“Ukraine – Russia”

A number of Chinese government-linked media outlets and pro-Russia social media accounts are spreading pro-Kremlin sentiment on the Chinese internet by mistranslating or manipulating international news about the war in Ukraine.

In response, online, anonymous volunteers – such as those under the Twitter account Great Translation Movement – have exposed China’s pro-Russia propaganda by highlighting mistranslations that falsely blame Ukrainian troops for bombings and atrocities perpetrated by Russian forces against civilians.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops pounded away at the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, apparently as part of efforts to disrupt the supply lines and weapons shipments that have been critical to Kyiv’s defense.

Ukraine’s ability to stymie a larger, better armed Russian military has surprised many observers, who had anticipated a much quicker conflict. With the war now in its 11th week and Kyiv bogging Russian forces down in many places and even staging a counteroffensive in others, Ukraine’s foreign minister appeared to suggest that the country could expand its aims beyond merely pushing Russia back to areas it or its allies held on the day of Feb. 24 invasion.

Ukraine War: Putin’s Victory Day speech fact-checked

“Kyiv has declared that it could obtain nuclear weapons”
President Putin has repeatedly said Ukraine plans to acquire nuclear weapons as a justification for Russia’s invasion, although there’s no evidence this is the case.

When it was part of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine did have nuclear weapons, but gave these up in the 1990s in return for security guarantees from the US, UK and Russia.

#Ukraine: The K2 Unit of the 54th Mechanized Brigade struck a Russian column somewhere in #Donetsk Oblast with artillery fire- as a result, 5x BMP IFV/Tanks were destroyed, with damage to others likely. pic.twitter.com/a9ITYdcs0C

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 10, 2022

#Ukraine: Footage of the destruction of this T-90M- as claimed, a Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle was used, but it actually appears that it was destroyed by a UA-operated tank.

Seems that HE-FRAG ammo was used against the poorly-protected rear, penetrating & destroying the tank. https://t.co/WTskZHKGqE pic.twitter.com/lQimWXiatY

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 10, 2022

Portraying Ukraine as the successor to Nazi Germany is a contemptible, dehumanising slur.

Standing this morning before Russian soldiers and tanks, in Red Square in Moscow, president Vladimir Putin used his Victory Day speech to justify the invasion of Ukraine. He told Russian soldiers that they were ‘fighting for the same thing their fathers and grandfathers did’ – for ‘the Motherland’.

There have been “anecdotal reports” that some Russian military members have refused orders from their superiors in Ukraine, according to a senior U.S. defense official.

The new details emanating from the Pentagon on Monday come as Russia continues its unsuccessful attempts to capture the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where Russian separatists and Ukrainian nationalists have fought for eight years.

… Europe has managed to reduce its need for Russian oil quickly for a couple of reasons. Oil can easily be delivered by tanker, not just pipelines, and it is relatively easy to find new supplies on the world market. The problem is that it is also relatively easy to find enough new buyers – and Russia has plenty – to offset a large part of the losses from an EU embargo.

Gas is different. Europe needs natural gas to provide heat in winter and to serve as feedstock for the world’s largest chemical industry, which accounts for a significant share of EU exports. And certain features of the natural-gas market will make it far more difficult and costlier to find alternatives to Russian supplies than it has been for oil.

Articles published on Lenta.ru on Victory Day accuse Putin of waging ‘bloodiest war of 21st century’

Two Russian journalists working for a popular pro-Kremlin website filled it with anti-war articles on Monday morning in a rare act of dissent as the country celebrated the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

The articles on Lenta.ru called President Vladimir Putin a “pitiful paranoid dictator” and accused him of waging “the bloodiest war of the 21st century”.

“We had to do it today. We wanted to remind everyone what our grandfathers really fought for on this beautiful Victory Day – for peace,” said 30-year-old Egor Polyakov, one of the two journalists.

KYIV, May 9 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Kyiv would defeat Russia’s invasionand not give up a single piece of land,as he marked victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Zelenskiy, in a powerful video address, commemorated the deaths of more than eight million Ukrainians in World War Two and said that Kyiv would not allow Moscow to appropriate the victory over Nazism for itself.

