“Ukraine – Russia”

Biden’s decision to escalate the Ukraine war is a last-ditch effort by the military-industrial complex to undermine Trump’s ability to end this tragic conflict.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to replace several top-tier Pentagon officials and officers who have overseen our military support of Ukraine, the Biden administration has announced that it has given permission to Kyiv to use long-range American missiles (Army Tactical Missiles Systems, or ATACMS) to strike deep inside Russia, a policy change that risks escalation of the Russia–Ukraine war, even as Trump and his transition team plan to seek a negotiated ceasefire to the conflict. The resistance to Trump’s policy preferences has begun in the most dangerous place — the Pentagon. The military-industrial complex will not readily surrender its policy of victory in Ukraine, even if that means bringing us closer to a full-scale Russia–NATO war.

Germany has said it has to assume that damage to two undersea fibre-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea since Sunday was an act of sabotage.

Two cables in the Baltic – one between Finland and Germany, the other between Sweden and Lithuania – were severed on Sunday and Monday, raising suspicions of a malicious attack, though authorities initially declined to speculate.

“No one believes that the cables were accidentally damaged. I also don’t want to believe that the ships’ anchors caused the damage by accident,” the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said in Brussels on Tuesday.

Russia says Ukraine has fired US-supplied long-range missiles into the country, a day after Washington gave its permission for such attacks.

Ukraine used the Army Tactical Missile System (Atacms) in a strike on Russia’s Bryansk region this morning, the ministry of defence in Moscow said.

Five missiles were shot down and one damaged, with its fragments causing a fire at a military facility in the region, it said in a statement.

And …

Putin approves changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine

Vladimir Putin has approved changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, setting out new conditions under which the country would consider using its arsenal.

The doctrine now says an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia.

US-made ATACMS missiles, with a range of nearly 200 miles, are likely to be used against Russian and North Korean troops in the Kursk region

President Biden has signalled a major shift in US policy, authorising the first use of American-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia.
The weapons, with a range of nearly 200 miles, are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops who are fighting Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, US media reported.

Let the senile Prez do the heavy lifting. Great idea.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Donald Trump becomes US president.

Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during their phone conversation after his victory in the US presidential election.

He did not say whether Trump had made any demands regarding possible talks with Russia, but said he’d not heard anything from him that was contrary to Ukraine’s position.

Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.

The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads.

Ireland recently signed a 10-year bilateral security arrangement with Ukraine. Simon Harris, our “far right”-condemning Taoiseach (prime minister), signed this deal. He did so despite the fact that, as I have outlined, Ukraine has a ‘far-right’ ultra-nationalist block, which, though electorally very small, has serious political influence and state support, especially since the U.S.-backed 2014 overthrow of the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine is also a nation which, quite tragically for the 73% of voters who elected Zelensky as president in 2019 on a promise of peace, is being militarily demolished on the battlefield.

To find the only Canadian woman serving on the front lines of the battle for Ukraine, you first have to drive to the absolute hottest point of the war.

Brittney Shki-Giizis, a 31-year-old tank gunner, says she left the Canadian army and joined Ukraine’s forces because she wanted to be part of the fight to hold back Vladimir Putin’s Russia, rather than watch from afar as Moscow tries to conquer a European country.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky beat most world leaders to offer his congratulations to Donald Trump, using his message to apparently express hope that things would continue unchanged between Ukraine and the United States of America.

Seems Ukraine and Russia will be at the peace table soon if rumours are true.

The soldiers were dug into their positions southeast of Pokrovsk when the Russian assault started. Over the next 20 hours, artillery rained down on their trenches, interspersed with dozens of glide bombs launched from Russian territory. As the Ukrainians were forced to pull back, newly mobilised Russian reserves swooped in on their position and swiftly dug in.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” Vitaliy Milovidov, an officer in the Ukrainian armed forces, said. “I don’t know how we can take such positions back.”