The Wagner Group might be a gang of hired murderers, but it is also a well-oiled machine: peel back its layers of barbarity and you’ll find a slick private military company with plans to expand its influence throughout the world. Experts, including US Congress, have long argued that Wagner is controlled by the Russian special services, specifically the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, commonly known as the GRU.
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, the notion that Vladimir V. Putin is seriously ill has been a subject of lurid speculation, internet video forensics — and potential wartime propaganda, even though U.S. officials say there is no evidence the Russian leader is dying.
Now, a document among the trove of leaked classified materials offers the latest example of the fascination with Mr. Putin’s health. It describes a conversation between two Ukrainian officials about what one claimed was a conspiracy among Mr. Putin’s internal opponents to challenge his rule at a moment when he was said to be undergoing chemotherapy.
The World Bank estimates an overall reconstruction bill for Ukraine at $349 billion, an eye-watering sum that is rising by the week. Ukrainian government sources put it at more like $700 billion. Somehow this has all got to be paid for, and it’s not going to come from Ukraine, whose economy is in tatters after months of fighting for its very survival. The chances of getting Russia to cough up are close to zero, whatever the talk of war crimes trials and reparations.
Meanwhile, sanctioned Russian oligarchs, who themselves bear considerable responsibility for Putin’s aggression, simply alter the ownership of their corporations to avoid penalties, often with their vast fortunes residing in Western banks and property empires. It is time for their wealth to come under greater scrutiny as the world figures out how to put Ukraine back together when the war eventually comes to an end.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and China’s Xi Jinping spoke by phone Wednesday — their first conversation since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago and a signal that Beijing may be angling to play a mediating role.
China will send a special representative to Ukraine and other countries to hold talks with all parties on resolving the “crisis,” Xi told Zelensky, according to a Chinese readout of the call.
“Amid the current rise of reasonable thinking and voices from all sides, we should seize the opportunity to build up favorable conditions for a political settlement of the crisis,” Xi told Zelensky, according to the Chinese summary.
The Biden administration is quietly preparing for the possibility that if Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive falls short of expectations, critics at home and allies abroad will argue that America has come up short, too.
Ukraine’s ever-imminent counteroffensive will attempt to retake Russian-seized territory most likely in the east and south, though for operational reasons no senior officials from Kyiv have detailed specifics.
#Ukraine: A Russian BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed by two ATGM strikes from Ukrainian forces in the vicinity of Vodyane, #Donetsk Oblast.
Another damaged BMP-2 nearby was also destroyed by an ATGM. pic.twitter.com/ZjwEQXORRq
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 24, 2023
Oleksiy Danilov says it is not up to France to negotiate on behalf of Kyiv ‘behind the Ukrainian people’s backs’
Emmanuel Macron must be prepared to give away Bordeaux if he wants to negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf, one of Volodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers has said in a swipe at the French president’s plans for a peace agreement.
Oleksiy Danilov, Mr Zelensky’s national security adviser, called on the French president to halt his attempts to draw up peace deal terms with the help of China.
In an interview with the Telegraph, he said Mr Macron was “deeply wrong” if he believed he could go behind the Ukrainian people’s backs and potentially negotiate away territory like Crimea.
The way things are going in France there may be a Caliphate of Bordeaux.
#Ukraine: Presumably one of the first videos showing US-delivered 🇺🇸 guided bombs with JDAM-ER kits in action in Bakhmut, #Donetsk Oblast.
Four GBU-62 were dropped on what is claimed to be an ammo storage point and Russian military staging area. pic.twitter.com/xExafWGAx0
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 25, 2023
Dimitri Lascaris’ apparent pro-Putin sympathies reveals tensions within Canada’s Greens.
Prominent Canadian “eco-socialist,” and former Green party leadership candidate, Dimitri Lascaris stirred up controversy this month by visiting Russia and seemingly endorsing pro-Kremlin propaganda. His visit illustrates potential divisions within Canada’s Green party, as well as the pitfalls of far-left politics.
Russia is advising citizens to avoid travel to Canada, citing what it calls numerous cases of discrimination against Russians, including physical violence, its foreign ministry said on Saturday.
