“Ukraine – Russia”

Shortly after Russia invaded on Feb. 24, Ukraine prohibited men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country. Most willingly signed up for military service to fight for their country, despite it having no formal conscription. Some others, however, packed up a few belongings and quietly left.

“Thousands of Ukrainian men of military age have left the country to avoid participating in the war,” the New York Times wrote over the weekend. “Smuggling rings in Moldova, and possibly other European countries, have been doing a brisk business. Some people have paid up to $15,000 for a secret night-time ride out of Ukraine.”

“I’m not a war tourist or anything like that,” Ajay tells me, from his base near Kyiv where Ukraine’s armed forces have been defending the country’s capital.

“I was quite comfortable back home sitting with my cat,” he says in a strong Belfast accent.

Ajay Spence travelled to the war in Ukraine from Northern Ireland a month ago, having first got in touch with the Ukrainian embassy in Dublin.

Having told them about his previous experience with the British army in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was soon on his way to Poland before crossing into Ukraine.

Russians are for the first time expressing their open outrage and anguish at the catastrophic death toll of Vladimir Putin’s troops – especially among young ‘cannon fodder soldiers’.

They are speaking out online despite the threats of severe punishment for doing so.

Putin’s invasion has suffered another blow after it was revealed on Friday his force’s death toll rose to 19,000, according to Kyiv’s estimates.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team has launched an investigation into three Twitter accounts that claim to be run by journalists on the frontlines in Ukraine. The suspicious accounts were originally spotted by Conspirador Norteño, an account that specialises in studying misinformation on social media. But before that, they were thought to be authentic – one even appeared in an article in a British newspaper. We found several clues that raise concerns about whether these three people exist.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia claimed that it destroyed several air defense systems in Ukraine over the weekend, in what appeared to be a renewed push to gain air superiority and take out weapons Kyiv has described as crucial ahead of a broad new offensive in the east.

In one strike announced Monday, Moscow said that it hit four S-300 launchers provided by a European country it didn’t name. Slovakia gave Ukraine just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. Russia previously reported two strikes on similar systems in other places.

Canada is targeting Russia’s defence industry with its latest round of sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says the new measures impose restrictions on 33 entities in the Russian defence sector.

Given it’s performance in Ukraine I don’t think the Russian armaments industry has a bright future.

Tens of thousands dead in Mariupol, Zelenskyy says amid plea to South Korea for arms

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday asked Seoul for any military aid it could provide as he said Russia could only be forced to make peace.

Speaking in a video address to South Korean lawmakers, Zelenskyy said his country needed more help, including weapons, if it is to survive the war.

“You have something that can be indispensable for us … armored vehicles, anti-aircraft, anti-tank, anti-ship weapons,” he said.

#Ukraine: Ukrainian indirect fire continues to strike Russian armored vehicles in #Mariupol; seen here, a (possible MT-LB based) vehicle is struck, and when ammo cooks off causes further damage and a fire to start on two T-72B tanks. (The damage looks very minor to one of them.) pic.twitter.com/oAHHC7YVm0

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 11, 2022

#Ukraine: A compilation of the recent operations by the 30th Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine on the eastern front – as can be seen a Russian BTR-80 armored personnel carrier was hit twice by Stugna-P ATGM and at least one BM-21 Grad MRL + a cargo truck were destroyed by artillery. pic.twitter.com/7M8EpsdW0Q

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 11, 2022

Oleg Orlov, a prominent Russian human rights activist, has been detained after staging a one-man protest in Moscow’s Red Square against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Members of Memorial, a now-banned human rights organisation of which Orlov had been a leader, shared a video of him on Sunday holding a banner before being taken away by police.

Just like Ottawa.

Canada will offer Ukraine up to $1 billion in new loan resources via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and provide an additional $500 million in military aid, the Liberal government said on Thursday.

Why are we sending more billions to Ukraine and contributing to escalate this war??

Our army doesn’t even have the resources to defend our territory. Let’s solve our problems first. https://t.co/sadRG8Hn6d

— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) April 9, 2022

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says there is no better source of extra funds for Ukraine‘s recovery from the Russian invasion than from the assets of those backing the war.

In an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Freeland emphasized the proposal in the budget she tabled last week that would allow Canada’s minister of foreign affairs to not only freeze Russian assets, but seize them, too.

The tragedy discovered amid the rubble of Bucha and Borodianka overshadowed any jubilation that Kyiv had defeated Russian forces that had spent a month trying to envelop the capital and snuff out the Ukrainian nation. Nevertheless, the defeat of Russian forces in the north marks a turning point in the war. For the medium term, Ukraine will now survive. But for its soldiers there is no respite, for having had its first objective denied Moscow has turned its gaze on the Donbas, where a major offensive is imminent.

The Donbas has been at war for eight years. More than 90 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in 2021 defending the line of contact. Since late February Ukrainian positions have come under regular artillery fire, with mobilised civilians from Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk pushed into attacks on the Ukrainian trenches. The aim of this Russian activity was to fix the 40,000 Ukrainian troops in the Joint Forces Operations (JFO) area, preventing them from impacting the fights for Mariupol, Kharkiv or Kyiv.

The Russian military claims it has destroyed a Ukrainian base hosting “foreign mercenaries” with warship-launched cruise missiles.

“During the night, high-precision sea-based missiles destroyed the headquarters and base of Dnepr nationalist battalion in Zvonetskoe, Dnepropetrovsk Region, where foreign mercenaries had recently arrived,” claimed Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defence ministry’s chief spokesman, in one of his regular social media briefings.

Sometimes the dead have more to say than the living. Those lying beneath the soft, yellow earth in the grounds of the church of Andrew the Apostle, in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, have many terrible stories to tell.

In a deep mass grave, a forearm and hand, the fingertips turning black, lay under a foot at a sickening angle; another man’s arm looked like it was clawing its way out of the disturbed soil in an attempt to escape his fate.

On Friday morning a team of forensic investigators from Kyiv arrived at the site to begin documenting the terror inflicted on civilians by Russian troops during Moscow’s six-week-old invasion. They strapped a door to a municipal digger to create a makeshift gurney, and got to work.

A “real embargo” on Russian energy by Western countries could stop war in Ukraine, President Putin’s former chief economic adviser has suggested.

Dr Andrei Illarionov said Russia “did not take seriously” other countries’ threats to reduce their energy usage.

Despite trying to reduce its reliance on Russian sources, Europe is continuing to buy oil and gas.

Last year, soaring prices meant oil and gas revenues accounted for 36% of Russia’s government spending.

Much of that income comes from the European Union, which imports about 40% of its gas and 27% of its oil from Russia.

This is turning into a phony war.