“Ukraine – Russia”

After nine months of war in Ukraine, all Nato countries are short of shells — but thanks to cuts and complacency the situation is particularly acute in Germany

In the basement of an east Berlin hotel, a couple of curious punters eye up a rocket-powered spy plane designed to hurtle through the lower reaches of space at more than five times the speed of sound.

Nearby, a suited man with an expression of childlike absorption pilots a tiny swarm drone with minute precision through the keyboard of a MacBook Air.

A colonel from the Mongolian army, decked out in a sky-blue dress uniform with magnificent golden braids, looks a little lost next to a Lockheed Martin stand bristling with swishy avionics.

I suggest they fall back to the Reichs Chancellery.

Despite Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 83 percent approval rating, his deceptions about losses in Ukraine and gradual increases in the costs of sanctions make him vulnerable to a Western campaign of information warfare. Putin must now deliver victory or face being removed. Skeptics warn that any perceived foreign interference in Russian society will trigger a defensive nationalism that neutralizes any of the effects of Western-influenced agitation. They will highlight the consistent failure of contemporary psychological warfare units in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and will point to NATO’s collective indifference toward learning about Islamic political culture as a cause that led to those failures.

TikTok is hosting dozens of videos that glorify violence by Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries and they have been viewed more than a billion times, according to a new report.

Wagner has sent mercenaries into Ukraine in big numbers.

US-based NewsGuard, which focuses on online misinformation, says some of the videos appear to show the execution of a former Russian mercenary.

TikTok has said it will act against any content violating its policies.

The number of Russians in favour of continuing the war in Ukraine has fallen dramatically, with just one in four now supporting the conflict, according to leaked Kremlin opinion polls.

In July, 57 per cent of respondents said they wanted to see Russian troops remain in Ukraine. That figure has fallen to 25 per cent. Support for negotiations to end the nine-month conflict has risen from 32 per cent to 55 per cent.

#Ukraine: A Russian T-80BV was destroyed by Ukrainian forces, presumably in the East. pic.twitter.com/CckdDXMJ8h

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 28, 2022

The Ukrainian government has said a scheme it created for Russian soldiers to surrender is getting up to 100 enquiries a day.

The “I Want To Live” project was started in September.

By calling a hotline or entering details through messenger apps, Russian troops can arrange the best way to surrender to Ukrainian forces.

Officials in Kyiv say they’ve had more than 3,500 contacts from invading personnel, as well as their families.

#Ukraine: In the East, the Ukrainian 66th Mechanized Brigade struck a Russian tank with an ATGM, damaging it.

Another Russian armoured vehicle and transport truck were also hit and destroyed. pic.twitter.com/ZZkQ4ZU3ZR

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

The man-made famine has been buried from the beginning — and not just by its perpetrators.

Maria Katchmar was 7 when the troops came to her farm.

The soldiers entered her home in Cherkasy Oblast — a region of Ukraine along the Dnieper River — and immediately began to break everything. Windows and doors. Paintings and linens. Even pots for cooking. Her father was ordered to drown his livestock. When he refused, he was sent to Siberia — and the Soviet troops confiscated the animals anyway.

With the family’s two cows, chickens, and pigs gone, Maria’s mother left to find food, leaving her 10 children to fend for themselves for nearly a month.

WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (Reuters) – Russia is firing unarmed cruise missiles that were designed to carry nuclear warheads at targets in Ukraine to try to deplete Kyiv’s stocks of air defenses, a senior U.S. military official said on Tuesday.

The official, who declined to be named, was asked about a Nov. 26 assessment by Britain’s military intelligence which said that Russia was “likely” removing nuclear warheads from cruise missiles and firing the unarmed munitions into Ukraine.

#Ukraine: Ukrainian Artillery fire knocked out two Russian tanks and a BMP-1/2 infantry fighting vehicle in the East. pic.twitter.com/XiEVqObh8q

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 29, 2022

Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily, as neither Russian or Ukrainian forces were able to make a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.

As Russia moved fresh formations to the area in recent weeks, including reinforcements previously in the Kherson region, the fighting in the Bakhmut sector has descended into trench warfare reminiscent of the first world war.

Over the weekend, images emerged of Ukrainian soldiers in flooded, muddy trenches and battlefields dotted with the stumps of trees cut down by withering artillery barrages.

#Ukraine: The first footage of a 105mm M101 howitzer, supplied by 🇱🇹 Lithuania to Ukraine earlier this year, in action with the AFU. Although these are older designs, more artillery is always useful-which is why Soviet WW2-era 85mm D-44 guns still make appearances. pic.twitter.com/2tQvMQ5Lkd

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 27, 2022

Two-thirds of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have depleted their stockpiles by sending weapons to Kiev, according to an alliance official. Even larger NATO states are struggling to meet the demands of Ukraine’s war effort.

The New York Times reported on Sunday the North Atlantic alliance is struggling to meet Kiev’s battlefield needs. According to one NATO official, 20 out of 30 members are “pretty tapped out” regarding their ability to supply Ukraine with additional weapons. While larger states like the US, France, Germany, and Italy have the ability to arm Ukraine, those governments have also resisted sending specific weapons systems requested by Kiev. 

Antifa activists brawled with police on Saturday during an attempt to disrupt a protest against the sanctions war with Russia.

Chaos hit the streets of the German city of Leipzig on Saturday after an attempt by Antifa to violently disrupt a march protesting the Western sanctions war with Russia, their impact on citizens, and the war in Ukraine more generally.

Die Polizei Jagd die Demonstrant*innen durchs Viertel, Steine fliegen #le1809 #wirsindallelinX pic.twitter.com/oLwC2N3UuF

— Leon Enrique Montero (@le0nenrique) September 18, 2021

Sergey Skvortsov and Elena Koulkova “seemed like everyone else” until police swooped on their home on the well-to-do island of Varmdo

In the months before they stopped posting updates on Russian social media, Sergey Skvortsov and Elena Koulkova appeared happy with their life in Sweden. In one picture taken in 2013, they smiled for the camera as they danced together.

Skvortsov, 59, and Koulkova, 58, from Moscow, settled in Saltsjo-Boo, an affluent area on the island of Varmdo in the Stockholm archipelago, in 2015, having secured residency in Sweden. “They seemed like everyone else in the area, they chatted about gardening and always greeted us in a friendly manner,” one neighbour said this week.

New technologies are changing the balance of power and penetrating what should have been impregnable counter measures

It wasn’t the biggest bang of the war. But a sudden flash that briefly illuminated the Russian port of Novorossiysk on November 18 had a significance that went well beyond its blast radius.

The explosion is believed to have been caused by a Ukrainian uncrewed surface vehicle – maritime drones that are changing the balance of power in the Black Sea and could profoundly reshape the future of naval warfare.

Ukrainian soldiers are firing thousands of shells daily, forcing the U.S. to replace gun barrels across the border in Poland.

WASHINGTON — Ukrainian troops fire thousands of explosive shells at Russian targets every day, using high-tech cannons supplied by the United States and its allies. But those weapons are burning out after months of overuse, or being damaged or destroyed in combat, and dozens have been taken off the battlefield for repairs, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

A third of the roughly 350 Western-made howitzers donated to Kyiv are out of action at any given time, according to U.S. defense officials and others familiar with Ukraine’s defense needs.