Canada is one of the most vocal backers of Ukraine in the war against Moscow’s forces and has imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian officials and companies as well as wide-scale trade bans.
Western allies this week delivered some of the most powerful weapons that Ukraine says it will need for a looming counteroffensive against Russia: a Patriot air-defense system from Germany and the Netherlands. Fighter jets from Slovakia. More 155-millimeter artillery from the United States.
And on Friday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III announced that Ukrainians would soon begin training, for the first time, on American M1 Abrams tanks — an important step to getting the sophisticated weapon to the battlefield.
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 25th Airborne Brigade destroyed a Russian BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle in #Luhansk Oblast using grenades dropped from a drone equipped with thermal optics. A BMP-1 was also taken out of action. pic.twitter.com/Z8kI3XQ3O0
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 20, 2023
For over a year, a massive An-124 Ruslan cargo plane has been sitting on the tarmac of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. The jet, with serial numbers RA-82078, had landed there on February 27, 2022 carrying a cargo of Covid-19 rapid tests—just four days after Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine. That same day, Canada’s transport minister closed Canadian airspace to all Russian-operated aircraft, keeping the An-124 grounded.
A Discord user matching the profile of Jack Teixeira distributed intelligence to a larger chat group, days after the beginning of the Ukraine war.
The Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents to a small group of gamers had been posting sensitive information months earlier than previously known and to a much larger chat group, according to online postings reviewed by The New York Times.
In February 2022, soon after the invasion of Ukraine, a user profile matching that of Airman Jack Teixeira began posting secret intelligence on the Russian war effort on a previously undisclosed chat group on Discord, a social media platform popular among gamers. The chat group contained about 600 members.
When a little black kitten was born at a frontline base in Kharkiv, the soldiers adopted it as their mascot, calling it “Stinger” after the feared shoulder-held missile that helped to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan. “It’s the only air defence we have here,” one of the men, codenamed “Hollywood”, explained.
Three decades on, Russian aircraft are equipped with new technology that scrambles the Stinger’s heat-seeking targeting system. “Now we have to fire two and hope that the second one will make it,” Hollywood said.
#Ukraine: A Russian BMP infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed by an ATGM of the 59th Ukrainian Motorized Brigade in Pisky, #Donetsk Oblast.
A second IFV can be seen immediately retreating. pic.twitter.com/fBuA78OwNl
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 20, 2023
An estimated 20 percent of Russia prisoner recruits are H.I.V. positive. To some, the front lines seemed less risky than prisons where they said they were denied effective treatments.
In Russian prisons, they said they were deprived of effective treatments for their H.I.V. On the battlefield in Ukraine, they were offered hope, with the promise of anti-viral medications if they agreed to fight.
It was a recruiting pitch that worked for many Russian prisoners.
About 20 percent of recruits in Russian prisoner units are H.I.V. positive, Ukrainian authorities estimate based on infection rates in captured soldiers. Serving on the front lines seemed less risky than staying in prison, the detainees said in interviews with The New York Times.
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 59th Brigade destroyed a Russian T-72B tank with an ATGM strike in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/lcoxfKqAAq
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 21, 2023
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said all member countries have agreed that Ukraine will eventually join the transatlantic military alliance once the war is over, ahead of a meeting of western defence ministers discussing further military aid for Kyiv.
Further announcements on weapons and support are expected after the summit at the Ramstein airbase in Germany, but Stoltenberg also sounded notably upbeat about Ukraine’s longer-term prospects for joining Nato.
“All Nato allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member,” he said. “President Zelenskiy has a very clear expectation, we discussed this.
Ukraine in Nato: Orban casts doubt on long-term membership plan
h/t TB
BERLIN — When 13,000 demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Feb. 25 to call for an end to weapons supplies to Ukraine, the protest was led by Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of parliament for Germany’s far-left Die Linke party and a firebrand with national ambitions. Wagenknecht decried the prospect that German tanks, soon to be delivered to Ukraine, could once again be used to shoot at “Russian women and men.”
Seems the Germans know how to organize their own.
