“Ukraine – Russia”

Two alleged spies suspected of planning to sabotage German military aid for Ukraine have been arrested in the southern German state of Bavaria.

The two men, described as dual German-Russian nationals, were detained in Bayreuth on suspicion of spying for Russia, prosecutors say.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said authorities had prevented “possible explosive attacks”.

The men are accused of scouting US military facilities and other sites.

Russia’s military death toll in Ukraine has now passed the 50,000 mark, the BBC can confirm.

In the second 12 months on the front line – as Moscow pushed its so-called meat grinder strategy – we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year.

BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022.

When a torpedo starts coming straight at you, there’s only one thing a submarine crew can do – snap into “full evasion” mode. Captain Ryan Ramsey issues swift orders. His crew responds immediately, twisting the Royal Navy’s Trafalgar-class submarine to manoeuvre the boat beneath the waves in an effort to shake off the weapon bearing down fast on their position.

It would, though, take a miracle for a submarine of nearly 6,000 tons to outrun a torpedo. And that miracle never comes. The torpedo smashes into the fin, the large central structure on the submarine sometimes called the conning tower. As it hits the boat, a loud bang reverberates hard through the hull, a high-strength steel alloy designed to withstand the extreme pressure experienced at the submarine’s maximum – and classified – diving depth.

Texas should secede. Alaska should come home to Mother Russia. It’s presidential election time again in America, and Kremlin leaders again are preaching the breakup of the United States.

Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev, recently joined a Kremlin chorus supporting Texas independence. A Russian state television host, Tigran Keosayan, said of Alaska, which Russia sold to America in 1867: “Secession from the United States is half the battle. The main thing is to join Russia.”

This time last year, Volodymyr Zelensky was touring western capitals, calling for weapons and money to launch a decisive summer offensive. NATO eventually provided Leopard and Challenger tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, M777 howitzers, Himars rocket artillery and Patriot air defenses — but too little, too late. The much-vaunted offensive went nowhere, despite a mutiny by the Wagner Group and widespread disarray in the Russian army. Instead, Soledar, Bakhmut and Avdiivka were seized. Today, Russian missile assaults are intensifying, not receding. In March, Russia hit Ukraine with 264 missiles and 515 drones. A relentless bombardment of Kharkiv is making Ukraine’s second city uninhabitable.

The Pentagon is defending its steady rollout of weapons to Ukraine even as officials in Kyiv say the assistance is coming too slowly — and it might already be too late to help turn the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor.

On Wednesday, POLITICO detailed criticisms from high-ranking Ukrainian officials, who said they can’t defend the frontlines any longer: “There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now,” one of the officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed into law three measures aimed at replenishing the ranks of his country’s exhausted and battered army, including lowering the age when men become eligible for conscription and eliminating some medical exemptions.

While Mr. Zelensky did not say why he had decided to move ahead on at least some changes, Russia’s forces have been on the offensive along the front line and the ongoing fighting has shrunk Ukraine’s supplies of soldiers and weapons.

The Western alliance responded vigorously to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and thoroughly debunked the Sino-Russian background chorus of the time that the Western alliance was now a decrepit myth from the Cold War of no current relevance.

The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, having started out with a contemptible shipment of helmets for the Ukrainian forces, strode to the podium of the Bundestag and announced that Germany would hereafter meet its commitment to two per cent of GDP for defence and got the ball rolling with a motion for €100 billion to begin the long-deferred task of getting Germany’s armed forces up to strength.

The convoy snaked through Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region on a bitter February morning.

A police car led the way, followed by a unit of forensic officials and a refrigerated van containing the corpses of dozens of Russian soldiers.

The delegation was travelling into Russian territory for one of the only functioning levels of diplomacy between Kyiv and Moscow: the exchange of dead bodies from either side.

They say the deeper a soldier digs, the better his chances of survival. But on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, the pulverising power of Russia’s newest weapon is testing soldiers’ faith.

Outside the town of Lyman, a crater 15m across and deeper than any Ukrainian trench has been thumped into a Donbas field. The impact of a Russian glide bomb has left a hole big enough to accommodate a small house.

Without western fighter jets to provide the air cover they need, Ukrainian soldiers have little to protect them besides prayer.

The potential scenario is horrific: “If Putin gets his way and Ukraine loses the war, this could turn an additional ten million people into refugees,” migration expert Gerald Knaus told DW.

Russia is reporting more military incursions into Ukrainian territory on an almost daily basis. Both sides are launching missiles and drones, but it is clear that Russia is on the offensive and is better equipped. It also recently started to refer to the war as such, and no longer as a “special military operation.” At the same time, international support for Ukraine is beginning to crumble.

The Canadian Immigration Lawyer Association is calling for a plan to address a looming backlog in work permit and permanent residency applications as the Ukrainian emergency visa program ends.

“We’re going to have about 200,000 Ukrainians in Canada based on this program, probably closer to 250,000. So, what is going to happen when their work permits are ultimately running down and they want to stay? That’s another thing that needs to be addressed,” immigration lawyer Lev Abramovich told Global News. “I don’t think we’re going to be deporting people back to Ukraine. So, I think a little bit more thought needs to go into the permanent residency part of the piece.”

We may not be living in pre-war years — as the period of the Munich Agreement was, and sometimes still is, called — but it feels that way. West Europeans accustomed to decades of peace under a protective American military umbrella find themselves watching the third year of a war on their eastern flank, caused by Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine. Both countries are part of Europe by history and geography. Russia officially recognized its neighbor’s legal sovereignty in 1991.