“Ukraine – Russia”

Ukrainian units plying the Dnipro River venture behind enemy lines under the cover of darkness, carrying out reconnaissance and sabotage.

ON THE BANKS OF THE DNIPRO RIVER, Ukraine — Under cover of darkness, a group of soldiers heaved their dinghy off the sand into the water. Another group loaded equipment with a heavy clanking into their boat, while a third pushed off silently with oars. Engines humming quietly, the boats turned to the open water and disappeared into the blackness.

The fighters, a volunteer Ukrainian special forces team called the Bratstvo battalion, were crossing the wide expanse of the Dnipro River, the strategic waterway that bisects Ukraine and has become the dividing line of the southern front. After recapturing the city of Kherson a week ago, Ukrainian forces hold the western bank, while the Russians still hold the eastern bank.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — When the power is out, as it so often is, the high-rise apartment overlooking Ukraine’s war-torn capital feels like a deathtrap. No lights, no water, no way to cook food. And the risk of not being able to escape from the 21st floor in time should a Russian missile strike. Even when electricity comes back, it’s never on for long.

“Russian strikes are plunging Ukraine into the Stone Age,” says Anastasia Pyrozhenko. In a recent 24-hour spell, her 26-story high-rise only had power for half an hour. She says the “military living conditions” have driven her and her husband from their apartment.

Stories continue to emerge suggesting that new Russian military conscripts are being deployed to the frontlines in Ukraine without adequate training.

Amid ongoing and increasingly significant military failures in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a partial mobilization order in late September, the country’s first since World War II. The stated goal was to draft 300,000 men into service, though the last figure given by officials was 220,000 before the mobilization was concluded.

RT @UAWeapons: #Ukraine: A Russian infantry fighting vehicle (presumably BMP-3) was destroyed by a Stugna-P anti-tank guided missile of the Ukrainian 30th Mechanized Brigade in the vicinity of Bakhmut, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/YSPXV0bvFg

— Trixy (@itrixy) November 20, 2022

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance needs to reinvigorate its military capacity in order to support Ukraine for the “long haul.”

In an interview Sunday on Rosemary Barton Live, Stoltenberg said the alliance had depleted much of its own supplies of weapons and ammunition and would need to work with industry to “ramp up production” in order to continue its support of Ukraine.

He also told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton that alliance states needed to be ready to pay some price, in the form of higher energy costs and other economic fallout, in order to bolster Ukraine’s defence.

The West’s attempts to persuade Ukraine to negotiate with Moscow are ‘bizarre’ and amount to asking for its capitulation, a key adviser to the Ukrainian presidency has declared.

‘When you have the initiative on the battlefield, it’s slightly bizarre to receive proposals like: ”you will not be able to do everything by military means anyway, you need to negotiate,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak.

This would mean that the country ‘that recovers its territories, must capitulate to the country that is losing,’ he added during an interview in the presidency building in Kyiv this week.

#Ukraine: The 68th Jager Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Army hit a Russian tank on the move with an ATGM, knocking it out. pic.twitter.com/BgltpYhzSU

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

Patriot missiles ring the airport in the Polish border city of Rzeszów, and US troops have taken over the Holiday Inn opposite the terminal. On its runway, once the preserve of budget carriers, private jets are lined up beside cargo planes crammed with weapons.

The bristling circle of military protection, set up hastily in early spring as the historic town became the world’s gateway to the war in Ukraine, is both a shield and a constant reminder of the conflict on its doorstep.

When a Russian-made missile slammed into a farm and killed two men in the village of Przewodów, about 100 miles away, many people wondered if it was enough.

The West is swinging bizarrely between defeatism and triumphalism

With Kyiv crippling Russian supply lines and driving back their forces in the east and south, and with Moscow’s missile blitz against Ukrainian cities, both sides are bracing for a tough winter. Right now, the initiative is still with Ukraine, but as Russia redeploys its forces and continues mobilising, the outcome remains in the balance.

