Author: Blazingcatfur

Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the need to set up humanitarian corridors and a possible ceasefire around them for fleeing civilians, both sides said after talks on Thursday, in their first sign of progress on any issue since the invasion.

But while Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the talks had made “substantial progress,” Russian invasion forces surrounded and bombarded Ukrainian cities as the conflict entered its second week.

#Ukraine: The Territorial Defense volunteers captured a modern Russian T-80BVM, along with one supply truck seized and one more destroyed. pic.twitter.com/bN5OVVXzTE

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 3, 2022

Sergei Lavrov has repeated his warning that World War Three would be nuclear while at the same time accusing the West of fixating on his dire threats of destruction.

The foreign minister also compared the US to Nazi Germany in his latest rant after Russian forces seized the Black Sea regional capital of Kherson in Ukraine, its first major city after a week of fighting.

Vladimir Putin’s lackey said today: ‘It is clear that World War Three can only be nuclear.

#Ukraine 🇺🇦: people in #Starobilsk (N #Luhansk) are blocking the road to prevent Russian invasion forces from advancing any further. pic.twitter.com/Q5OpKRmfeC

— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) March 2, 2022

Learn the phrase, for historians will be referencing it for generations to come.

Linguists remind us that Paskudnyak is “THE most potent and offensive insult known to man. It has so much connotation that cannot be truly defined that the closest you can come to its meaning is ‘horrible person’…. Use with caution.”

And so with cluster bombs and shattered hospitals, schools, and apartments, Putin has earned the title of Paskudnyak, a description that will accompany him as long as long as there are historians to record the deeds of despots, dictators, and war criminals, who would crush democracy and freedom.

NATO governments have pledged to crack down on the dealings of Russian oligarchs and companies, but some controversial figures with significant investment ties to Western Canada have so far evaded sanctions from the Canadian government.

Every weekend for most of her youth, while other children were out playing, Natalia Toroshenko attended Ukrainian school, studying the country’s geography, language, its history and national heroes.

“Ukraine, and being Ukrainian, is a deep part of me,” she said. “I wasn’t born there, but it’s my ancestral homeland.”

Toroshenko grew up in Montreal, thousands of kilometres away from the country her father had left to flee famine and conflict. But, she like many other Ukrainian Canadians, has maintained strong connections to the country – and watched horrified as family and friends are trapped in war.

It’s not often that tax can lift people’s spirits but Ukrainian authorities may have done just that, assuring citizens that any Russian military equipment they seize won’t need to be declared for tax purposes.

“Have you captured a Russian tank or armoured personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the motherland!” Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption (NAPC) said, according to the Ukraine arm of the Interfax news service.

The agency went on to explain there was “no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH248,100) ($8,298).”

#Ukraine: Locals in #Mykolaiv Oblast found 4 abandoned 2K22M/M1 Tunguska AA vehicles. And burned them down. pic.twitter.com/U3hfBEoxTS

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 3, 2022

Despite Zelenskyy’s urgings, Canada, the U.S. and other members of NATO have repeatedly said they will not enter into a war with Putin and Russia.

That means that at the end of the day, they are prepared to sacrifice Ukraine to Russian aggression.

We all admire Zelenskyy’s bravery. His blunt refusal of an offer by the U.S. to evacuate him to safety declaring: “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride” was Churchillian in its defiance, recalling Winston Churchill’s famous war-time speech: “We shall fight on the beaches.”

Nothing like a nuclear war to stir things up.