“Ukraine – Russia”

Canada has reversed course after initially blocking a Russian anti-war activist from receiving citizenship because she had run afoul of Moscow’s harsh laws criminalizing dissent over the invasion of Ukraine.

Maria Kartasheva’s plight had baffled immigration lawyers and exposed the confusing reality of Canada’s immigration bureaucracy. Last year, the 30-year-old was charged and convicted by Russian prosecutors of violating a law barring criticism of the military. And even though her opinions mirrored Canada’s foreign policy, the conviction threatened to derail her application for Canadian citizenship.

“I’m being punished for writing what Canada believes is the truth about Russia’s actions,” she said.

The way the American media has dealt with the Ukraine War brings to mind a remark credited to Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”

“I had a hunch that someone was watching me. My heart was pounding.”

A man, who we’re calling Agent One, takes photos as he crouches down in some bushes.

He tells us he’s part of a group called Atesh – a word that means fire in Crimean Tatar.

And via a messaging app, he describes his secret life to the BBC: spying on Russian forces in occupied Crimea.

Is Vladimir Putin trying to end his war in Ukraine? According to recent reports, the Kremlin has launched a new ‘back-channel diplomacy’ to reach out to senior officials in the Joe Biden administration. Putin’s message: to signal that he could accept a ceasefire that freezes the fighting along current lines.

Reactions to the story have been furious. Some Ukrainians, sheltering from Russia’s biggest-ever missile and drone assaults of the war over Christmas, saw it as evidence of a nefarious Washington insider plot to sell Kyiv down the river. President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Putin’s initiative as disingenuous, saying that he saw ‘no sign’ Russia genuinely wanted to negotiate. ‘We just see brazen willingness to kill,’ he told the New York Times.

‘Cuckoo’ comes from a proud tradition of Ukrainian snipers — and Putin is sending poorly trained men into her crosshairs

From her stakeout a kilometre away, the Ukrainian sniper trained her rifle on the gap blasted through the colliery’s concrete perimeter, waiting for the Russians to reappear.

The 47th Brigade markswoman had fired ten .338 calibre bullets at the wall behind which five men were sheltering. One had collapsed, apparently injured, before rousing himself and limping ­towards cover, minus his gun. The Russian raiding party, part of a wider assault on Avdiivka, was in disarray.

LVIV — The Japanese have a concept of forest bathing for health. Joe Rogan promotes daily ice baths for a little shock to get you going in the morning. But in Ukraine, people often experience missile-and-drone baths, and so it was in the early hours of last Friday, when Russia launched what seems to have been its biggest ever sky assault upon Ukrainian cities. It was the first major Russian attack upon Ukrainian since the summer, when Ukraine disrupted Moscow’s missile-launching Black Sea Fleet.

Since then, it’s been a brutal New Year.

British defence stocks have risen to a record high as tensions in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine continue to stoke global demand for military hardware.

The UK benchmark for defence and aerospace companies surged 1.4pc to 8,710.43 points on Tuesday, the highest figure on record.

Among the winners were Babcock International, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, which jumped 3.5pc, 1.8pc and 1.9pc respectively in early Tuesday trading.

Britain and other European countries are “cranking through the gears” trying to ensure they can help Ukraine win its war against Russia without the US should Donald Trump get into power, according to a senior Whitehall source.

Ministers are desperately trying to ramp up manufacturing capabilities across the continent so they can send weapons and ammunition to the front line and keep Vladimir Putin at bay for at least another year, irrespective of US support.

The saboteurs managed to place four explosives on a Russian freight train carrying diesel and jet fuel, roughly 3,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. But more important than the destruction of the train, Ukrainian intelligence officials said, was the timing of the blast.

They needed it to blow up as the 50 rail cars were traveling through the nine-mile-long tunnel through the Severomuysky mountains, the longest train tunnel in Russia.

Russia says it has destroyed dozens of missiles and drones fired at its territory from Ukraine. Local officials reported four people, including three children, were killed in attacks.

The Russian defence ministry said 13 missiles and 32 drones were shot down over several Russian regions.

A child was reported killed in Bryansk, while a man and two children in Belgorod are also said to have died.

The attacks follow strikes on Ukraine which killed 39 people.

Western air defences saved many Ukrainians from the Kremlin’s missiles but with 18 dead and support from its allies wavering, Kyiv is in no mood to celebrate

President Putin once boasted that Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, which were among the 158 fired at targets across Ukraine on Friday, were “indestructible”.

Russia launched a wave of hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles as well as kamikaze drones at cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and Odesa.

The ease with which Ukraine was able to swat them away is testament to the power of its western air defences.

The conflict in Ukraine is about to enter its third calendar year. The front lines have hardly moved in the last few months but could the course of the war change in 2024?

President Volodomyr Zelensky has admitted his country’s spring offensive has not been the success he hoped. Russia still controls about 18% of Ukraine.

We asked three military analysts how they think events may unfold in the coming 12 months.

Western defence is too fragmented, too slow to respond, and will be attacked by Putin’s Russia if it doesn’t do more to help Ukraine, their foreign minister says in a rebuke of Europe’s response to the Russian invasion.

Apologies for this seasonal downer. Had the website such a listing, this column would surely soar to number one in The Spectator’s “Least Popular” roster. For just now, few topics are a bigger turn-off than Ukraine.

Following Russia’s invasion, I got caught up in the same waves of emotion that washed over most western publics, and I say that with no regret. After relentlessly battling the prevailing cultural winds these past few years, I was relieved to feel a sense of solidarity for once. Most of us were revulsed by the gratuitous aggression, allied with an underdog whose bite proved surprisingly fierce, thrilled by a former comedian’s unexpected rise to his nation’s occasion and consumed by a weirdly addictive loathing for Vladimir Putin. Kyiv’s repelling Russia’s clumsy invasion of the capital was exhilarating. Like so many of you, in those early months I read about Ukraine every day.