“Ukraine – Russia”

The top U.S. general on November 16 said the chances of any near-term military victory for Ukraine are not high unless the Russian military completely collapses, which he said is unlikely.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while the Ukrainian military has had important successes in Kharkiv and Kherson, Russia occupies 20 percent of Ukraine and still has significant combat power inside the country’s territory.

#Ukraine: A precise artillery strike from the Ukrainian 59th Brigade destroyed a Russian BTR-80/82A APC on the left bank of the Dnipro River- near Oleshky, #Kherson Oblast. pic.twitter.com/oRnnYyGW6H

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

“Analysis carried out shows traces of explosives on several of the foreign objects that were found” at the site, Ljungqvist said in a statement.

The prosecution authority said the preliminary investigation was “very complex and comprehensive” and further scrutiny would show whether anyone could be charged “with suspicion of crime.”

A journey to the site of the Nord Stream explosions

… Later, we discovered the Russian offshore vessel we had spotted was part of a separate investigation Moscow had begun into the Baltic explosions. While many in the West see this as a cynical move by Moscow, Stockholm is worried that Russia might use this as a pretext to stage a more regular presence close to Swedish shores. The country is poised to join Nato.

One thing has become clear from the explosions – the critical importance of Europe’s energy infrastructure, bringing oil, gas and electricity from source to our homes and workplaces at this time of energy crisis, and the huge difficulty in protecting it.

Russian oligarchs are butchering each other in a vicious fight over wealth sparked by Western sanctions crippling the economy, Bill Browder has told MailOnline.

Mr Browder – who ran Russia’s largest foreign investment firm until he fell foul of Putin and is now dubbed his ‘number one enemy’ – believes a spate of ‘suicides’ and suspicious deaths among the country’s elites are ‘all murders’.

Though he did not name names, recent deaths include Ivan Pechorin, 39, director of the Far East and Arctic Development Corporation who ‘fell overboard’ from his yacht in September; Pavel Pchelnikov, 52, a PR manager for the Russian Railways shot dead in his Moscow apartment the same month; and Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom executive found hanged at his house, also in Moscow.

While Europe has been keeping a generally optimistic facade ahead of the coming cold winter, signaling that it has more than enough gas in storage to make up for loss of Russian supply even in a “coldest-case” scenario, behind the scenes Europe’s largest economy is quietly preparing for a worst case scenario which include angry mobs and bankruns should blackouts prevent the population from accessing cash.

Ukrainians suspected of collaborating with Russia have continued to be rounded up and confronted by residents in Kherson.

Images appear to show collaborators filed against a wall and displayed for residents as their hands are bound and eyes covered with tape.

The men were understood to have been arrested for allegedly collaborating and working with Russian forces after they entered the southern city earlier this year.

#Ukraine: Ukrainian forces captured a Russian 2S3 Akatsiya 152mm SPG recently- in working condition.pic.twitter.com/MM58seslor

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 15, 2022

PRZEWODOW, Poland (AP) — NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance both said Wednesday there is “no indication” that a missile that came down in Polish farmland, killing two people, was an intentional attack, and that air defenses in neighboring Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile to fend off a Russian assault that savaged its power grid.

“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”

Two people have been killed in Poland after two stray rockets landed near the border with Ukraine.

It has not yet been confirmed if the rockets landed in the NATO state as a result of Russia’s mass bombardment of Ukrainian cities earlier today, which saw over 100 rockets launched.

Article 5 is trending on twitter – I do not think NATO will consider this reason to formally strike back against Russia. Most NATO states are already equipping Ukraine to some extent already. Now bear in mind that my Crystal ball predicted that Putin would not invade Ukraine as his posturing seemed to be accomplishing much of what he desired. So you best keep some iodine pills handy.

#Ukraine: A Russian cruise missile (Kh-101/Kh-55) was shot down by Ukrainian Air Defense systems over #Kyiv today. pic.twitter.com/kiHiTvLDh0

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 15, 2022

#Ukraine: A Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed by a Skif anti-tank guided missile of the Ukrainian National Guard “Omega” unit in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/YZSvFuI32s

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 15, 2022

h/t TB

The head of private Russian military group Wagner has defended a brutal video apparently showing the death of a mercenary who defected to Ukraine.

Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin said unverified footage of Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, being struck with a sledgehammer was “a dog’s death for a dog”.

The convicted murderer announced in September he had changed sides.

In the video he says he was hit on the head while walking in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and woke up in a cellar.

Canada is providing Ukraine with an additional $500 million in military assistance and is adding the names of 23 Russians to its sanctions list, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday.

“This additional military assistance will support Ukrainians as they bravely continue to fight against Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion, while these new sanctions will put added pressure on those who support these acts of war,” Trudeau said in a statement.

Russia’s pro-war activists delivered over the weekend their most cutting criticism of the military’s performance in Ukraine to date, following the humiliating withdrawal of Russian troops from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. By Sunday, the drumbeat of denunciations broke the taboo against singling out President Vladimir V. Putin himself and Russia’s very system of government.

Destroyed Russian 152 mm 2S5 Giatsint-S self-propelled gun in Mykolaiv Oblast.#Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/8A9Z85VZou

— BlueSauron👁️ (@Blue_Sauron) November 12, 2022

President Joe Biden might be right that the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine will lead to “Armageddon.” Since NATO is outmatched 250 to 2,000 in the category of non-strategic nuclear weapons, it may well have to choose between escalation to the strategic level of war (which would be disastrous for all concerned regardless of the outcome) or defeat if it finds itself on the wrong side of the nuclear threshold. Ironically, some of the Western commentators who most fervently oppose the use of any nuclear weapons see this rather precarious position as desirable: they want the United States to carry out massive retaliation in the case of any nuclear use against NATO forces, or at the very least threaten to do so. They believe that the best method for a country to deter a nuclear attack is to repudiate the very idea that a nuclear war could be limited, even to the point of unilaterally abandoning the capability to fight such a war. Merely possessing the capacity for limited war—so the argument goes—demonstrates to one’s adversary that there is some level of nuclear conflict that you find tolerable, and this makes nuclear war more likely. Possess only the capability for massive retaliation, and you will never have to use it. This is an alluring argument: it offers us the best possible outcome at a relatively low dollar cost. But everything has a price, and in the case of minimum deterrence, the price is extreme risk.

Russia’s Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said on Sunday that a former mercenary who was filmed being executed by a sledgehammer blow to the head after changing sides in the Ukraine war was a traitor.

Prigozhin, a Russian businessman who founded the Wagner private military group, was responding to an unverified video distributed on Telegram that showed a man identified as a former Wagner mercenary being executed after admitting that he had changed sides in September to “fight against the Russians”.

More… Another part of the video shows a man in Ukrainian military uniform, with his head taped to a makeshift anvil made of bricks and concrete. He says that he is “Evgeniy Nuzhin, born in 1967, went to the front to join Ukraine and fight against the Russians” and that “on 4 September, he carried out his plan to join Ukraine.”

Iran is preparing to hand the Kremlin the blueprints for its most effective weapon against the West: the underground financial network it relies on to evade sanctions.

For years, the Islamic Republic has frustrated American efforts to isolate it and starve its economy by constructing a parallel universe of front companies and foreign banks — including major financial institutions based in Europe and the U.S. — that Iranian companies use to evade international controls and conduct business abroad.