“Ukraine – Russia”

Thirsting for a bit of good news in these bad times of war, Ukraine’s media headlined what it saw as a victory: The return to Kiev of a haul of artefacts from Crimea that had been on exhibit in European cities before Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The return came after a ten-year legal battle in which Russia claimed that it should receive the artefacts because they were made before the 1950s when the then Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev “handed Crimea over to Ukraine.” Ukraine counter-argued that the artefacts were loaned to a Dutch museum before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops annexed Crimea.

Well, in every war even the tiniest bit of good news could help divert attention, even momentarily, from bigger bad news.

President Zelensky has admitted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive against invading Russian forces did not achieve the success he had hoped for.

“We wanted faster results,” the Ukrainian leader said during a visit to the Kharkiv region in the north east of the country. “From that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.”

Ukraine will not surrender land to Russia in exchange for Nato membership, its foreign minister said, as a US official predicted that President Putin was unlikely to consider calling off his invasion until next year’s American presidential elections.

“We have to continue, we have to keep fighting. Ukraine is not going to back down,” Dmytro Kuleba told Nato foreign ministers in Brussels. He said Kyiv remained committed to recapturing all its land, including Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by the Kremlin almost a decade ago. He expressed frustration at the speed with which western countries were delivering weapons to Ukraine.

More … NATO Unity Tested Over Ukraine War

The United States and Germany are in talks over an effort to persuade Ukraine to negotiate a peace deal with Russia broadly along the lines of the present battle front, according to a report.

The two largest states in Nato and Kyiv’s biggest military backers are said to be deliberately limiting arms deliveries to make it clear to President Zelensky that the conflict is now “frozen”.

With the world’s news cameras focused on Gaza, Ukrainian Marines are secretly crossing the half-mile wide waterway, ferrying men and ammo in inflatable rubber rafts and establishing beachheads on the opposite shore.

For generations of Soviets, “crossing the Dniepr” evokes the epic 1943 battle that pitted three million Soviet soldiers against one million Nazi defenders. As memorialized in monuments and murals, Soviet soldiers used small boats, rafts, and logs to cross a river as wide as the Mississippi. By the end of a four month long amphibious assault, more than one million Soviet soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. However, by surmounting Ukraine’s water wall, they broke the back of Nazi power in Eastern Europe.

Volodymyr Zelensky said deliveries of key artillery shells to Ukraine from its Western allies have “really slowed down” since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Ukrainian president said he would “defend what is ours” after the decline in supply of 155mm artillery shells, which are also used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against Hamas.

Ukrainian troops have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, officials from Russia and Ukraine have acknowledged, in an operation that Kyiv says will open new avenues of attack toward Crimea.

Estimates of the number of Ukrainian troops involved range from dozens to several hundred and they are reported to be engaged in heavy fighting with Russian forces on the far side of the river.

In Ukraine’s first official confirmation of the beachhead, Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, said that the crossing showed that Kyiv was still making advances in a months-long counteroffensive that has so far failed to yield major territorial gains.

Every day in Ukraine is Groundhog Day for the occupiers.

📹: 58th Motorized Brigade pic.twitter.com/4e9pM1KbTo

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 15, 2023

Chain-smoking Ukrainians tote French-made assault rifles as they hunker down in a newly conquered village to prepare for a counterattack.

But this isn’t a firefight in eastern Ukraine. Rather, it’s a mock village in rural France where the Ukrainian troops are being trained by the French military, who are acting the role of the enemy.

On a cold and sunny November day, the Ukrainians — both volunteers and draftees — are in the fourth and final week of training in a French military camp, part of a 48-hour exercise to put into practice what they’ve learned over the past month.

Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was integral to the brazen sabotage operation, say people familiar with planning

A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last year, according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation.

The officer’s role provides the most direct evidence to date tying Ukraine’s military and security leadership to a controversial act of sabotage that has spawned multiple criminal investigations and that U.S. and Western officials have called a dangerous attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

There’s a very different tone coming from Kyiv these days. Speaking to Time magazine, Volodymyr Zelensky had just returned from Washington after failing to make another impassioned public address on Capitol Hill, and not even managing to get on Oprah. The Ukrainian president sounded angry. The constant struggle to maintain international support seems to be taking its toll. ‘Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,’ he insisted, but added that dragging Ukraine’s allies along with him ‘takes all your power, your energy… It takes so much of everything.’