#Ukraine: A Russian tank was damaged by an air delivered improvised munition dropped from a drone of the 503rd Marine Battalion of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/UU16ckYbdZ

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

An intelligence officer holed up in Mariupol’s massive Azovstal steel factory has blasted the Ukraine government for leaving the citizens and soldiers on their own.

“We got zero support — no air support, no artillery or ground support. We were left on our own,” Ilya Samoilenko said, yet added that they are continuing to fight.

“We are basically here, dead men. Most of us know this and it’s why we fight so fearlessly,” he said.

Is this an expedient end to their problematic existence?

Berlin and other cities across Germany increased police patrols on Monday ahead of expected pro-Russia protests.

The demonstrations are happening to mark Victory Day on May 9, a holiday commemorating the Soviet military’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

Tensions are running high this year over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with authorities in Berlin banning both Russian and Ukrainian flags at memorial sites.

A clash of loyalties is dividing opinion among residents in Bakhmut – a town on the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Sometimes it slips out as a whisper. More often, it is hidden behind euphemisms and shrugs – and carefully ambivalent replies. And then, once in a while, a fiercely pro-Russian sentiment is simply blurted out, like the crack of a gunshot, here in the rolling green hills of the Donbas.

“This is Russian territory. Ukraine is the occupier here,” said a man in overalls, standing with a group of council workers. They had been clearing weeds in Bakhmut – a Ukrainian town currently within easy earshot of Russian artillery.

Vladimir Putin’s regime is ‘mirroring’ the actions of the Nazis and must share the same fate as them, Ben Wallace will say as the Russian leader stages a military parade to celebrate victory in World War II.

Defence Secretary Mr Wallace will use a major speech to say that Putin and his inner circle should share the same fate as the Nazis, who ended up defeated and facing the Nuremberg trials for their atrocities.

His speech, at the National Army Museum in London, will also directly criticise the behaviour of Russian commanders for war crimes and their incompetence in a campaign which has failed to secure the gains expected by Putin.

Putin defends his Ukraine invasion, invoking World War II, but does not signal an escalation.

President Vladimir V. Putin used his Victory Day speech on Monday to try to channel Russian pride in defeating Nazi Germany into support for this year’s invasion of Ukraine. But contrary to some expectations he did not make any new announcements signaling a mass mobilization for the war effort or an escalation of the onslaught.

“We thought those were our last minutes. It was extremely scary but we were lucky.”

Elena is recalling the moment Russian troops started shelling, after she and a group of escapees passed through one of their checkpoints.

After two months living in the basement of a kindergarten in the Russian-occupied town of Izyum in Ukraine, Elena spent two nerve-shredding days on the road to safety. She and her daughter were among 20 people in a convoy of vehicles heading away from Russian-controlled territory. They fled last Friday using a route organised by volunteers.

I was given access to a secret Ukrainian base

Barbed wire knots together sky and earth. Burned-out vehicles, modern-day carcasses of industrial warfare, dot the landscape. The ground is strafed and cratered: Eastern Ukraine has been disembowelled by shelling. The war here is fought with 21st-century drone technology, but it flies over soldiers who carry 50-year-old Kalashnikovs. The black snouts and brown handles of these guns line the eastern front, which is a frieze cast in metal and wood, and is where, in the late afternoon of a warm spring day, I see Jesus.

INews, an independent news source in the UK, is reporting that a network of former Soviet sanatoriums and other sites in regions including Siberia, the Caucasus, the Arctic Circle, and the Far East, are housing Ukrainians forcibly removed from their homeland. Some of the camps are up to 5,500 miles from Ukraine.

The last time war came to Uman, the city was occupied by the Nazis.

Now 83, Olga was only two years old when the soldiers arrived in her village.

We are sitting around a table in a Jewish community centre in Uman, a city slightly west of the centre of Ukraine. The walls of the centre are covered in smiling photos of family gatherings and a box of matzah stapled to a display of a shabbat meal.

Olga watches the tea in her cup gradually turn a bitter dark brown. She doesn’t touch the biscuits on the table. She lives just a few miles from where she was brought up.