Hundreds of Canadians have already offered to fight for Ukraine against Russian invasion forces, just two days after the country formally put out the call for volunteers, a top Ukrainian diplomat said Tuesday.
“Ukraine – Russia”
UN votes to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calls for withdrawal
The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly for a resolution deploring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for the immediate withdrawal of its forces, in a global expression of outrage that highlighted Russia’s increasing isolation.
In an emergency session of the UN’s general assembly, 141 of the 193 member states voted for the resolution, 35 abstained and five voted against.
The resolution, which was co-sponsored by 94 countries, said the UN “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine”. It demanded that “the Russian Federation immediately cease its use of force against Ukraine” and “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces”.
A miracle on the Dnieper?
Roughly a hundred years ago, another Russian tyrant — Vladimir Lenin — sent overwhelming forces streaming across the border of Poland.
The formerly subjugated Polish nation was attempting to resurrect itself as a sovereign state following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian empires as a result of the First World War. Lenin anticipated the collapse of the fledgling republic and expected his troops to drive straight through Warsaw and export the Russian Revolution to Berlin and points west. Observers didn’t give the Polish David a chance against the Russian Goliath.
Weeping Russian POWs say ‘We were sent as cannon fodder. We’re killing peaceful people’
Weeping Russian prisoners of war have said they had no idea they were being sent to invade Ukraine and were used like ‘cannon fodder’ by commanders who threw them into battle against ‘peaceful people defending their territory’ after Vladimir Putin’s forces took heavy losses in the opening days of the conflict.
‘This is not our war. Mothers and wives, collect your husbands. There is no need to be here,’ an injured soldier sat in front of a Ukrainian flag was filmed saying. Other footage showed handcuffed Russian prisoner crying, while saying: ‘They don’t even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals’.
Ukraine says Russia has lost 5,840 soldiers in the opening days of the conflict – some of its fastest losses since the Second World War, if the figure proves accurate – with Putin’s men suffering a series of embarrassing defeats as they tried to pull off a quick victory but instead met with stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces.
What happened to Russia’s Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence had predicted a blistering assault by Moscow that would quickly mobilize the vast Russian air power that its military assembled in order to dominate Ukraine’s skies.
But the first six days have confounded those expectations and instead seen Moscow act far more delicately with its air power, so much so that U.S. officials can’t exactly explain what’s driving Russia’s apparent risk-averse behavior.
Freeland says Canada’s new sanctions targeting Russia could hurt Canada’s economy as well
Canada will hit Russia with more sanctions and economic policies designed to undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage war — and some of those moves might end up hurting Canada’s economy, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday.
Freeland made those remarks Tuesday afternoon after meeting with the finance ministers of the other G7 nations and the Ukrainian finance minister to discuss measures to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Freeland’s remarks suggest the Trudeauscu regime will use the Ukraine invasion to advance his economy killing green-agenda. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Gas prices in Ontario set to soar this week to ‘a price we have never seen’
Gas prices in Ontario are set to hit another record this week, one expert says.
Dan McTeague, President of Canadians for Affordable Energy, told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday that prices will jump two cents per litre on Wednesday to an average of $1.60 per liter.
The bigger increase will come on Thursday, when gas prices are expected to jump six cents to and average of $1.66 per litre.
Bank of Canada raises key interest rate to 0.5%
The Bank of Canada has hiked its key interest rate to 0.5 per cent, the first step of a series of signalled increases amid economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The overnight rate target will rise 25 basis points, the central bank announced Wednesday, up from the floor of 0.25 per cent it held for much of the pandemic.
Russia aims to erase Ukraine, says Zelenskiy, as bombardment intensifies
Russia aims to erase Ukraine, its history and its people, the besieged country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, as Moscow, in the face of international isolation, claimed to have seized its first large city amid continued heavy fighting.
A Russian defence ministry spokesperson said its forces had taken control of the strategically important city of Kherson on the Black Sea, with nearly 250,000 inhabitants. Local authorities said the port and train station had been captured overnight but denied the city had been occupied.
Ukraine: Putin’s miscalculations could see him strike harder
Ukraine has fought back much harder during the first week than Vladimir Putin expected, or very probably than his generals promised him, it would. But these are still the early stages of what could be a very nasty war.
Putin must have hoped that a few days after Russian forces invaded, Kyiv would have fallen. And he surely expected that Western countries, cowed and divided, would have accepted that he had reclaimed a territory that he says is historically part of Russia.
None of this has happened.
Ukrainians say they are fighting on in southern city of Kherson
Ukrainians said they were fighting on in the first sizeable city Russia claimed to have seized, while Moscow stepped up its lethal bombardment of major population centres that its invasion force has so far failed to tame.
