more like a live expo for weapons manufacturers. Is there an end in sight? Under what terms?

Ukraine on Saturday announced the deaths of four foreign military volunteers who joined the fight against the Russian invasion, three of whom were from the EU.

“We wish to remember and honor our fallen brothers, who travelled to Ukraine to join the bravest of the brave and fight shoulder to shoulder with the defenders of Ukraine,” the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine said in a statement.

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine (AP) — As soon as they had finished burying a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling, the cemetery workers readied the next hole. Inevitably, given how quickly death is felling Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the empty grave won’t stay that way for long.

Col. Oleksandr Makhachek left behind a widow, Elena, and their daughters Olena and Myroslava-Oleksandra. In the first 100 days of war, his grave was the 40th dug in the military cemetery in Zhytomyr, 90 miles (140 kilometers) west of the capital, Kyiv.