“Ukraine – Russia”

President Zelensky arrived in Washington this evening for talks with President Biden and a meeting with Congress that is expected to secure billions of dollars’ worth of fresh military equipment for Ukraine.

His first foreign trip since Russia’s invasion in February was fraught with security challenges but the prospect of another $47 billion in military support — and the opportunity to address American leaders — was worth the long journey. It included a flight from Poland, rather than his own country, which would have carried a greater risk of being shot down by Russian forces.

STOCKHOLM — Two military helicopters shattered the calm of suburban Stockholm on a late November morning, swooping over a private home in the sleepy locale of Kil in a high-profile raid on a Swedish couple accused of spying for Russia.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the police piling into their house,” a neighbor of the arrested Stockholm couple told POLITICO. “The noise of the helicopters woke up the whole street, and we just stood on our driveways watching the action.”

The rattle of helicopters in the darkness was the latest sign that European nations’ high-stakes games of espionage with Russia are increasingly being played in the open.

#Ukraine: A Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter (RF-91335, 43 Yellow, formerly 43 White) was reportedly shot down by a Russian Pantsir-S1 in a friendly fire incident in #Zaporizhzhia Oblast. pic.twitter.com/IWXeORBI0M

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 20, 2022

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lands in Washington Wednesday, he will come with one of his biggest requests of the U.S. since Russia invaded his country nearly 300 days ago — and he might not get the answer he wants.

… During the meeting with Biden and his national security team, the Ukrainian delegation is expected to make another round of pleas for long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, and Gray Eagle and Reaper drones, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The person and others were granted anonymity to describe internal discussions.

But U.S. officials aren’t ready to budge. The Biden White House has flatly rejected sending the ATACMS. The costs of doing so are high, U.S. officials say. Sending long-range missiles to Kyiv could risk provoking Putin using potentially even more lethal weapons inside Ukraine.

⚡️Life does not stop at the front line.

Preserving meat by smoking, a method that works perfectly in wartime conditions.

I love it! Bread, onions or peppers and tea!

Wonderful food!

Vegetarians should not watch this video. 😅#Hungary #Ukraine 🇭🇺❤️🇺🇦👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/V4RXtXltRS

— Dénes Törteli 🇪🇺🇭🇺🇺🇦 (@DenesTorteli) December 21, 2022

OTTAWA — There will be many prayers offered up this Christmas that the guns fall silent across Ukraine in the New Year.

But let’s hope that any peace is prompted by Russia’s realization that it cannot win, rather than because the Ukrainians have run out of ammunition.

The latter is a very real prospect. As retired Australian Major Gen. Mick Ryan wrote last week in an influential Twitter thread: “In 2023, the Ukrainian army may run out of munitions before it runs out of fight. Based on current usage of ammunition in the war, production of munitions is increasingly lagging battlefield needs.”

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian 9A310M1 TELAR of the Buk-M1 air-defense system was destroyed by a Russian Lancet loitering munition in Oleksandrivka, #Kherson Oblast. pic.twitter.com/8bI8tl2FRl

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 20, 2022

Out on the frontline, near the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, on 8 November at 15.10, a Russian serviceman called Andrey decided to ignore the orders of his superiors and call his mother with an unauthorised mobile phone.

“No one feeds us anything, mum,” he complained. “Our supply is shit, to be honest. We draw water from puddles, then we strain it and drink it.”

Russian forces had been on the back foot in the Donetsk oblast for weeks. Lyman, taken by the Russians in May, was liberated by Ukrainian forces in October.

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter was shot down by the Russian forces in the vicinity of Pervomaiske, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/CZnW13kd6n

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 19, 2022

OTTAWA – The federal government says it plans to target a Russian oligarch using a law to confiscate and divert assets held by people who have been sanctioned.

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says Canada will try to seize and forfeit US$26 million, or about C$36 million, from a firm owned by Roman Abramovich.

Abramovich is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the former owner of Chelsea Football Club in England.

Psychological aspects of Japan’s wartime death cult have been almost entirely ignored by the revisionist historians

The use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is hardly a festive subject. But given that in recent conversations with President Macron, Vladimir Putin has referenced Hiroshima as a precedent that he could use to justify the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it seems a timely moment to evaluate the subject. And this is especially the case when the case for America using the bomb against Japan has more and more come under attack.

One hundred years ago this December, delegations from the core nations of the East Slavs, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus signed the ‘Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’. They had with them representatives of the ‘Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republic’ artificially constructed by the Communists who had just won a horrifically bloody civil war. In theory it was a free association of states. In practice Stalin quickly imposed even more ruthless centralisation than before. By the end of the second world war he had recovered all the territories of Imperial Russia, and achieved domination of almost the whole of Eastern Europe.

Russia may attempt to re-enact a version of its original invasion plans, Ukrainian military officials believe, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned this weekend Vladimir Putin still has enough missiles to order more heavy strikes.

The Ukrainian president was speaking in the aftermath of the latest wave of missiles to target his country’s critical energy infrastructure after Russia launched 98 rockets at 20 cities and towns on Friday.

Officials said on Saturday, however, that repairs had been speedy with water supply restored throughout Kyiv and two-thirds of the capital now connected to electricity while the country’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, had been reconnected to the grid after suffering a total blackout.

#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 45th Artillery Brigade (Along with the 128th and 26th Brigades) targeted Russian positions in the East, destroying at least three BMP infantry fighting vehicles. pic.twitter.com/xCsMnFsJeo

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 18, 2022

The extremist group has been spotted alongside Putin’s forces

As his forces began rolling on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that he wanted to “demilitarise and denazify” the country — by which he was referring to ultranationalist elements in the Ukrainian government and armed forces such as Azov Regiment, Right Sector and Freikorps.

Has a previously-unseen munition been revealed in #Ukraine?

Recently video appeared showing shelling of a Russian position in the vicinity of Bakhmut, #Donetsk Oblast. The unusual explosions have led to to many theories- but we have a strong idea about what was really used. pic.twitter.com/P16gA9vP9h

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 17, 2022

This week, John Ivison is joined by Canadian Forces veteran, James Challice, who spent six months training troops and fighting on the frontline in Ukraine earlier this year. He’s spending Christmas with his sons and mother in Ontario but early in the New Year he is heading back to the brutal killing fields of eastern Ukraine.

The corpse of a woman lay abandoned on her bedroom floor. Her name was unknown. A Ukrainian man, a feral-looking survivor with an attack dog, had guided Dave Young through the shell-churned landscape, hoping the Englishman would remove her body. He said only that the dead woman had a son but that he was dead too.

“The son died of sickness,” the man said casually, thumbing backwards down the empty stairwell as the sound of shelling reverberated through the building and small arms fire crackled from the slopes nearby. He looked through the buckled door of the woman’s apartment. “She’s been lying here two weeks.”

With the war in Ukraine grinding through its 10th month, both sides are locked in a stalemated battle of attrition, which could set the stage for a new round of escalation.

Many observers see the current deadlock as beneficial to Ukraine, allowing it to receive more state-of-the-art weapons from the West and prepare for new counteroffensives. In Russia, there is a growing sense of desperation among hard-liners about what they see as President Vladimir Putin’s hesitancy and lack of a clear strategy.

Military analysts note the fighting is likely to intensify again shortly as the soil freezes. Many point to Russian-occupied areas in the south as the most likely place for the next Ukrainian attack.