“Ukraine – Russia”

Extraordinary first images of a mangled Nord Stream pipeline have emerged, three weeks after it was blown up ‘with extreme force’ in a suspected act of sabotage.

Footage, released on Tuesday, showed at least 165 feet of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was destroyed or buried under the seabed, following an explosion on September 26 – assumed by many to have been a Russian attack.

Release of the images came as Danish police said ‘powerful explosions’ were behind damage to the two gas pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and 2) in the Danish part of the Baltic Sea. On October 6, Swedish investigators said their own initial investigations had come to a similar conclusion.

History may well judge Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to be a great gift to Western civilization. That is not to say that Russia’s invasion of that sovereign country was not unwarranted and a crime against humanity. Clearly, it has been both of those things. But how is it that the West, and the rest of the world by extension, will benefit from Mr. Putin’s heinous acts? It is related to the law of unintended consequences, which I will simply define as the following: “for every act intended to produce a specific outcome, there is a set of one or more unintended consequences that result.”

Russia has hit Ukraine with a wave of attacks, dive-bombing the capital, Kyiv, with what appear to be Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones.

Critical infrastructure was hit in the Kyiv, Dnipro and Sumy regions, with electricity cut in hundreds of towns and villages, the government says.

At least eight people were killed, four in Kyiv and four in Sumy.

Calls have mounted for sanctions on Iran, which continues to deny supplying drones to the Russian military.

Look how #russia carries out a strike by Iran-made kamikaze drones this morning. Several buildings are damaged. #Rescuers are pulling civillians out of the rubble.
This is 🇷🇺 another terrorist attack on the capital.#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/TKOiu9hr1w

— Emine Dzheppar (@EmineDzheppar) October 17, 2022

Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, according to the culture ministry in Kyiv.

Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert “intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson”, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page.

The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra, of which Kerpatenko was the principal conductor, but he “categorically refused to cooperate with the occupants”, the statement said.

U.S. President Joe Biden is known for making confusing and sometimes wild pronouncements that his administration is known for frequently walking back. This might have been the case when he randomly decided to tell an audience of well-heeled Democrats at a fundraiser that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not joking” about using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon,” he added, “since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Biden has since refused to clarify his remarks or explain on what he was basing them. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby took to the Sunday shows to clarify that the president was not saying an attack was imminent and this his “comments were not based on new or fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr. Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons.”

In the last few weeks, there has been widespread speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin might use a nuclear weapon in his war against Ukraine. This has generated speculation on how the West might react, including the use of nuclear weapons in response. As Cheryl Rofer notes, much of this commentary has been irresponsible, trading on the lurid, apocalyptic possibilities of nuclear weapons to throw out alarmist scenarios. Her trenchant term for this is ‘nukeporn.’ She is almost certainly right.

The death toll following a shooting at a Russian military base on the Ukraine border has risen to 22 after two gunmen from Tajikstan opened fire at fellow recruits reportedly in a row over religion.

Initial reports announced that 11 soldiers had been killed and a further 15 injured on a training ground in the Belgorod region on the Ukrainian border, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed yesterday.

But it has now been suggested that double this number were shot dead, with independent news outlet SOTA suggesting that 22 soldiers have died and 16 were wounded.

#Ukraine: Another Russian BMP-3 IFV was destroyed by accurate indirect fire- as usual claimed to be from a Ukrainian T-64BM2 tank of the 22nd Separate Motorized Infantry Battalion.

As the tank firing is reused footage, we can't tell precisely what struck the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/LDP5fHY031

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

Nearly eight months into Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, citizens in core western alliance countries show little appetite for the kind of concessions to Russia that might form part of an eventual agreement to end the fighting, according to a major survey.

The YouGov-Cambridge globalism project, which gauged public opinion in 25 of the world’s largest countries, also found strong support for maintaining, and often toughening and expanding, military and economic measures against Moscow.

But while the survey found respondents in most western nations in an uncompromising mood, multiple countries around the world – including some in the west – were markedly more ambivalent, or even sympathetic, towards Russia.

#Ukraine: Another two casual 2S19 Msta-S 152mm self-propelled howitzers of the Russian Army were destroyed by a Ukrainian precision strike somewhere in the East. pic.twitter.com/vu035Q7d4S

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 12, 2022

Washington has announced that it will send more arms and munitions to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion.

The package worth a total of $725 million (€745 million) will include HIMARS mobile rocket launch systems — the long-range artillery weapons that played a key role in the Ukrainian counteroffensive in September.

It will also include more munitions, armored vehicles and medical supplies, the White House said. The aim of the package is to restock Ukrainian supplies rather than provide any new types of weapons.

#Ukraine: Another precise Ukrainian artillery strike took out a concealed Russian tank in #Luhansk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/3i0ei6LVvY

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

Yesterday, Canada signed an agreement that will enable @EBRD to provide a €300 million loan to help keep the heat and lights on in Ukraine this winter. I hope other countries will soon follow Canada’s €36.5 million guarantee. pic.twitter.com/ArcYSwrUDj

— Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) October 14, 2022

Sweden has opted out of a proposal to set up a formal joint investigation team with Denmark and Germany to investigate the recent leaks of the Russian-owned pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2.

Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor involved in the country’s criminal investigation of the leaks in the Swedish economic zone, told Reuters that the country would not join a Joint Investigation Team from the judicial co-operation agency Eurojust.

A strike in Ukraine would threaten chaos at home — but one expert says it may not be as bad as we fear

Western countries are making contingency plans to deal with chaos at home in case of nuclear war in Ukraine, officials said yesterday, as the threat of a battlefield strike by President Putin grew.

The measures could include issuing leaflets on how to survive a nuclear attack or ways to ease panic buying amid fears the fallout could reach western Europe and beyond. President Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons in recent weeks have sent alarm bells ringing across Nato, with the alliance engaging in discussions behind closed doors as to how it will respond to such an eventuality.

Oh that’s nice, we’re only gonna be irradiated just a tetch.