Author: Blazingcatfur

The sound of gunfire has echoed through Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as Russian tanks were filmed entering the city for the first time.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence called on those living in Kyiv’s northern outskirts – where the tanks were filmed – to make fire bombs “to neutralise the enemy”.

Overnight, the city was hit by blasts, with at least one block of flats damaged and several civilians injured.

Russia has denied carrying out strikes.

The unnamed source at Russia’s defence ministry also said a plane shot down over Kyiv was Ukrainian, Reuters news agency reports. Ukraine has said the jet was Russian.

In Kiev weapons for free.. pic.twitter.com/0P2ry0cJCX

— ZOKA (@200_zoka) February 25, 2022

Fighting reaches Kyiv suburbs as Russian invasion of Ukraine intensifies

Fighting has reached the northern suburbs of Kyiv after a night of missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital to prepare for a major Russian assault, as president Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleaded for more international help and tougher sanctions.

Air raid sirens wailed over the city of 3 million people and heavy gunfire and explosions were heard in a residential district on Friday morning. Ukrainian officials warned that Russian military vehicles were approaching the city from the north-west.

Western incoherence and Russian opportunism have led Ukraine into disaster.

As Russian troops pile into Ukraine, and Russian bombs fall on Ukrainian cities, what are the security services in the UK focusing on? White privilege. This is not a joke. As the Daily Mail reports today, ‘Britain’s spies are being urged to consider their “white privilege” and declare their pronouns as Europe descends into war’. This comes from a leaked report on ‘improving diversity’ in the security services, written by Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the UK’s national security adviser. It also advises against using gendered terms like ‘manpower’ and even words like ‘strong’ and ‘grip’, which can ‘reinforce dominant cultural patterns’. And there you have it: as Putin plays the strongman, our security bosses are saying ze and zir and advising against inappropriate usage of upsetting words like… ‘strength’.

In 1946, Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith, who was the new ambassador to the Soviet Union, left Spaso House late at night to meet with Generalissimo Josef Stalin in the Kremlin. Winston Churchill had recently delivered his Iron Curtain speech and relations between West and East could hardly have been frostier. The Cold War had begun. The first question Smith asked the Soviet leader was “What does the Soviet Union want, and how far is Russia going to go?” Stalin was impassive. “He did not look at me directly,” Smith wrote in his memoirs, “but kept his head turned to one side, taking an occasional puff from a long Russian cigarette.” After Smith reiterated the question, Stalin looked directly at him and said, “We’re not going much further.”

Vladimir Putin has said there is broad public support for the invasion of Ukraine that he announced just before dawn on Thursday morning. But by evening, thousands of people in cities across Russia had defied police threats to take to central squares and protest against the military campaign.

Police had made at least 1,702 arrest in 53 Russian cities as of Thursday evening, according to the OVD-Info monitor, as they cracked down on the unsanctioned protests. Most of the arrests were made in Moscow and St Petersburg, where the crowds were largest.

The protesters chanted: “No to war!” as they exchanged shocked reactions to the attack on Ukraine.