With Moscow having failed in its aim of swiftly overthrowing Ukraine’s government after nearly a week, Western countries are worried that it is switching to new, far more violent tactics to blast its way into cities it had expected to easily take.
#Ukraine: In the vicinity of #Nikolaev, a MT-LBV (Or vehicle based on it) was abandoned by Russian troops, also leaving behind an AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, 6x RPG-26, PG-7L, 2x RPG-7, and other ammo. pic.twitter.com/Bf8bvrKTuJ
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 2, 2022
Will China fund Moscow’s war chest as Western sanctions bite?
China is the only major economy that still has a direct line to a fast-isolated Russia — but the pressure is increasing on Beijing to change that.
Just weeks after the two countries signed a “no limits” partnership agreement, China now has no choice but to recalibrate its position on bilateral trade and macroeconomics with Moscow, after President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked war on Ukraine.
While Beijing still wants to count on Moscow as a long-term strategic partner to fend off America’s global influence, it will no doubt be wary of the international reaction if it opts for measures that could be interpreted as an endorsement of Putin’s aggression, according to experts.
The West’s Current Worldview Is An Illusion, And Russia Just Smashed It
… Putin’s attack on Ukraine will have more serious repercussions than rising gas prices, wavering confidence that the United States can act as the world’s policeman or even the dismantling of a sovereign nation. It represents a shock to the system for the cozy “rules-based international order” that has for decades reassured the West that things like naked aggression are relics of the past.
Vladimir Putin, Tyrant
The Russian leader’s actions express essential and unalterable truths about human nature, which we ignore at our peril
When Vladimir Putin sent Russian forces into Crimea in 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry professed bewilderment that such imperial aggression could happen in the modern age. It was like something out of “the 19th century.” Kerry’s reaction to Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine was equally baffled, as the patrician American diplomat lamented that the war would distract Putin from working with him on climate change. Common to both reactions was the astonishment that the material calculations and preoccupations of Western democracies might be blown away by a resurgence of old-fashioned tyrannical ambition.
The Strategic Threat from Net-zero Emissions
The retreat of the United States and her allies before the Chinese-backed Taliban in Afghanistan and the failure of the West’s feeble attempts at diplomacy in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine share a sinister aetiology that has attracted remarkably little attention. A relentless, targeted campaign of desinformatsiya – systematic reputational destruction or “unpersoning” by Communist front groups posing as environmental campaign entities but in reality fostered, funded and too often founded by Moscow and Beijing – has all but silenced thousands of skeptical climate researchers who had formerly been able to debate the climate question in the sunlight of the agora, and has deterred tens of thousands more who would have spoken out in their support but dare not do so.
Ukraine is winning the online war
Kyiv has succeeded in reordering reality
The internet is a chaotic place, but it is nonetheless ruled by a series of iron laws, especially when it comes to what we put on it. Perhaps the most important one is that whatever you post, try to make it visual. Once that’s established it’s about what sort of image will best hoover up those likes and shares and retweets. Well, that’s down to where you are and who your audience is. But as a rule of thumb there are two things that generally never fail: blondes and guns.
In praise of Ukraine’s international brigades
British volunteers are laying their lives on the line in Ukraine’s fight for freedom.
On Sunday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged foreign citizens to join Ukraine’s armed resistance against the invading Russian forces. He asked those who were willing to head to Ukrainian embassies in their own countries and sign up for an ‘international brigade’. It is reported that dozens of British citizens – some with military backgrounds, others without – have already joined this struggle for Ukraine’s future.
Russian ruble now worth less than a penny as wartime sanctions cripple economy
The value of Russia’s ruble has collapsed to less than 1 cent after the United States and other Western countries applied biting sanctions against the Russian economy.
The ruble was down nearly 10% against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday at 115.68 to the dollar. On Monday, after a weekend filled with painful new sanctions, the Russian currency saw an even more precipitous decline of about 30%. The ruble was at about 84 per dollar late Friday before the harshest financial penalties kicked in.
Amazing footage from Melitopol of Ukrainians stopping the onward advance of a Russian convoy and chanting “Occupants!” and “Murderers!” The jittery Russians are firing into the air pic.twitter.com/j3jypGJdgz
— Matthew Luxmoore (@mjluxmoore) March 1, 2022
In the smouldering ruins of a children’s clothes shop, signs of Russian desperation emerge
For five fear-filled days, residents of Kharkiv have listened to the rockets slamming into the fringes of their city and prayed that at least civilian areas would be spared.
But on Monday, at about midday, the moment they had been dreading arrived.
At least 11 people were killed in rocket strikes in residential areas of Kharkiv as both sides readied for a major battle over Ukraine’s second largest city.
The city council said 15 soldiers and 16 civilians were hospitalised, and that numbers of both dead and wounded were likely to rise. Interior Minister adviser Anton Herashchenko said ‘dozens’ had been killed.