President Putin is set to demonstrate his willingness to use weapons of mass destruction with a nuclear test on Ukraine’s borders, defence sources have warned.
The Kremlin has been signalling its readiness for a significant escalation as Russia loses ground on the battlefield. Fears that Putin’s earlier hints that he might resort to such tactics were heightened today by claims that a train operated by the secretive nuclear division was destined for Ukraine.
Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.
On Monday the Russian military acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka.
#Ukraine: Another Russian T-80BV tank was captured in #Kharkiv Oblast, seen here being towed by a Ukrainian BREM-1 recovery vehicle over a pontoon bridge. pic.twitter.com/dMbRRWPspM
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 3, 2022
If France wants to lead Europe to a new era of military self-reliance, how come its contribution to the war effort in Ukraine is so small?
That is the awkward question being posed by some of the country’s top strategic thinkers, who are pushing President Emmanuel Macron to make an urgent decision on more arms to Kyiv.
Recent analysis conducted on the ground in Poland and Ukraine shows that the French share of foreign arms deliveries is less than 2%, way behind the US on 49%, but also behind Poland (22%) and Germany (9%).
Aman lies groaning on the path with a red stump where his leg was. Ukrainian recruits run through smoke to kneel behind sandbags and fire at the enemy on a sun-baked hillside.
It looks like a scene from the war in eastern Ukraine, but this is southern England and the casualty an amputee actor, engaged by the British Army to help train Ukrainian civilians in rudimentary soldiering skills to defend their homeland from Russia.
The faces of these raw recruits betray their anxiety as bursts of live machinegun fire crackle overhead — the idea is to “inoculate” them, to familiarise them with the sound so they won’t panic in combat.
#Ukraine: The National Guard of Ukraine took out a Russian BMP-3 IFV with an ATGM strike in the vicinity of Pavlivka, #Donetsk Oblast.pic.twitter.com/LMGYJQZQJF
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 2, 2022
The old world broke this week. It was blown up cynically by someone who thought this would advance their agenda the most.
The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.
Well, for most people anyway.
When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go.
Serious Rabbit Hole reading. But I admit that blowing up the pipelines leaves us more questions than answers. Do you trust the Biden government? The EU? The WEF? Russia?
A blood-stained mattress lay in the dank basement of a bombed-out hotel where Russian troops were based until Ukraine’s soldiers forced them out last month. Abandoned army rations and sleeping bags indicated a rapid departure.
Not long ago, Sviati Hory [Holy Mountains] National Park was a popular tourist spot. The war has transformed this once tranquil area in the north of Donetsk region, centred on a 17th monastery, into an apocalyptic landscape littered with the grim detritus of Russia’s failing invasion.
Sensors are everywhere on the battlefield in #Ukraine: including those of the Bayraktar TB-2 UCAV, seen using the Wescam MX-15D sensor turret to observe what appears to be this recent shootdown. https://t.co/wZCgXgAoJo pic.twitter.com/5NRlcNq0by
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 2, 2022
IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end.
Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was.
“No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.”
… The latest example of Putin’s alleged deviousness has to do with leaks in an undersea Russian gas pipeline that traverses the Baltic.
The pro-Ukraine side blames Russia. Moscow, they say, is responsible for deliberately causing the leak.
Why would Russia sabotage its own pipeline? The pro-Ukraine side provides no coherent explanation beyond the belief, expressed as fact, that Putin is irrationally evil.
By definition, these people say, Russia is playing a dangerous double game. It cannot be treated as a normal country.
This is very odd coming from The Star
The Calgary branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is calling on the federal government to take a harsher stance against Russia as the situation abroad continues to worsen.
The organization wants to see Ottawa declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, expel Russian diplomats from Canada and suspend the issuance of Canadian travel visas to Russian Federation citizens.
Vladimir Putin’s disastrous military adventure in Ukraine has raised the prospect that his 22-year rule could be nearing its end. But will he go, or will he have to be pushed?
Seven months into the Russian president’s war of aggression, his troops have suffered massive losses of men and equipment and are in headlong retreat in eastern Ukraine. Putin’s order last week to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men has descended into chaos, drawing rebukes even from his own propagandists and political allies.
The 69-year-old autocrat rose to power in 2000, succeeding an ailing Boris Yeltsin after championing Russia’s second war in Chechnya. The chances of his leaving anytime soon are still remote, but it’s clear that the escalating fallout from his military gamble is already loosening his viselike grip on power.
President Xi can’t afford to isolate the West
After managing a strained smile and handshake for the cameras, President Xi Jinping walked away from Vladimir Putin with a face like stone. By most accounts, the recent meeting in Uzbekistan between the two leaders, who once spoke of each other as “best friends” and “bosom buddies,” was frosty. In a remarkable admission, Putin acknowledged that the Chinese leader had arrived with “questions and concerns” about the course of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Putin promised to better explain “our position on this issue, although we have talked about it before”.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and key Kremlin ally, called on Vladimir Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine in the wake of another major and embarrassing military defeat.
His comments marked the first time a Russian official has openly and explicitly called for the use of atomic bombs in Ukraine.
It came after Moscow admitted it had withdrawn from the key eastern city of Lyman on Saturday in the face of “significant superiority in forces and means”, handing Kyiv a major battlefield victory.
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 110th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade claimed to shoot down another Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter in #Zaporizhzhia Oblast, presumably using MANPADS. We cannot verify the precise type of aircraft or date of the incident. pic.twitter.com/NB4ftliEgu
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 1, 2022
DARIALI, Georgia — They are bus drivers, programmers, photographers, bankers. They have driven for hours, bribed their way through many police checkpoints — spending a month’s wages in some cases — and then waited at the border, most of them for days, in a traffic jam that stretched for miles.
Many grabbed their passports, abandoned their cars and crossed the frontier on foot, fearing that Russia would slam shut one of the last, precious routes to leave the country. The Kremlin dispatched teams to border crossings to weed out draft-eligible men and hand them conscription notices, and rumors spread on social media that it would seal the border.
Most of those who left had no idea when they would return home, if ever.
Russia has withdrawn its troops from the strategic Ukrainian town of Lyman, in a move seen as a significant setback for its campaign in the east.
The retreat came amid fears thousands of soldiers would be encircled in the town, Russia’s defence ministry said.
Recapturing Lyman is of strategic significance for Ukraine.
The town had been used as a logistics hub by Russia, and could give Ukrainian troops access to more territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
OTTAWA—Russia’s war on Ukraine escalated sharply Friday after President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed four eastern Ukraine territories, prompting Kyiv to apply for fast-track membership in NATO and the U.S. and Canada to promise more support.
In Moscow, Putin renewed threats to use tactical nuclear weapons and blamed the West for sabotaging Russia-built undersea gas pipelines to Germany — an accusation the White House flatly rejected.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly condemned Putin’s latest moves, including “sham” votes this week that were “political theatre” to justify Friday’s “illegitimate” annexations.
