Author: Blazingcatfur

​Demoralized Russian soldiers are sabotaging their own equipment — including ​accidentally ​downing ​their own planes — and top generals are lying to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the success of his military campaign in Ukraine, the United Kingdom’s spy chief said Thursday.

Jeremy Fleming, the head of Government Communication Headquarters, said during a speech in Australia that Putin had “massively misjudged” both the capabilities of Russian forces and the will of the Ukrainian people to fight for their homeland.

The Guardian disputes such claims…

Why is GCHQ saying Putin has been misinformed about Ukraine war?

For a spy chief, it was an eye-catching claim. “We believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth,” the GCHQ boss, Sir Jeremy Fleming, confidently declared overnight to an audience in Australia.

The head of the British eavesdropping agency offered no details to back up his assertion – leaving the impression it was a piece of psychological warfare, of the “we know all is not well in the Kremlin” type.

#Ukraine: An LNR-operated (Separatist) T-64BV was struck by Ukrainian fire in #Luhansk Oblast, destroying the vehicle.

Please ignore the “T-72” label; this is incorrect. pic.twitter.com/ygyauYJmav

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 31, 2022

#Ukraine: Accurate mortar fire from the Ukrainian 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade landing on Russian Tanks, destroying/damaging at least 3 vehicles; they appear to be T-72 variants.

Ukrainian indirect fire is often corrected with drones, as is the case here. pic.twitter.com/duDKNtOvID

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 30, 2022

Aman reclines in a chair in the restaurant of the Holiday Inn in Rzeszow, Poland, a beer in one hand and his phone in the other.

He has just gotten off a flight from New York, initially intending to head straight for the Ukrainian border, about 65 kilometres to the east. But his body armour was lost on the flight. While he contemplated going in without it, he’s decided to wait and see if it arrives tomorrow.

Germany’s industrial sector has sounded the alarm over a new emergency warning system to manage the country’s energy security in case Russia cuts supplies of natural gas.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck on Wednesday announced a three-stage alert system that would ultimately give households and hospitals priority over industrial firms if gas usage had to be rationed.

The Kremlin upped the stakes in its standoff with Europe last week, by saying that “unfriendly” states would have to pay for their gas in rubles instead of euros or dollars.

G7 nations rejected the demand but the uncertainty has sparked fears that Moscow may turn off the taps in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the West over the invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. President Biden taps oil reserve for 6 months to control gas prices

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Joe Biden is ordering the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for six months, the White House said Thursday, in a bid to control energy prices that have spiked as the U.S. and allies imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Biden was making the formal announcement later Thursday in remarks on his administration’s plans to combat rising gas prices.

The federal carbon tax is set to rise April 1. How will that affect gas prices?

Russia is building up its forces in eastern Ukraine in readiness for a new wave of attacks in the breakaway Donbas region, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, as another attempt was being made to rescue trapped civilians and deliver aid to besieged Mariupol.

In an early morning video address, the Ukrainian president said Russia’s drawdown announcement had been forced upon the Kremlin by the fierce resistance of Ukraine’s armed forces.

He added that his government was instead seeing “a build-up of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas” and preparing for that. The region encompasses two self-proclaimed “people’s republics” that Russia says it is helping to free from Ukrainian control. The leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said on Wednesday that offensive operations were intensifying.

America’s leadership is now uncontested

War is the domain of paradox, contradiction, and boundless surprise. It is not merely because of ignorance or stupidity that military history is a record of crimes, follies, defeats, and very few victories worth their cost. Even so, the Ukraine war is exceptional in the amplitude of its paradoxes, the extremity of its contradictions, and the magnitude of its surprises.

Ukraine is paying the price for its defiance of Moscow. Encouraged by the West since the 2008 Orange Revolution, Kyiv pursued engagement with the European Union and NATO. For more than a decade, it refused to negotiate neutrality or a closer relationship with Moscow. Despite repeated Russian threats and “redlines,” Kyiv stood up to Vladimir Putin. That resistance ultimately resulted in the loss of Crimea; a civil war fomented by Moscow in Donbass; and now, finally, open war with Russia. Western democracies encouraged Ukraine to take this Quixotic approach, even as they made clear that Ukraine had no near-term chance of joining NATO. The bottom line is that the Ukrainians were left to fend for themselves. Despite that, it is possible that Ukraine, with NATO-supplied equipment, will now pull off the impossible: slowing Russia’s invasion into a military stalemate.