“Ukraine – Russia”

Russia has deployed mobile propaganda vans with large-screen televisions to humanitarian aid points in the captured city of Mariupol as the Kremlin has pushed forward with efforts to integrate newly occupied territories across the south of Ukraine.

Videos published by the Russian ministry of emergency situations showed the vans, which it called “mobile information complexes”, playing state TV news segments and political chat shows where pundits support the invasion to locals in the ruined city that still lacks electricity and running water.

… While it has historically been considered a rich agricultural region, it is now considered extremely valuable. Putin understands that Ukraine is also very rich in the precious metal lithium. One source reports that for fixed contracts, the annual average lithium price in the United States was $17,000 per ton in 2021, more than double that in 2020.

Well well well.

The war in Ukraine may be just the first test of the western alliance

There are many ways to fracture a people. But one of the best is to destroy all the remaining ties that bind them. To persuade them that to the extent they have anything of their own, it is not very special, and in the final analysis, hardly worth preserving. This is a process that has gone on across the western world for over a generation: a remorseless, daily assault on everything that most of us were brought up to believe was good about ourselves.

When their dogs started digging insistently at a spot in the woods, villagers in Zavalivka called in the authorities.

A Ukrainian military team were soon at the scene in white protective suits, carefully removing the topsoil.

They uncovered a man’s body, face down with his legs oddly twisted beneath him. It was clear from his uniform that he was a Russian soldier.

Kremlin vows to service its debt in roubles – an option that’s already been rejected

It is “a matter of time” until Russia defaults on its foreign debts after Joe Biden cut the Kremlin off from paying its bondholders.

Moscow is on the cusp of its first ­foreign debt default in a century after the US allowed an exemption permitting Russia to meet its obligations to international creditors to lapse.

The cut-off, which means US banks and individuals are banned from receiving bond payments from Russia, comes before Moscow is due to make a tranche of payments worth around $100m this Friday.

Western unity will be sorely tested if the conflict turns into a war of attrition with no side claiming victory

Aquarter of a year has now passed since Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine. And the first drafts of history have already been written. Their rough conclusions seem to go along the following lines.

First, to add to Talleyrand’s famous phrase, Putin has committed both a crime and a blunder. The Russian military has shown itself to be corrupt and inefficient. The Ukrainians have shown themselves to be quite astonishingly stalwart defenders of their homeland. And the West has shown itself to be unpredictably united.

After three months, the historical record is now clear

Within hours of 11 Republican Senators voting to delay proceeding with the roughly $40 billion Ukraine aid package, and days after 57 Republicans voted against the package in the House, the name calling has begun. “Isolationists!” Others characterized those who opposed the measure as “politicizing” the issue. Once again, the power brokers in DC are signaling that in American politics there is no room for debate on big issues, there is only one right answer.

Dmytro Kozatsky, Azov Regiment fighter and photographer, documented the siege of the Azovstal metalworks. Before his capture he posted his pictures on social media, asking that they be shared as widely as possible. This is some of his work showing the realities of life during the battle. The Azov regiment retains some far-right affiliations

When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, it had hoped to overtake the country in a blitz lasting only days or a few weeks. Many Western analysts thought so, too.

As the conflict marked its third month Tuesday, however, Moscow appears to be bogged down in what increasingly looks like a war of attrition, with no end in sight and few successes on the battlefield.

There was no quick victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s powerful forces, no rout that would allow the Kremlin to control most of Ukraine and establish a puppet government.

#Ukraine: Ukrainian SSO (SOF) published rare footage of a kamikaze drone in action, which we identied as a US-supplied Switchblade 300 – hitting a Russian T-72B3 tank with its crew on top.
The tank is unlikely to receive any serious damage, which cannot be said about the crew. pic.twitter.com/sRm5GQNRyL

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 24, 2022

#Ukraine: Canadian Roshel Senator armored personnel carriers are already in Ukraine – 8 of these APCs were supplied by Canada recently. The hull of this vehicle can protect occupants from explosion and bullets up to .30-60 AP. pic.twitter.com/YNh2el1J1b

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 23, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin survived an assassination attempt two months ago, a top Ukrainian military official said Monday.

Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, said an “unsuccessful attempt” on the Russian strongman’s life occurred in Caucasus shortly after Russia invaded the nation on Feb. 24, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

“There was an attempt to assassinate Putin,” Budanov told the outlet. “He was even attacked, it is said, by representatives of the Caucasus, not so long ago.”

A Russian diplomat has quit his job in protest at the “bloody, witless” war “unleashed by Putin against Ukraine”.

Boris Bondarev, whose LinkedIn says he worked at the Russian mission to the UN in Geneva, told the BBC he knew his decision to speak out may mean the Kremlin now considers him a traitor.

But he stood by his statement which described the war as “a crime against the Ukrainian people” and “the people of Russia”.

Moscow has not yet commented.