This is no time for equivocation. Yet that is what we are seeing, with reaction in the West switching bafflingly between defeatism and triumphalism.

#Ukraine: The victims of Ukrainian counter-battery fire keep being discovered in #Kherson Oblast- here's what was once a 2S19 Msta-S 152mm SPG. pic.twitter.com/ccQddvnjao

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

Volodymyr Zelensky’s explanation for the deadly missile explosion in Poland may have been at odds with the one given by Joe Biden but could it undermine how the U.S. views future claims the Ukrainian president makes about Russia’s invasion?

On Tuesday, there was initial alarm among world leaders that the strike in Przewodow in the east of the NATO member could prompt an a response under Article 5 of the alliance’s charter. This quickly eased when Poland and the U.S. agreed that it was an accident likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile.

A video has emerged from the front line in eastern Ukraine showing the surrender of a group of soldiers in an incident that appears to end in their deaths.

Russia has reacted to the footage, accusing Ukraine of executing Russian prisoners of war, which would be a war crime. Ukraine has not yet responded to the allegations.

Crazy – both sides are claiming victimhood.

⚡️The captured Russian soldiers are shot by one of their own comrades to prevent them from becoming prisoners of war. 2/2.

That is one solution, but it is a crime!

🔎@Militarylandnet#Hungary #DenesTorteli #Ukraine 🇭🇺❤️🇺🇦👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/02hEOOSc7u

— Dénes Törteli 🇪🇺🇭🇺🇺🇦 (@DenesTorteli) November 18, 2022

In his 12 years in the frontier service, Bohdan Hotskiy saw many wild places. He thought his home, Ukraine, was the most beautiful country in the world: it had sea and mountains, forests and steppes, marshes and lakes. All was perfect, and so complete that Hotskiy – a 29-year-old captain – never felt the inclination to go abroad. Why bother? “We have everything,” he tells me when we meet in the Ukrainian town of Izmail, close to the border with Romania.

It is high summer. We sit outside on a bench in a central park, not far from the Danube River and Izmail’s port. Hotskiy is dressed in military uniform and holds a Kalashnikov. He is a modest and diffident person, tall and a little awkward, his dark hair receding into an arrow shape. At times Hotskiy seems reluctant to talk about his recent experiences, giving staccato answers to my questions. His story is remarkable, a tale of survival and dispossession.

Some of Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants are being blunt about what the retreat from Kherson means for them and the war with Ukraine moving forward.

Elites are coming to grips with the Russian military’s withdrawal earlier this month, the Russian independent news outlet Meduza reported. Sources close to the presidential administration (AP) and the Russian Federation called recent events “very painful.”

In 2015, Marat Gabidullin, a Russian airborne forces veteran and former bodyguard, joined the Wagner Group. The private military company (PMC), infamous for their ruthless military tactics and elite soldiers, is funded by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. It first emerged in the Donbas region of Ukraine, stirring up separatist action after the Maidan Revolution of 2014.

‘Ukrainians do not want any negotiations,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says. This time, he’s right.

LVIV, Ukraine — “One thing is for sure: the Ukrainians do not want any negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday in Moscow.

And never has he uttered a truer word.

They don’t.

No one wants to sit down with foes who bomb their homes indiscriminately and target their energy infrastructure, plunging households into darkness and forcing surgeons in hospitals to perform operations by torchlight.

Did Zelensky Try to Dupe the World Into WW3? It Sure Looks Like It…

No one embodies the extraordinary story of Kherson quite like Alexei.

When the Russians invaded his hometown, he worked under the cover of darkness, risking his life tracking the soldiers and officials setting up their hated government.

Three months later, he staged a dramatic escape across the front line to join the Ukrainian army, returning last week as a liberator in a lightning counter-attack.

#Ukraine: Ukrainian forces came across the remains of a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter that was shot down when Russian forces still occupied the right back of the Dnipro River, #Kherson Oblast. It was possibly taken down in September-October. pic.twitter.com/wZgmOccrur

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