OTTAWA – Settlement agencies are preparing for a surge of Ukrainians arriving in Canada before emergency visas for those fleeing the Russian invasion expire at the end of March.
The federal government has issued more then 930,000 temporary emergency visas since March 2022 for Ukrainians who want to work or study in Canada while they wait out the war.
I have no problem with this, but cut off migrants from everywhere else.
h/t Mauser & XC
Too many Ukrainians have died in the year since Canada announced the “high-priority donation” of an advanced air-defence system to Ukraine that has yet to be delivered, the secretary of country’s National Security and Defence Council said Tuesday.
Oleksiy Danilov told The Globe and Mail that his own nephew, killed near the front line on Jan. 8, was among those who had died in the 53 weeks since Canada promised to purchase a US$406-million National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, on Ukraine’s behalf. While the reasons for the delay may make sense in Ottawa, the wait for the U.S.-made equipment is harder to understand for those facing daily Russian missile attacks.
Two years ago, it momentarily looked like the Ukraine war might be concluded as soon as it had begun. As Zelenskyy’s former advisor Oleksiy Arestovych revealed in his interview with UnHerd, when he returned from the Istanbul peace negotiations with Russia in April 2022, his team cracked open the champagne to celebrate. The talks had been “completely successful”, he said, with 90% of contentious issues resolved in a manner broadly advantageous to Ukraine. All that was left was for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet in person a few days later to hammer out the final size of the post-war Ukrainian army, and ink the final deal. And then everything changed: “Something changed in Zelenskyy absolutely during this [period]. And historians have to find the answer to what happened.”
The director of a Russian state propaganda TV channel was found poisoned in her home last weekend at Krasnodar, some 400 miles south of Ukraine. A bomb disrupted rail traffic Sunday at Nizhny Tagil, home to the world’s largest tank factory, 1,400 miles east of Ukraine.
A 16-year-old boy was arrested last week for torching a $50 million SU war jet, at Chelyabinsk, 1,100 miles east of Ukraine’s border. A TV announcer who said that Ukrainian children should be drowned is struggling to recover from near fatal poisoning at Moscow, 400 miles north of Ukraine.
According to a report by the Pentagon inspector general, more than 40,000 weapons worth more than $1 billion were shipped to Ukraine but never made it to the battlefield.
Many of the weapons were sent to a U.S. military logistics hub in Poland, while others were shipped directly to Ukraine. The equipment includes shoulder-fired missiles, kamikaze drones, and night-vision goggles.
Call it the mystery of the disappearing missile system.
In January 2023, Anita Anand, then-minster of defence, announced an act of sweeping largesse on the part of the Canadian government.
This country would purchase a National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) for Ukraine.
I bet the LPC stole it.
h/t Mauser
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.
If the absurd ruling stands, she could potentially be deported back to Russia, where she faces an 8-year prison sentence.
h/t XC
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.
