Author: Blazingcatfur

A clash of loyalties is dividing opinion among residents in Bakhmut – a town on the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Sometimes it slips out as a whisper. More often, it is hidden behind euphemisms and shrugs – and carefully ambivalent replies. And then, once in a while, a fiercely pro-Russian sentiment is simply blurted out, like the crack of a gunshot, here in the rolling green hills of the Donbas.

“This is Russian territory. Ukraine is the occupier here,” said a man in overalls, standing with a group of council workers. They had been clearing weeds in Bakhmut – a Ukrainian town currently within easy earshot of Russian artillery.

Vladimir Putin’s regime is ‘mirroring’ the actions of the Nazis and must share the same fate as them, Ben Wallace will say as the Russian leader stages a military parade to celebrate victory in World War II.

Defence Secretary Mr Wallace will use a major speech to say that Putin and his inner circle should share the same fate as the Nazis, who ended up defeated and facing the Nuremberg trials for their atrocities.

His speech, at the National Army Museum in London, will also directly criticise the behaviour of Russian commanders for war crimes and their incompetence in a campaign which has failed to secure the gains expected by Putin.

Putin defends his Ukraine invasion, invoking World War II, but does not signal an escalation.

President Vladimir V. Putin used his Victory Day speech on Monday to try to channel Russian pride in defeating Nazi Germany into support for this year’s invasion of Ukraine. But contrary to some expectations he did not make any new announcements signaling a mass mobilization for the war effort or an escalation of the onslaught.

“We thought those were our last minutes. It was extremely scary but we were lucky.”

Elena is recalling the moment Russian troops started shelling, after she and a group of escapees passed through one of their checkpoints.

After two months living in the basement of a kindergarten in the Russian-occupied town of Izyum in Ukraine, Elena spent two nerve-shredding days on the road to safety. She and her daughter were among 20 people in a convoy of vehicles heading away from Russian-controlled territory. They fled last Friday using a route organised by volunteers.

I was given access to a secret Ukrainian base

Barbed wire knots together sky and earth. Burned-out vehicles, modern-day carcasses of industrial warfare, dot the landscape. The ground is strafed and cratered: Eastern Ukraine has been disembowelled by shelling. The war here is fought with 21st-century drone technology, but it flies over soldiers who carry 50-year-old Kalashnikovs. The black snouts and brown handles of these guns line the eastern front, which is a frieze cast in metal and wood, and is where, in the late afternoon of a warm spring day, I see Jesus.