When Russia invaded Ukraine 19 months ago, western socialists had an opportunity to prove that their commitments to “anti-imperialism” were authentic and principled. Instead, many of these leftists rallied behind Moscow and, in the process, spotlighted their own moral bankruptcy and disdain for eastern European lives.
This behaviour, however disappointing, was utterly predictable when put into historical context.
The chance of a serious disaster at the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine has risen to one in five, a leading engineer at the Soviet-era facility has warned.
A recent exodus of top staff and the power station’s use as a military base by Chechen troops are among the reasons why a “Fukushima scenario” could happen at any time, according to one of the ten most senior engineers at the plant near Zaporizhzhia, which had a prewar workforce of 11,000.
The shortage of expertise is so acute that janitors, secretaries and “blue-collar” workers are posing as engineers in lab coats to dupe international observers into believing that the Russians have the necessary staff to avert disaster, according to sources with knowledge of conditions inside the facility.
This week saw spectacular Ukrainian attacks on the Crimean Peninsula, hitting Russian warships and missiles.
Estimates of the damage done ran into billions of pounds and raised the question: is Ukraine getting ready to retake Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014?
Crimea is a Russian fortress, so it is important not to get carried away.
“The strategy has two main goals,” says Oleksandr Musiienko, from Kyiv’s Centre for Military and Legal Studies.
Damage from Ukraine's recent strike on Russian air defenses in Crimea is visible in new high resolution satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/is2lF3TonU
— Brady Africk (@bradyafr) September 14, 2023
A large nation does not engage in the same pattern of behavior for centuries for no reason.
Russia has changed little over the past 400 years. Yes, Russians now drive cars instead of oxcarts, but from a political, cultural, military, and geopolitical standpoint, Russia and how it behaves has changed remarkably little. In fact, the run-up to and trajectory of the war in Ukraine is very much a repeat of Russian history. Yet Western governments have completely ignored this, and their obliviousness is proving costly.
A Russian pilot tried to shoot down an RAF surveillance plane after believing he had permission to fire, the BBC has learned.
The pilot fired two missiles, the first of which missed rather than malfunctioned as claimed at the time.
Russia had claimed the incident last September was caused by a “technical malfunction”.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) publicly accepted the Russian explanation.
Ukraine targeted Russian navy vessels and port infrastructure in Sevastopol in its biggest attack yet on the home of the Kremlin’s Black Sea fleet.
Russia said at least 24 people were injured in the early-morning strike. Ukraine said it launched ten cruise missiles at the Sevmorzavod shipyard — often used to fire missiles at Ukrainian cities — and three maritime drones at Russian ships in the Black Sea. Video posted online showed flames engulfing the naval facility in the Crimean port.
#Ukraine: Tonight in Crimea the Sevastopol Shipyard was hit with multiple Ukrainian strikes. At the time two Russian watercraft were undergoing repairs in drydocks- Pr. 775 "Minsk" landing ship and Pr. 636.3 "Rostov na Donu" submarine.
Both suffered damage to an unknown degree. pic.twitter.com/yIR55dGyyp
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 13, 2023
North Korea’s Kim Jong-un offered President Putin his full support for what he called Russia’s “sacred fight” against the West as the two leaders met.
The pair finally met and shook hands at Russia’s remote Vostochny Cosmodrome, some 900 miles from where the Russian president was attending an economic forum at the port of Vladivostok. The North Korean leader had been travelling from the beginning of the week for the meeting.
#Ukraine: A Russian T-90M tank with "special" sandbag addon armour was hit by a FPV loitering munition of the Ukrainian 11th National Guard Brigade East of Oleshky, #Kherson Oblast- leading to the detonation of ammunition onboard and a turret toss. pic.twitter.com/g86gR4QHrw
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 13, 2023
Konstantin Dobrovolski was out in the woods like he was most days in early autumn before the inevitable advance of arctic winter.
Armed with little more than a map, a shovel and an old metal detector, Dobrovolski has scoured the hostile landscape of Russia’s far north for the last 33 years in search of the long-forgotten remains of Soviet second world war soldiers.
“Just today we found the remains of five soldiers, some bones and old medals,” he said, speaking to the Guardian during a research trip outside the Arctic town of Murmansk. “We have to hurry before the ground freezes again.”
Get your soldier certificate. Join Ukraine’s International Legion. Earn €3,400 a month.
So offers a private tactical and security training company in Spain.
According to Euronews, G.O.A. Tactical, based in Lleida, is recruiting soldiers for Ukraine.
#Ukraine: A concealed Russian tank (presumably a T-80BV) was destroyed by three FPV loitering munitions of the Ukrainian army in #Luhansk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/bhUGN780X0
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 11, 2023
Neither the Austrian, nor the Czech government is willing to bow to Ukraine’s demands and extradite Ukrainian men who have fled the war-torn country. “That would be a massive interference in our sovereignty, we would never do that,” a spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry said to Exxpress on September 7th. “Such a request would likely contravene Czech law, making it impossible to approve it,” the Czech Justice Ministry stated in the Prague Monitor.
Ukraine called the joint declaration that came out of the G20 Leaders’ Summit this weekend ‘nothing to be proud of,’ after the document failed to label Russia as an aggressor in the war, but banned the use of nukes.
The G20 leaders, including President Joe Biden and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, standing in for Russian President Vladimir Putin, were gathered in New Delhi for the annual meeting.
The host, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pushed for there to be a joint communique produced at the meeting, after last year’s G20 Leaders’ Summit in Bali concluded without one due to there being a lack of consensus on the Russian invasion.
Ukraine has little more than 30 days left of fighting before the weather hinders its counter-offensive, the top-ranking US military officer says.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Gen Mark Milley said colder conditions would make it much harder for Ukraine to manoeuvre.
He admitted the offensive had gone more slowly than expected. But he said: “There’s still heavy fighting going on.
“The Ukrainians are still plugging away with steady progress.”
#Ukraine: A Russian AMN-590951 multipurpose armored vehicle was destroyed by a FPV loitering munition of the Ukrainian 63rd Mechanized Brigade near Kreminna, #Luhansk Oblast.
Only two vehicles of this type were documented as destroyed before, making this the third one. pic.twitter.com/16KyL0y8SH
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 10, 2023
Elon Musk said he refused a request to activate his Starlink satellite network in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol to aid a drone attack on Russia’s fleet there.
He said he feared that agreeing would have made his company complicit in a “major” act of war and an “escalation” in the conflict following Russia’s invasion.
Elon Musk told his engineers to switch off a Starlink satellite communications network near the coast of Crimea last year due to fears that a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s naval fleet could trigger a nuclear response from President Putin, a new biography has revealed.
Ukraine has used SpaceX-made Starlink satellite terminals to keep its military forces connected even as Russia has destroyed phone and internet networks. Yet as Ukrainian submarine drones armed with explosives approached the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, they suddenly lost connectivity and “washed ashore harmlessly”, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire, entitled Elon Musk. An excerpt was published yesterday by CNN.
President Zelensky has condemned a “deliberate” attack on Ukraine’s “peaceful city” of Kostyantynivka.
At least 17 people, including a child, were killed in the blast, which took place on a busy market street in the middle of the day – a rarity.
Kostyantynivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, is near the front line.
