An alleged Russian mole at the heart of Germany’s foreign intelligence service tipped off the Kremlin that western spies had cracked the communications of its biggest mercenary force in eastern Ukraine, according to a report.
Carsten Linke and his alleged middleman, Arthur Eller, a well-connected German diamond trader, will go on trial next week for aggravated treason. It is Germany’s most significant espionage case in decades.
Kyiv has been through a lot over more than 21 months of war, fighting off the invading Russian army and surviving the regular cruise missile attacks and electricity blackouts that followed.
But the political machinations in the Ukrainian capital in recent weeks nonetheless feel unprecedented.
KYIV — More than 21 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine the mood is turning grim in Kyiv — with tensions between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, spilling into the open.
Last year’s successes, as Ukraine first blunted Russia’s attacks on its capital and then recaptured swaths of territory, have faded into a stalemate along hundreds of kilometers of frontlines as entrenched Ukrainian and Russian soldiers fight bloody battles for advances and retreats measured in meters.
When offered the chance to renew a free trade deal with Ukraine, a country that had no choice but to take on a mountain of debt to finance a bitter fight for self-defence, the Liberals couldn’t help but inject it with progressive nods to social and carbon policies. In the words of critics, the deal is “woke.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted last week that his country’s 2023 counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results,” and that “we have a new phase of war.” Russian strongman Vladimir Putin could have said the exact same thing this time last year after his country was forced to retreat from huge swaths of occupied Ukraine.
So what can we learn from each side’s successes and failures?
Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is falling and he will pay for his mistakes by eventually losing power, the mayor of Kyiv Vladimir Klitschko has said.
In a startling rebuke of Ukraine’s president, Mr Klitschko told two interviewers that he considered Mr Zelensky to be increasingly isolated and autocratic.
“People see who’s effective and who’s not. And there were and still are a lot of expectations. Zelensky is paying for mistakes he has made,” he said in an interview with the Swiss news website 20 Minutes.
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
U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin made a surprise trip to Ukraine this week to tell that country and the world that the United States has not forgotten about the war that still rages there. Mr. Austin tried his best to reassure President Volodymyr Zelensky that America still has his back. But with a critical military aid package for Ukraine facing major roadblocks in the U.S. Congress, and “Ukraine fatigue” setting in across the West, the U.S. defence chief’s words rang hollow.
A big part of the fatigue in Canada is due to Trudeau and Freeland attempting to link support for Ukraine with support for the Liberal party and its policies.
At one point a tone deaf Freeland spoke of how Canadians were happy to sacrifice for Ukraine by paying the hated carbon tax. Uh no. Never entered my mind.
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”.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Conservatives of using a “frankly absurd excuse” to vote against the updated Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, and said that “all Canadians should be concerned” about the Opposition turning its back to Ukraine.
Conservatives have dismissed any suggestions that they do not support Ukraine’s fight against Russia or that they do not support free trade, after they voted against C-57, a bill that would implement a revised trade deal between Canada and Ukraine, earlier this week.
What an ass.
A public hearing has been approved to look into how a Canadian man who fought in a Nazi unit in the Second World War was given a hero’s welcome in Parliament.
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.
