Russia’s space program has apparently threatened to leave an American astronaut aboard the International Space Station as it comes crashing down to Earth in a video shared by Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti.
Mark Vande Hei, a married 55-year-old father of two from Texas, is scheduled to return to Kazakhstan from the International Space Station (ISS) with two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30 after spending nearly a year on board.
A Ukrainian monastery sheltering 1,000 people was struck by Russian missiles and a train heading to pick up evacuees was damaged by bomb debris last night as more than 2.6 million people have fled the country.
Families, including 200 children, sheltering in the Svyatogorsk Lavra, an Orthodox Christian monastery in the Donetsk region, were left terrified after it was damaged by a missile last night.
The monastery says the bomb exploded 50 metres from a bridge at the entrance to the site, injuring a number of people.
Huge equipment losses.
#Ukraine: The losses of the Russian army from the previous days keep appearing – a T-80BVM tank and Msta-S 152mm self-propelled howitzer, which were destroyed by the Ukrainian forces. pic.twitter.com/Tz87Mdg0yj
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 13, 2022
Russians have a sense of humour!
russia has attacked the International Center for Peacekeeping&Security near Lviv.Foreign instructors work here.Information about the victims is being clarified.This is new terrorist attack on peace&security near the EU-NATO border.Action must be taken to stop this.Close the sky!
— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) March 13, 2022
h/t Billy
A captured Russian soldier spoke about the use of “execution squads” to eliminate deserters as tensions within the Russian military rise, Interfax-Ukraine reported on Saturday.
It seems Putin does not believe in his own army and resorts to Stalinist methods of controlling soldiers.
“However, this does not save him from the riots that have already begun to arise among the Russian military.” Another captured soldier has said during questioning conducted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) according to Interfax.
Brent Renaud, an award-winning US film-maker whose work has appeared in the New York Times and other outlets, has been killed by Russian forces in the flashpoint town of Irpin, outside Kyiv. A US photographer, Juan Arredondo, was wounded.
Renaud, 51, was hit in the neck and died after coming under Russian fire while working on Sunday, according to local police officials and multiple Ukrainian sources.
Russia has escalated its war in Ukraine with a strike on a major military base close to the Polish border killing at least 35 people and injuring 134 more, according to the governor of the Lviv region.
The attack happened hours after the Kremlin had warned that western supply lines into the embattled country were “legitimate targets”.
There were large explosions on Sunday at the base in Yavoriv, a garrison city less than 10 miles from the Polish border. The rocket attack took place at 5.45am.
The governor of the Lviv region said that 35 people have been killed after a Ukrainian military base used for NATO drills less than 15 miles from the Polish border was targeted in a Russian airstrike.
More on this story: https://t.co/j2j5YHyZ4Y pic.twitter.com/gEFiEkYQxp
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 13, 2022
Ukraine has chosen the image for a new postage stamp called “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!” as the besieged country continues to try to keep morale high and win the PR battle against invading Russian forces.
The country’s first deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, announced the stamp commemorating the Snake Island incident, in which 13 border guards stationed on a roughly 16-hectare (40-acre) rocky island about 186 miles (300km) west of Crimea reportedly replied, when asked to surrender: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” They were then attacked, and thought killed.
While much attention is being paid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, less analysis has focused on how foreign volunteers are flocking to join the conflict. Ukraine’s appeal to foreign fighters is not unusual; such invitations from sovereign states have occurred many times throughout history, and volunteers routinely have fought and risked their lives for countries other than their own.
One way to answer the question in the headline is “It already has.” Even to a rank amateur like me, it was clear by *day three* that Putin was facing a strategic debacle. He misjudged Ukraine’s desire and ability to resist, he misjudged the strength of his military, and he misjudged the west’s willingness to paralyze Russia’s economy with sanctions.
#Ukraine: UAV footage showing a Russian T-72 variant tank being hit by Ukrainian forces anti-tank fire in #Mariupol. pic.twitter.com/DycyL46A3a
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 11, 2022
The Catholic leader has been criticized for being too soft on the Ukraine invasion
On February 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pope Francis met with Aleksandr Avdeyev, Russia’s ambassador to the Holy See. Yet rather than summoning Mr. Avdeyev to the Vatican, Francis called at the Russian embassy, just two blocks from the Castel Sant’Angelo.
The visit was a violation of diplomatic protocol. Heads of state don’t just pop ‘round to the local embassy.
Over the next couple of days, it became clear that Francis wouldn’t be paying the same honor to Ukraine’s ambassador. Even more strikingly, Francis refused to condemn Russia for the attack. Vatican-watchers fumed.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was touring Europe expressing solidarity with Canada’s NATO partners last week, a new study by the Parliamentary Budget Officer said his government has postponed billions of dollars in capital spending to replace aging military equipment promised in 2017.
Russia has made dire threats to the West that any military shipments to Ukraine will be seen as ‘legitimate targets’, prompting fears there could be an escalation of conflict that could suck in other countries.
Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned the US ‘that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets’.
The warnings came after Joe Biden personally intervened to stop a shipment of Polish MiG fighter jets to Kyiv, fearing the move could lead to ‘World War Three’.
#Ukraine: Very dramatic footage of a Russian convoy ambushed yesterday, showing the destruction of a T-72(B3) and a BTR-82A, as well as the detonation of an unseen Russian vehicle. pic.twitter.com/R8JwSGMQUS
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 11, 2022
Russian Collusion fans have had a hard time of it lately, as their favorite theories about how the evil mastermind Putin installed his dimwitted stooge Trump in the Oval Office have been exploded, but that ever-vigilant guardian of global peace, the United Nations, is ready to fill in the breach. The United Nations’ Department of Global Communications has ordered its staffers not to refer to Ukraine war as a “war,” or to Putin’s invasion as an “invasion.” If you still thought the UN was some sort of impartial international arbiter, this ought to disabuse you of that notion forever.
Father Yuriy asks politely if we can postpone the first leg of an online interview. An air-raid siren has just gone off, he says, and he and his wife Mariia have to hurry to a nearby basement for shelter.
It’s hours before they surface again.
The vast majority of Russia’s oil exports are purchased by Europe and China, which together account for 90 percent of the country’s total exports.
That’s made it tougher for Europe to enact similar bans as the U.S. on Russian imports and lessens the economic hit to Moscow from the Biden administration’s decision this week to cut off Russian oil.
Canada’s plan to help offset Russian oil ban for Europe expected by March 23: minister
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says it will be another week or two before Canada will know with certainty how much extra oil it can produce and ship to help offset bans on the use of fossil fuels from Russia.
But he says longer-term conversations about Canada partnering with Europe on renewable energy are likely more realistic and more lucrative.
With several yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs already having been seized by Germany, France and Italy other yachts have been doing their best to disappear. But for some unfortunate oligarchs that may not be possible because their yacht was having work done and was not even in the water when sanctions were put in place. That may be the case for superyacht Scheherazade, a 459 foot long yacht which remains in an Italian dry dock this week.
