“Ukraine – Russia”

It was an event that rocked Europe and shook world affairs.

Early in the morning on Sept. 26, 2022, a series of powerful undersea explosions damaged pipelines under the Baltic Sea near Denmark that carried Russian natural gas to Germany.

Fingers were immediately pointed at Ukraine, which had been at war with Russia since the latter invaded in February of that year. Ukraine denied involvement, and in the absence of reliable information, conspiracy theories proliferated about who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline.

KYIV — Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries.

But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials. The possible agreement and planned summit have not been previously reported.

President Zelensky approved the plan, then tried unsuccessfully to call it off

International incidents rarely play out like Hollywood action films — and when they do, the public usually doesn’t get to hear about it. But every once in a while, some journalist goes out and digs up the kind of story that Steven King might conjure up.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy investigative piece on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage mystery. For those Americans who may have forgotten, in September 2022, an unknown someone set off an explosive that ruptured the twin pipelines usually used to pump natural gas from Russia to Europe. The result was that, on the eve of winter, Europe was faced with a potential energy crisis, and they weren’t happy about it.

Germany has frozen its military aid to Ukraine, claiming that a domestic budgetary crisis means it can no longer afford to supply Kyiv with new weapons.

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, told his defence minister this month that there would be no money available for further military aid, according to a new report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, had written up a wish list for €4 billion (£3.4 billion) in additional military supplies to Ukraine, but a letter sent to him by the finance ministry made clear that no extra money would be freed up because of the need to cut federal spending.

Nearly two years after the 21st century’s perhaps biggest sabotage operation shocked the world while fueling the U.S.-Russian conflict, investigative reporter Bojan Pancevski published the first truly detailed account of what happened in the months preceding the Nord Stream gas pipeline attack in September 2022.

After identifying the primary suspect allegedly responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline two years ago, Germany issued an international arrest warrant for the diver living in Poland back in June, German media revealed this week.

However, the suspect evaded the authorities by disappearing behind the Ukrainian-Polish border—something that, according to Warsaw, was made possible by Germany’s failure to put him in the wanted persons database for border guards to see.

KYIV — Ukraine’s top military commander says his forces now control 386 square miles of Russia’s neighboring Kursk region, the first time a Ukrainian military official has publicly commented on the gains of the lightning incursion that has embarrassed the Kremlin.

General Oleksandr Syrskyi made the statement in a video posted Monday to President Zelensky’s Telegram channel. In the video, he briefed the president on the front-line situation.

As Ukrainian armoured vehicles maraud around the Russian countryside, they all sport the same symbol – a white triangle.

Tanks, trucks and Nato military equipment bearing the marking, daubed in paint or stuck on with tape, have forced the evacuation of some 180,000 Russian citizens from their homes.

It has been enough for some to brand the first invasion of Russian soil since the Second World War “operation triangle”.

A growing number of mainstream politicians have begun to join national conservative parties across Europe in their call to reverse the EU’s failing Ukraine strategy.

The latest to call for pivoting to a pro-ceasefire approach instead of continuing to send endless weapons shipments that Europe can’t afford was Michael Kretschmer, the minister president of the German federal state of Saxony, in a recent interview with the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND), published on Friday, August 9th.

A Ukrainian rocket attack left a trail of dead Russian soldiers and burnt-out military vehicles in “one of the bloodiest strikes of the war”.

Night-time footage emerged early on Friday showing what appeared to be a line of military trucks ablaze on a road in the Kursk region of Russia.

A separate video, shared on Russian social media, appeared to have been taken by someone driving past the aftermath of the apparent strike.

I don’t I remember seeing such a big convoy of russian military vehicles destroyed and captured on video since the start of the full-scale war. May it not be the last!

The video is shot near Rylsk, Kursk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/j260d6Tftt

— Saint Javelin (@saintjavelin) August 9, 2024

A surprise Ukrainian attack into Russia’s Kursk region raised questions about whether Kyiv’s forces violated U.S. restrictions on the use of donated fighting vehicles.

KYIV — Ukrainian troops battled Russian forces Thursday for a third day in Russia’s Kursk region, occupying villages and part of a town, in what has become Ukraine’s largest incursion into Russia since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have confirmed the cross-border Ukrainian attack, which stunned Moscow and appeared to involve the use of Western donated infantry fighting vehicles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had crossed the border into the Kursk region of western Russia and carried out an attack, describing the operation as a large-scale “provocation.”

“The Kyiv regime has launched another major provocation,” Putin told members of the Russian government at a meeting, claiming that Ukraine was “firing indiscriminately” using various types of weapons, including rockets, “at civilian buildings, residential houses, ambulances.”

Putin’s statement followed a Russian Defense Ministry announcement late Tuesday night that up to “300 Ukrainian militants” launched a cross-border attack on Tuesday morning and had entered Russian territory along with “11 tanks and more than 200 armored vehicles.”

Ukraine has received its first batch of US-made F-16 fighter jets, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said on Sunday, adding that more are needed to beat back Russian forces.

For more than two years, Ukraine has pleaded with its Western partners for the aircraft – long considered the crown jewel in the sprawling list of military hardware Kyiv has sought.