Not long after Russia began bombing Ukraine, Oleksii Martynenko packed his bags and fled Kremenchuk, a once-tranquil but now war-torn city roughly 190 miles (300 kilometres) from Kyiv. He moved to Stockholm and took a job as a line cook. One year later, as his work visa approached expiry, he relocated to Canada’s largest city.
h/t Mauser
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
Three Ukrainians who aided the Donald Trump campaign’s efforts to discredit the Biden family have been charged with treason.
The 2019 drive was led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was Mr Trump’s personal lawyer at the time.
It centred on unproven allegations that Joe Biden had corrupt dealings with Ukraine as vice-president.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said the three men charged were paid by Russian military intelligence (GRU).
This stinks.
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.’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited former President Trump to his country’s war zone, saying the former president “can’t manage this war.”
Zelensky, who joined NBC “Meet the Press” Kristen Welker, responded to Trump’s claims that he could end the war with Russia in 24 hours.
“Former President Trump said that about 24 hours, that he can manage it and finish the war,” Zelensky said during the interview that airs Sunday. “For me, what can I say? So he’s very welcome as well.”
Zelensky don’t know Trump.
h/t Mauser
The White House on Friday suggested it is beginning to run out of available funding to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, once again calling on Congress to approve more.
Earlier Friday, the Biden administration announced it was sending another US$425 million worth of additional arms and equipment to Ukraine. Most of the money — around US$300 million — is being drawn from the US$18-billion Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which funds contracts for weapons built or modified by defence companies.
Senior Ukrainian politicians appealed to Europe to not abandon the country after the Italian prime minister unintentionally disclosed during a prank call that European leaders were growing weary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after the country’s unconvincing counteroffensive.
“I see that there is a lot of fatigue … from all the sides,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said to two Russian comedians, pretending to be the president of the African Union in a hoax call, which was made public on Wednesday. “We [are] near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out.”
Volodymyr Zelensky’s closest aides have revealed the anger, division and corruption which is weighing his administration down.
Almost 22 months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, all eyes are now on Israel, which means they are not on Kyiv. Even before Hamas’ October 7th terrorist attacks, there were already signs that Western public support for backing Ukraine was waning.
There has never been any doubt that Ukraine was the focus of an intelligence war as much as a physical one. But the extent of Western assistance, as well as growing concern at some Ukrainian tactics, is only now becoming clear.
On Monday, the Washington Post ran a lengthy examination of the level of CIA assistance for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and military intelligence (HUR) that bore all the hallmarks of being facilitated by the US government. It acknowledged that since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Americans has invested ‘tens of millions’ of dollars in training and technical assistance for their Ukrainian counterparts, even building new headquarters for HUR’s special forces, for fear that the old ones were compromised.
Russia’s Federal Security Service’s (FSB) claim that the assassination of Darya Dugina, the daughter of the political philosopher and idealogue Aleksandr Dugin, had been “prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services” appears to have been confirmed days ago by a report published days ago by The Washington Post.
Citing unnamed “security officials with knowledge of the operation,” the report, titled “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia,” states that Ukrainian intelligence operatives used a secret compartment inside a cat crate to smuggle bomb components into Russia; parts that were used to produce the car bomb that murdered Dugina in the summer of 2022.
A new survey suggests more Canadians want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to maintain Canada’s current level of spending on helping Ukraine fight Russia’s ongoing invasion, rather than boosting financial support.
Polling firm Leger recently asked Canadians about their country’s presence on the world stage, including Canada’s efforts to assist Ukraine defend against Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The first indication that this was a literary festival like no other came with the request to provide “proof of life” questions in case of kidnap. I’ve been to some unusual festivals — earlier this year I found myself discussing war-rape, ancient and modern, with the classicist Mary Beard on a barefoot island in the Maldives — and had some unusual festival encounters, such as the woman who asked me to sign a book to her dead husband, adding that he was reading it when he died. This, however, was my first in a war zone. There was a polite warning from the Lviv Book Forum organizers: “If there is an airstrike, we will interrupt the event.” It’s all part of the resilience of Ukrainians, determined in the face of Russian aggression that life must go on.
Finland’s security service has said a “state actor” may have sabotaged the undersea gas pipeline that was torn open on Sunday, amid speculation that Russia was behind the incident.
The Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia is likely to be out of action for several months after a “mechanical force” ripped apart its concrete casing and cracked open the pipe at a depth of about 60 metres, a few miles outside Finnish territorial waters.
The same night, a submarine data cable between the two countries was knocked out by unspecified damage in Estonia’s maritime economic zone.
